CHAPTER IV

Vampires in the Desert

Forty hours later the _Red Rover_ entered the atmosphere of the earth, above northern Mexico.

It was night, the desert was shrouded in blackness. The telescopes revealed only the lights at ranches scattered as thinly as they had been two centuries before.

Bill was in the bridge-room, with Captain Smith.

"The blue globe that destroyed your fleet has already landed here," Smith said. "We saw both of them before they slipped into the shadow of night. They were right together, and it seems that a white metal building has been set up between them."

"The Prince means to attack? In spite of those purple atomic bombs?" Bill seemed surprised.

"Yes. They are below a low mountain ridge. We land on the other side of the hill, a dozen miles off, and give 'em a surprise at dawn."

"We'd better be careful," Bill said doubtfully. "They're more likely to surprise us. If you had been in front of one of those little purple bombs, flying on the white ray!"

"We have a sort of rocket torpedo that Doc Trainor invented. The Prince means to try that on 'em."

The _Red Rover_ dropped swiftly, with Smith's skilled hands on the controls. It seemed but a few minutes until the dark shadow of the earth beneath abruptly resolved itself into a level plain scattered with looming shapes that were clumps of mesquite and sagebrush. The slim silver cylinder came silently to rest upon the desert, beneath stars that shone clearly, though to Bill they seemed dim in comparison with the splendid wonders of space.

Three hours before dawn, five men slipped out through the air-lock. The Prince himself was the leader, with Captains Brand and Smith, Bill, and a young officer named Walker. Each man carried a searchlight and a positive ray pistol. And strapped upon the back of each was a rocket torpedo--a smooth, white metal tube, four feet long and as many inches thick, weighing some eighty pounds.

Dr. Trainor, kindly, bald-headed old scientist, was left in charge of the ship. He and his daughter came out of the air-lock into the darkness, to bid the five adventurers farewell.

"We should be back by night," said the Prince, his even white teeth flashing in the darkness. "Wait for us until then. If we don't come, return at once to the City of Space. I want no one to follow us, and no attempt made to rescue us if we don't come back. If we aren't back by tomorrow night we shall be dead."

"Very good, sir," Trainor nodded.

"I'm coming with you, then," Paula declared suddenly.

"Absolutely you are not!" cried the Prince. "Dr. Trainor, I command you not to let your daughter off the ship until we return."

Paula turned quickly away, a slim pillar of misty white in the darkness. Bill heard a little choking sound; he knew that she had burst into tears.

"I can't let you go off into such danger, without me!" she cried, almost hysterical. "I can't!"

The Prince swung a heavy torpedo higher on his shoulders, and strode off over bare gravel toward the low rocky slope of the mountain that lay to northward, faintly revealed in the light of the stars. The other four followed silently. The slender sunship, with the old scientist and his sobbing daughter outside the air-lock, quickly vanished behind them.

With only an occasional cautious flicker of the flashlights the five men picked their way over bare hard ground, among scattered clumps of mesquite. Presently they crossed a barren lava bed, clambering over huge blocks of twisted black volcanic rock. Up the slope of the mountain they struggled, sweating under heavy burdens, blundering into spiky cactus, stumbling over boulders and sagebrush.

When the silver and rose of dawn came in the purple eastern sky, the five lay on bare rock at the top of the low ridge, overlooking the flat, mesquite-covered valley beyond. The valley floor was a brownish green in the light of morning, the hills that rose far across it a hazy blue-gray, faintly tinged with green on age-worn slopes.

Like a string of emeralds dropped down the valley lay an endless wandering line of cottonwoods, of a light and vivid green that stood out from the somber plain. These trees traced the winding course of a stream, the Rio Casas Grandes.

Lying against the cottonwoods, and rising above their tops, were two great spheres of blue, gleaming like twin globes of lapis lazuli in the morning light. They were not far apart, and between them rose a curious domed structure of white, silvery metal.

Each of the five men lifted his heavy metal tube, leveled it across a boulder before him. The Prince, alert and smiling despite the dust and stain of the march through the desert, spoke to the others.

"This little tube along the top of the torpedo is a telescope sight. You will peer through, get the cross hairs squarely upon your target, and hold them there. Then press this nickeled lever. That starts the projectile inside the case to spinning so that inertia will hold it true. Then, being certain that the aim is correct, press the red button. The torpedo is thrown from the case by compressed air, and a positive ray mechanism drives it true to the target. When it strikes, about fifty pounds of Dr. Trainor's new explosive, _trainite_, will be set off.

"Walker, you and Windsor take the right globe. Smith and Brand, the left. I'll have a shot at that peculiar edifice between them."

Bill balanced his torpedo, peered through the telescope, and pressed the lever. The hum of a motor came from the heavy tube.

"All ready?" the Prince inquired.

"Ready," each man returned.

"Fire!"

Bill pressed the red button. The tube drove heavily backward in his hands, and then was but a light, sheet-metal shell. He saw a little gleam of white light before him, against the right blue globe, a diminishing point. It was the motor ray that drove the torpedo speeding toward its mark.

* * * * *

Great flares of orange light hid the two azure spheres and the white dome between them. The spheres and the dome crumpled and vanished, and a thin haze of bluish smoke swirled about them.

"Good shooting!" the Prince commented. "This motor torpedo of Trainor's ought to put a lot of the old fighting equipment in the museum--if we were disposed to bestow such a dangerous toy upon humanity.

"But let's get over and see what happened."

Grasping ray pistols, they sprang to their feet and plunged down the rocky slope. It was five miles to the river. Nearly two hours later it was, when the five men slipped out of the mesquites, to look two hundred yards across an open, grassy flat to the wall of green trees along the river.

Three great heaps of wreckage lay upon the flat. At the right and the left were crumpled masses of bright silver metal--evidently the remains of the globes. In the center was another pile of bent and twisted metal, which had been the domed building.

"Funny that those blue globes look like ordinary white metal now," said Smith.

"I wonder if the blue is not some sort of etheric screen?" Brand commented. "When we were fighting, our rays seemed to take no effect. It occurred to me that some vibratory wall might have stopped them."

"It's possible," the Prince agreed. "I'll take up the possibilities with Trainor. If they have such a screen, it might even be opaque to gravity. Quite a convenience in maneuvering a ship."

As they spoke, they were advancing cautiously, stopping to pick up bits of white metal that had been scattered about by the explosion.

Suddenly Bill's eyes caught movement from the pile of crumpled metal that had been the white dome. It seemed that a green plant was growing quickly from among the ruins. Green tendrils shot up amazingly. Then he saw on the end of a twisted stalk a glowing purple thing that looked somehow like an eye.

At first sight of the thing he had stopped in amazement, leveling his deadly ray pistol and shouting, "Look out!"

Before the shout had died in his throat, before the others had time to turn their heads, they caught the flash of metal among the twining green tentacles. The thing was lifting a metal object.

Then Bill saw a tiny purple spark dart from a bright little mechanism that the green tendrils held. He saw a blinding flash of violet light. His consciousness was cut off abruptly.

The next he knew he was lying on his back on rocky soil. He felt considerably bruised and battered, and his right eye was swollen so that he could not open it. Struggling to a sitting position, he found his hands and feet bound by bloody manacles of unfamiliar design. Captain Brand was lying on his elbow beside him, half under the thin shade of a mesquite bush. Brand looked much torn and disheveled; blood was streaming across his face from a gash in his scalp. His hands and feet also were bound with fetters of white metal.

"What happened?" Bill called dazedly.

"Not so loud," Brand whispered. "The thing--a Martian left alive, I guess it is. Must have been somewhere out in the brush when we shot. It blew us up with an atomic bomb. Smith and Walker dead--blown to pieces."

"And the Prince?"

"I can speak for myself."

Hearing the familiar low voice, Bill turned. He saw the Prince squatted down, in the blazing sunshine, hands and feet manacled, hat off and face covered with blood and grime.

"Was it that--that green thing?" Bill asked.

"Looks like a sort of animated plant," said the Prince. "A bunch of green tentacles, that it uses for hands. Three purple eyes on green stalks. Just enough of a body to join it all together. Not like anything I ever saw. But the Martians, originating under different conditions, ought to be different."

"What is going to happen now?" Bill inquired.

"Probably it will suck our blood--as it did to the passengers of the _Helicon_," Brand suggested grimly.

Windsor fell silent. It was almost noon. The desert sun was very hot. The motionless air was oppressive with a dry, parching heat; and flies buzzed annoyingly about his bleeding cuts. Wrists and ankles ached under the cruel pressure of the manacles.

"Wish the thing would come back, and end the suspense," Brand muttered.

Bill reflected with satisfaction that he had no relatives to be saddened by his demise. He had no great fear of death. Newspaper work in the twenty-second century is not all commonplace monotony; your veteran reporter is pretty well inured to danger.

"Glad I haven't anyone to worry about me," he observed.

"So am I," the Prince said bitterly. "I left them all, years ago."

"But you have someone!" Bill cried. "It isn't my business to say it, but that makes no difference now. And you're a fool not to know. Paula Trainor loves you! This will kill her!"

The Prince looked up, a bitter smile visible behind the bloody grime on his thin dark face.

"Paula--in love with me! We're friends, of course. But love! I used to believe in love. I have not been always a nameless outcast of space. Once I had name, family--even wealth and position. I trusted my name and my honor to a beautiful woman. I loved her! She said she loved me--I thought she meant it. She used me for a tool. I was trustful; she was clever."

The dark eyes of the Prince burned in fierce anger.

"When she was through with me she left me to die in disgrace. I barely escaped with my life. She had robbed me of my name, wealth, position. She named me the outlaw. She made me appear a traitor to those who trusted me--then laughed at me. She laughed at me and called me a fool. I was--but I won't be again!"

"At first I was filled with anger at the whole world, at the unjust laws and the silly conventions and the cruel intolerance of men. I became the pirate of space. A pariah. Fighting against my own kind. Struggling desperately for power."

For a few moments he was moodily silent, slapping at the flies that buzzed around his bloody wounds.

"I gained power. And I learned of the dangers from Mars. First I was glad. Glad to see the race of man swept out. Parasites men seemed. Insects. Life--what is it but a kind of decay on a mote in space? Then I got a saner view, and built the City of Space, to save a few men. Then because the few seemed to have noble qualities, I resolved to try to save the world.

"But it is too late. We have lost. And I have had enough of love, enough of women, with their soft, alluring bodies, and the sweet lying voices, and the heartless scheming."

* * * * *

The Prince fell into black silence, motionless, heedless of the flies that swarmed about him. Presently Brand contrived, despite his manacles, to fish a packet of cigarettes from his pocket, extract one, and tossed the others to Bill, who managed to light one for the Prince. The three battered men sat in dazzling sun and blistering heat, smoking and trying to forget heat and flies and torturing manacles--and the death that loomed so near.

It was early noon when Bill heard a little rustling beyond the mesquites. In a moment the Martian appeared. A grotesque and terrifying being it was. Scores of green tentacles, slender and writhing, grew from an insignificant body. Three lidless, purple eyes, staring, alien, and malevolent, watched them alertly from foot-long green stalks that rose above the body. The creature half walked on tentacles extended below it, half dragged itself along by green appendages that reached out to grasp mesquite limbs above it. One inch-thick coil carried a curious instrument of glittering crystal and white metal--it was a strange, gleaming thing, remotely like a ray pistol. And fastened about another tentacle was a little metal ring, from which an odd-looking little bar dangled.

The thing came straight for the Prince. Bill screamed a warning. The Prince saw it, twisted himself over on the ground, tried desperately to crawl away. The thing reached out a slender tentacle, many yards long. It grasped him about the neck, drew him back.

In a moment the dreadful being was crouching in a writhing green mass above the body of the manacled man. Once he screamed piteously, then there was no sound save loud, gasping breaths. His muscles knotted as he struggled in agony against the fetters and the coils of the monster.

Bill and Captain Brand lay there, unable either to escape or to give assistance. In silent horror they watched the scene. They saw that each slender green tentacle ended in a sharp-edged suction disk. They watched the disks forcing themselves against the throat of the agonized man, tearing a way through his clothing to his body. They saw constrictions move down the rubber-like green tentacles as if they were sucking, while red drops oozed out about the edge of the disks.

"Our turn next," muttered Captain Brand.

"And after us, the world!" Bill breathed, tense with horror.

A narrow, white beam, blindingly brilliant, flashed from beyond the dull green foliage of the mesquite. It struck the crouching monster waveringly. Without a sound, it leapt, flinging itself aside from the body of the Prince. It raised its curious weapon. A tiny purple spark darted from it.

A shattering crash rang out at a little distance. There was a thin scream--a woman's scream.

Then the white ray stabbed at the monster again, and it collapsed in a twitching heap of thin green coils, upon the still body of the Prince.

A slender girl rushed out of the brush, tossed aside a ray pistol, and flung herself upon the monster, trying to drag it from the Prince. It was Paula Trainor. Her clothing was torn. Her skin was scratched and bleeding from miles of running through the desert of rocks and cactus and thorny mesquite. She was evidently exhausted. But she flung herself with desperate energy to the rescue of the injured man.

The body of the dead thing was light enough. But the sucking disks still clung to the flesh. They pulled and tore it when she tugged at them. She struggled desperately to drag them loose, by turns sobbing and laughing hysterically.

"If you can help us get loose, we might help," Bill suggested.

The girl raised a piteous face. "Oh, Mr. Bill--Captain Brand! Is he dead?"

"I think not, Miss Paula. The thing had just jumped on him. Buck up!"

"See the little bar--it looks like a sliver of aluminum--fastened to the metal ring about that coil?" Brand said. "It might be the key for these chains. End of it seems to be shaped about right. Suppose you try it?"

In nervous haste, the girl tore the little bar from its ring. With Brand's aid, she was able to unlock his fetters. The Captain lost no time in freeing Bill and removing the manacles from the unconscious Prince.

The thin, rubber-like tentacles could not be torn loose. Brand cut them with his knife. He found them tough and fibrous. Red blood flowed from them when they were severed.

Bill carried the injured man down to the shade of the cottonwoods, brought water to him in a hat from the muddy little stream below. In a few minutes he was conscious, though weak from loss of blood.

Captain Brand, after satisfying himself that Paula had killed the Martian, and that it was the only one that had survived in the wreckage of the blue globes and the metal dome, set off to cross the mountain and bring back the sunship.

When the _Red Rover_ came into view late that evening, a beautiful slender bar of silver against the pyrotechnic gold and scarlet splendor of the desert sunset, the Prince of Space was hobbling about, supported on Bill's arm, examining the wreckage of the Martian fliers.

Paula was hovering eagerly about him, anxious to aid him. Bill noticed the pain and despair that clouded her brown eyes. She had been holding the Prince's head in her arms when he regained consciousness. Her lips had been very close to his, and bright tears were brimming in her golden eyes.

Bill had seen the Prince push her away, then thank her gruffly when he had found what she had done.

"Paula, you have done a great thing for the world," Bill had heard him say.

"It wasn't the world at all! It was for you!" the girl had cried, tearfully.

She had turned away, to hide her tears. And the Prince had said nothing more.

The _Red Rover_ landed beside the wreckage of the Martian fliers. After a few hours spent in examining and photographing the wrecks, in taking specimens of the white alloy of which they were built, and of other substances used in the construction, they all went back on the sunship, taking the dead Martian and other objects for further study. Brand took off for the upper atmosphere.

"Captain Brand," the Prince said as they stood in the bridge-room, "since the death of poor Captain Smith this morning, I believe you are the most skillful sunship officer in my organization. Hereafter you are in command of the _Red Rover_, with Harris and Vincent as your officers.

"We have a huge task before us. The victory we have won is but the first hand in the game that decides the fate of Earth."