CHAPTER III

The City of Space

Bill lay on an Alpine glacier, a painful broken leg inextricably wedged in a crevasse. It was dark, frightfully cold. In vain he struggled to move, to seek light and warmth, while the grim grip of the ice held him, while bitter wind howled about him and the piercing cold of the blizzard crept numbingly up his limbs.

He came to with a start, realized that it was a dream. But he was none the less freezing, gasping for thin, frigid air, that somehow would not come into his lungs. All about was darkness. He lay on cold metal.

"In the wreck of the _Fury_!" he thought. "The air is leaking out. And the cold of space! A frozen tomb!"

He must have made a sound, for a groan came from beside him. He fought to draw breath, tried to speak. He choked, and his voice was oddly high and thin.

"Who are----"

He ended in a fit of coughing, felt warm blood spraying from his mouth. Faintly he heard a whisper beside him.

"I'm Brand. The Moon Patrol--fought to the last!"

Bill could speak no more, and evidently the redoubtable captain could not. For a long time they lay in freezing silence. Bill had no hope of life, he felt only very grim satisfaction in the fact that he and Brand had not been killed outright.

But suddenly he was thrilled with hope. He heard a crash of hammer blows upon metal, sharp as the sound of snapping glass in the thin air. Then he heard the thin hiss of an oxygen lance.

Someone was cutting a way to them through the wreckage. Only a moment later, it seemed, a vivid bar of light cleft the darkness, searched the wrecked bridge, settled upon the two limp figures. Bill saw grotesque figures in cumbrous metal space suits clambering through a hole they had cut. He felt an oxygen helmet being fastened about his head, heard the thin hiss of the escaping gas, and was once more able to breathe.

Again he slipped into oblivion.

He awoke with the sensation that infinite time had passed. He sat up quickly, feeling strong, alert, fully recovered in every faculty, a clear memory of every detail of the disastrous encounter with the strange blue globe-ship springing instantly to his mind.

He was in a clean bed in a little white-walled room. Captain Brand, a surprised grin on his bluff, rough-hewn features, was sitting upon another bed beside him. Two attendants in white uniform stood just inside the door; and a nervous little man in black suit, evidently a doctor, was hastily replacing gleaming instruments in a leather bag.

A tall man appeared suddenly in the door, clad in a striking uniform of black, scarlet, and gold--black trousers, scarlet military coat and cap, gold buttons and decorations. He carried in his hand a glittering positive ray pistol.

"Gentlemen," he said in a crisp, gruff voice, "you may consider yourselves prisoners of the Prince of Space."

"How come?" Brand demanded.

"The Prince was kind enough to have you removed from the wreck of your ship, and brought aboard the _Red Rover_, his own sunship. You have been kept unconscious until your recovery was complete."

"And what do you want with us now?" Brand was rather aggressive.

The man with the pistol smiled. "That, gentlemen, I am happy to say, rests largely with yourselves."

"I am an officer in the Moon Patrol," said Brand. "I prefer death to anything----"

"Wait, Captain. You need have none but the kindest feelings for my master, the Prince of Space. I now ask you nothing but your word as an officer and a gentleman that you will act as becomes a guest of the Prince. Your promise will lose you nothing and win you much."

"Very good, I promise," Brand agreed after a moment. "----for twenty-four hours."

He pulled out his watch, looked at it. The man in the door lowered his pistol, smiling, and walked across to shake hands with Brand.

"Call me Smith," he introduced himself. "Captain of the Prince's cruiser, _Red Rover_."

Still smiling, he beckoned toward the door.

"And if you like, gentlemen, you may come with me to the bridge. The _Red Rover_ is to land in an hour."

Brand sprang nimbly to the floor, and Bill followed. The flier was maintaining a moderate acceleration--they felt light, but were able to walk without difficulty. Beyond the door was a round shaft, with a ladder through its length. Captain Smith clambered up the ladder. Brand and Bill swung up behind him.

After an easy climb of fifty feet or so, they entered a domed pilot-house, with vitrolite observation panels, telescopes, maps and charts, and speaking tube--an arrangement similiar to that of the _Fury_.

Black, star-strewn heavens lay before them. Bill looked for the earth, found it visible in the periscopic screens, almost behind them. It was a little green disk; the moon but a white dot beside it.

"We land in an hour!" he exclaimed.

"I didn't say where," said Captain Smith, smiling. "Our landing place is a million miles from the earth."

"Not on earth! Then where----"

"At the City of Space."

"The City of Space!"

"The capital of the Prince of Space. It is not a thousand miles before us."

Bill peered ahead, through the vitrolite dome, distinguished the bright constellation of Sagittarius with the luminous clouds of the Galaxy behind it.

"I don't see anything----"

"The Prince does not care to advertise his city. The outside of the City of Space is covered with black vitalium--which furnishes us with power. Reflecting none of the sun's rays, it cannot be seen by reflected light. Against the black background of space it is invisible, except when it occults a star."

* * * * *

Captain Smith busied himself with giving orders for the landing. Bill and Brand stood for many minutes looking forward through the vitrolite dome, while the motor ray tubes retarded the flier. Presently a little black point came against the silver haze of the Milky Way. It grew, stars vanishing behind its rim, until a huge section of the heavens was utterly black before them.

"The City of Space is in a cylinder," Captain Smith said. "Roughly five thousand feet in diameter, and about that high. It is built largely of meteoric iron which we captured from a meteorite swarm--making navigation safe and getting useful metal at the same time. The cylinder whirls constantly, with such speed that the centrifugal force against the sides equals the force of gravity on the earth. The city is built around the inside of the cylinder--so that one can look up and see his neighbor's house apparently upside down, a mile above his head. We enter through a lock in one end of the cylinder."

A vast disk of dull black metal was now visible a few yards outside the vitrolite panels. A huge metal valve swung open in it, revealing a bright space beyond. The _Red Rover_ moved into the chamber, the mighty valve closed behind her, air hissed in about her, an inner valve was opened, and she slipped into the City of Space.

[Illustration: _A huge metal valve swung open in it, revealing a bright space beyond.... An inner valve was opened, and_ Red Rover _slipped into the City of Space._]

They were, Bill saw, at the center of an enormous cylinder. The sides, half a mile away, above and below them, were covered with buildings along neat, tree-bordered streets, scattered with green lawns, tiny gardens, and bits of wooded park. It seemed very strange to Bill, to see these endless streets about the inside of a tube, so that one by walking a little over three miles in one direction would arrive again at the starting point, in the same way that one gets back to the starting point after going around the earth in one direction.

At the ends of the cylinder, fastened to the huge metal disks, which closed the ends, were elaborate and complex mechanisms, machines strange and massive. "They must be for heating the city," Bill thought, "and for purifying the air, for furnishing light and power, perhaps even for moving it about." The lock through which they had entered was part of this mechanism.

In the center of each end of the cylinder hung a huge light, seeming large and round as the sun, flooding the place with brilliant mellow rays.

"There are five thousand people here," said Captain Smith. "The Prince has always kept the best specimens among his captives, and others have been recruited besides. We are self-sustaining as the earth is. We use the power of the sun--through our vitalium batteries. We grow our own food. We utilize our waste products--matter here goes through a regular cycle of life and death as on the earth. Men eat food containing carbon, breathe in oxygen, and breathe out carbon dioxide; our plants break up the carbon dioxide, make more foods containing the same carbon, and give off the oxygen for men to breathe again. Our nitrogen, our oxygen and hydrogen, go through similar cycles. The power of the sun is all we need from outside."

Captain Smith guided his "guests" down the ladder, and out through the ship's air-lock. They entered an elevator. Three minutes later they stepped off upon the side of the great cylinder that housed the City, and entered a low building with a broad concrete road curving up before it. As they stepped out, it gave Bill a curious dizzy feeling to look up and see busy streets, inverted, a mile above his head. The road before them curved smoothly up on either hand, bordered with beautiful trees, until its ends met again above his head.

The centrifugal force that held objects against the sides of the cylinder acted in precisely the same way as gravity on the earth--except that it pulled _away_ from the center of the cylinder, instead of _toward_ it.

A glistening heliocar came skimming down upon whirling heliocopters, dropped to rubber tires, and rolled up beside them. A young man of military bearing, clad in a striking uniform of red, black, and gold, stepped out, saluted stiffly.

"Captain Smith," he said, "the Prince desires your attendance at his private office immediately with your guests."

Smith motioned Bill and Captain Brand into the richly upholstered body of the heliocar. Bill, gazing up at the end of the huge cylinder with a city inside it, caught sight, for the first time, of the exterior of the _Red Rover_, the ship that had brought them to the City of Space. It lay just beside the massive machinery of the air-lock, supported in a heavy metal cradle, with the elevator tube running straight from it to the building behind them.

"Look, Brand!" Bill gasped. "That isn't the blue globe. It isn't the ship we fought at all!"

Brand looked. The _Red Rover_ was much the same sort of ship that the _Fury_ had been. She was slender and tapering, cigar-shaped, some two hundred feet in length and twenty-five in diameter--nearly twice as large as the _Fury_. She was cylindrical, instead of octagonal, and she mounted twenty-four motor tubes, in two rings fore and aft, of twelve each, instead of eight.

Brand turned to Smith. "How's this?" he demanded. "Where is the blue globe? Did you have two ships?"

A smile flickered over Smith's stern face. "You have a revelation waiting for you. But it is better not to keep the Prince waiting."

They stepped into the heliocar. The pilot sprang to his place, set the electric motors whirring. The machine rolled easily forward, took the air on spinning helicopters. The road, lined with green gardens and bright cottages, dropped away "below" them, and other houses drew nearer "above." In the center of the cylinder the young man dextrously inverted the flier; and they continued on a straight line toward an imposing concrete building which now seemed "below."

* * * * *

The heliocar landed; they sprang out and approached the imposing building of several stories. Guards uniformed in scarlet, black and gold standing just outside the door held ray pistols in readiness. Smith hurried his "guests" past; they entered a long, high-ceilinged room. It gave a first impression of stately luxury. The walls were paneled with rich dark wood, hung with a few striking paintings. It was almost empty of furniture; a heavy desk stood alone toward the farther end. A tall young man rose from behind this desk, advanced rapidly to meet them.

"My guests, sir," said Smith. "Captain Brand of the _Fury_, and a reporter."

"The mysterious Mr. Cain!" Bill gasped.

Indeed, Mr. Cain stood before him, a tall man, slender and wiry, with a certain not unhandsome sternness in his dark face. A smile twinkled in his black, enigmatic eyes--which none the less looked as if they might easily flash with fierce authority.

"And Mr. Win----or, I believe you asked me to call you Bill. You seem a very hard man to evade!"

Still smiling enigmatically, Mr. Cain took Bill's hand, and then shook hands with Captain Brand.

"But--are you the Prince of Space?" Bill demanded.

"I am. Cain was only a _nom de guerre_, so to speak. Gentlemen, I welcome you to the City of Space!"

"And you kidnaped yourself?"

"My men brought the _Red Rover_ for me."

"Dr. Trainor and his daughter----" Bill ejaculated.

"They are friends of mine. They are here."

"And that blue globe!" said Captain Brand. "What was that?"

"You saw the course it was following?"

"It was headed to intersect the orbit of the earth--and its direction was on a line that cuts the orbit of Mars where that planet was forty days ago."

The Prince turned to Bill. "And you have seen something like that blue globe before?"

"Why, yes. The little blue circle on Mars--that I saw through the great telescope on Trainor's Tower."

A sober smile flickered across the dark lean face of the Prince.

"Then, gentlemen, you should believe me. The earth is threatened with a dreadful danger from Mars. The blue globe that wrecked your fleet was a ship from Mars. It was another Martian flier that took the _Helicon_. I believe I have credit for that ghastly exploit of sucking out the passengers' blood." His smile became grimly humorous. "One of the consequences of my position."

"Martian fliers?" echoed Captain Brand. "Then how did we come to be on your ship?"

"I haven't any weapon that will meet those purple atomic bombs on equal terms--though we are now working out a new device. I had Smith cruising around the blue globe in our _Red Rover_ to see what he could learn. He was investigating the wrecks, and found you alive."

"You really mean that men from Mars have come this near the earth?" Captain Brand was frankly incredulous.

"Not men," the Prince corrected, smiling. "But _things_ from Mars have done it. They have already landed on earth, in fact."

He turned to the desk, picked up a broad sheet of cardboard.

"I have a color photograph here."

Bill studied it, saw that it looked like an aerial photograph of a vast stretch of mountain and desert, a monotonous expanse of gray, tinged with green and red.

"A photograph, taken from space, of part of the state of Chihuahua, Mexico. And see!"

He pointed to a little blue disk in the green-gray expanse of a plain, just below a narrow mountain ridge, with the fine green line that marked a river just beside it.

"That blue circle is the first ship that came. It was the things aboard it that sucked the blood out of the people on the _Helicon_."

Captain Brand was staring at the tall, smiling man, with a curious expression on his red, square-chinned face. Suddenly he spoke.

"Your Highness, or whatever we must call you----"

"Just call me Prince. Cain is not my name. Once I had a name--but now I am nameless!"

The thin dark face suddenly lined with pain, the lips closed in a narrow line. The Prince swept a hand across his high forehead, as if to sweep something unpleasant away.

"Well, Prince, I'm with you. That is, if you want an officer from the Moon Patrol." A sheepish smile overspread his bluff features. "I would have killed a man for suggesting that I would ever do such a thing. But I'll fight for you as well as I ever did for the honor of the Patrol."

"Thanks, Brand!" The Prince took his hand, smiling again.

"Count me in too, of course," said Bill.

"Both of you will be valuable men," said the Prince.

He picked up a sheaf of papers, scanned them quickly, seemed to mark off one item from a sheet and add another.

"The _Red Rover_ sets out for the earth in one hour, gentlemen. We're going to try a surprise attack on that blue globe in the desert. You will both go aboard."

"And I'm going too!" A woman's voice, soft and a little husky, spoke beside them. Recognizing it, Bill turned to see Paula Trainor standing behind them, an eager smile on her elfinly beautiful face. Her amazing eyes were fixed upon the Prince, their brown depths filled, for the moment, with passionate wistful yearning.

"Why, no, Paula," the Prince said. "It's dangerous!"

Tears swam mistily in the golden orbs. "I will go! I must! I must!" The girl cried out the words, a sobbing catch in her voice.

"Very well, then," the Prince agreed, smiling absently. "You father will be along of course. But anything will be likely to happen."

"But you will be there in danger, too!" cried the girl.

"We start in an hour," said the Prince. "Smith, you may take Brand and Windsor back aboard the _Red Rover_."

"Curse his fatherly indifference!" Bill muttered under his breath as they walked out through the guarded door. "Can't he see that she loves him?"

Smith must have heard him, for he turned to him, spoke confidentially. "The Prince is a determined misogynist. I think an unfortunate love affair was what ruined his life--back on the earth. He left his history, even his name, behind him. I think a woman was the trouble. He won't look at a woman now."

They were outside again, startled anew by the amazing scene of a street of houses and gardens, that curved evenly up on either side of them and met above, so that men were moving about, head downward directly above them.

The heliocar was waiting. The three got aboard, were lifted and swiftly carried to the slender silver cylinder of the _Red Rover_, where it hung among the ponderous machinery of the air-lock, on the end of the huge cylinder that housed the amazing City of Space.

"I will show you your rooms," said Captain Smith. "And in an hour we are off to attack the Martians in Mexico."