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You may copy it, give it away or -re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included -with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org/license - - -Title: Phantom of the Seven Stars - -Author: Ray Cummings - -Release Date: April 17, 2020 [EBook #61855] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: ASCII - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PHANTOM OF THE SEVEN STARS *** - - - - -Produced by Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online -Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net - - - - - - -</pre> - - -<div class="figcenter"> - <img src="images/cover.jpg" width="351" height="500" alt=""/> -</div> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<div class="titlepage"> - -<h1>Phantom of the Seven Stars</h1> - -<h2>By RAY CUMMINGS</h2> - -<p>Lovely Brenda Carson, scholarly Jerome, pompous<br /> -Livingston ... everyone aboard the <i>Seven Stars</i><br /> -scoffed at the idea of a Phantom Pirate. But I.P.<br /> -agent Jim Fanning didn't laugh. He knew the luxury-liner's<br /> -innocent looking cargo was already marked for plunder.</p> - -<p>[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from<br /> -Planet Stories Winter 1940.<br /> -Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that<br /> -the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]</p> - -</div> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<p>Part of my assignment on this space-flight of the <i>Seven Stars</i> was to -watch the girl. That much, at least, wasn't hard. She was certainly -easy to look at—a little beauty, slim with a pert, oval little face -framed by unruly pale-gold hair. With mingled starlight and earthlight -gleaming in that hair, it was like spun platinum. Her name was Brenda -Carson. Certainly, she was an inspiring figure to any young man, in her -white blouse and corded black and white trousers and her long black -traveling cape with its hood dangling at the back of her neck and the -cape folds flowing from her slim shoulders almost to the ground.</p> - -<p>We were several days out from New York, with Mars, our destination, -hanging like a great dull-red ball among the blazing stars in the black -firmament ahead of us, when I first noticed that there was anything -queer about Brenda. We were sitting under the glassite pressure-dome on -the forepeak of the <i>Seven Stars</i>, bathed in the pallid starlight. By -ship-routine it was mid-evening.</p> - -<p>I gestured toward one of the side bull's-eyes of the bow-peak. -"Gloomy-looking world, that Asteroid-9," I said.</p> - -<p>The little asteroid, one of the many out here in the belt between the -orbits of Earth and Mars, was a small leaden crescent of sunlight -with the unlighted portion faintly putty-colored. It was, I knew, a -world some five-hundred miles in diameter, amazingly dense so that -its gravity was not a great deal less than Earth. A bleak, barren -little globe. It had an atmosphere breathable for humans; there was -water—occasional rainfall; but chemicals in the cloud-vapors poisoned -the water for human consumption. The rocks were heavily laden with -metals. But they were all base metals, of no particular value. So far -as I knew, nobody had ever bothered to settle on Asteroid-9. It was -completely uninhabited.</p> - -<p>"Asteroid-9?" Brenda murmured. "Is that what it's called?"</p> - -<p>Something in my chance remark had frightened her. Her blue eyes as she -flung me a quick, startled glance were suddenly clouded with what might -have been terror.</p> - -<p>Her brother Philip was with us. He quickly said, "Asteroid-9? Somebody -said we pass pretty close to it this voyage." He laughed. "Rotten sort -of place, by what I've heard. You can have it and welcome."</p> - -<p>I must explain that I was—and still am—an IP Man. My name, Jim -Fanning. I was assigned as Lieutenant to Patrolship two. I had -been on vacation, in New York. My ship, one of the biggest in the -Interplanetary Patrol, was now on roving duty somewhere in the vicinity -of Mars. Then suddenly an emergency with the <i>Seven Stars</i> had arisen. -Chief Rankin had planted me on her. Only the captain knew my identity. -To the dozen or so passengers, I was merely a young civilian traveler.</p> - -<p>"I've never been to Asteroid-9," I was saying. And I, too, laughed -casually, "I agree with you, Carson. Nice place to die in, but I guess -that's all."</p> - -<p>There was no question but what Brenda was trying to hide her sudden -emotion. Terror? Was that it? We said no more about the asteroid; -chatted of other things, and we were presently joined by another of the -passengers.</p> - -<p>"Ah, beautiful night," he greeted us. "I never get tired of the glories -of the starways. Good evening, Miss Carson." He nodded smilingly to -Philip Carson and me, and drew up a chair with us. His name was Arthur -Jerome, well-known to me, though I had never before met him. He was -a big, florid, distinguished-looking man of forty-odd; a habitual -Interplanetary traveler, who between flights lectured over the earth -television networks on things astronomical.</p> - -<p>We talked for a while, and then suddenly Arthur Jerome said, "Nobody -mentions the Phantom bandit. You know, if anything could spoil my -interest in Interplanetary travel, it's to have a weird thing like that -come up."</p> - -<p>"Phantom bandit?" Brenda Carson murmured. "Is there—is there really -such a thing?"</p> - -<p>Arthur Jerome shrugged. "Naturally it's had no publicity. But things -get out. Those last three accidents to space-liners—you can't hide -that sort of thing. And you wouldn't call it supernatural. Or would -you?"</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>The Phantom of the starways! That was the crux of my being here on the -<i>Seven Stars</i>. Weird, mysterious thing—no wonder the Earth, Mars and -Venus governments had not dared let it get any publicity which they -could possibly avoid. For three months now, this Earth-year of 2170, -mysterious accidents had been happening to commercial space-ships. -Non-arrival at destination, and then later found by the Interplanetary -Patrol, derelicts in space. Gruesome damn' thing. A ship unharmed, save -that its air was gone. As though some mysterious accident had broken -one of the pressure valves, or deranged the machinery of an exit-porte, -so that the air had all hissed out. Ship of the dead. Everyone aboard -lying asphyxiated.</p> - -<p>It was eerie.</p> - -<p>A "ghost-vessel" attacking the liners? A modern version of the ancient -<i>Flying Dutchman</i> legend? Radio newscasters talked of things like -that. A vengeful ghost-ship roaming the starways, with dead pirates -aboard, bent on attacking the living navigators whom they hated just -because they were alive. It made nice gruesome broadcasting to give -the television audience the shivers. Supernatural legends easily get -support. Particularly from hysterical, imaginative women, or cranks who -crave publicity. Reports had come from amateur astronomers who owned -fairly decent telescopes that they had seen the wraith of a pallid -ghost-ship hovering up in Earth's stratosphere; passengers on liners -had hysterically thought they saw the same thing.</p> - -<p>A supernatural menace. But no reputable observer had ever seen -anything. Our Interplanetary Patrol was completely baffled. And what -the public didn't know was that those wrecked vessels—one of them, -at least—had shown evidence that it had been hit by an electronic -space-gun with a range of several hundred miles, which had broken the -pressure-dome and let the air out. And in every case the wrecked ship -was looted; the passengers' money and jewelry gone; the Purser's safe -rifled.</p> - -<p>"Anyway, it's a good thing for us," Arthur Jerome was saying, "the -little <i>Seven Stars</i> ought not to be much of a prize for the phantom -raider." He grinned, with his hand ruffling his sandy hair. "Let's hope -we escape."</p> - -<p>The <i>Seven Stars</i> not much of a prize? It was certainly reasonable -enough to think that. We had a few Martians in the second-class -section, and a few Earthmen passengers; and just an average commercial -cargo. That's what anyone would think; and only the captain and I knew -differently. Our cargo was anything but average. The boxes, as they -had come aboard and been stored in the hold, were labeled as American -preserved food-stuffs; technical commercial instruments, German-made -prisms, lenses and the like. But in reality those boxes were crammed -only with modern electronic weapons of war. It was a shipment purchased -by the Martian government which was faced by the insurrection of its -wealthy colony on Deimos. They were unusual weapons of exclusive -Earth-manufacture. Small, for short-range, hand-use only; weapons to -disable, but not injure. The recently publicized so-called "paralysis -gun" was one of them. The Martian government, humane at least in battle -with its own people, desperately needed this type of weapon in its -forthcoming invasion of Deimos to subdue the rebels.</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>Not much of a prize, our little commercial liner <i>Seven Stars</i> -this voyage? Just the opposite! Those rich colonists of Deimos -most certainly would pay well to keep this shipment away for Mars! -Would news of it have leaked out? Would the Phantom of the Starways -attack the <i>Seven Stars</i> for just that purpose? Chief Rankin, of -the Interplanetary Patrol, certainly thought it a possibility. He -had put me aboard here; and as only the Captain and I knew, my -ship—Patrolship-2—had been ordered to join us out here somewhere and -convoy us to Mars. Convoy us against an attack by an enemy that you -couldn't see!</p> - -<p>"The Phantom raider!" Young Philip Carson was echoing Arthur Jerome's -lugubrious words. "You suppose there is really any such thing?" I saw -him exchange a glance with his sister. He laughed, but it wasn't much -of a success.</p> - -<p>"I doubt it," I agreed. "So far as I ever heard, those accidents -were—well, just accidents. An air-valve can go wrong, you know, -and dump the air out of a ship. Air goes quickly, and with a pretty -powerful rush, if it once gets started.... Gruesome kind of talk, Miss -Carson," I added lightly.</p> - -<p>She tried to smile. My heart went out to her in that moment. Her -beauty, I suppose; but somehow she seemed horribly pathetic. That -mention of Asteroid-9 mysteriously frightened her; and now this mention -of the phantom spaceship terrified her even more.</p> - -<p>"You're right," Arthur Jerome agreed. "The supernatural is fascinating. -Or a thing that you can't see but still can kill you—that's just as -gruesome."</p> - -<p>"And fascinating?" Philip Carson put in sourly. "Well, it may be to -you, but it's frightening my sister. Let's talk of something else."</p> - -<p>Then another passenger joined us. That girl was a magnet to men.</p> - -<p>"Well, well, Miss Carson," he boomed as he came up. "You are looking -very beautiful in the starlight." He sat down with us. His name was -Walter J. Livingston—the Very Honorable Walter J. Livingston to give -him his official title. He had just been appointed by the President -of the World-Federation as Earth Ambassador to the Martian Government; -was on his way there now to present his credentials. He was a big, -heavy-set fellow, with a mass of iron-gray hair, a ribbon across his -ruffled shirt-bosom; and the out-jutting jaw and booming voice of a -born politician. Did he by any chance know the contents of the <i>Seven -Stars'</i> cargo, this voyage? So far as I had been informed, he did -not. I studied him now, and instinctively I didn't like him—possibly -because of the extravagant compliments he was paying Brenda Carson.</p> - -<p>The talk went on, and presently as I glanced up to the little control -tower under the pressure-dome above us, I saw the bulky figure of -Captain Wilkes standing there. He caught my gaze and furtively -gestured. I excused myself in a moment; sauntered down the narrow side -deck, turned a distant corner of the little superstructure. Then I went -up to its roof, and forward again. In a moment I was in the control -tower.</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>Captain Wilkes was there, seated alone with his electro-telescope -beside him. He slid the oval doors closed upon us.</p> - -<p>"Your ship's in sight," he greeted me. "Thought you'd be interested."</p> - -<p>Patrolship-2, coming to convoy us. I took a look through the eye-piece -of the telescope. Familiar vessel on which I had spent so many months. -Its long cylindrical alumite hull, with the pressure-dome over its -single upper deck, was painted by sunlight on one side and starlight on -the other as it headed diagonally toward us. By the range-finder on the -telescope I measured its visual length.</p> - -<p>"Ten thousand miles off us," I said to the captain.</p> - -<p>"Yes. Just about. Now listen, Fanning—there'll be no contact. It will -circle us, close at hand. If the passengers ask you why we need any -convoy—we don't want any panic here you know."</p> - -<p>What he had in mind about explaining this convoy was never disclosed. -He was staring through a duplicate eye-piece, and suddenly his words -were checked as he sucked in his breath.</p> - -<p>"Good Lord, Fanning—"</p> - -<p>I saw it also—a tiny puff of electronic light at the top of the -oncoming patrolship's dome. There was nothing else to be seen, I -searched the starfield in that second of premonitory horror. Absolutely -nothing visible. Just that puff of light where an electronic shot must -have struck.</p> - -<p>"Fanning—you saw that?" Captain Wilkes murmured.</p> - -<p>"Yes."</p> - -<p>Another few seconds. It seemed an eternity. And then the Patrolship -wavered; drunkenly lurching and slowly turning over! Ghastly silent -drama, out there in space ten thousand miles away. We could not see its -details; just the tiny image of the ship, lurching, turning end over -end.</p> - -<p>A derelict in space. My horrified imagination pictured the air hissing -out, spewing wreckage and bodies out perhaps. Ship of the dead, all in -those seconds. Then it was hanging poised, slowly turning on a drunken -axis of its own. The leprous, smashed dome was for a moment visible as -it turned.</p> - -<p>The Phantom raider had struck again!</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>My comrades. Thirty of them meeting their deaths out there in that -moment. The thought numbed me. Captain Wilkes had leaped to his feet.</p> - -<p>"Why—why, good Lord, it got them! And now—us next!"</p> - -<p>Our convoy gone. Unquestionably that was because the phantom was after -us!</p> - -<p>"What are you going to do?" I murmured. "Not tell the passengers—"</p> - -<p>"Good Lord, no. Nor the crew. What good would it do? We're not armed -with long-range guns—no preparations to make. Only spread panic maybe -among my men. Some of them might want to try and persuade me to turn -back to Earth."</p> - -<p>"And you're not going to do that?"</p> - -<p>"Hell, no." Captain Wilkes was a choleric fellow. His ham-like fist -crashed down on his desk. "I was told to run this cargo to Mars, and -by Heaven, Fanning, that's what I'm going to do. Make a run for it." -He swung for his controls. "I can use a greater Earth-repulsion and -once we get past Asteroid-9, by a little jockeying I can use that, too. -We'll see if there's any damn' phantom-ship going to overtake us."</p> - -<p>It was a weird, gruesome feeling, realization that in all probability -we were being pursued by something we couldn't see. Something still ten -thousand miles away. Could it overtake us? Certainly not in less than a -few hours, perhaps not even in a day. And then, would there be a flash -of an electronic space-gun, weirdly from its unseen source? The crash -of our hull, or our pressure-dome exploding outward; the wild rush -and hiss of our air out into the vacuum of space? And then death by -suffocation all in a minute or two.</p> - -<p>The thing had me shuddering. I must have been murmuring something of my -thoughts, for Captain Wilkes retorted:</p> - -<p>"If they crash us with a shot they might very easily injure the cargo. -More apt to try running in close to us—a boarding party with powered -pressure-suits." His fist thumped his desk again. "An' by Heaven, if -they try that—you got a gun, Fanning?"</p> - -<p>"Yes," I agreed. I had a small weapon of the paralyzer-gun type, -efficient at a few feet of range. But of what use against an enemy you -couldn't see?</p> - -<p>Wilkes presently dismissed me. "You keep your own counsel," he told me. -He lowered his voice. "By what your Chief Rankin intimated, there's at -least a reasonable possibility that we've some damn' spy on board."</p> - -<p>"Well, if that's a fact," I said, "the Phantom won't try cracking us -with a long-range gun and killing the spy as well as the rest of us."</p> - -<p>"Exactly. That's what I'm counting on. Keep your eyes open and your -ears stretched. Report to me anything that looks queer."</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>I left him presently. Dogged, indomitable old fellow. He was seated -grimly at his desk with his astronomical charts as he figured by what -ingenuity he could map an emergency course to give the little <i>Seven -Stars</i> its greatest speed. The ship was silent as I padded the length -of the superstructure roof and went down to the stern triangle. By -ship-routine it was now about eleven at night. The Martian Passengers -were out of sight, sleeping probably. None of the crew were about, -save the man in the aft peak with his small, wide-angle telescope. -The wreck of the patrolship was certainly far beyond sight of the -naked eye. This stern lookout evidently hadn't spotted it, and in a -moment now I knew it would be beyond his range also. The captain and I, -doubtless, were the only ones who knew what had happened.</p> - -<p>I went forward along the side deck. In the men's smoking lounge, -amidships in the superstructure, I heard voices, caught a glimpse as I -went past of Arthur Jerome, the television lecturer, and Livingston, -the Earth Ambassador to Mars, in there with Green, the ship's purser. -Did that mean that Brenda Carson and her brother were still on the -forward peak? I went cautiously forward. They were there—the blobs of -them, faintly starlit, showed where they were standing together at one -of the side bull's-eyes. Upon impulse, instead of joining them, I slid -unseen into the shadows of a loading engine.</p> - -<p>"Oh, Philip—" The girl's voice was faintly audible in the silence. -"I'm so frightened. You think we can do it safely?"</p> - -<p>"Yes, of course. I'll make sure—" He lowered his voice and I lost the -rest of it.</p> - -<p>"When?" she murmured.</p> - -<p>"I'll just take a look presently. We're not there yet—closer in a few -hours."</p> - -<p>What, in Heaven's name, could that mean? Were these two spies, planted -here on the <i>Seven Stars</i> by the phantom-bandits? Were they discussing -the attack which Captain Wilkes and I feared? Certainly it did not -seem so. Young Philip Carson wasn't much older than his sister. Slim, -handsome, rather effeminate-looking fellow, with a weak jaw and slack -mouth. He wore black and white trousers, somewhat like hers. He and she -seemed devoted to each other. Rankin had told me that Philip Carson had -a bad record of gambling and bad companions. Was the girl entangled -because of him?</p> - -<p>My mind went back to the meager details which Rankin had given me. -Brenda and Philip Carson came of a cultured and once-rich family in -New York. Their father—their only close living relative—had been a -research physicist. An eccentric old fellow; he had built a laboratory -down on Long Island where, working in secret, he was laboriously -experimenting on something. Two years ago the place had exploded. -Presumably he had been killed. But in the wreckage his body had not -been found; nor was there anything to give a clue as to what he had -been doing there.</p> - -<p>Had he been building the phantom space-raider? The thought was obvious -now. Brenda and Philip had denied knowing, when the authorities had -questioned them. And now they were going to Mars, on this of all -voyages, and for no reason that they had been able to give. Was the -vanished eccentric Professor Robert Carson the Phantom raider? My heart -leaped as I heard another fragment from the girl.</p> - -<p>"You think you got his message correctly?"</p> - -<p>"Yes, of course I did."</p> - -<p>"If we can do it safely—Oh, Phil—the location."</p> - -<p>"I've got it all figured out, Bren," he insisted. "Even made a little -map—got it in the wallet of my jacket."</p> - -<p>That stiffened me. I could see the blob of him standing there with -her. The folds of his hooded cape, like hers, fell almost to his feet. -But his arm held the cape draped a little to one side. I could see his -white shirt; he was wearing no jacket. It would be in his sleeping -cubby then.</p> - -<p>For a moment more I crouched in the shelter of the little loading -engine; I caught a few more fragments, but they were not important.</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>A wallet in young Carson's cubby, with a map in it? I shifted silently -backward, reached the side deck and padded aft. The smoking lounge was -empty now. The little interior cross corridor of the superstructure -was dim and silent. Carson and his sister had connecting rooms, with -corridor doors side by side. Cautiously I tried them. They were locked.</p> - -<p>In a moment I was out to the side deck. Carson's window was closed; -I pulled at the vertical sash and it yielded, slid outward. The room -was dim, with just a faint glow of the corridor light coming over the -lattice-grille above the door.</p> - -<p>I jumped over the sill; landed silently in the room. No need for any -lengthy search; his jacket was here, folded on a chair. The wallet was -in a pocket. Swiftly I riffled through it, came upon a folded square -of notepaper. The map? I was opening it. By the dim sheen of reflected -light I could see its penciled scrawl. And suddenly I was stricken -by the sound of footsteps in the corridor outside. Someone coming. I -jumped on the chair. Through the grille I could catch a glimpse of a -cloaked figure coming along the corridor. Carson or the girl—in that -second I could not tell which.</p> - -<p>But at all events I had no desire to get caught here by either of them. -I got back out the window just in time. Aft down the side deck there -was the blob of a loitering figure, a big, bulky silhouette. It was -Walter Livingston, the Earth-Mars Ambassador. The tip of his cigarette -glowed in the dimness as he stood by one of the side bull's-eyes. Was -he watching these windows of Carson and the girl? Did he see me? I had -no way of telling. I ran forward, ducked around the superstructure -corner. The bow-peak triangle was empty; the chairs where the group of -us had been sitting were still here.</p> - -<p>There was enough light for me to examine the folded sheet of paper I -had purloined. It seemed a crude map. A rough, penciled sketch. But a -map of what? There were the ragged outlines of what might be intended -to represent mountains. The scribbled word: "Andros." A dotted line -through what might be a mountain pass. And then a tiny X.</p> - -<p>I stared at the thing, puzzled. A few hundred years ago the fabled -surface-ship pirates of Earth's romantic sea-history supposedly made -maps like this. Maps of buried treasure. Pirates' gold. Were Carson and -his young sister after some treasure? Where? On Earth? Mars? Little -Deimos? Asteroid-9? That thought leaped at me. Certainly they had -shown a queer interest in my chance remark about Asteroid-9. We were -not far from it now. Fifty thousand miles perhaps—would pass at our -closest point to it in an hour of two. I stared through the bull's-eye -beside me. It was down there, diagonally ahead of us—a full-round, -putty-colored disk, with the configurations of its mountains and the -turgid clouds of its atmosphere beginning to be visible.</p> - -<p>But what could any of that have to do with the Phantom raider, or the -attack on the patrolship and the impending attack upon us? Surely there -was no treasure on Asteroid-9. The treasure, if you could call it that, -was right here on board the little <i>Seven Stars</i>.</p> - -<p>I was crouching now in the shadow of the loading engine on the -bow-peak, puzzled by my rush of thoughts. Should I take this to Captain -Wilkes? Vaguely I realized that perhaps I should, but something stopped -me. My own instinctive feelings for Brenda Carson. She seemed somehow -so pathetic. Surely she was no plotting murderess. Her brother—yes. -But the girl—protecting someone she loved? Was her father really the -Phantom raider? His invention an X-flyer endowed with mechanical, -electronic invisibility? I knew that such a thing was scientifically -possible, of course. But Professor Carson was a frail old man. And my -mind leaped back to some other things Chief Rankin had told me. The -Phantom was thought to be a notorious Earth-criminal who, a few years -ago, had been known as the "Chameleon." A fellow skilled in the art of -wax disguise so that none of the Earth crime-trackers really knew what -he looked like. He was wanted in both Great New York and Great London -for mail-tube murders. Nothing was known of his identity save that he -had once had an operation for a fractured skull, where in the back of -the skull a big triangular platinum plate had been inserted to take the -place of the shattered bone. A criminal surgeon, dying, had confessed -that much; had said he had performed the operation. And then he had -mumbled something about the Chameleon being the Phantom raider.</p> - -<p>Surely such a notorious skilled adventurer could not be old Professor -Carson. I decided not to have Brenda and Philip hauled before the -captain now for questioning.</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>Thoughts are instant things. I was crouching there behind the engine -loader no more than a moment; and suddenly down the other side deck -just beyond the smoking lounge, I saw a moving figure. A slight figure -in dark cloak and hood—the bottoms of black and white trousers were -visible. Brenda? It made my heart pound. For a second I stared as she -ducked into a doorway. I was there in twenty seconds, until I saw the -cloaked shadow of her going down a companion ladder into the ship's -hold.</p> - -<p>Swiftly I followed. Down two eight-foot levels, and then I caught -another glimpse of her as she moved into the lower passage. It was -a metal catwalk with small cubbies opening from it. The ship's -air-renewers, ventilating system; a cubby controlling the hull -gravity-plate shifters; other mechanism rooms. She went past them, a -furtive little shadow. And stopped at what seemed the door to one of -the tiny pressure chambers of an exit-porte in the side of the hull.</p> - -<p>"Oh, you, Mr. Fanning? What do you want down here?" The voice in the -silence so startled me that I whirled. It was Kellogg, the ship's -gravity-control operator. In his shirtsleeves, pipe in hand, with a -green eyeshade on his forehead, he had seen me from the door of his -little cubby.</p> - -<p>"Why—" I murmured. "Just coming down to see you." I turned to join -him. And suddenly a buzzer in his control room interrupted him. I stood -while he answered it—an audio-tube for direct voice-transmission.</p> - -<p>"Yes, Captain Wilkes—" And then Kellogg gasped and clutched at the -table beside him; then he whirled upon me, his face chalk-white. "Our -radio-helio is smashed! Someone—something smashed it!"</p> - -<p>Our little <i>Seven Stars</i> was cut off from Earth or Mars communication! -Captain Wilkes had evidently decided to flash a call for help to Earth, -and found that the apparatus had been smashed! But even that startling -news instantly was stricken from Kellogg and me. Out in the corridor -quite near us a low scream sounded! And then there was the sound of air -hissing!</p> - -<p>"What the devil!" Kellogg gasped.</p> - -<p>My gun was in my hand as we ran. There was nothing in sight on the dim -little catwalk. The scream had died. The air-hissing stopped.</p> - -<p>"Somebody went into the pressure-chamber!" Kellogg muttered. "What in -the hell—"</p> - -<p>"The pressure-chamber door-slide was closed. I knew the mechanism -of these exit-portes. There were four of them in the hull-bottom of -the <i>Seven Stars</i>—two on each side. There was an inner door-slide; a -sealed pressure-room some ten feet square and six feet high; and an -outer door-slide. Ordinarily the mechanism was automatic. The outer -slide must be closed if the inner one was open. To make an exit, one -went into the pressure-room; closed the catwalk door, and with manual -control slowly opened the outer slide, so that the air in the sealed -room would hiss out into space. After which, with a thirty-second -interval, the outer slide would close and the inner one slowly open, -admitting the ship's air again into the pressure-room.</p> - -<p>"Someone worked the manual controls wrong!" Kellogg was muttering. He -gestured to where there was a duplicate set of controls out here in the -corridor. "That outer slide opened too quickly!"</p> - -<p>We could hear the last of the air rushing out with a wild gush. A stab -of horror went into my heart. Brenda Carson in there, trying to escape -from the ship—not knowing how to work the controls—opening that outer -slide too quickly.</p> - -<p>The air in the pressure-room was gone in a few seconds. Then we heard -the click of the outer slide closing. The inner door began very slowly -opening. With a muttered curse of impatience Kellogg twitched at the -control levers here. The inner door slid wide.</p> - -<p>We clutched at the catwalk rail to hold ourselves against the gust -of wind as the little pressure-room filled. And then we rushed into -it. Pressure suits, powered as I knew by tiny gravity-repulsers and a -rocket-stream mechanism, stood here in racks. One of them lay here on -the floor, entangled with a rack-post so that it had not blown out. -Brenda evidently had tried to get into it and failed.</p> - -<p>"Look! Good Lord—poor little thing—" Kellogg murmured. He had slid -aside a tiny bull's-eye shade. Through it a segment of space outside -the hull was visible.</p> - -<p>We had only a glimpse of a ghastly body, mangled by the explosion of -the pressure within itself, out in the pressureless vacuum of space. -It floated past us, some forty feet out. Held poised by the gravity, -the nearness and bulk of the <i>Seven Stars</i>. Horrible little satellite, -already finding an orbit of its own, slowly circling around us.</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>I staggered back from the bull's-eye. As I rushed back along the -catwalk my horrified mind was clamoring with the vague thought: had -Brenda operated that pressure-mechanism wrongly? Or had someone on the -catwalk, at the controls there, done it?</p> - -<p>That thought, too, was stricken away. I reached the forward deck -triangle. The bow-peak lookout was calling up to Captain Wilkes:</p> - -<p>"Passenger overboard! Brenda Carson! It's Miss Brenda Carson!"</p> - -<p>Dead girl in the space-light. I could not look at the horrible thing as -it rounded our bow and came slowly floating past again.</p> - -<p>"You, Fanning—what's happened? Brenda Carson, he says."</p> - -<p>Arthur Jerome stood calling to me from his stateroom door at the bow -superstructure corner. He was in his nightrobe with a negligee hastily -wrapped around him.</p> - -<p>"Yes—" I gasped. "Brenda Carson. She—"</p> - -<p>"And I heard something about radio-helio room wrecked." The big, florid -television lecturer seemed in a panic. Experienced space-traveler, -but he had never run into anything like this before. I wouldn't blame -him for his terror. But I had no time for him now. The ship was in -confusion. I could hear the Martians, below deck in the bow, shouting -with frightened questions. Two or three members of the crew were -running up to Captain Wilkes who was outside his turret calling down -orders.</p> - -<p>I ran down the side deck. One of the excited crew stopped me. "You seen -young Philip Carson? Captain wants him."</p> - -<p>I shook my head and ran on. Somebody else was calling Carson's name. I -mounted the companionway to the superstructure roof. Had Philip Carson -vanished? They couldn't find him? Well, what I knew about Philip Carson -now I'd certainly tell Captain Wilkes! Suddenly I realized fully that -because of Brenda I had wanted to keep silent—but there was no need of -that now.</p> - -<p>From the superstructure roof, as I ran forward along it, I could see -down to the side deck. A cloaked figure there. Philip Carson. I had -just a glimpse as he darted into a door under me. A ladder was nearby. -My little paralyzer-gun was in my hand as I climbed down the ladder, -reached the dark side-deck. The commotion was all up forward; there was -no one here at the moment. The corridor door into which Carson had run -was beside me. I ran into it, ten feet or so and into a cross corridor. -Came to his doorway. It was locked. I ran around to the deck again. His -window was near here.</p> - -<p>The glassite pane of the window was closed and locked. The inner -fabric-shade was drawn down. What was he doing in there? Searching for -his map? For other things which might be incriminating?</p> - -<p>I had a few instruments hidden in my clothes, tiny devices which we -of the Interplanetary Patrol sometimes have occasion to use—a small -electric listener and a tiny X-ray fluoroscope screen. The listener -yielded the sound of a man's panting breath, his furtive, fumbling -movements within the dark little cubby. Then I tried the X-ray, through -the fabric-shrouded glassite pane of the window. It shot its invisible, -soundless rays through the window into the cubby. The little hooded -three-inch screen in my palm glowed with the greenish fluoroscopic -X-ray image.</p> - -<p>A kneeling skeleton was revealed—the skeleton of a man kneeling in -there with his back to me. I stared, and suddenly gasped, with my -breath stopped. The back of the skeleton's skull was visible—the -image-shadow there was of a different density from the bones of his -skull! A dark triangular patch—not bone, but metal! The man with the -metal skull! Philip Carson, of notorious Chameleon fame! The Phantom -raider! I had him here identified at last! Had him trapped here!</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>With a blow of my gun-butt I smashed through the glassite pane; tore -the fabric-shade aside. This room was dark. I had an instant's glimpse -of the dark blob of his crouching figure. There was the whiz of -something he threw at me; the tinkling of glass as some fragile little -thing struck against my forehead. I recall that my paralyzer ray darted -into the dark room. Perhaps it caught him, held him for a second. -But my head was reeling; my senses swiftly fading, with a cold sweat -breaking out all over me.</p> - -<p>And then I was aware that I had fallen to the deck with my gun -clattering away. With my last dim thought came the realization that -I was fainting. That tiny glass globe which had broken against my -forehead—I knew what it was! A little bomb of acetycholine, a weird -drug to lower the blood-pressure and cause me to faint. I fought, but -it was useless. My senses faded.</p> - -<p>Then after an interval I seemed vaguely to be conscious that someone -was bending over me. A dark cloak.... Again I knew only blankness; -and then slowly my senses were coming back. Weak, dizzy, with my head -roaring, my body bathed in cold sweat, I found myself still lying on -the dark deck. Perhaps I had been out only a moment or two. I could -still hear the commotion up forward. I staggered to my feet; saw the -cloaked figure as it ran into the superstructure. Carson making his -getaway! I had a glimpse of him again, two levels down on the dim -catwalk, and saw him dart into the pressure-chamber. I was too late -getting there. The metal pressure-door closed in my face.</p> - -<p>But I had him! I could do to him what he had done to Brenda! I started -for the manual controls. I could open that outer slide, let the -pressure-room air out with a rush before he could get into his space -suit, blast him out into space, or suffocate him in the pressure-room.</p> - -<p>But I had over-taxed my strength. My blood-pressure was still too low -from that accursed drug. My senses were fading again and I sank to the -floor. Weakly I tried to call Kellogg. But he wasn't in his little -nearby cubby now.</p> - -<p>I did not quite lose consciousness this time. I heard the air slowly -going out through the outside opening slide. Then heard the click -as the automatic mechanism closed it. The corridor slide in another -moment, automatically was slowly opening. The rush of air into the -little room helped revive me. I got to my feet again; ran into the -room. I could see the empty space on the rack where he had taken one of -the powered pressure suits and escaped. At the bull's-eye observation -porte I had a glimpse of him—a bloated figure in his air-filled -suit—a tiny comet with a radiance of rocket-stream like a tail behind -it.</p> - -<p>The blob of him in a moment had vanished. Where did he expect to go? -Diagonally ahead, and far down in the glittering starfield, the round, -putty-colored disk of Asteroid-9 was visible.</p> - -<p>My strength had almost fully come back to me now. Quickly I got -into another of the power-suits. They were a somewhat old-fashioned -model, but adequate enough, a double-shelled fabric with electronic -pressure-absorbing current in it; air-renewers, and the small -power-units. I bloated the suit in another moment; closed the corridor -slide. I let the air rush out through the outer slide as quickly as I -dared.</p> - -<p>And then I catapulted out, not bothering with the rocket-stream but -using full gravity-repulsion against the bulk of the <i>Seven Stars</i>. Far -down, ahead of me, for an instant I could just see the speck which was -the fleeing Carson. Over me the bulk of the <i>Seven Stars</i> hung, a great -alumite cylinder, receding, dwindled by distance until it was only a -tiny speck, lost among the blazing stars.</p> - -<p>With the huge, dull-lead disk of Asteroid-9 growing in visual size -under me, I hurtled downward, using the asteroid's full attraction now -as I sped after the escaping Carson.</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>Alone in space; a little drifting world of yourself. It is an eerie -feeling. I have no idea how long that descent to Asteroid-9 took; one -loses all sense of time as well as space, hurtling alone through the -starry universe. The <i>Seven Stars</i> long since was gone, vanished in the -black illimitable distances of the blazing firmament above me. Head -down, with full attraction in the little gravity plates of the padded -shoulders of my bloated suit, like a diver I headed, hurtling for the -dull-lead surface.</p> - -<p>I had picked up velocity swiftly. The great round disk of Asteroid-9 -widened, spread, crawled outward and seemed visually coming up. For -a time, sunlight was a thin stream on its distant curving limb of -mountains. Then I went into the cone of its shadow. At once the look of -the weird leaden mountains changed; starlight and earthlight mellow -with a faint sheen that struck down through the clouds and tinged the -giant ragged peaks with a tinting glow.</p> - -<p>The clouds, still far down, were broken in thin stratas here over this -hemisphere. The disk had widened now so that presently it filled all -the lower half of the firmament; and a visual convexity had come to -it. I tried to calculate my velocity by the apparent enlarging of the -desolate scene as it rushed up at me.</p> - -<p>Where was Carson? Long since, I had lost sight of the tiny speck -which had been he. Was I overtaking him? I could not tell. With the -leaden glow of the asteroid's surface as a background, I knew I could -be quite close to him and still not see him. Undoubtedly he was not -using his rocket-stream now; had only used it in starting, for quick -repulsion against the ship's hull. I was sure he could not be very far -below me unless, during the time which had passed, he had headed in -some other direction, departing from a straight, swift descent. Could -he drop faster than I was dropping? I doubted it. Unless he was very -skilled—or very desperate, holding the asteroid's attraction to a -dangerous point. I held my own until I dared hold it no longer. I was -in the upper atmosphere now. In every direction, save above me, the -planet's dark surface spread out to its jagged, circular horizon.</p> - -<p>Then at last I dared not hold the attraction longer. With all the tiny -plates in my suit electronized to full repulsion, I began slackening my -fall. Still I had not glimpsed Carson. Disappointment was within me. -What a long chance was this! A five-hundred-mile hemisphere of utter -desolation. No food; no water. And I had no weapons or instruments, -save the single little paralyzer-gun which I had snatched from the deck -when I recovered my senses. I was beginning to be sorry now that I had -so hastily left the <i>Seven Stars</i>. No chance of getting back; the die -was cast, here on little Asteroid-9 pitted against this resourceful, -youthful astonishing Interplanetary murderer.</p> - -<p>What was Carson's plan? Escape from the ship had been a desperate -necessity for him, of course. And my memory was back to the fragments -I had heard between him and Brenda. I could understand them better -now! They had planned from the beginning to escape to Asteroid-9! And -poor little Brenda, entangled in this criminality with her brother, had -left the ship first, and met her death. Memory of the map they had had -came suddenly to me. I had it in my pocket now; I tried to conjure what -it had looked like. Outlines of mountains; the word Andros. Was that -the name of one of the asteroid's mountain peaks? Probably it was. I -cursed myself for my ignorance. The Phantom raider probably was based -upon this desolate asteroid. A hide-out here, with food and water and -possibly with some of the raiders' men living here. And Carson was -dropping now to join them.</p> - -<p>What chance had I against a layout like that?</p> - -<p>But I had no choice now but hurtle downward, trying to check my descent -as best I could. For a time, as I came out from under the clouds, with -the dark, fantastic surface of naked, ragged little peaks no more than -twenty or thirty thousand feet down, it seemed that I had been too -brash; I was dropping too fast; never would I be able to check it. I -would crash....</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>But that, too, was an error, born of my momentarily despairing -thoughts. I was presently poised, some ten thousand feet up. The -highest of the little peaks was no more than half that. They stood -in a tumbled mass—jagged needle-spires—rocks and buttes and great -round-top boulders, with ravines and gullies between them. Scene of -utter, naked desolation, convulsed landscape, frozen into immobility.</p> - -<p>And suddenly my heart was pounding with abrupt exultation. Far down, -where the starlight and Earthlight bathed a little peak, I saw the -speck which was the descending Carson! Just for a second the tiny -outline of his bloated suit was clear against the background of a -shining rock. Then he dropped into an inky shadow and was gone again.</p> - -<p>I tried to mark the spot. A little triplet of spires, standing like -sentinels above a small dark valley. Was that Andros, a landmark here? -Probably it was.</p> - -<p>I was down in perhaps another half hour, with the triplet of spires -standing up against what was now a sullen sky of broken leaden clouds -through which the starlight and Earthlight fitfully shone. I had -landed, by all that I could judge, about half an Earth-mile from where -Carson had dropped. Had he seen me coming down above him? Perhaps. -Perhaps not.</p> - -<p>With my helmet off, and with my lungs panting as they tried to adjust -themselves to the weird air, I crouched for a moment in the shadow of -a rock, peering, listening. There was nothing. It seemed a dead world, -myself its only inhabitant—a silence so utter that my own breath, my -pounding heart were roaring in my ears.</p> - -<p>I started in a moment, heading along a ridged, fantastic little terrain -at the bottom of a shadowed valley. The deflated suit hung in baggy -folds upon me; the bulky helmet was folded, hanging down from the back -of my neck. Half a mile to where Carson had dropped. Gun in hand I -advanced as cautiously as I could, until presently I was following a -ragged ditch with the triple spires of Andros looming above me.</p> - -<p>Was this where Carson had landed? So far as I could judge, it seemed -so. I was tense, alert with the vague, horrible feeling that I was -walking into ambush.</p> - -<p>Then ahead of me, in a distant shadow, it seemed that there was a faint -stir of movement. Soundlessly I melted down to the lead-gray rocks. I -could not see the shadow now, but every instant I expected the luminous -darkness to be stabbed with a bursting bolt. There was nothing.</p> - -<p>Suddenly the stillness was broken by a faint scraping sound. It seemed -fairly close, and into the darkness from whence it had come I aimed my -ray; pressed its lever.</p> - -<p>There was a faint, gasping scream; then a choked silence. I jumped to -my feet, holding the paralyzer-gun leveled as it throbbed and quivered -in my grip. Got him! He couldn't move. He was rooted there in the -darkness, with rigid, stiffened muscles as the ray held him.</p> - -<p>I saw him in an instant, the dark blob of him almost merged with the -shadows, with his baggy space-suit like my own deflated in folds upon -him, and his helmet folded back.</p> - -<p>Triumphant, I dashed forward; and then stopped transfixed, amazed. -The paralyzed figure, stricken upright here on the rocks wasn't young -Carson! Above the folded helmet there was a head of bobbed blonde hair! -Brenda! Brenda, not dead! Not that ghastly thing that was a gruesome -little satellite of the <i>Seven Stars</i>!</p> - -<p>I saw her rigid face, with goggling mouth and staring eyes. Brenda -mute, stricken by my ray. I snapped it off frantically; called to her -as I dashed up. And as the ray released her, I saw her waver; then, -with her knees buckling, she sank into a little heap on the ground.</p> - -<p>If only I had some water to dash into her face! Frantically I knelt, -holding her head, brushing her curls from her damp forehead. The ray, I -knew, upon her for so short a time, should not quite do this to her. It -was her emotion, her terror which had caused her to faint.</p> - -<p>My mind went back to that hooded figure, cloaked, which I had chased -in the ship's corridor. I had had a vague indecision, then had decided -it was Brenda—and the ship's lookout at the bow-peak had confirmed my -fears. But that had been Philip, and it was Brenda whom I had chased -that second time, following her out the porte, hurtling into space -after her.</p> - -<p>"Brenda—"</p> - -<p>She opened her eyes presently, bewildered, but she was unharmed.</p> - -<p>"Oh—you—I was so frightened."</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>I held her as she recovered, and presently she was filling in all the -grim details of her tragic little story. Whatever her brother Philip's -propensities for gambling and bad companions, he had been no criminal. -They had lost their father; had been truthful when they said they did -not know what Professor Carson had been building in his lonely little -laboratory. But they knew enough so that when the Phantom bandit began -his mysterious raids, they suspected it was their father's ship; the -laboratory explosion merely a blind. He had often mentioned, when they -were children, that the dream of his life was to discover and perfect -electronic invisibility.</p> - -<p>"Albert Einstein of two hundred years ago," she was telling me now. -"Father studied his writings and his theories very closely. He said -that the secret of practical mechanical invisibility was clearly -forecast by Einstein's discoveries."</p> - -<p>"And you think now," I murmured, "your father is this mysterious -Phantom raider?"</p> - -<p>Her little face clouded. Her blue eyes, misty with Earthlight which -was striking down upon us now through the clouds, gazed at me with a -pathetic appeal.</p> - -<p>"We did not know. We—we were afraid so. And then Philip got a message -one night—"</p> - -<p>Weird occurrence. Young Carson had been on the porch of their Long -Island home. From the sky overhead, where nothing was to be seen, had -come a little stab of waving white light. A helio signal. From their -father? Certainly it seemed so. It told them to come secretly to -Asteroid-9. He would be there, at the base of Andros. And so they had -come to try and help their father.</p> - -<p>"Help him?" I murmured.</p> - -<p>"Yes. Oh, Mr. Fanning—"</p> - -<p>"Jim is shorter," I interjected.</p> - -<p>"—Jim, you see, we couldn't believe father is a criminal. Captured -maybe and forced to operate his ship by these bandits, and appealing to -us for help."</p> - -<p>Desperate adventure indeed. But they had tackled it; had taken passage -on the little <i>Seven Stars</i> which they understood would pass very close -to Asteroid-9, this voyage. And they had known completely nothing of -the <i>Seven Stars'</i> cargo or of any plot which the raider might have -against her! Brenda gasped now when I told her of those angles.</p> - -<p>And there were still other angles that puzzled me. "Brenda, have you -ever heard of an Earth-criminal called the Chameleon?"</p> - -<p>She had not; and when I described his exploits of a few years ago, -she was convinced that by no possible chance could her aged father -have been secretly doing things like that. Nor Philip either, for that -matter. She declared it vehemently, and I believed her. But the man -with the metal skull had been on the <i>Seven Stars</i> as stowaway, or spy -among the passengers, ship's officers or crew. I had seen him there in -young Carson's stateroom.</p> - -<p>Brenda, when I was chasing her, had eluded me. "I saw you fighting with -somebody at Philip's window," she told me now. "I was going to escape -from the ship then."</p> - -<p>"Even though Philip was dead, you were going on with your plans alone?"</p> - -<p>"Yes, why not?" She smiled her twisted little smile. "Then I saw you -fall to the deck. I ran, bent over you. I—I thought you were dead. So -I—I ran down to the porte and took off. Philip and I had planned it so -carefully. Oh, poor Philip!"</p> - -<p>"He didn't miscalculate those air-mechanisms," I muttered. "That damned -villain must have been there in the corridor for an instant while I was -talking to Kellogg, and shoved the controls—killed Philip."</p> - -<p>And I had tried to do the same thing to Brenda! I could only thank the -Lord now that I had failed!</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>The two of us, alone here on Asteroid-9. No food nor water. Perhaps the -only inhabitants of this desolate little world.</p> - -<p>Abruptly she was gripping me. "Look—Jim—look there!"</p> - -<p>I followed her gesture. Up in the leaden sky beyond the looming triple -spires of Andros, a tiny speck had appeared. A ship coming down. -Breathlessly we watched. In a few minutes it was a little oblong blob.</p> - -<p>"It's coming this way, Brenda."</p> - -<p>"Yes."</p> - -<p>It seemed circling a little. By the look it would land on a small level -plateau some quarter of a mile from us. We stared, mute, transfixed, -watching.</p> - -<p>And then suddenly I sucked in my breath with a new shock of startled -amazement. There was something familiar about that cylindrical alumite -hull with the curving pressure-dome above it, and those quadruplicate -tail-fins.</p> - -<p>It wasn't the bandit flyer! "That's the <i>Seven Stars</i>!" I gasped.</p> - -<p>The <i>Seven Stars</i> unquestionably. We saw her clearly in a moment, as -she circled some five miles away from us and headed slowly for the -small plateau. Captain Wilkes undoubtedly had changed his mind about -trying to make a run for it. With chaos on his ship—his radio-helio -wrecked so that he could not summon another convoy—he had headed down -here to hide his vessel. And he did not know, of course, that the -Phantom raider's base was here! He had brought his little treasure ship -into the very camp of the enemy!</p> - -<p>"We must warn him, Brenda."</p> - -<p>The blob of the little liner dropped from our sight behind a line of -broken rock-spires as she settled to the plateau. But we could tell -within a few hundred yards of where she had landed. It took us only -a few minutes to run there, with the slighter gravity of Asteroid-9 -aiding us in our leaps across the intervening little chasms. And then -we saw the <i>Seven Stars</i>, where she rested placidly on the level -surface. One of her lower portes was open, but there were no figures -out on the dim rocks.</p> - -<p>There was silence inside as we entered the dark little -pressure-chamber. As always customary in port, both its outer and inner -door-slides were open, admitting the fresh outer air.</p> - -<p>There was no one to greet us on the lower level catwalk. Its single -overhead light was burning. We passed Kellogg's little cubby. No -one was in it. Then we mounted the companion ladder; came to the -superstructure corridor.</p> - -<p>Queer, this silence. I held Brenda, with my heart chilling, sinking. -It seemed suddenly that we were prowling like ghouls. The ship was so -cold, so silent. With the ventilating fans stilled, the interior air -here was turning fetid. I had an impulse to call out. Captain Wilkes, -Controlman Kellogg, Purser Green, the crew, the passengers—where were -they all? But abruptly I was furtive, with a slow, horrified terror -dawning in me so that in the dim corridor I stood suddenly and turned -to Brenda.</p> - -<p>"We'd better get back out of here," I murmured. "Something queer—"</p> - -<p>"Jim—look!"</p> - -<p>We stood frozen, transfixed. At the deck doorway a blob was lying. -Captain Wilkes. Dead—suffocated. I swept Brenda away that she might -not get a second glimpse of his puffed, mangled flesh where it had -burst outward from its own pressure. There had been a vacuum here! Out -in space the little <i>Seven Stars</i> quite evidently had lost her interior -air!</p> - -<p>Ship of the dead! I took only one look at the dimly starlit deck -triangle; the bodies lying strewn there. Little group of humans who -had gathered there in a last frenzied panic, clinging to each other, -falling one upon the other—suffocating, dying.</p> - -<p>Nothing but the dead here.</p> - -<p>But this tragedy had happened out in space! And we had seen the <i>Seven -Stars</i> calmly coming down, gracefully, skilfully landing!</p> - -<p>I swung back to Brenda. I gasped, "Good Lord, we've got to get out!"</p> - -<p>Too late a realization! I was aware suddenly of a dark glistening shape -behind us in the corridor—a man in a sleek tight-fitting black robe. -His white face, evil with a leer, grinned at us. Brenda screamed. I -tried to defend us from another dark blob that leaped from a doorway -beside me. And then something struck my head. I was aware only that -Brenda was screaming as I felt myself falling, my senses hurtling off -into the soundless abyss of unconsciousness.</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>I came at last into a dim half-consciousness in which I realized that I -was being carried. I could feel the rhythmic step; and then I knew that -I was slung over a man's shoulder and that he was walking with me on -the rocks. Other dark forms were beside us. With blurred vague vision I -could see the little <i>Seven Stars</i> which we had left.</p> - -<p>And near at hand another spaceship had landed now, here upon little -Asteroid-9. I was being carried to it. I could glimpse it only -vaguely as I hung inert on my captor's shoulder. It was a small -ship, smaller than the <i>Seven Stars</i>, and of a type I had never seen -before—barrel-finned and with a spreading fan-tail, somewhat in the -British Earth-design. It rested on the rocks like a long, thin bird, -with body puffed out underneath. Over it was the conventional glassite -pressure dome, low-slung so that its top was no more than ten feet -above the single deck. A dead-black bird. The starlight and mellow -Earthlight were on it, but the black metal surface did not shimmer.</p> - -<p>My senses wafted away again into another blank interval.... And then -dimly my hearing came....</p> - -<p>"We're glad to have you, little Brenda. You are a treasure indeed. A -woman among us—to cook and sew with woman's duties. Your father will -appreciate that. You do, eh Carson?"</p> - -<p>Familiar, suave, ironic voice with a rich booming timber to it of -assumed graciousness. I knew I had heard that voice before, but with my -swimming senses now I could not quite place it. I felt my eyes opening -to a blur of swaying outlines.</p> - -<p>"You let her alone." The thin frightened voice of an old man. Brenda's -father.</p> - -<p>The dim scene clarified as my strength came. I was lying on the -floor of a little circular control room, with a black shape beside -me. And there were three other figures: Brenda, still garbed in her -baggy deflated space-suit, with her white tense face staring in my -direction; her gray-haired, thin father, in black trousers and black -shirt, seated in a little metal chair beside her. And the other figure -at the controls—a big, heavy-set man in tight-fitting black garment. -Tubelight shone on his florid face. Arthur Jerome, Interplanetary -traveler, Earth television lecturer on things astronomical! The man -with the metal skull, unquestionably! Notorious chameleon of former -years, and now the Phantom Raider!</p> - -<p>"This Fanning comes to his senses," a voice beside me growled.</p> - -<p>"Ah, so?" It brought Jerome with a leap, and then he bent over me. "So -that blow on your head didn't kill you, Fanning?"</p> - -<p>"No," I said. "You, Jerome. If only I had known—"</p> - -<p>"Quite true," he chuckled. "Hindsight is very easy. And now we have -you here. You will be useful, if you have any sense, A member of the -Interplanetary Patrol, you should be skilled in many things of our -adventuring in space. Romantic life, Fanning. Did you ever read of -Captain Kidd, so long ago? One might say I am his modern incarnation. -Romantic idea, eh Fanning?"</p> - -<p>A little mad, this fellow. I could well imagine it. But a clever -scheming, murderous villain for all that. "Much money for you," he -added slyly. "I treat all my men well. There are fifteen of us here."</p> - -<p>"I like money," I said with an assumption of sullenness. "But there are -a lot of things I want to know."</p> - -<p>I found that I was still garbed in the space-suit, but my weapon was -gone. I was presently allowed to sit up in a chair beside Brenda and -her father. But for all my assumption that I could be bribed, it did -not deceive the wily Jerome. The two other black-garbed men here were -closely watching me.</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>The Phantom flyer. From here in its tiny control room, it did not seem -unusually weird. Its fittings a dead-black metal. Its men garbed in -sleek, dead-black, close-fitting fabric suits with black fabric helmets -dangling at the back of the neck.</p> - -<p>I could see that we were in space. Through the pressure dome the stars -were glittering in a black firmament. Where were we going? Jerome had -not the slightest objection to telling me. Perhaps in the back of his -mind there was the idea that ultimately he could bribe me, make me one -of his band of cutthroats, useful to him. He was a genial, triumphant -villain now, flushed with his success, pleased to boast of it before -his men and before Brenda.</p> - -<p>Old Professor Carson had not intended that his children come to -Asteroid-9 and try to rescue him. That furtive message he had found -opportunity to send was intended to bring the Interplanetary Police. -Jerome had discovered that the message was sent. On the <i>Seven Stars</i> -he had thrust Philip out through the porte; and had been searching -Philip's stateroom, fearing that some incriminating evidence might be -there, when I assailed him.</p> - -<p>"You were using an X-ray screen?" he jibed at me now. "My metal -headplate? Much good will it ever do you now to know that I was the -Chameleon. A clever fellow, that Chameleon—but I like the Phantom -bandit better, don't you?"</p> - -<p>And then he told me gloatingly how easy it had been for him to don -a pressure-suit and hide in the pressure-room while he wrecked the -air-valves and let the air out of the doomed <i>Seven Stars</i>. Ship of the -dead, on which he was the only living human until his phantom raider -had come with a boarding party. Then the <i>Seven</i> had been taken to -Asteroid-9, her cargo of electronic weapons transferred to the arriving -X-flyer, and here we were.</p> - -<p>"Headed for Deimos," he chuckled. "How glad they will be to see us! -A million decimars of Interplanetary currency, Fanning. You'll want -some of it, surely. And then we'll go looking for another adventure. -Romantic life, eh?"</p> - -<p>I tried, during those following hours, very cautiously to convince -Jerome that at heart I might be a villain like himself. Perhaps to some -extent, I succeeded. At all events, there came at last a brief interval -when the controls were locked and Brenda, her father and I were out on -the tiny forepeak in the starlight, momentarily alone. I had found now -that a little freedom of movement was given us. After all, there was -nothing that we could do, trapped here.</p> - -<p>"You know where the exit porte of this ship is?" I murmured.</p> - -<p>"Yes, yes, of course." Professor Carson was a confused, dazed old man; -his life among these cutthroats for so long now had cowed him. "But -what—what do you think you could do?"</p> - -<p>In truth I had no possible idea. But if ever a chance should come for -escape—</p> - -<p>"In the pressure chamber," I whispered, "would there be pressure suits? -One for you—"</p> - -<p>"Yes. Yes, there are."</p> - -<p>A commotion up at the control turret interrupted us. The black-garbed -man at the electro-telescope there was shouting. Jerome came running; -and we followed him up into the turret. He was grim, but ironically -smiling.</p> - -<p>"Interplanetary Patrolship off there," he said. "Patrolship-3."</p> - -<p>Sister ship of my ill-fated vessel.</p> - -<p>"Sighted us?" I murmured.</p> - -<p>He shrugged. "Probably. Only three thousand miles away—probably did." -His mouth was set into a grim hard line. In his eyes I saw that gleam -of fanatic irrationality. "Unfortunate, for them. This little vessel of -mine has never been sighted before, you know." His lips twitched with a -grin. "You see how we are dressed here? Why, we've even been down into -Earth's atmosphere—we've landed and made away without discovery. We'll -do that on Deimos. And now this Patrolship—no one on it will ever live -to tell that even for a moment they sighted the Phantom raider!"</p> - -<p>He turned to an intricate bank of levers, dials and tiny vacuum -globes that were ranged on a table here at the side of the control -room. Separate from the space-flying mechanisms. The controls of the -mechanical electronic invisibility.</p> - -<p>"You'll see us go into action now, Fanning. It should be interesting."</p> - -<p>He swung the dials. I felt my senses reel with a weird shock. Brenda -gave a little gasp. There was a momentary quiver of all the ship; a -momentary current-hum. And then silence.</p> - -<p>My head cleared; the shock was passed. I gripped the arms of my chair -and stared.</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>A glow like an aura of green radiance suffused the control room. A -green glow of unreality throughout all the little ship. I could see it -out on the forepeak triangle—the black-garbed figures like wraiths -out there in a luminous green gloom. The glassite bull's-eye portes -seemed now to have a green film on them. The stars outside were shut -away. The transparent glassite dome was spread with the same dull-green -opaqueness now. And then I saw, here in the turret walls, in the dome -and in the center of each of the bull's-eyes, little holes through -which a tiny segment of the starfield still was apparent—windows like -dull little eyes puncturing our barrage of invisibility so that we -could see outward through them.</p> - -<p>Here in the control room the dull radience shone upon Jerome's -grinning, triumphant face; it was tinted ghastly, putty-colored by the -strange light. And the light glistened on his eyeballs, glowing like -phosphorescence—like the eyes of an animal in a hunter's torchlight at -night.</p> - -<p>Everyone here, the same. And I saw old Professor Carson's face—the -face of a dead man. His expression was stamped with his mixed emotions. -This, his science of which he had been so proud, perverted now into -murderous, ghastly warfare by the villainous Jerome.</p> - -<p>Then Jerome moved to his space-flight controls; through the tiny -windows in the barrage I could see that our ship was swinging, heading -for the oncoming patrolship. Only three thousand miles apart. They -would be upon each other in a few minutes.</p> - -<p>Jerome's footsteps as he moved across the room faintly sounded on -the metal floor-grid. Toneless footsteps in this eerie radiance. -Unreal—they might have been tinkling bells, or harsh thuds. All -timbre had gone from them so that they had lost their identity -completely.</p> - -<p>"Not long now, Fanning," Jerome said. "You'll see that ship go to its -death." Ghastly dead voice. Every overtone had gone from it. It could -have been a man's voice, or a woman's. The voice of a dead thing in a -hollow tomb.</p> - -<p>"Weird—" I muttered. My own voice the same. And Brenda's, as she -murmured something in horror. All dead, indistinguishable one from the -other.</p> - -<p>Down on the forepeak in the sodden dull-green light, I could see the -crew raising the electronic gun-carriages into position now. They were -quite evidently of the most modern Edretch type, squat projectors -with grid faces fitted into vacuum firing portes on each side of the -forepeak. Guns undoubtedly with an effective range of some five hundred -Earth-miles.</p> - -<p>X-flyer going into action. The crew, with their dead putty-colored -faces, moved, silently in the soundless ship. Up here in the turret -with us, Jerome's hollow voice was gloating:</p> - -<p>"That fool patrolship—they have seen us vanish. They know now who -their adversary is. Want to see them, Fanning?"</p> - -<p>There was no need of a telescope now. A magnified image of the oncoming -patrolship as seen through one of the little barrage-vents on our bow, -was spread here on a grid-screen in the control turret. Fascinated with -horror, I watched it—the foreshortened looming bow of the patrolship -clearly outlined against the black velvet of the firmament. It had seen -us vanish, had turned and was heading straight for where it had last -seen us! Even as I watched, the image of it was visibly enlarging. A -thousand miles away now, probably. But almost in a moment it would be -within range!</p> - -<p>Then the wily Jerome abruptly swung us sharply. He was still at his -gravity-control levers. The starfield rolled sidewise as we turned in -a great hundred-mile arc. The maneuver was obvious. The patrolship -had marked our position. Jerome quite evidently was not sure what -range-guns his adversary had. He was taking no chances that a premature -shot, aimed by calculation at where we might be, would strike us.</p> - -<p>Patrolship-3 had guns very similar to these which I saw now being -erected here on the X-flyer. It could have been a fairly even battle, a -test of electronic battery-strength, of astronomical skill, of reckless -daring—and yet, against an invisible enemy it could be no fight at -all! I knew the commander of Patrolship-3 well. A stalwart, youngish -fellow named Rollins. A man of infinite skill, reckless daring. I could -picture him now in the turret of his ship, with his mouth set grim and -his eyes flashing as he hurtled his little vessel forward. At what? -Nothing but an apparently empty starfield from some unknown quarter -of which a sudden stab of bolt would leap to strike him! I knew what -Commander Rollins was thinking now. He would watch for that first bolt, -and if it did not wreck his ship he would fire at the blankness from -whence the shot had come. His only chance. An almost hopeless one. And -yet he had done his best to hurl himself at us.</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>We were circling now. And suddenly it seemed that Rollins' ship, with -its side spread toward us, off there at some five hundred miles, was -slackening its velocity. Like a lion at bay, stopping, waiting with an -invisible soundless wasp encircling it.</p> - -<p>One of the gunners down in our forepeak signaled up to Jerome.</p> - -<p>"Not yet," Jerome called. "When we strike, it must smash. There must -not even be a chance of an answering shot."</p> - -<p>Maneuvering for the kill. Fascinated, silently I watched as again -we were heading for Rollins' ship. And within me a vague, desperate -thought was growing: There are things through which one has no right to -live. If only I could contrive it.</p> - -<p>Jerome was absorbed at his controls, his range-finders and his -calculations. My hand touched Brenda's arm where she sat beside me. I -whispered:</p> - -<p>"Brenda, we may not live through this."</p> - -<p>"I know."</p> - -<p>"I mean, if we were to die, to help that other ship."</p> - -<p>She stared at me, and then at her father. Jerome had called the old -man, ordered him to the mechanisms of the vessel's invisibility, where -he sat checking the dial-readings of his intricate apparatus.</p> - -<p>Briefly, its operation involved three scientific factors: -De-electronization, thus to create around any metallic object a -barrage of magnetic field of a new type to any previously developed; -color-absorption, by which there can be no reflected light from the -de-electronized object; and the Albert Einstein principle of the -natural bending of light-rays when passing through a magnetic field. -In effect then, the total color-absorption into the de-electronized -object would make it, when viewed externally, a <i>nothingness</i> to see. -A blankness, like an outlined dark hole. But that in itself is not -invisibility—merely a silhouette. The background would be blotted out, -so that the invisible object would be perceived by the background it -obscured. The magnetic field, however, by natural law which Einstein -discovered, bends the light-rays from the background, <i>around</i> the -intervening object. The background thus seems complete. The intervening -object has vanished!</p> - -<p>Simple in theory; but it was an intricate little apparatus here which -now old Professor Carson was attending. I stared at him as he bent so -earnestly over it. His beloved brain-child.</p> - -<p>For that moment Brenda tenderly regarded him. And then she turned to -me. Her eyes were misted.</p> - -<p>"Whatever you think best," she murmured.</p> - -<p>Tensely I was waiting my chance. That tiny row of fragile vacuum tubes.</p> - -<p>My heart pounded suddenly as Jerome locked his space-controls and -darted down to the forepeak to consult one of his men at a gun-range -finder. I muttered:</p> - -<p>"Brenda take your father and get out of here quickly!" A burly, -black-garbed guard was coming in from the turret balcony to watch us in -Jerome's absence. I added in a swift undertone: "Go down with Jerome. -Find some pretense to help him."</p> - -<p>They would escape Jerome's wrath and there was just a chance that they -might live through this.</p> - -<p>They had only reached the little balcony outside the turret when the -guard came in. I was on my feet.</p> - -<p>"Sit down," he commanded.</p> - -<p>He was between me and the little table where Carson's tiny row of -vacuum tubes glowed dull-green. And in that second I leaped, head -down like a battering ram. With my skull striking his middle he went -backward, spun as he tried to get his balance. And he landed, sprawled -forward on Carson's little table.</p> - -<p>There was a tinkling crash as the de-electronizers short-circuited. -A hiss of neutronic flame which in that second with its half-million -ultra-pressure oscillating volts, electrocuted the luckless villain who -was sprawled there.</p> - -<p>I was down on the floor, crawling in the chaos. Amazing, electronic -turmoil. The shock of it swiftly spread around the little vessel; -made the senses of everyone on board momentarily reel. I was aware -of thin slivers of neutronic fire darting upward from the cooking -flesh of the sprawling man's body. Neutronic fire that all in that -second of deranged current darted throughout the ship. A split second -of flash; but in that second the darting tiny slivers of light-fire -everywhere were drinking up the weird green glow. The muffled ghastly, -toneless sounds of the ship's interior were brought to life. Down on -the forepeak Jerome gasped a startled curse. One of his men fell with -reeling senses.</p> - -<p>And light was here. Normal celestial light, streaming down through our -transparent dome where the blazing firmament of stars was now clearly -to be seen. We had lost our invisibility! Gone. Irrevocably gone. At -least this combat would be upon an equality! Rollins at last had his -equal chance with the Phantom raider!</p> - -<p>Patrolship-3 was clearly apparent now through our forward dome. I saw -Rollins swing his bow toward us. There was a tiny violet flash from his -forepeak. The first shot!</p> - -<p>It came like a great violet lightning bolt hurtling at us!</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>There was a puff of electronic light up at our dome-peak. A shower of -red-yellow sparks. I held my breath as Rollins' little circle of violet -beam struck us full, and clung. A second. Ten seconds, while the shower -of sparks sprayed like a little fountain of light-points. Would the -outer shell of our dome crack?</p> - -<p>It seemed to hold. Ten seconds, and then Rollins' ray snapped off and -vanished. A test shot. I knew it was not a weakness of his electronic -power. A great, long-range space-gun with a single snap-bolt ordinarily -can do little damage. It is the duration of seconds over which the bolt -can cling, eating its way with generated interference-heat, fusing and -breaking its opposing armored substance.</p> - -<p>And this was Rollins' first tentative test. Verifying his range, and -our ship's resistance. A conservation of his electronic power. In -space-gun battle, the available reserve of battery strength is vital. -A long-range gun, with ten seconds of sustained voltage, drains any -battery-series faster than the whirling electro-dynamos can build them -up. Then there must be an interval of replenishment.</p> - -<p>My heart pounded with exultation as the thoughts swept me. Rollins had -been grimly desperate, undoubtedly, against an invisible enemy. But his -adversary was visible now. An equality of battle; and so Rollins would -use his wits, his skill of judgment. This damned murderous Jerome would -have all he could do to match tactics with the skilful commander of -Patrolship-3!</p> - -<p>In those chaotic seconds I was still on the floor near the door of the -control room. Inside it the dead, roasted body of my guard lay sprawled -face down upon the wreckage of the invisibility-controls. The current -there was shut off now. The slivers of light-fire were gone. Down on -our forepeak Jerome and his gunners were recovering. Jerome was gazing -up, wildly cursing.</p> - -<p>I staggered to the little turret-balcony, where Brenda and her father, -white-faced, were clinging to its rail.</p> - -<p>"That damned fool!" I shouted. "In there—in the turret. He stumbled -and fell on the control table."</p> - -<p>Would it serve as an excuse? Would the raging Jerome stab at me now -with a heat-bolt? Or would he believe me? I felt sure that no one -actually had seen what had happened.</p> - -<p>"You damned—why—why—" Jerome for that instant glared up at me, his -hand instinctively reaching for his belt. But in all the chaos, turning -his wrath upon me must have struck him as futile. And it was stricken -from his mind by the confusion around him. Acrid choking fumes were -swirling through our little vessel, fumes from the deranged current of -the de-electronizers. One of Jerome's men dashed up to him.</p> - -<p>"A fire on our stern-deck. I put it out."</p> - -<p>"Go back to your post." Jerome shoved him away impatiently; turned, -came up and went into his turret, and seated himself at his gravity -controls.</p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<div class="figcenter"> - <img src="images/illus.jpg" width="588" height="500" alt=""/> -</div> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<p>Through the dome-peak I could see Rollins' ship, going in the opposite -direction from us, hurtling past us. Two hundred miles off. In a moment -it had passed and was out of range. Then it was turning, mounting in a -great arc and hurtling back at us!</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>Jerome stabbed first. A hit! The violet sword dimly glowing, luminous -as it ignited the motes of intervening star-dust, leaped across the -narrowing angle and struck with a puff of glare. Jerome held it, -clinging. Five seconds. Ten. Fifteen. I could hear the throb and whir -of our dynamos as they struggled with the load. The big dial levers -on Jerome's desk quivered, slowly turned backward toward zero as our -batteries drained.</p> - -<p>For those seconds Rollins took it with no answering shot. Would his -forepeak dome hold? I could see the tiny puff of fountain-light there -where the violet beam was boring. And then Rollins answered! From his -stern-peak this time diagonally away from us, his beam shot out. Not -directly at us, but at our bolt-stream. Two great violet rapiers in -space, sliding one upon the other. Midway between the vessels they -clashed. The interference cut our beam from Rollins' vessel. Out there -in space for breathless seconds both the beams held firm. Amazing sight -of pyrotechnic beauty, that area where the beams clashed.</p> - -<p>Another ten seconds, each of them an eternity. The giant circle of the -interference area slowly was backing toward Rollins' ship! Our beam, -at reckless full-power now, was pushing it back. Only twenty or thirty -miles now from its target.</p> - -<p>A buzzer sounded at Jerome's elbow. He reached for his audiphone. The -panic-stricken voice of our controlman in the ship's hull sounded:</p> - -<p>"Chief! Dynamo bearing running hot! An' we're almost at zero in the -main battery."</p> - -<p>Jerome disconnected with a grim curse. Another few seconds. The -narrowing angle of the hurtling ships had brought them within a hundred -miles of each other. And then suddenly, again it was Rollins who was -the more cautious. From the tail of his vessel a stream of burning gas -suddenly was issuing. A widening fluorescent comet-tail streaming out -behind him. And then he was turning, heading away from us! In retreat! -The interference area of the two clashing sword-beams broke. The great -prismatic spark shower died. Our bolt, plunging through, for a second -may have struck the turning, retreating Rollins. No one here could say. -Rollins' bolt had snapped off. The image of his ship merged with the -gas cloud. Vanished behind its masking cloak.</p> - -<p>Jerome snapped off our beam. His face was triumphant; his enemy -fleeing, trying to mask his retreat with a cloud of burning gas.</p> - -<p>"By Heaven, I've got him!" Jerome was muttering. "Damn' fool, trying to -fight the Phantom."</p> - -<p>The starfield swung as we turned, headed at the gas-cloud where it hung -in a vast luminous fog of prismatic color as though a comet had burst -there. Triumphant pursuit of our enemy. But I held my breath.</p> - -<p>I found Brenda beside me. Her hand, cold dank, gripped mine. Our eyes -met. There was nothing to say. Surely we both knew what little chance -we had of coming out of this alive.</p> - -<p>The luminous gas-cloud swarmed to the sides as our ship plunged -headlong into it. And then we were through it.</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>There was no warning as Rollins' bolt struck us! He had not tried to -escape but was poised here in ambush, bow toward us, no more than fifty -miles away, off to one side by skilled calculation so that there was -only his narrow bow as our target and we were almost broadside to him!</p> - -<p>The bolt struck us midway of the hull in a shower of sparks that -mounted up and clouded our instruments. Clinging, full-power beam. -Rollins at last striking for the kill! Wildly our guns tried to -intercept it. One of our forepeak guns went out of commission with -a back-firing burst which shattered it and killed the man at its -controls. The fumes of the explosion came wafting up, acrid, choking.</p> - -<p>There was a sudden panic of confusion here, but Jerome leaped to his -feet with his roaring voice steadying his men. Then two of our guns, -stem and bow, stabbed beams that struck the patrolship's bow and clung. -But still that blast at our hull persisted. Eating, fusing the metallic -hull-plate.</p> - -<p>Weird, transfixed drama as the seconds passed. I knew that Rollins now -would never yield. This bolt would cling to the limit of his batteries.</p> - -<p>The audiphone beside Jerome was screaming with the hull-controlman's -panic-stricken voice: "Chief—hull plate is bending—bulging—"</p> - -<p>Then I saw, through the shower of sparks outside, that Rollins' ship -was edging even closer. One of our two bolts had wavered and broken, -with exhausted battery. The other, weakened by all Jerome's reckless -firing, was futilely clinging to its target with a shower of sparks -paling now by diminished voltage.</p> - -<p>And then from the patrolship, little blobs were popping out. Catapulted -bombs, hurtling at us with this close, twenty-mile range. Some exploded -in mid-space fired by the free electrons which hung heavy here around -us. And then one struck us, exploded with a dull concussion against our -stern. And then another, and another.</p> - -<p>"Jim—Jim dear—goodbye."</p> - -<p>Brenda's murmured words brought me suddenly to myself. Only sixty -seconds had passed since we burst out of the gas-cloud and Rollins had -jumped to finish us. Sixty seconds, but it had brought chaos here on -the Phantom ship. My chance! Old Professor Carson beside us was in a -daze; white-faced, numbly staring.</p> - -<p>"The exit-porte," I muttered. "Brenda, make your father hurry."</p> - -<p>Fumes of green-yellow chlorine mingled with oil-smoke, were surging -around us as we staggered up the little catwalk from the balcony to the -dome-top. Jerome may have seen us. His voice was shouting desperate -orders, and curses, but whether at us or not I never knew. A gunner -down on the deck fired at us with a hand-ray, but it missed.</p> - -<p>"Brenda, hurry! Get your father into a space-suit."</p> - -<p>She and I still were garbed in the space-suits from the <i>Seven -Stars</i>. In the tiny exit-porte, one of Jerome's crew, himself trying -to escape, lunged at me, but I felled him with a blow of my fist -into his face. The closing slide-door of the tiny pressure chamber -shut away the chaos. Then our suits were inflated; our helmets fixed -and we catapulted into the glare of outside space. I flung on my -rocket-stream; clung to Brenda and her father. My metal-tipped fingers -on the metallic plate of her shoulder made audiphone contact.</p> - -<p>"Hold tight, Brenda."</p> - -<p>"Yes, Jim."</p> - -<p>"I'll tow us."</p> - -<p>Horrible, chaotic seconds as the showering electronic sparks from the -doomed phantom flyer enveloped us. Indescribable glaring confusion of -deranged electricity and fusing, bubbling, flying metal-fragments. -Prismatic light that blinded.</p> - -<p>We came through it in a moment, out into the starlight with the -glaring, staggering vessel, receding behind and above us as my -rocket-stream and gravity-plates drew us out of the line of fire. -The patrolship was hardly ten miles away now. I signalled with a -helmet-flare. Interplanetary Code signal. Rollins saw it; recognized -it; answered it!</p> - -<p>We hurtled forward. Behind us, well overhead now, Jerome's harried, -wavering ship suddenly cracked. With a great burst of interior pressure -the dome, to which Rollins' main beam had shifted, abruptly exploded -outward. Ghastly, silent explosion. It spewed wreckage. Little hurtling -dots of shattered glassite and metal and mangled humans—blobs that -spewed out, were caught by the vessel's attraction, finding their -orbits so that they circled, gruesome satellites of their convulsed -world.</p> - -<p>Then the last of Rollins' blasting beams snapped off. Back there the -broken ship hung leprous, with fused, still bubbling dome. Like a bent -finger of colored light for a moment more it glowed. And then it went -dark.</p> - -<p>Dead X-flyer among the stars. The end of the dreaded Phantom of the -Starways.</p> - - - - - - - - -<pre> - - - - - -End of Project Gutenberg's Phantom of the Seven Stars, by Ray Cummings - -*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PHANTOM OF THE SEVEN STARS *** - -***** This file should be named 61855-h.htm or 61855-h.zip ***** -This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: - http://www.gutenberg.org/6/1/8/5/61855/ - -Produced by Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online -Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net - - -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions -will be renamed. - -Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no -one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation -(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without -permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or -re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included -with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org/license - - -Title: Phantom of the Seven Stars - -Author: Ray Cummings - -Release Date: April 17, 2020 [EBook #61855] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: ASCII - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PHANTOM OF THE SEVEN STARS *** - - - - -Produced by Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online -Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net - - - - - - - - - - Phantom of the Seven Stars - - By RAY CUMMINGS - - Lovely Brenda Carson, scholarly Jerome, pompous - Livingston ... everyone aboard the _Seven Stars_ - scoffed at the idea of a Phantom Pirate. But I.P. - agent Jim Fanning didn't laugh. He knew the luxury-liner's - innocent looking cargo was already marked for plunder. - - [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from - Planet Stories Winter 1940. - Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that - the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] - - -Part of my assignment on this space-flight of the _Seven Stars_ was to -watch the girl. That much, at least, wasn't hard. She was certainly -easy to look at--a little beauty, slim with a pert, oval little face -framed by unruly pale-gold hair. With mingled starlight and earthlight -gleaming in that hair, it was like spun platinum. Her name was Brenda -Carson. Certainly, she was an inspiring figure to any young man, in her -white blouse and corded black and white trousers and her long black -traveling cape with its hood dangling at the back of her neck and the -cape folds flowing from her slim shoulders almost to the ground. - -We were several days out from New York, with Mars, our destination, -hanging like a great dull-red ball among the blazing stars in the black -firmament ahead of us, when I first noticed that there was anything -queer about Brenda. We were sitting under the glassite pressure-dome on -the forepeak of the _Seven Stars_, bathed in the pallid starlight. By -ship-routine it was mid-evening. - -I gestured toward one of the side bull's-eyes of the bow-peak. -"Gloomy-looking world, that Asteroid-9," I said. - -The little asteroid, one of the many out here in the belt between the -orbits of Earth and Mars, was a small leaden crescent of sunlight -with the unlighted portion faintly putty-colored. It was, I knew, a -world some five-hundred miles in diameter, amazingly dense so that -its gravity was not a great deal less than Earth. A bleak, barren -little globe. It had an atmosphere breathable for humans; there was -water--occasional rainfall; but chemicals in the cloud-vapors poisoned -the water for human consumption. The rocks were heavily laden with -metals. But they were all base metals, of no particular value. So far -as I knew, nobody had ever bothered to settle on Asteroid-9. It was -completely uninhabited. - -"Asteroid-9?" Brenda murmured. "Is that what it's called?" - -Something in my chance remark had frightened her. Her blue eyes as she -flung me a quick, startled glance were suddenly clouded with what might -have been terror. - -Her brother Philip was with us. He quickly said, "Asteroid-9? Somebody -said we pass pretty close to it this voyage." He laughed. "Rotten sort -of place, by what I've heard. You can have it and welcome." - -I must explain that I was--and still am--an IP Man. My name, Jim -Fanning. I was assigned as Lieutenant to Patrolship two. I had -been on vacation, in New York. My ship, one of the biggest in the -Interplanetary Patrol, was now on roving duty somewhere in the vicinity -of Mars. Then suddenly an emergency with the _Seven Stars_ had arisen. -Chief Rankin had planted me on her. Only the captain knew my identity. -To the dozen or so passengers, I was merely a young civilian traveler. - -"I've never been to Asteroid-9," I was saying. And I, too, laughed -casually, "I agree with you, Carson. Nice place to die in, but I guess -that's all." - -There was no question but what Brenda was trying to hide her sudden -emotion. Terror? Was that it? We said no more about the asteroid; -chatted of other things, and we were presently joined by another of the -passengers. - -"Ah, beautiful night," he greeted us. "I never get tired of the glories -of the starways. Good evening, Miss Carson." He nodded smilingly to -Philip Carson and me, and drew up a chair with us. His name was Arthur -Jerome, well-known to me, though I had never before met him. He was -a big, florid, distinguished-looking man of forty-odd; a habitual -Interplanetary traveler, who between flights lectured over the earth -television networks on things astronomical. - -We talked for a while, and then suddenly Arthur Jerome said, "Nobody -mentions the Phantom bandit. You know, if anything could spoil my -interest in Interplanetary travel, it's to have a weird thing like that -come up." - -"Phantom bandit?" Brenda Carson murmured. "Is there--is there really -such a thing?" - -Arthur Jerome shrugged. "Naturally it's had no publicity. But things -get out. Those last three accidents to space-liners--you can't hide -that sort of thing. And you wouldn't call it supernatural. Or would -you?" - - * * * * * - -The Phantom of the starways! That was the crux of my being here on the -_Seven Stars_. Weird, mysterious thing--no wonder the Earth, Mars and -Venus governments had not dared let it get any publicity which they -could possibly avoid. For three months now, this Earth-year of 2170, -mysterious accidents had been happening to commercial space-ships. -Non-arrival at destination, and then later found by the Interplanetary -Patrol, derelicts in space. Gruesome damn' thing. A ship unharmed, save -that its air was gone. As though some mysterious accident had broken -one of the pressure valves, or deranged the machinery of an exit-porte, -so that the air had all hissed out. Ship of the dead. Everyone aboard -lying asphyxiated. - -It was eerie. - -A "ghost-vessel" attacking the liners? A modern version of the ancient -_Flying Dutchman_ legend? Radio newscasters talked of things like -that. A vengeful ghost-ship roaming the starways, with dead pirates -aboard, bent on attacking the living navigators whom they hated just -because they were alive. It made nice gruesome broadcasting to give -the television audience the shivers. Supernatural legends easily get -support. Particularly from hysterical, imaginative women, or cranks who -crave publicity. Reports had come from amateur astronomers who owned -fairly decent telescopes that they had seen the wraith of a pallid -ghost-ship hovering up in Earth's stratosphere; passengers on liners -had hysterically thought they saw the same thing. - -A supernatural menace. But no reputable observer had ever seen -anything. Our Interplanetary Patrol was completely baffled. And what -the public didn't know was that those wrecked vessels--one of them, -at least--had shown evidence that it had been hit by an electronic -space-gun with a range of several hundred miles, which had broken the -pressure-dome and let the air out. And in every case the wrecked ship -was looted; the passengers' money and jewelry gone; the Purser's safe -rifled. - -"Anyway, it's a good thing for us," Arthur Jerome was saying, "the -little _Seven Stars_ ought not to be much of a prize for the phantom -raider." He grinned, with his hand ruffling his sandy hair. "Let's hope -we escape." - -The _Seven Stars_ not much of a prize? It was certainly reasonable -enough to think that. We had a few Martians in the second-class -section, and a few Earthmen passengers; and just an average commercial -cargo. That's what anyone would think; and only the captain and I knew -differently. Our cargo was anything but average. The boxes, as they -had come aboard and been stored in the hold, were labeled as American -preserved food-stuffs; technical commercial instruments, German-made -prisms, lenses and the like. But in reality those boxes were crammed -only with modern electronic weapons of war. It was a shipment purchased -by the Martian government which was faced by the insurrection of its -wealthy colony on Deimos. They were unusual weapons of exclusive -Earth-manufacture. Small, for short-range, hand-use only; weapons to -disable, but not injure. The recently publicized so-called "paralysis -gun" was one of them. The Martian government, humane at least in battle -with its own people, desperately needed this type of weapon in its -forthcoming invasion of Deimos to subdue the rebels. - - * * * * * - -Not much of a prize, our little commercial liner _Seven Stars_ -this voyage? Just the opposite! Those rich colonists of Deimos -most certainly would pay well to keep this shipment away for Mars! -Would news of it have leaked out? Would the Phantom of the Starways -attack the _Seven Stars_ for just that purpose? Chief Rankin, of -the Interplanetary Patrol, certainly thought it a possibility. He -had put me aboard here; and as only the Captain and I knew, my -ship--Patrolship-2--had been ordered to join us out here somewhere and -convoy us to Mars. Convoy us against an attack by an enemy that you -couldn't see! - -"The Phantom raider!" Young Philip Carson was echoing Arthur Jerome's -lugubrious words. "You suppose there is really any such thing?" I saw -him exchange a glance with his sister. He laughed, but it wasn't much -of a success. - -"I doubt it," I agreed. "So far as I ever heard, those accidents -were--well, just accidents. An air-valve can go wrong, you know, -and dump the air out of a ship. Air goes quickly, and with a pretty -powerful rush, if it once gets started.... Gruesome kind of talk, Miss -Carson," I added lightly. - -She tried to smile. My heart went out to her in that moment. Her -beauty, I suppose; but somehow she seemed horribly pathetic. That -mention of Asteroid-9 mysteriously frightened her; and now this mention -of the phantom spaceship terrified her even more. - -"You're right," Arthur Jerome agreed. "The supernatural is fascinating. -Or a thing that you can't see but still can kill you--that's just as -gruesome." - -"And fascinating?" Philip Carson put in sourly. "Well, it may be to -you, but it's frightening my sister. Let's talk of something else." - -Then another passenger joined us. That girl was a magnet to men. - -"Well, well, Miss Carson," he boomed as he came up. "You are looking -very beautiful in the starlight." He sat down with us. His name was -Walter J. Livingston--the Very Honorable Walter J. Livingston to give -him his official title. He had just been appointed by the President -of the World-Federation as Earth Ambassador to the Martian Government; -was on his way there now to present his credentials. He was a big, -heavy-set fellow, with a mass of iron-gray hair, a ribbon across his -ruffled shirt-bosom; and the out-jutting jaw and booming voice of a -born politician. Did he by any chance know the contents of the _Seven -Stars'_ cargo, this voyage? So far as I had been informed, he did -not. I studied him now, and instinctively I didn't like him--possibly -because of the extravagant compliments he was paying Brenda Carson. - -The talk went on, and presently as I glanced up to the little control -tower under the pressure-dome above us, I saw the bulky figure of -Captain Wilkes standing there. He caught my gaze and furtively -gestured. I excused myself in a moment; sauntered down the narrow side -deck, turned a distant corner of the little superstructure. Then I went -up to its roof, and forward again. In a moment I was in the control -tower. - - * * * * * - -Captain Wilkes was there, seated alone with his electro-telescope -beside him. He slid the oval doors closed upon us. - -"Your ship's in sight," he greeted me. "Thought you'd be interested." - -Patrolship-2, coming to convoy us. I took a look through the eye-piece -of the telescope. Familiar vessel on which I had spent so many months. -Its long cylindrical alumite hull, with the pressure-dome over its -single upper deck, was painted by sunlight on one side and starlight on -the other as it headed diagonally toward us. By the range-finder on the -telescope I measured its visual length. - -"Ten thousand miles off us," I said to the captain. - -"Yes. Just about. Now listen, Fanning--there'll be no contact. It will -circle us, close at hand. If the passengers ask you why we need any -convoy--we don't want any panic here you know." - -What he had in mind about explaining this convoy was never disclosed. -He was staring through a duplicate eye-piece, and suddenly his words -were checked as he sucked in his breath. - -"Good Lord, Fanning--" - -I saw it also--a tiny puff of electronic light at the top of the -oncoming patrolship's dome. There was nothing else to be seen, I -searched the starfield in that second of premonitory horror. Absolutely -nothing visible. Just that puff of light where an electronic shot must -have struck. - -"Fanning--you saw that?" Captain Wilkes murmured. - -"Yes." - -Another few seconds. It seemed an eternity. And then the Patrolship -wavered; drunkenly lurching and slowly turning over! Ghastly silent -drama, out there in space ten thousand miles away. We could not see its -details; just the tiny image of the ship, lurching, turning end over -end. - -A derelict in space. My horrified imagination pictured the air hissing -out, spewing wreckage and bodies out perhaps. Ship of the dead, all in -those seconds. Then it was hanging poised, slowly turning on a drunken -axis of its own. The leprous, smashed dome was for a moment visible as -it turned. - -The Phantom raider had struck again! - - * * * * * - -My comrades. Thirty of them meeting their deaths out there in that -moment. The thought numbed me. Captain Wilkes had leaped to his feet. - -"Why--why, good Lord, it got them! And now--us next!" - -Our convoy gone. Unquestionably that was because the phantom was after -us! - -"What are you going to do?" I murmured. "Not tell the passengers--" - -"Good Lord, no. Nor the crew. What good would it do? We're not armed -with long-range guns--no preparations to make. Only spread panic maybe -among my men. Some of them might want to try and persuade me to turn -back to Earth." - -"And you're not going to do that?" - -"Hell, no." Captain Wilkes was a choleric fellow. His ham-like fist -crashed down on his desk. "I was told to run this cargo to Mars, and -by Heaven, Fanning, that's what I'm going to do. Make a run for it." -He swung for his controls. "I can use a greater Earth-repulsion and -once we get past Asteroid-9, by a little jockeying I can use that, too. -We'll see if there's any damn' phantom-ship going to overtake us." - -It was a weird, gruesome feeling, realization that in all probability -we were being pursued by something we couldn't see. Something still ten -thousand miles away. Could it overtake us? Certainly not in less than a -few hours, perhaps not even in a day. And then, would there be a flash -of an electronic space-gun, weirdly from its unseen source? The crash -of our hull, or our pressure-dome exploding outward; the wild rush -and hiss of our air out into the vacuum of space? And then death by -suffocation all in a minute or two. - -The thing had me shuddering. I must have been murmuring something of my -thoughts, for Captain Wilkes retorted: - -"If they crash us with a shot they might very easily injure the cargo. -More apt to try running in close to us--a boarding party with powered -pressure-suits." His fist thumped his desk again. "An' by Heaven, if -they try that--you got a gun, Fanning?" - -"Yes," I agreed. I had a small weapon of the paralyzer-gun type, -efficient at a few feet of range. But of what use against an enemy you -couldn't see? - -Wilkes presently dismissed me. "You keep your own counsel," he told me. -He lowered his voice. "By what your Chief Rankin intimated, there's at -least a reasonable possibility that we've some damn' spy on board." - -"Well, if that's a fact," I said, "the Phantom won't try cracking us -with a long-range gun and killing the spy as well as the rest of us." - -"Exactly. That's what I'm counting on. Keep your eyes open and your -ears stretched. Report to me anything that looks queer." - - * * * * * - -I left him presently. Dogged, indomitable old fellow. He was seated -grimly at his desk with his astronomical charts as he figured by what -ingenuity he could map an emergency course to give the little _Seven -Stars_ its greatest speed. The ship was silent as I padded the length -of the superstructure roof and went down to the stern triangle. By -ship-routine it was now about eleven at night. The Martian Passengers -were out of sight, sleeping probably. None of the crew were about, -save the man in the aft peak with his small, wide-angle telescope. -The wreck of the patrolship was certainly far beyond sight of the -naked eye. This stern lookout evidently hadn't spotted it, and in a -moment now I knew it would be beyond his range also. The captain and I, -doubtless, were the only ones who knew what had happened. - -I went forward along the side deck. In the men's smoking lounge, -amidships in the superstructure, I heard voices, caught a glimpse as I -went past of Arthur Jerome, the television lecturer, and Livingston, -the Earth Ambassador to Mars, in there with Green, the ship's purser. -Did that mean that Brenda Carson and her brother were still on the -forward peak? I went cautiously forward. They were there--the blobs of -them, faintly starlit, showed where they were standing together at one -of the side bull's-eyes. Upon impulse, instead of joining them, I slid -unseen into the shadows of a loading engine. - -"Oh, Philip--" The girl's voice was faintly audible in the silence. -"I'm so frightened. You think we can do it safely?" - -"Yes, of course. I'll make sure--" He lowered his voice and I lost the -rest of it. - -"When?" she murmured. - -"I'll just take a look presently. We're not there yet--closer in a few -hours." - -What, in Heaven's name, could that mean? Were these two spies, planted -here on the _Seven Stars_ by the phantom-bandits? Were they discussing -the attack which Captain Wilkes and I feared? Certainly it did not -seem so. Young Philip Carson wasn't much older than his sister. Slim, -handsome, rather effeminate-looking fellow, with a weak jaw and slack -mouth. He wore black and white trousers, somewhat like hers. He and she -seemed devoted to each other. Rankin had told me that Philip Carson had -a bad record of gambling and bad companions. Was the girl entangled -because of him? - -My mind went back to the meager details which Rankin had given me. -Brenda and Philip Carson came of a cultured and once-rich family in -New York. Their father--their only close living relative--had been a -research physicist. An eccentric old fellow; he had built a laboratory -down on Long Island where, working in secret, he was laboriously -experimenting on something. Two years ago the place had exploded. -Presumably he had been killed. But in the wreckage his body had not -been found; nor was there anything to give a clue as to what he had -been doing there. - -Had he been building the phantom space-raider? The thought was obvious -now. Brenda and Philip had denied knowing, when the authorities had -questioned them. And now they were going to Mars, on this of all -voyages, and for no reason that they had been able to give. Was the -vanished eccentric Professor Robert Carson the Phantom raider? My heart -leaped as I heard another fragment from the girl. - -"You think you got his message correctly?" - -"Yes, of course I did." - -"If we can do it safely--Oh, Phil--the location." - -"I've got it all figured out, Bren," he insisted. "Even made a little -map--got it in the wallet of my jacket." - -That stiffened me. I could see the blob of him standing there with -her. The folds of his hooded cape, like hers, fell almost to his feet. -But his arm held the cape draped a little to one side. I could see his -white shirt; he was wearing no jacket. It would be in his sleeping -cubby then. - -For a moment more I crouched in the shelter of the little loading -engine; I caught a few more fragments, but they were not important. - - * * * * * - -A wallet in young Carson's cubby, with a map in it? I shifted silently -backward, reached the side deck and padded aft. The smoking lounge was -empty now. The little interior cross corridor of the superstructure -was dim and silent. Carson and his sister had connecting rooms, with -corridor doors side by side. Cautiously I tried them. They were locked. - -In a moment I was out to the side deck. Carson's window was closed; -I pulled at the vertical sash and it yielded, slid outward. The room -was dim, with just a faint glow of the corridor light coming over the -lattice-grille above the door. - -I jumped over the sill; landed silently in the room. No need for any -lengthy search; his jacket was here, folded on a chair. The wallet was -in a pocket. Swiftly I riffled through it, came upon a folded square -of notepaper. The map? I was opening it. By the dim sheen of reflected -light I could see its penciled scrawl. And suddenly I was stricken -by the sound of footsteps in the corridor outside. Someone coming. I -jumped on the chair. Through the grille I could catch a glimpse of a -cloaked figure coming along the corridor. Carson or the girl--in that -second I could not tell which. - -But at all events I had no desire to get caught here by either of them. -I got back out the window just in time. Aft down the side deck there -was the blob of a loitering figure, a big, bulky silhouette. It was -Walter Livingston, the Earth-Mars Ambassador. The tip of his cigarette -glowed in the dimness as he stood by one of the side bull's-eyes. Was -he watching these windows of Carson and the girl? Did he see me? I had -no way of telling. I ran forward, ducked around the superstructure -corner. The bow-peak triangle was empty; the chairs where the group of -us had been sitting were still here. - -There was enough light for me to examine the folded sheet of paper I -had purloined. It seemed a crude map. A rough, penciled sketch. But a -map of what? There were the ragged outlines of what might be intended -to represent mountains. The scribbled word: "Andros." A dotted line -through what might be a mountain pass. And then a tiny X. - -I stared at the thing, puzzled. A few hundred years ago the fabled -surface-ship pirates of Earth's romantic sea-history supposedly made -maps like this. Maps of buried treasure. Pirates' gold. Were Carson and -his young sister after some treasure? Where? On Earth? Mars? Little -Deimos? Asteroid-9? That thought leaped at me. Certainly they had -shown a queer interest in my chance remark about Asteroid-9. We were -not far from it now. Fifty thousand miles perhaps--would pass at our -closest point to it in an hour of two. I stared through the bull's-eye -beside me. It was down there, diagonally ahead of us--a full-round, -putty-colored disk, with the configurations of its mountains and the -turgid clouds of its atmosphere beginning to be visible. - -But what could any of that have to do with the Phantom raider, or the -attack on the patrolship and the impending attack upon us? Surely there -was no treasure on Asteroid-9. The treasure, if you could call it that, -was right here on board the little _Seven Stars_. - -I was crouching now in the shadow of the loading engine on the -bow-peak, puzzled by my rush of thoughts. Should I take this to Captain -Wilkes? Vaguely I realized that perhaps I should, but something stopped -me. My own instinctive feelings for Brenda Carson. She seemed somehow -so pathetic. Surely she was no plotting murderess. Her brother--yes. -But the girl--protecting someone she loved? Was her father really the -Phantom raider? His invention an X-flyer endowed with mechanical, -electronic invisibility? I knew that such a thing was scientifically -possible, of course. But Professor Carson was a frail old man. And my -mind leaped back to some other things Chief Rankin had told me. The -Phantom was thought to be a notorious Earth-criminal who, a few years -ago, had been known as the "Chameleon." A fellow skilled in the art of -wax disguise so that none of the Earth crime-trackers really knew what -he looked like. He was wanted in both Great New York and Great London -for mail-tube murders. Nothing was known of his identity save that he -had once had an operation for a fractured skull, where in the back of -the skull a big triangular platinum plate had been inserted to take the -place of the shattered bone. A criminal surgeon, dying, had confessed -that much; had said he had performed the operation. And then he had -mumbled something about the Chameleon being the Phantom raider. - -Surely such a notorious skilled adventurer could not be old Professor -Carson. I decided not to have Brenda and Philip hauled before the -captain now for questioning. - - * * * * * - -Thoughts are instant things. I was crouching there behind the engine -loader no more than a moment; and suddenly down the other side deck -just beyond the smoking lounge, I saw a moving figure. A slight figure -in dark cloak and hood--the bottoms of black and white trousers were -visible. Brenda? It made my heart pound. For a second I stared as she -ducked into a doorway. I was there in twenty seconds, until I saw the -cloaked shadow of her going down a companion ladder into the ship's -hold. - -Swiftly I followed. Down two eight-foot levels, and then I caught -another glimpse of her as she moved into the lower passage. It was -a metal catwalk with small cubbies opening from it. The ship's -air-renewers, ventilating system; a cubby controlling the hull -gravity-plate shifters; other mechanism rooms. She went past them, a -furtive little shadow. And stopped at what seemed the door to one of -the tiny pressure chambers of an exit-porte in the side of the hull. - -"Oh, you, Mr. Fanning? What do you want down here?" The voice in the -silence so startled me that I whirled. It was Kellogg, the ship's -gravity-control operator. In his shirtsleeves, pipe in hand, with a -green eyeshade on his forehead, he had seen me from the door of his -little cubby. - -"Why--" I murmured. "Just coming down to see you." I turned to join -him. And suddenly a buzzer in his control room interrupted him. I stood -while he answered it--an audio-tube for direct voice-transmission. - -"Yes, Captain Wilkes--" And then Kellogg gasped and clutched at the -table beside him; then he whirled upon me, his face chalk-white. "Our -radio-helio is smashed! Someone--something smashed it!" - -Our little _Seven Stars_ was cut off from Earth or Mars communication! -Captain Wilkes had evidently decided to flash a call for help to Earth, -and found that the apparatus had been smashed! But even that startling -news instantly was stricken from Kellogg and me. Out in the corridor -quite near us a low scream sounded! And then there was the sound of air -hissing! - -"What the devil!" Kellogg gasped. - -My gun was in my hand as we ran. There was nothing in sight on the dim -little catwalk. The scream had died. The air-hissing stopped. - -"Somebody went into the pressure-chamber!" Kellogg muttered. "What in -the hell--" - -"The pressure-chamber door-slide was closed. I knew the mechanism -of these exit-portes. There were four of them in the hull-bottom of -the _Seven Stars_--two on each side. There was an inner door-slide; a -sealed pressure-room some ten feet square and six feet high; and an -outer door-slide. Ordinarily the mechanism was automatic. The outer -slide must be closed if the inner one was open. To make an exit, one -went into the pressure-room; closed the catwalk door, and with manual -control slowly opened the outer slide, so that the air in the sealed -room would hiss out into space. After which, with a thirty-second -interval, the outer slide would close and the inner one slowly open, -admitting the ship's air again into the pressure-room. - -"Someone worked the manual controls wrong!" Kellogg was muttering. He -gestured to where there was a duplicate set of controls out here in the -corridor. "That outer slide opened too quickly!" - -We could hear the last of the air rushing out with a wild gush. A stab -of horror went into my heart. Brenda Carson in there, trying to escape -from the ship--not knowing how to work the controls--opening that outer -slide too quickly. - -The air in the pressure-room was gone in a few seconds. Then we heard -the click of the outer slide closing. The inner door began very slowly -opening. With a muttered curse of impatience Kellogg twitched at the -control levers here. The inner door slid wide. - -We clutched at the catwalk rail to hold ourselves against the gust -of wind as the little pressure-room filled. And then we rushed into -it. Pressure suits, powered as I knew by tiny gravity-repulsers and a -rocket-stream mechanism, stood here in racks. One of them lay here on -the floor, entangled with a rack-post so that it had not blown out. -Brenda evidently had tried to get into it and failed. - -"Look! Good Lord--poor little thing--" Kellogg murmured. He had slid -aside a tiny bull's-eye shade. Through it a segment of space outside -the hull was visible. - -We had only a glimpse of a ghastly body, mangled by the explosion of -the pressure within itself, out in the pressureless vacuum of space. -It floated past us, some forty feet out. Held poised by the gravity, -the nearness and bulk of the _Seven Stars_. Horrible little satellite, -already finding an orbit of its own, slowly circling around us. - - * * * * * - -I staggered back from the bull's-eye. As I rushed back along the -catwalk my horrified mind was clamoring with the vague thought: had -Brenda operated that pressure-mechanism wrongly? Or had someone on the -catwalk, at the controls there, done it? - -That thought, too, was stricken away. I reached the forward deck -triangle. The bow-peak lookout was calling up to Captain Wilkes: - -"Passenger overboard! Brenda Carson! It's Miss Brenda Carson!" - -Dead girl in the space-light. I could not look at the horrible thing as -it rounded our bow and came slowly floating past again. - -"You, Fanning--what's happened? Brenda Carson, he says." - -Arthur Jerome stood calling to me from his stateroom door at the bow -superstructure corner. He was in his nightrobe with a negligee hastily -wrapped around him. - -"Yes--" I gasped. "Brenda Carson. She--" - -"And I heard something about radio-helio room wrecked." The big, florid -television lecturer seemed in a panic. Experienced space-traveler, -but he had never run into anything like this before. I wouldn't blame -him for his terror. But I had no time for him now. The ship was in -confusion. I could hear the Martians, below deck in the bow, shouting -with frightened questions. Two or three members of the crew were -running up to Captain Wilkes who was outside his turret calling down -orders. - -I ran down the side deck. One of the excited crew stopped me. "You seen -young Philip Carson? Captain wants him." - -I shook my head and ran on. Somebody else was calling Carson's name. I -mounted the companionway to the superstructure roof. Had Philip Carson -vanished? They couldn't find him? Well, what I knew about Philip Carson -now I'd certainly tell Captain Wilkes! Suddenly I realized fully that -because of Brenda I had wanted to keep silent--but there was no need of -that now. - -From the superstructure roof, as I ran forward along it, I could see -down to the side deck. A cloaked figure there. Philip Carson. I had -just a glimpse as he darted into a door under me. A ladder was nearby. -My little paralyzer-gun was in my hand as I climbed down the ladder, -reached the dark side-deck. The commotion was all up forward; there was -no one here at the moment. The corridor door into which Carson had run -was beside me. I ran into it, ten feet or so and into a cross corridor. -Came to his doorway. It was locked. I ran around to the deck again. His -window was near here. - -The glassite pane of the window was closed and locked. The inner -fabric-shade was drawn down. What was he doing in there? Searching for -his map? For other things which might be incriminating? - -I had a few instruments hidden in my clothes, tiny devices which we -of the Interplanetary Patrol sometimes have occasion to use--a small -electric listener and a tiny X-ray fluoroscope screen. The listener -yielded the sound of a man's panting breath, his furtive, fumbling -movements within the dark little cubby. Then I tried the X-ray, through -the fabric-shrouded glassite pane of the window. It shot its invisible, -soundless rays through the window into the cubby. The little hooded -three-inch screen in my palm glowed with the greenish fluoroscopic -X-ray image. - -A kneeling skeleton was revealed--the skeleton of a man kneeling in -there with his back to me. I stared, and suddenly gasped, with my -breath stopped. The back of the skeleton's skull was visible--the -image-shadow there was of a different density from the bones of his -skull! A dark triangular patch--not bone, but metal! The man with the -metal skull! Philip Carson, of notorious Chameleon fame! The Phantom -raider! I had him here identified at last! Had him trapped here! - - * * * * * - -With a blow of my gun-butt I smashed through the glassite pane; tore -the fabric-shade aside. This room was dark. I had an instant's glimpse -of the dark blob of his crouching figure. There was the whiz of -something he threw at me; the tinkling of glass as some fragile little -thing struck against my forehead. I recall that my paralyzer ray darted -into the dark room. Perhaps it caught him, held him for a second. -But my head was reeling; my senses swiftly fading, with a cold sweat -breaking out all over me. - -And then I was aware that I had fallen to the deck with my gun -clattering away. With my last dim thought came the realization that -I was fainting. That tiny glass globe which had broken against my -forehead--I knew what it was! A little bomb of acetycholine, a weird -drug to lower the blood-pressure and cause me to faint. I fought, but -it was useless. My senses faded. - -Then after an interval I seemed vaguely to be conscious that someone -was bending over me. A dark cloak.... Again I knew only blankness; -and then slowly my senses were coming back. Weak, dizzy, with my head -roaring, my body bathed in cold sweat, I found myself still lying on -the dark deck. Perhaps I had been out only a moment or two. I could -still hear the commotion up forward. I staggered to my feet; saw the -cloaked figure as it ran into the superstructure. Carson making his -getaway! I had a glimpse of him again, two levels down on the dim -catwalk, and saw him dart into the pressure-chamber. I was too late -getting there. The metal pressure-door closed in my face. - -But I had him! I could do to him what he had done to Brenda! I started -for the manual controls. I could open that outer slide, let the -pressure-room air out with a rush before he could get into his space -suit, blast him out into space, or suffocate him in the pressure-room. - -But I had over-taxed my strength. My blood-pressure was still too low -from that accursed drug. My senses were fading again and I sank to the -floor. Weakly I tried to call Kellogg. But he wasn't in his little -nearby cubby now. - -I did not quite lose consciousness this time. I heard the air slowly -going out through the outside opening slide. Then heard the click -as the automatic mechanism closed it. The corridor slide in another -moment, automatically was slowly opening. The rush of air into the -little room helped revive me. I got to my feet again; ran into the -room. I could see the empty space on the rack where he had taken one of -the powered pressure suits and escaped. At the bull's-eye observation -porte I had a glimpse of him--a bloated figure in his air-filled -suit--a tiny comet with a radiance of rocket-stream like a tail behind -it. - -The blob of him in a moment had vanished. Where did he expect to go? -Diagonally ahead, and far down in the glittering starfield, the round, -putty-colored disk of Asteroid-9 was visible. - -My strength had almost fully come back to me now. Quickly I got -into another of the power-suits. They were a somewhat old-fashioned -model, but adequate enough, a double-shelled fabric with electronic -pressure-absorbing current in it; air-renewers, and the small -power-units. I bloated the suit in another moment; closed the corridor -slide. I let the air rush out through the outer slide as quickly as I -dared. - -And then I catapulted out, not bothering with the rocket-stream but -using full gravity-repulsion against the bulk of the _Seven Stars_. Far -down, ahead of me, for an instant I could just see the speck which was -the fleeing Carson. Over me the bulk of the _Seven Stars_ hung, a great -alumite cylinder, receding, dwindled by distance until it was only a -tiny speck, lost among the blazing stars. - -With the huge, dull-lead disk of Asteroid-9 growing in visual size -under me, I hurtled downward, using the asteroid's full attraction now -as I sped after the escaping Carson. - - * * * * * - -Alone in space; a little drifting world of yourself. It is an eerie -feeling. I have no idea how long that descent to Asteroid-9 took; one -loses all sense of time as well as space, hurtling alone through the -starry universe. The _Seven Stars_ long since was gone, vanished in the -black illimitable distances of the blazing firmament above me. Head -down, with full attraction in the little gravity plates of the padded -shoulders of my bloated suit, like a diver I headed, hurtling for the -dull-lead surface. - -I had picked up velocity swiftly. The great round disk of Asteroid-9 -widened, spread, crawled outward and seemed visually coming up. For -a time, sunlight was a thin stream on its distant curving limb of -mountains. Then I went into the cone of its shadow. At once the look of -the weird leaden mountains changed; starlight and earthlight mellow -with a faint sheen that struck down through the clouds and tinged the -giant ragged peaks with a tinting glow. - -The clouds, still far down, were broken in thin stratas here over this -hemisphere. The disk had widened now so that presently it filled all -the lower half of the firmament; and a visual convexity had come to -it. I tried to calculate my velocity by the apparent enlarging of the -desolate scene as it rushed up at me. - -Where was Carson? Long since, I had lost sight of the tiny speck -which had been he. Was I overtaking him? I could not tell. With the -leaden glow of the asteroid's surface as a background, I knew I could -be quite close to him and still not see him. Undoubtedly he was not -using his rocket-stream now; had only used it in starting, for quick -repulsion against the ship's hull. I was sure he could not be very far -below me unless, during the time which had passed, he had headed in -some other direction, departing from a straight, swift descent. Could -he drop faster than I was dropping? I doubted it. Unless he was very -skilled--or very desperate, holding the asteroid's attraction to a -dangerous point. I held my own until I dared hold it no longer. I was -in the upper atmosphere now. In every direction, save above me, the -planet's dark surface spread out to its jagged, circular horizon. - -Then at last I dared not hold the attraction longer. With all the tiny -plates in my suit electronized to full repulsion, I began slackening my -fall. Still I had not glimpsed Carson. Disappointment was within me. -What a long chance was this! A five-hundred-mile hemisphere of utter -desolation. No food; no water. And I had no weapons or instruments, -save the single little paralyzer-gun which I had snatched from the deck -when I recovered my senses. I was beginning to be sorry now that I had -so hastily left the _Seven Stars_. No chance of getting back; the die -was cast, here on little Asteroid-9 pitted against this resourceful, -youthful astonishing Interplanetary murderer. - -What was Carson's plan? Escape from the ship had been a desperate -necessity for him, of course. And my memory was back to the fragments -I had heard between him and Brenda. I could understand them better -now! They had planned from the beginning to escape to Asteroid-9! And -poor little Brenda, entangled in this criminality with her brother, had -left the ship first, and met her death. Memory of the map they had had -came suddenly to me. I had it in my pocket now; I tried to conjure what -it had looked like. Outlines of mountains; the word Andros. Was that -the name of one of the asteroid's mountain peaks? Probably it was. I -cursed myself for my ignorance. The Phantom raider probably was based -upon this desolate asteroid. A hide-out here, with food and water and -possibly with some of the raiders' men living here. And Carson was -dropping now to join them. - -What chance had I against a layout like that? - -But I had no choice now but hurtle downward, trying to check my descent -as best I could. For a time, as I came out from under the clouds, with -the dark, fantastic surface of naked, ragged little peaks no more than -twenty or thirty thousand feet down, it seemed that I had been too -brash; I was dropping too fast; never would I be able to check it. I -would crash.... - - * * * * * - -But that, too, was an error, born of my momentarily despairing -thoughts. I was presently poised, some ten thousand feet up. The -highest of the little peaks was no more than half that. They stood -in a tumbled mass--jagged needle-spires--rocks and buttes and great -round-top boulders, with ravines and gullies between them. Scene of -utter, naked desolation, convulsed landscape, frozen into immobility. - -And suddenly my heart was pounding with abrupt exultation. Far down, -where the starlight and Earthlight bathed a little peak, I saw the -speck which was the descending Carson! Just for a second the tiny -outline of his bloated suit was clear against the background of a -shining rock. Then he dropped into an inky shadow and was gone again. - -I tried to mark the spot. A little triplet of spires, standing like -sentinels above a small dark valley. Was that Andros, a landmark here? -Probably it was. - -I was down in perhaps another half hour, with the triplet of spires -standing up against what was now a sullen sky of broken leaden clouds -through which the starlight and Earthlight fitfully shone. I had -landed, by all that I could judge, about half an Earth-mile from where -Carson had dropped. Had he seen me coming down above him? Perhaps. -Perhaps not. - -With my helmet off, and with my lungs panting as they tried to adjust -themselves to the weird air, I crouched for a moment in the shadow of -a rock, peering, listening. There was nothing. It seemed a dead world, -myself its only inhabitant--a silence so utter that my own breath, my -pounding heart were roaring in my ears. - -I started in a moment, heading along a ridged, fantastic little terrain -at the bottom of a shadowed valley. The deflated suit hung in baggy -folds upon me; the bulky helmet was folded, hanging down from the back -of my neck. Half a mile to where Carson had dropped. Gun in hand I -advanced as cautiously as I could, until presently I was following a -ragged ditch with the triple spires of Andros looming above me. - -Was this where Carson had landed? So far as I could judge, it seemed -so. I was tense, alert with the vague, horrible feeling that I was -walking into ambush. - -Then ahead of me, in a distant shadow, it seemed that there was a faint -stir of movement. Soundlessly I melted down to the lead-gray rocks. I -could not see the shadow now, but every instant I expected the luminous -darkness to be stabbed with a bursting bolt. There was nothing. - -Suddenly the stillness was broken by a faint scraping sound. It seemed -fairly close, and into the darkness from whence it had come I aimed my -ray; pressed its lever. - -There was a faint, gasping scream; then a choked silence. I jumped to -my feet, holding the paralyzer-gun leveled as it throbbed and quivered -in my grip. Got him! He couldn't move. He was rooted there in the -darkness, with rigid, stiffened muscles as the ray held him. - -I saw him in an instant, the dark blob of him almost merged with the -shadows, with his baggy space-suit like my own deflated in folds upon -him, and his helmet folded back. - -Triumphant, I dashed forward; and then stopped transfixed, amazed. -The paralyzed figure, stricken upright here on the rocks wasn't young -Carson! Above the folded helmet there was a head of bobbed blonde hair! -Brenda! Brenda, not dead! Not that ghastly thing that was a gruesome -little satellite of the _Seven Stars_! - -I saw her rigid face, with goggling mouth and staring eyes. Brenda -mute, stricken by my ray. I snapped it off frantically; called to her -as I dashed up. And as the ray released her, I saw her waver; then, -with her knees buckling, she sank into a little heap on the ground. - -If only I had some water to dash into her face! Frantically I knelt, -holding her head, brushing her curls from her damp forehead. The ray, I -knew, upon her for so short a time, should not quite do this to her. It -was her emotion, her terror which had caused her to faint. - -My mind went back to that hooded figure, cloaked, which I had chased -in the ship's corridor. I had had a vague indecision, then had decided -it was Brenda--and the ship's lookout at the bow-peak had confirmed my -fears. But that had been Philip, and it was Brenda whom I had chased -that second time, following her out the porte, hurtling into space -after her. - -"Brenda--" - -She opened her eyes presently, bewildered, but she was unharmed. - -"Oh--you--I was so frightened." - - * * * * * - -I held her as she recovered, and presently she was filling in all the -grim details of her tragic little story. Whatever her brother Philip's -propensities for gambling and bad companions, he had been no criminal. -They had lost their father; had been truthful when they said they did -not know what Professor Carson had been building in his lonely little -laboratory. But they knew enough so that when the Phantom bandit began -his mysterious raids, they suspected it was their father's ship; the -laboratory explosion merely a blind. He had often mentioned, when they -were children, that the dream of his life was to discover and perfect -electronic invisibility. - -"Albert Einstein of two hundred years ago," she was telling me now. -"Father studied his writings and his theories very closely. He said -that the secret of practical mechanical invisibility was clearly -forecast by Einstein's discoveries." - -"And you think now," I murmured, "your father is this mysterious -Phantom raider?" - -Her little face clouded. Her blue eyes, misty with Earthlight which -was striking down upon us now through the clouds, gazed at me with a -pathetic appeal. - -"We did not know. We--we were afraid so. And then Philip got a message -one night--" - -Weird occurrence. Young Carson had been on the porch of their Long -Island home. From the sky overhead, where nothing was to be seen, had -come a little stab of waving white light. A helio signal. From their -father? Certainly it seemed so. It told them to come secretly to -Asteroid-9. He would be there, at the base of Andros. And so they had -come to try and help their father. - -"Help him?" I murmured. - -"Yes. Oh, Mr. Fanning--" - -"Jim is shorter," I interjected. - -"--Jim, you see, we couldn't believe father is a criminal. Captured -maybe and forced to operate his ship by these bandits, and appealing to -us for help." - -Desperate adventure indeed. But they had tackled it; had taken passage -on the little _Seven Stars_ which they understood would pass very close -to Asteroid-9, this voyage. And they had known completely nothing of -the _Seven Stars'_ cargo or of any plot which the raider might have -against her! Brenda gasped now when I told her of those angles. - -And there were still other angles that puzzled me. "Brenda, have you -ever heard of an Earth-criminal called the Chameleon?" - -She had not; and when I described his exploits of a few years ago, -she was convinced that by no possible chance could her aged father -have been secretly doing things like that. Nor Philip either, for that -matter. She declared it vehemently, and I believed her. But the man -with the metal skull had been on the _Seven Stars_ as stowaway, or spy -among the passengers, ship's officers or crew. I had seen him there in -young Carson's stateroom. - -Brenda, when I was chasing her, had eluded me. "I saw you fighting with -somebody at Philip's window," she told me now. "I was going to escape -from the ship then." - -"Even though Philip was dead, you were going on with your plans alone?" - -"Yes, why not?" She smiled her twisted little smile. "Then I saw you -fall to the deck. I ran, bent over you. I--I thought you were dead. So -I--I ran down to the porte and took off. Philip and I had planned it so -carefully. Oh, poor Philip!" - -"He didn't miscalculate those air-mechanisms," I muttered. "That damned -villain must have been there in the corridor for an instant while I was -talking to Kellogg, and shoved the controls--killed Philip." - -And I had tried to do the same thing to Brenda! I could only thank the -Lord now that I had failed! - - * * * * * - -The two of us, alone here on Asteroid-9. No food nor water. Perhaps the -only inhabitants of this desolate little world. - -Abruptly she was gripping me. "Look--Jim--look there!" - -I followed her gesture. Up in the leaden sky beyond the looming triple -spires of Andros, a tiny speck had appeared. A ship coming down. -Breathlessly we watched. In a few minutes it was a little oblong blob. - -"It's coming this way, Brenda." - -"Yes." - -It seemed circling a little. By the look it would land on a small level -plateau some quarter of a mile from us. We stared, mute, transfixed, -watching. - -And then suddenly I sucked in my breath with a new shock of startled -amazement. There was something familiar about that cylindrical alumite -hull with the curving pressure-dome above it, and those quadruplicate -tail-fins. - -It wasn't the bandit flyer! "That's the _Seven Stars_!" I gasped. - -The _Seven Stars_ unquestionably. We saw her clearly in a moment, as -she circled some five miles away from us and headed slowly for the -small plateau. Captain Wilkes undoubtedly had changed his mind about -trying to make a run for it. With chaos on his ship--his radio-helio -wrecked so that he could not summon another convoy--he had headed down -here to hide his vessel. And he did not know, of course, that the -Phantom raider's base was here! He had brought his little treasure ship -into the very camp of the enemy! - -"We must warn him, Brenda." - -The blob of the little liner dropped from our sight behind a line of -broken rock-spires as she settled to the plateau. But we could tell -within a few hundred yards of where she had landed. It took us only -a few minutes to run there, with the slighter gravity of Asteroid-9 -aiding us in our leaps across the intervening little chasms. And then -we saw the _Seven Stars_, where she rested placidly on the level -surface. One of her lower portes was open, but there were no figures -out on the dim rocks. - -There was silence inside as we entered the dark little -pressure-chamber. As always customary in port, both its outer and inner -door-slides were open, admitting the fresh outer air. - -There was no one to greet us on the lower level catwalk. Its single -overhead light was burning. We passed Kellogg's little cubby. No -one was in it. Then we mounted the companion ladder; came to the -superstructure corridor. - -Queer, this silence. I held Brenda, with my heart chilling, sinking. -It seemed suddenly that we were prowling like ghouls. The ship was so -cold, so silent. With the ventilating fans stilled, the interior air -here was turning fetid. I had an impulse to call out. Captain Wilkes, -Controlman Kellogg, Purser Green, the crew, the passengers--where were -they all? But abruptly I was furtive, with a slow, horrified terror -dawning in me so that in the dim corridor I stood suddenly and turned -to Brenda. - -"We'd better get back out of here," I murmured. "Something queer--" - -"Jim--look!" - -We stood frozen, transfixed. At the deck doorway a blob was lying. -Captain Wilkes. Dead--suffocated. I swept Brenda away that she might -not get a second glimpse of his puffed, mangled flesh where it had -burst outward from its own pressure. There had been a vacuum here! Out -in space the little _Seven Stars_ quite evidently had lost her interior -air! - -Ship of the dead! I took only one look at the dimly starlit deck -triangle; the bodies lying strewn there. Little group of humans who -had gathered there in a last frenzied panic, clinging to each other, -falling one upon the other--suffocating, dying. - -Nothing but the dead here. - -But this tragedy had happened out in space! And we had seen the _Seven -Stars_ calmly coming down, gracefully, skilfully landing! - -I swung back to Brenda. I gasped, "Good Lord, we've got to get out!" - -Too late a realization! I was aware suddenly of a dark glistening shape -behind us in the corridor--a man in a sleek tight-fitting black robe. -His white face, evil with a leer, grinned at us. Brenda screamed. I -tried to defend us from another dark blob that leaped from a doorway -beside me. And then something struck my head. I was aware only that -Brenda was screaming as I felt myself falling, my senses hurtling off -into the soundless abyss of unconsciousness. - - * * * * * - -I came at last into a dim half-consciousness in which I realized that I -was being carried. I could feel the rhythmic step; and then I knew that -I was slung over a man's shoulder and that he was walking with me on -the rocks. Other dark forms were beside us. With blurred vague vision I -could see the little _Seven Stars_ which we had left. - -And near at hand another spaceship had landed now, here upon little -Asteroid-9. I was being carried to it. I could glimpse it only -vaguely as I hung inert on my captor's shoulder. It was a small -ship, smaller than the _Seven Stars_, and of a type I had never seen -before--barrel-finned and with a spreading fan-tail, somewhat in the -British Earth-design. It rested on the rocks like a long, thin bird, -with body puffed out underneath. Over it was the conventional glassite -pressure dome, low-slung so that its top was no more than ten feet -above the single deck. A dead-black bird. The starlight and mellow -Earthlight were on it, but the black metal surface did not shimmer. - -My senses wafted away again into another blank interval.... And then -dimly my hearing came.... - -"We're glad to have you, little Brenda. You are a treasure indeed. A -woman among us--to cook and sew with woman's duties. Your father will -appreciate that. You do, eh Carson?" - -Familiar, suave, ironic voice with a rich booming timber to it of -assumed graciousness. I knew I had heard that voice before, but with my -swimming senses now I could not quite place it. I felt my eyes opening -to a blur of swaying outlines. - -"You let her alone." The thin frightened voice of an old man. Brenda's -father. - -The dim scene clarified as my strength came. I was lying on the -floor of a little circular control room, with a black shape beside -me. And there were three other figures: Brenda, still garbed in her -baggy deflated space-suit, with her white tense face staring in my -direction; her gray-haired, thin father, in black trousers and black -shirt, seated in a little metal chair beside her. And the other figure -at the controls--a big, heavy-set man in tight-fitting black garment. -Tubelight shone on his florid face. Arthur Jerome, Interplanetary -traveler, Earth television lecturer on things astronomical! The man -with the metal skull, unquestionably! Notorious chameleon of former -years, and now the Phantom Raider! - -"This Fanning comes to his senses," a voice beside me growled. - -"Ah, so?" It brought Jerome with a leap, and then he bent over me. "So -that blow on your head didn't kill you, Fanning?" - -"No," I said. "You, Jerome. If only I had known--" - -"Quite true," he chuckled. "Hindsight is very easy. And now we have -you here. You will be useful, if you have any sense, A member of the -Interplanetary Patrol, you should be skilled in many things of our -adventuring in space. Romantic life, Fanning. Did you ever read of -Captain Kidd, so long ago? One might say I am his modern incarnation. -Romantic idea, eh Fanning?" - -A little mad, this fellow. I could well imagine it. But a clever -scheming, murderous villain for all that. "Much money for you," he -added slyly. "I treat all my men well. There are fifteen of us here." - -"I like money," I said with an assumption of sullenness. "But there are -a lot of things I want to know." - -I found that I was still garbed in the space-suit, but my weapon was -gone. I was presently allowed to sit up in a chair beside Brenda and -her father. But for all my assumption that I could be bribed, it did -not deceive the wily Jerome. The two other black-garbed men here were -closely watching me. - - * * * * * - -The Phantom flyer. From here in its tiny control room, it did not seem -unusually weird. Its fittings a dead-black metal. Its men garbed in -sleek, dead-black, close-fitting fabric suits with black fabric helmets -dangling at the back of the neck. - -I could see that we were in space. Through the pressure dome the stars -were glittering in a black firmament. Where were we going? Jerome had -not the slightest objection to telling me. Perhaps in the back of his -mind there was the idea that ultimately he could bribe me, make me one -of his band of cutthroats, useful to him. He was a genial, triumphant -villain now, flushed with his success, pleased to boast of it before -his men and before Brenda. - -Old Professor Carson had not intended that his children come to -Asteroid-9 and try to rescue him. That furtive message he had found -opportunity to send was intended to bring the Interplanetary Police. -Jerome had discovered that the message was sent. On the _Seven Stars_ -he had thrust Philip out through the porte; and had been searching -Philip's stateroom, fearing that some incriminating evidence might be -there, when I assailed him. - -"You were using an X-ray screen?" he jibed at me now. "My metal -headplate? Much good will it ever do you now to know that I was the -Chameleon. A clever fellow, that Chameleon--but I like the Phantom -bandit better, don't you?" - -And then he told me gloatingly how easy it had been for him to don -a pressure-suit and hide in the pressure-room while he wrecked the -air-valves and let the air out of the doomed _Seven Stars_. Ship of the -dead, on which he was the only living human until his phantom raider -had come with a boarding party. Then the _Seven_ had been taken to -Asteroid-9, her cargo of electronic weapons transferred to the arriving -X-flyer, and here we were. - -"Headed for Deimos," he chuckled. "How glad they will be to see us! -A million decimars of Interplanetary currency, Fanning. You'll want -some of it, surely. And then we'll go looking for another adventure. -Romantic life, eh?" - -I tried, during those following hours, very cautiously to convince -Jerome that at heart I might be a villain like himself. Perhaps to some -extent, I succeeded. At all events, there came at last a brief interval -when the controls were locked and Brenda, her father and I were out on -the tiny forepeak in the starlight, momentarily alone. I had found now -that a little freedom of movement was given us. After all, there was -nothing that we could do, trapped here. - -"You know where the exit porte of this ship is?" I murmured. - -"Yes, yes, of course." Professor Carson was a confused, dazed old man; -his life among these cutthroats for so long now had cowed him. "But -what--what do you think you could do?" - -In truth I had no possible idea. But if ever a chance should come for -escape-- - -"In the pressure chamber," I whispered, "would there be pressure suits? -One for you--" - -"Yes. Yes, there are." - -A commotion up at the control turret interrupted us. The black-garbed -man at the electro-telescope there was shouting. Jerome came running; -and we followed him up into the turret. He was grim, but ironically -smiling. - -"Interplanetary Patrolship off there," he said. "Patrolship-3." - -Sister ship of my ill-fated vessel. - -"Sighted us?" I murmured. - -He shrugged. "Probably. Only three thousand miles away--probably did." -His mouth was set into a grim hard line. In his eyes I saw that gleam -of fanatic irrationality. "Unfortunate, for them. This little vessel of -mine has never been sighted before, you know." His lips twitched with a -grin. "You see how we are dressed here? Why, we've even been down into -Earth's atmosphere--we've landed and made away without discovery. We'll -do that on Deimos. And now this Patrolship--no one on it will ever live -to tell that even for a moment they sighted the Phantom raider!" - -He turned to an intricate bank of levers, dials and tiny vacuum -globes that were ranged on a table here at the side of the control -room. Separate from the space-flying mechanisms. The controls of the -mechanical electronic invisibility. - -"You'll see us go into action now, Fanning. It should be interesting." - -He swung the dials. I felt my senses reel with a weird shock. Brenda -gave a little gasp. There was a momentary quiver of all the ship; a -momentary current-hum. And then silence. - -My head cleared; the shock was passed. I gripped the arms of my chair -and stared. - - * * * * * - -A glow like an aura of green radiance suffused the control room. A -green glow of unreality throughout all the little ship. I could see it -out on the forepeak triangle--the black-garbed figures like wraiths -out there in a luminous green gloom. The glassite bull's-eye portes -seemed now to have a green film on them. The stars outside were shut -away. The transparent glassite dome was spread with the same dull-green -opaqueness now. And then I saw, here in the turret walls, in the dome -and in the center of each of the bull's-eyes, little holes through -which a tiny segment of the starfield still was apparent--windows like -dull little eyes puncturing our barrage of invisibility so that we -could see outward through them. - -Here in the control room the dull radience shone upon Jerome's -grinning, triumphant face; it was tinted ghastly, putty-colored by the -strange light. And the light glistened on his eyeballs, glowing like -phosphorescence--like the eyes of an animal in a hunter's torchlight at -night. - -Everyone here, the same. And I saw old Professor Carson's face--the -face of a dead man. His expression was stamped with his mixed emotions. -This, his science of which he had been so proud, perverted now into -murderous, ghastly warfare by the villainous Jerome. - -Then Jerome moved to his space-flight controls; through the tiny -windows in the barrage I could see that our ship was swinging, heading -for the oncoming patrolship. Only three thousand miles apart. They -would be upon each other in a few minutes. - -Jerome's footsteps as he moved across the room faintly sounded on -the metal floor-grid. Toneless footsteps in this eerie radiance. -Unreal--they might have been tinkling bells, or harsh thuds. All -timbre had gone from them so that they had lost their identity -completely. - -"Not long now, Fanning," Jerome said. "You'll see that ship go to its -death." Ghastly dead voice. Every overtone had gone from it. It could -have been a man's voice, or a woman's. The voice of a dead thing in a -hollow tomb. - -"Weird--" I muttered. My own voice the same. And Brenda's, as she -murmured something in horror. All dead, indistinguishable one from the -other. - -Down on the forepeak in the sodden dull-green light, I could see the -crew raising the electronic gun-carriages into position now. They were -quite evidently of the most modern Edretch type, squat projectors -with grid faces fitted into vacuum firing portes on each side of the -forepeak. Guns undoubtedly with an effective range of some five hundred -Earth-miles. - -X-flyer going into action. The crew, with their dead putty-colored -faces, moved, silently in the soundless ship. Up here in the turret -with us, Jerome's hollow voice was gloating: - -"That fool patrolship--they have seen us vanish. They know now who -their adversary is. Want to see them, Fanning?" - -There was no need of a telescope now. A magnified image of the oncoming -patrolship as seen through one of the little barrage-vents on our bow, -was spread here on a grid-screen in the control turret. Fascinated with -horror, I watched it--the foreshortened looming bow of the patrolship -clearly outlined against the black velvet of the firmament. It had seen -us vanish, had turned and was heading straight for where it had last -seen us! Even as I watched, the image of it was visibly enlarging. A -thousand miles away now, probably. But almost in a moment it would be -within range! - -Then the wily Jerome abruptly swung us sharply. He was still at his -gravity-control levers. The starfield rolled sidewise as we turned in -a great hundred-mile arc. The maneuver was obvious. The patrolship -had marked our position. Jerome quite evidently was not sure what -range-guns his adversary had. He was taking no chances that a premature -shot, aimed by calculation at where we might be, would strike us. - -Patrolship-3 had guns very similar to these which I saw now being -erected here on the X-flyer. It could have been a fairly even battle, a -test of electronic battery-strength, of astronomical skill, of reckless -daring--and yet, against an invisible enemy it could be no fight at -all! I knew the commander of Patrolship-3 well. A stalwart, youngish -fellow named Rollins. A man of infinite skill, reckless daring. I could -picture him now in the turret of his ship, with his mouth set grim and -his eyes flashing as he hurtled his little vessel forward. At what? -Nothing but an apparently empty starfield from some unknown quarter -of which a sudden stab of bolt would leap to strike him! I knew what -Commander Rollins was thinking now. He would watch for that first bolt, -and if it did not wreck his ship he would fire at the blankness from -whence the shot had come. His only chance. An almost hopeless one. And -yet he had done his best to hurl himself at us. - - * * * * * - -We were circling now. And suddenly it seemed that Rollins' ship, with -its side spread toward us, off there at some five hundred miles, was -slackening its velocity. Like a lion at bay, stopping, waiting with an -invisible soundless wasp encircling it. - -One of the gunners down in our forepeak signaled up to Jerome. - -"Not yet," Jerome called. "When we strike, it must smash. There must -not even be a chance of an answering shot." - -Maneuvering for the kill. Fascinated, silently I watched as again -we were heading for Rollins' ship. And within me a vague, desperate -thought was growing: There are things through which one has no right to -live. If only I could contrive it. - -Jerome was absorbed at his controls, his range-finders and his -calculations. My hand touched Brenda's arm where she sat beside me. I -whispered: - -"Brenda, we may not live through this." - -"I know." - -"I mean, if we were to die, to help that other ship." - -She stared at me, and then at her father. Jerome had called the old -man, ordered him to the mechanisms of the vessel's invisibility, where -he sat checking the dial-readings of his intricate apparatus. - -Briefly, its operation involved three scientific factors: -De-electronization, thus to create around any metallic object a -barrage of magnetic field of a new type to any previously developed; -color-absorption, by which there can be no reflected light from the -de-electronized object; and the Albert Einstein principle of the -natural bending of light-rays when passing through a magnetic field. -In effect then, the total color-absorption into the de-electronized -object would make it, when viewed externally, a _nothingness_ to see. -A blankness, like an outlined dark hole. But that in itself is not -invisibility--merely a silhouette. The background would be blotted out, -so that the invisible object would be perceived by the background it -obscured. The magnetic field, however, by natural law which Einstein -discovered, bends the light-rays from the background, _around_ the -intervening object. The background thus seems complete. The intervening -object has vanished! - -Simple in theory; but it was an intricate little apparatus here which -now old Professor Carson was attending. I stared at him as he bent so -earnestly over it. His beloved brain-child. - -For that moment Brenda tenderly regarded him. And then she turned to -me. Her eyes were misted. - -"Whatever you think best," she murmured. - -Tensely I was waiting my chance. That tiny row of fragile vacuum tubes. - -My heart pounded suddenly as Jerome locked his space-controls and -darted down to the forepeak to consult one of his men at a gun-range -finder. I muttered: - -"Brenda take your father and get out of here quickly!" A burly, -black-garbed guard was coming in from the turret balcony to watch us in -Jerome's absence. I added in a swift undertone: "Go down with Jerome. -Find some pretense to help him." - -They would escape Jerome's wrath and there was just a chance that they -might live through this. - -They had only reached the little balcony outside the turret when the -guard came in. I was on my feet. - -"Sit down," he commanded. - -He was between me and the little table where Carson's tiny row of -vacuum tubes glowed dull-green. And in that second I leaped, head -down like a battering ram. With my skull striking his middle he went -backward, spun as he tried to get his balance. And he landed, sprawled -forward on Carson's little table. - -There was a tinkling crash as the de-electronizers short-circuited. -A hiss of neutronic flame which in that second with its half-million -ultra-pressure oscillating volts, electrocuted the luckless villain who -was sprawled there. - -I was down on the floor, crawling in the chaos. Amazing, electronic -turmoil. The shock of it swiftly spread around the little vessel; -made the senses of everyone on board momentarily reel. I was aware -of thin slivers of neutronic fire darting upward from the cooking -flesh of the sprawling man's body. Neutronic fire that all in that -second of deranged current darted throughout the ship. A split second -of flash; but in that second the darting tiny slivers of light-fire -everywhere were drinking up the weird green glow. The muffled ghastly, -toneless sounds of the ship's interior were brought to life. Down on -the forepeak Jerome gasped a startled curse. One of his men fell with -reeling senses. - -And light was here. Normal celestial light, streaming down through our -transparent dome where the blazing firmament of stars was now clearly -to be seen. We had lost our invisibility! Gone. Irrevocably gone. At -least this combat would be upon an equality! Rollins at last had his -equal chance with the Phantom raider! - -Patrolship-3 was clearly apparent now through our forward dome. I saw -Rollins swing his bow toward us. There was a tiny violet flash from his -forepeak. The first shot! - -It came like a great violet lightning bolt hurtling at us! - - * * * * * - -There was a puff of electronic light up at our dome-peak. A shower of -red-yellow sparks. I held my breath as Rollins' little circle of violet -beam struck us full, and clung. A second. Ten seconds, while the shower -of sparks sprayed like a little fountain of light-points. Would the -outer shell of our dome crack? - -It seemed to hold. Ten seconds, and then Rollins' ray snapped off and -vanished. A test shot. I knew it was not a weakness of his electronic -power. A great, long-range space-gun with a single snap-bolt ordinarily -can do little damage. It is the duration of seconds over which the bolt -can cling, eating its way with generated interference-heat, fusing and -breaking its opposing armored substance. - -And this was Rollins' first tentative test. Verifying his range, and -our ship's resistance. A conservation of his electronic power. In -space-gun battle, the available reserve of battery strength is vital. -A long-range gun, with ten seconds of sustained voltage, drains any -battery-series faster than the whirling electro-dynamos can build them -up. Then there must be an interval of replenishment. - -My heart pounded with exultation as the thoughts swept me. Rollins had -been grimly desperate, undoubtedly, against an invisible enemy. But his -adversary was visible now. An equality of battle; and so Rollins would -use his wits, his skill of judgment. This damned murderous Jerome would -have all he could do to match tactics with the skilful commander of -Patrolship-3! - -In those chaotic seconds I was still on the floor near the door of the -control room. Inside it the dead, roasted body of my guard lay sprawled -face down upon the wreckage of the invisibility-controls. The current -there was shut off now. The slivers of light-fire were gone. Down on -our forepeak Jerome and his gunners were recovering. Jerome was gazing -up, wildly cursing. - -I staggered to the little turret-balcony, where Brenda and her father, -white-faced, were clinging to its rail. - -"That damned fool!" I shouted. "In there--in the turret. He stumbled -and fell on the control table." - -Would it serve as an excuse? Would the raging Jerome stab at me now -with a heat-bolt? Or would he believe me? I felt sure that no one -actually had seen what had happened. - -"You damned--why--why--" Jerome for that instant glared up at me, his -hand instinctively reaching for his belt. But in all the chaos, turning -his wrath upon me must have struck him as futile. And it was stricken -from his mind by the confusion around him. Acrid choking fumes were -swirling through our little vessel, fumes from the deranged current of -the de-electronizers. One of Jerome's men dashed up to him. - -"A fire on our stern-deck. I put it out." - -"Go back to your post." Jerome shoved him away impatiently; turned, -came up and went into his turret, and seated himself at his gravity -controls. - -Through the dome-peak I could see Rollins' ship, going in the opposite -direction from us, hurtling past us. Two hundred miles off. In a moment -it had passed and was out of range. Then it was turning, mounting in a -great arc and hurtling back at us! - - * * * * * - -Jerome stabbed first. A hit! The violet sword dimly glowing, luminous -as it ignited the motes of intervening star-dust, leaped across the -narrowing angle and struck with a puff of glare. Jerome held it, -clinging. Five seconds. Ten. Fifteen. I could hear the throb and whir -of our dynamos as they struggled with the load. The big dial levers -on Jerome's desk quivered, slowly turned backward toward zero as our -batteries drained. - -For those seconds Rollins took it with no answering shot. Would his -forepeak dome hold? I could see the tiny puff of fountain-light there -where the violet beam was boring. And then Rollins answered! From his -stern-peak this time diagonally away from us, his beam shot out. Not -directly at us, but at our bolt-stream. Two great violet rapiers in -space, sliding one upon the other. Midway between the vessels they -clashed. The interference cut our beam from Rollins' vessel. Out there -in space for breathless seconds both the beams held firm. Amazing sight -of pyrotechnic beauty, that area where the beams clashed. - -Another ten seconds, each of them an eternity. The giant circle of the -interference area slowly was backing toward Rollins' ship! Our beam, -at reckless full-power now, was pushing it back. Only twenty or thirty -miles now from its target. - -A buzzer sounded at Jerome's elbow. He reached for his audiphone. The -panic-stricken voice of our controlman in the ship's hull sounded: - -"Chief! Dynamo bearing running hot! An' we're almost at zero in the -main battery." - -Jerome disconnected with a grim curse. Another few seconds. The -narrowing angle of the hurtling ships had brought them within a hundred -miles of each other. And then suddenly, again it was Rollins who was -the more cautious. From the tail of his vessel a stream of burning gas -suddenly was issuing. A widening fluorescent comet-tail streaming out -behind him. And then he was turning, heading away from us! In retreat! -The interference area of the two clashing sword-beams broke. The great -prismatic spark shower died. Our bolt, plunging through, for a second -may have struck the turning, retreating Rollins. No one here could say. -Rollins' bolt had snapped off. The image of his ship merged with the -gas cloud. Vanished behind its masking cloak. - -Jerome snapped off our beam. His face was triumphant; his enemy -fleeing, trying to mask his retreat with a cloud of burning gas. - -"By Heaven, I've got him!" Jerome was muttering. "Damn' fool, trying to -fight the Phantom." - -The starfield swung as we turned, headed at the gas-cloud where it hung -in a vast luminous fog of prismatic color as though a comet had burst -there. Triumphant pursuit of our enemy. But I held my breath. - -I found Brenda beside me. Her hand, cold dank, gripped mine. Our eyes -met. There was nothing to say. Surely we both knew what little chance -we had of coming out of this alive. - -The luminous gas-cloud swarmed to the sides as our ship plunged -headlong into it. And then we were through it. - - * * * * * - -There was no warning as Rollins' bolt struck us! He had not tried to -escape but was poised here in ambush, bow toward us, no more than fifty -miles away, off to one side by skilled calculation so that there was -only his narrow bow as our target and we were almost broadside to him! - -The bolt struck us midway of the hull in a shower of sparks that -mounted up and clouded our instruments. Clinging, full-power beam. -Rollins at last striking for the kill! Wildly our guns tried to -intercept it. One of our forepeak guns went out of commission with -a back-firing burst which shattered it and killed the man at its -controls. The fumes of the explosion came wafting up, acrid, choking. - -There was a sudden panic of confusion here, but Jerome leaped to his -feet with his roaring voice steadying his men. Then two of our guns, -stem and bow, stabbed beams that struck the patrolship's bow and clung. -But still that blast at our hull persisted. Eating, fusing the metallic -hull-plate. - -Weird, transfixed drama as the seconds passed. I knew that Rollins now -would never yield. This bolt would cling to the limit of his batteries. - -The audiphone beside Jerome was screaming with the hull-controlman's -panic-stricken voice: "Chief--hull plate is bending--bulging--" - -Then I saw, through the shower of sparks outside, that Rollins' ship -was edging even closer. One of our two bolts had wavered and broken, -with exhausted battery. The other, weakened by all Jerome's reckless -firing, was futilely clinging to its target with a shower of sparks -paling now by diminished voltage. - -And then from the patrolship, little blobs were popping out. Catapulted -bombs, hurtling at us with this close, twenty-mile range. Some exploded -in mid-space fired by the free electrons which hung heavy here around -us. And then one struck us, exploded with a dull concussion against our -stern. And then another, and another. - -"Jim--Jim dear--goodbye." - -Brenda's murmured words brought me suddenly to myself. Only sixty -seconds had passed since we burst out of the gas-cloud and Rollins had -jumped to finish us. Sixty seconds, but it had brought chaos here on -the Phantom ship. My chance! Old Professor Carson beside us was in a -daze; white-faced, numbly staring. - -"The exit-porte," I muttered. "Brenda, make your father hurry." - -Fumes of green-yellow chlorine mingled with oil-smoke, were surging -around us as we staggered up the little catwalk from the balcony to the -dome-top. Jerome may have seen us. His voice was shouting desperate -orders, and curses, but whether at us or not I never knew. A gunner -down on the deck fired at us with a hand-ray, but it missed. - -"Brenda, hurry! Get your father into a space-suit." - -She and I still were garbed in the space-suits from the _Seven -Stars_. In the tiny exit-porte, one of Jerome's crew, himself trying -to escape, lunged at me, but I felled him with a blow of my fist -into his face. The closing slide-door of the tiny pressure chamber -shut away the chaos. Then our suits were inflated; our helmets fixed -and we catapulted into the glare of outside space. I flung on my -rocket-stream; clung to Brenda and her father. My metal-tipped fingers -on the metallic plate of her shoulder made audiphone contact. - -"Hold tight, Brenda." - -"Yes, Jim." - -"I'll tow us." - -Horrible, chaotic seconds as the showering electronic sparks from the -doomed phantom flyer enveloped us. Indescribable glaring confusion of -deranged electricity and fusing, bubbling, flying metal-fragments. -Prismatic light that blinded. - -We came through it in a moment, out into the starlight with the -glaring, staggering vessel, receding behind and above us as my -rocket-stream and gravity-plates drew us out of the line of fire. -The patrolship was hardly ten miles away now. I signalled with a -helmet-flare. Interplanetary Code signal. Rollins saw it; recognized -it; answered it! - -We hurtled forward. Behind us, well overhead now, Jerome's harried, -wavering ship suddenly cracked. With a great burst of interior pressure -the dome, to which Rollins' main beam had shifted, abruptly exploded -outward. Ghastly, silent explosion. It spewed wreckage. Little hurtling -dots of shattered glassite and metal and mangled humans--blobs that -spewed out, were caught by the vessel's attraction, finding their -orbits so that they circled, gruesome satellites of their convulsed -world. - -Then the last of Rollins' blasting beams snapped off. Back there the -broken ship hung leprous, with fused, still bubbling dome. Like a bent -finger of colored light for a moment more it glowed. And then it went -dark. - -Dead X-flyer among the stars. The end of the dreaded Phantom of the -Starways. - - - - - -End of Project Gutenberg's Phantom of the Seven Stars, by Ray Cummings - -*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PHANTOM OF THE SEVEN STARS *** - -***** This file should be named 61855.txt or 61855.zip ***** -This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: - http://www.gutenberg.org/6/1/8/5/61855/ - -Produced by Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online -Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net - - -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions -will be renamed. - -Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no -one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation -(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without -permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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