Part 2 (2/2)
A fine workman. O'Deen swears he heard something moving on the deck. Cook thinks some of the doctor's stuffed monstrosities have come to life. Ridiculous, of course. But what is one to think?”
Pondering the significance of those few lines, Thad climbed back to the deck. Was the s.h.i.+p haunted by some weird death, that had seized the crew man by man, mysteriously? That was the obvious implication.
And if the flier had been still outside Jupiter's...o...b..t when those words were written, it must have been weeks before the end. A lurking, invisible death! The scream he had heard....
He descended into the forecastle, and came upon another such silent record of frightful carnage as he had found in the captain's cabin.
Dried blood, sc.r.a.ps of cloth, knives and other weapons. A fearful question was beginning to obsess him. What had become of the bodies of those who must have died in these conflicts? He dared not think the answer.
Gripping the welding arc, Thad approached the after hatch, giving to the cargo hold. Trepidation almost overpowered him, but he was determined to find the sinister menace of the s.h.i.+p, before it found him. The dog whimpered, hung back, and finally deserted him, contributing nothing to his peace of mind.
The hold proved to be dark. An indefinite black s.p.a.ce, oppressive with the terrible silence of the flier. The air within it bore still more strongly the unpleasant fetor.
Thad hesitated on the steps. The hold was not inviting. But at the thought that he must sleep, unguarded, while taking the flier to Mars, his resolution returned. The uncertainty, the constant fear, would be unendurable.
He climbed on down, feeling for the light b.u.t.ton. He found it, as his feet touched the floor. Blue light flooded the hold.
It was filled with monstrous things, colossal creatures, such as nothing that ever lived upon the Earth; like nothing known in the jungles of Venus or the deserts of Mars, or anything that has been found upon Jupiter's moons.
They were monsters remotely resembling insects or crustaceans, but as large as horses or elephants; creatures upreared upon strange limbs, armed with hideously fanged jaws, cruel talons, frightful, saw-toothed snouts, and glittering scales, red and yellow and green. They leered at him with phosph.o.r.escent eyes, yellow and purple.
They cast grotesquely gigantic shadows in the blue light....
A cold shock of horror started along Thad's spine, at sight of those incredible nightmare things. Automatically be flung up the welding tool, flicking over the lever with his thumb, so that violet electric flame played about the electrode.
Then he saw that the crowding, hideous things were motionless, that they stood upon wooden pedestals, that many of them were supported upon metal bars. They were dead. Mounted. Collected specimens of some alien life.
Grinning wanly, and conscious of a weakness in the knees, he muttered: ”They sure will fill the museum, if everybody gets the kick out of them that I did. A little too realistic, I'd say. Guess these are the 'stuffed monstrosities' mentioned in the page out of the log. No wonder the cook was afraid of them. Some of then do look h.e.l.lishly alive!”
He started across the hold, shrinking involuntarily from the armored enormities that seemed crouched to spring at him, motionless eyes staring.
So, at the end of the long s.p.a.ce, he found the treasure.
Glittering in the blue light, it looked unreal. Incredible. A dazzling dream. He stopped among the fearful things that seemed gathered as if to guard it, and stared with wide eyes through the opened face-plate of his helmet.
He saw neat stacks of gold ingots, new, freshly smelted; bars of silver-white iridium, of argent platinum, of blue-white osmium. Many of them. Thousands of pounds, Thad knew. He trembled at thought of their value. Almost beyond calculation.
Then he saw the coffer, lying beyond the piled, gleaming ingots--a huge box, eight feet long; made of some crystal that glittered with snowy whiteness, filled with sparkling, iridescent gleams, and inlaid with strange designs, apparently in vermilion enamel.
With a little cry, he ran toward the chest, moving awkwardly in the loose, deflated fabric of the Osprey suit.
Beside the coffer, on the floor of the hold, was literally a mountain of flame--blazing gems, heaped as if they had been carelessly dumped from it; cut diamonds, incredibly gigantic; monster emeralds, sapphires, rubies; and strange stones, that Thad did not recognize.
And Thad gasped with horror, when he looked at the designs of the vermilion inlay, in the white, gleaming crystal. Weird forms. Shapes of creatures somewhat like gigantic spiders, and more unlike them.
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