Destroyer From the Past E-Book

John Russell Fearn

• Herausgeber: Wildside Press
• Kategorie: Fantasy und Science-Fiction
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022

Seitenzahl: 48

Beschreibung

Destroyer From the Past

Leseprobe

Table of Contents

DESTROYER FROM THE PAST, by John Russell Fearn

COPYRIGHT INFORMATION

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 4

DESTROYER FROM THE PAST,by John Russell Fearn

COPYRIGHT INFORMATION

Copyright © 1942 by John Russell Fearn.

First published Amazing Stories, May 1942, under the pseudonym Polton Cross.

Reprinted with the permission of the Cosmos Literary Agency.

Published by Wildside Press LLC.

wildsidepress.com | bcmystery.com

CHAPTER 1

The Earth-Mars Space Route

Murray Gregg, veteran chief of the Earth-Mars Space Route, stood at the window overlooking the sprawling towers ringing the departure grounds. He was worried: every line of his strong cast face showed it. There was even a despondent droop to his usually erect shoulders.

He was alone in this great operations office, surrounded by the numberless instruments that kept him in touch with space ports the world over. And being alone meant that he was dictator of all space travel and its necessary safety….That was why he was worried. Something was desperately wrong.

He turned almost in relief as the door opened and two men were shown in. Then his face fell as he gazed at them. They were so shabby, so apparently inefficient. The one huge, fat, round-faced and genial….The other much shorter, keen eyed, with a comical seriousness about his face. Their clothes, such as they were, were ill-fitting. Rather than looking like men prepared to face death, they resembled comedians. To Murray Gregg the famous Laurel and Hardy of the Twentieth Century were mere memories, otherwise he might have been tempted to remark the similarity.

“You—you are the firm of Long and—er—Shortt?” he asked gravely.

The big one smiled reassuringly. “Don’t let that worry you, my dear sir. The names are assumed, of course, befitting our physical characteristics and also, might I say, covering up the names of two—hm!—unwanted members of the human race. Ex-hoboes, sir! But not afraid of danger, or of death. Where special agents fail, Long and Shortt succeed.”

“I see.” Gregg’s voice was dry. He felt he had made a damn fool of himself. But he went on colorlessly, “If you can make anything of the case I’m handing to you you’ll indeed show special agents something, since they can’t overcome the trouble.”

“Speak, sir—we are all ears,” Long invited, beaming, and his little partner nodded though he looked half asleep.

Gregg motioned to the reports on his desk.

“Four space liners recently have returned to Earth on their robot controls with all the passengers and crews dead! That means something like four thousand people wiped out by something in the void between here and Mars on the usual space route. I have had to cancel all space travel by that route until the mystery is solved. Special agents of the company have investigated—and never returned. Or if they have they have come back dead! Possibly you have heard of this, however?”

“Nothing,” said Long calmly, “escapes us. And realizing the matter was beyond special agents you called us in?”

“I noted in the professions index that you were spacemen able to tackle any danger, great or small. So I—” Gregg hesitated, looked at the two again unhappily. “So I sent for you. Maybe I made a mistake…?”

“Our firm,” said Long with dignity, “will undertake anything from disinfecting a ship full of cultures to transporting a planet. We always deliver the goods—At a price!” he cooed. “For this, with such at stake, our terms are—”

“One million dollars,” said the little one, eyelids drooping.

“My partner is, for once, right,” Long agreed.

Gregg shrugged. “You will receive that sum when—and if—you completely destroy this menace, otherwise only a small expense fee for your initial tests. I think,” he added grimly, “that is all. Make of it what you can.”

He waited, an eyebrow raised, as both men doffed their worn civilian hats and went out together side by side. He shook his head sadly.

“I have a suspicion that route is sealed forever,” he muttered. “At least until first class scientists solve the problem. These two mountebanks—” He gave up with a grunt of despair.

* * * *

But neither Long nor Shortt were mountebanks. As Long had intimated they were ex-hoboes and the owners of a battered space machine filled with all imaginable scientific gadgets, some their own idea, others politely “frisked” in years of wandering the various worlds of the System before they had teamed up to make money in the way they loved best—space roaming. Their down-at-heel appearance was part of their stock-in-trade—it made people talk about them—but there were brains aplenty under those oddly diverse exteriors.

“Have you any ideas, Mr. Long?” Shortt asked off-handedly, as they trudged together to the public space park where their bus was grounded.

“None, alas,” Long sighed, his fat wabbling with exertion. “Unless it be the old trouble of a full-spot of cosmic rays. As we know, a nest of cosmic rays, blocked by some transverse radiation, can produce instant death to the tenants of any ship running into it.”

“That,” Shortt averred, “doesn’t match up with the newscast reports. The people were found sitting or standing exactly as death had reached them. And they had no cosmic ray burns. Just as though they had gone to sleep and had all the life jerked out of them….Definitely, Mr. Long, we are going to earn our million dollars.”

“At least we shall collect it,” Long answered ambiguously.

Fifteen minutes later they reached their space machine—a twenty year old model with “Jollopy” inscribed shamelessly—and with no pretensions to art—on the prow. Inside it was a sight to make a trained pilot wince; but not so either of the partners. Long waved his hand airily to the airlock, left his colleague to shut it—then he wormed his ponderous mass in and out of the jam of instruments to the switchboard, sat down, put in the power.