The Project Gutenberg eBook of "Shadrach", by Nelson S. Bond

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Title: "Shadrach"

Author: Nelson S. Bond

Release Date: April 29, 2020 [EBook #61976]

Language: English

Credits: Produced by Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ***

"SHADRACH"

By NELSON S. BOND

Once, in Bible times, three men were

cast into a fiery furnace—and lived!

Now, on far-off, frozen Titania, three

space-bitten Shadrachs faced the

same awful test of godship.

[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from

Planet Stories Fall 1941.

Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that

the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

The man at the end of the bar was very drunk. That was not, in itself, unusual. Xuerl's Cosmobar, dangling like a leech on the drab outskirts of Mars Central, did not cater to a select clientele. It was not noted for its culture or gentility; it was famed from one end of the System to another as a place where a hard-fisted, full-pursed spaceman, newly in from the mines or out from Earth, could get a weapon or a wench, a bottle or a battle, any or all with equal celerity. And at an instant's notice.

But the man at the end of the bar was very drunk. So drunk, indeed, that he seemed neither to notice nor to be concerned about the actions of his comrades. And they, Chip Warren thought as he watched the bleary man pour yet another jigger of green from a malevolently gleaming bottle of lisk, were a particularly evil-looking and ill-assorted lot. Even for a dive like this.

"A Venusian," he mused, "a greenie, a runt—and an Earthman. Like bugs in a rug...."

"Trink?" piped a thin, reedy voice at Chip's elbow. "Trink, ssor?"

Chip shook his head in reply to the Martian barman's query. Damned chrysanthemum! he thought. Damned squeaking, upright chrysanthemum! He would never, so long as he lived, get used to hearing English speech emanating from the curled petals that served as a Redlander's head. Martians tried to look like Earthlings. They braced their soft, pallid bodies in steel uprights, they underwent serious and probably painful operations to give themselves a humanoid appearance, but they still looked—and always would to Chip—like ungainly flowers of madness.

"No," he said. "Not just now, thanks. Later." He returned his gaze to the group at the end of the bar. A new member had joined the quartet. Another Earthman. Warren's eyes became more speculative as the newcomer drew the Jovian aside, queried him briefly, then moved to the drunken man's shoulder.

"Trink?" piped the persistent voice of the barman.

"Blast jets!" said Chip curtly. "I'll order when I get damn good and—hey!"

The gasp broke unbidden from his lips. In the din and confusion of Xuerl's Cosmobar it went unnoticed, even as had gone unnoticed by everyone else the momentary byplay he had glimpsed.

As the newcomer slipped his arm about the drunken man's shoulder, the first Earthman, turning suddenly, dropped from his hand to the floor a previously concealed something. A silvery, glistening, round something that hit the floor—and bounced!

Four figures reacted immediately, violently, eagerly. The Venusian, the Uranian, the Jovian—like four minds with but a single thought they formed a wall of flesh around the drunken one. The other Earthman's hand leaped out greedily to catch the bouncing blob on the rebound. But in vain. The drunk had retrieved the object, shoved it into a pocket.

But Chip Warren knew what the object was. It was a ball of ekalastron!

Ekalastron! Most recently discovered, rarest, and most precious of all metals known to man! A metal so unique that up to the time of its discovery there had been no place for it in man's supposedly "complete" periodic table.

A metal that, defying man's previous deliberations on the habits of metals, supplied man with the most valuable servant he had ever known. A metal so light that a child could carry enough in one hand to coat the entire hull of a space-cruiser—yet so adamant that a gossamer film of it would deflect the impact of a meteoride or the battering crush of a rotor-gun shell! A metal strong enough to grind diamonds to powder—but so resilient that, when molded and properly treated, it would bounce like a rubber ball!

In all the wide universe, hungry mankind had found less than two tons of this vitally precious new metal. An ounce was worth a prince's ransom; so jealously was each gram weighed, guarded and distributed that the U.S.C.—Universal Science Council—could account for every known ounce of it. Yet here, in the noisy bar of Mars' most infamous refuge for scoundrels, a drunken miner toyed with a chunk the size of a billiard ball!

If Chip Warren's attention had previously been attracted by the oddly-assorted quintet, it was riveted now. Fierce curiosity hunched him forward. Abandoning all shame at eavesdropping, he strained eyes and ears upon the group.

It was well that he did so. Otherwise he would not have seen the sober Earthman's gesture to the bartender, the bartender's furtive acquiescence, the tentacular hand opening a colorless phial, pouring its contents into the miner's bottle of lisk. There would have been no one to protect the drunken man from the drug that would swiftly have left him at the mercy of his companions.

But Chip was watching. And moving on raw instinct, without a thought for the consequences, he surged forward. His arm brushed the surprised Uranian aside, his hand thrust just in time to sweep the doped drink from the miner's lips. Glass shattered on the floor, singing a shrill song. Chip's challenging voice echoed its brittle crispness.

"Hold course a minute, buckoes!" he ordered. "What in space goes on around here?"

Chip thought afterward that never in his life had he ever looked upon such stark, forbidding coldness as that which, in the next moment, flamed upon him from the eyes of the newly arrived Earthman.

Everything about the man was cold, bitter and bleak as the hostile depths of space. His eyes were glacier-gray, his lips thin and bloodless as hoarfrost; the hand he shoved forward to grip Chip's wrist in steely grasp was like ice.

The coldness of death was in his voice, although he spoke with infinite quietude.

"I might ask the same of you, sailor." The man had raven-black hair save where, from a widow's peak, one single swatch of pure white sprang startlingly to lie like a stream of ice between dark banks. "By what right do you intrude on a private party?"

Chip shook the man's hand from his wrist. His eyes parried with hot defiance the stranger's frigid calm.

"By the right of any man," he growled, "to see fair play! I saw—"

"A moment, sailor!" The man's voice was like a low note struck in warning. "Before you tell what you saw, you might like to know who I am. My name is Blaze Amborg."

"I don't give a portside blast," snarled Chip, "if your name is Lucifer himself. I saw—"

"You haven't been out here long, have you, sailor? Well—that's your misfortune, I fear. Torth!"

He inclined his head gently toward the giant Venusian. The big man rolled forward. His hamlike paws reached for Chip. But fast as he moved, Chip moved faster still; in the split of a second his hand had found his belt. The dull lights of the Cosmobar glinted sallowly on metal that prodded Amborg's middle.

"So that's the way it is, eh?" gritted Chip. "Your bullies do your fighting for you? Well, maybe you're right. I haven't been out here long. But where I come from, men do their own scrapping. Now—tell these scum of yours to keep their distance, or by the Seven Sacred Stars, I'll let ether through you!"

A man could not tell by studying Amborg's features if his lips were white with fear or what. But the ice in his eyes was deeper, more shadowy. And he said, "Back, Torth!"

"That's better!" approved Chip. "And now—come out of it, you!" The drunken man had finally slipped out of the picture. Blissfully unaware of what was going on about him, his head had slumped to the bar. He was asleep, lips loosely agape, breath coming in sodden grunts. Chip grasped the nape of his neck, shook him roughly. "Pull yourself together!" he commanded. "We're getting out of here!"

The man came to with a start, stared at Chip Warren blearily. "W-whuzzup? Whuzzmatter? Don' shake me like that, ole boy. All pals t'gether. All good ole pals...."

His head dropped forward again, and Chip sighed. It was like kicking a pup, he thought, but it had to be done. His rousing slap jarred the drunk to grieved awareness.

"Hey! Don' do that! We're pals, ain't we? All—"

"I wouldn't know about that," snorted Chip. "But I do know these other 'pals' of yours are getting ready to dig you for that—that stuff in your pocket."

That did it. The warning drove its way through the miner's stupor. His head jerked up, his eyes widened, and a hand clawed at his pocket.

"What? My ekalastron? The filthy thieves—!"

His loud voice carried throughout the room clearly. Too clearly. For with a sudden fear, Chip could feel a tension tighten through the hard habitues of the bar. Nervous scrapings of feet, the frou-frou of suddenly intense voices. "Ekalastron! Eka—"

For a moment, Chip's guard relaxed. He twisted his head to survey a new and potent danger. And as he did so, a sharp cry burst from Amborg's lips. "Raat 'Aran! Torth!"

Chip whirled back to face immediate trouble. Shapes were plunging down upon him. He wheeled, slipped, tumbled to one side even as the scorching burst of a needle gun seared a hissing path past his shoulder. Someone behind screamed a high, thin scream that died in a choked gurgle....

Then all was madness! The magic word "ekalastron" had wakened the riches-lust of the mob; now the presence of death had roused its blood-lust. In the space of a moment's time, a score of guns were drawn and wildly flaming as the throng charged the bar.

Chip only lived in that moment because he lay helplessly asprawl upon the floor. The hobnailed boots of miners kicked and trampled him, thick bodies struggled, cursed and groaned above him. Once as he tried to scramble to his feet his hand slipped nauseatingly in a pool of freshly spilled and steaming blood.

He was aware that somewhere in the howling mob that fought, not knowing why, and fighting died, the glacier-eyed Amborg strained for sight of him. But the tide of conflict, sweeping over and about them, separated them.

There came a reedy cry in the voice of the Martian barman; the lights went out suddenly, and the room was alive and spiteful with the flames of criss-crossing fire-needles. A questing hand found Chip's throat in the darkness, fingers tightened. But in a flash of fire, Chip saw the figure atop him suddenly crumple, steel clattered aimlessly beside him as his assailant choked and died. Thus close to him walked mad, unreasoning Death.

But he was on his feet again, now, and armed! Chip forced his way toward that spot at the bar where last he had glimpsed the drunken miner. No figure stood there, but his feet stumbled against a yielding body. He stooped—then he blinked as the lights suddenly flared on again.

He looked upon a frightful scene of carnage. Where men had fought, a dozen bodies lay upon the floor like broken things; elsewhere about the room a dozen struggling piles of life, human and humanoid, white, coral and green, Earthborn and spawn of a dozen globes, still fought their purposeless battle. And at the far side of the room—

Amborg!

But Amborg had seen him first. Even as he raised his needle-gun, Chip realized the dousing of the lights, the sudden return of them, had been a trick of Amborg's to gain advantage. The other man had the drop on him ... even now his hand was tightening on the press.

And then, miraculously—

"Hold!" cried a thunderous voice. "'Stay now thine hand from the sword, yea, loose not thine arrow from the bow—else by My might shall I crush thee to the dust, truly My lightnings shall wither thee with fire!' Thus saith my Lord God which is Jehovah!"

A vast, awed silence fell suddenly upon the room, a paralysis seized all forms and held them motionless. Amborg stayed his finger. All eyes sought the doorway. And there, covering the whole of the Cosmobar with the ugliest but most efficient looking piece of private ordnance Chip had seen in his life, stood a man. A tall, gangling scarecrow garbed in rusty black; a lean-jawed, hawk-eyed man with tumbling locks of silver and blazing eyes.

A whisper arose from men's lips. A whisper at once respectful and—fearful.

"It's Salvation! Salvation Smith!"

For a long, dramatic moment the ol man stood there in the doorway; then, satisfied that all motion had stopped, he stepped forward into the room. Chip knew, now, who—and what—he was. "Salvation" Smith, sin-driving missionary of the Wastelands, was a legendary, almost fabulous, figure of the Martian scene.

A devoutly religious man with the heart and soul of a pioneer, he had taken upon himself the mission of carrying to the savage outland tribes the story of the God he worshipped. That this God was Him of the Old Testament, a God of wrath and vengeance, fire and flame, was evidenced by those methods Salvation sometimes employed to make his message acceptable to uncivilized breasts. In addition to being the most pious man on Mars, Salvation was also reputed to be the best shot!

Earth's softhanded ecclesiastics did not altogether approve of their wayward missionary's reputation, but had to concede that he, working unaided and alone, had done more to bring the light to Mars than the rest of their emissaries as a group.

Thus Salvation Smith, who stared now at the corpses on the floor and muttered beneath his breath a prayer so hot and violent as to be almost blasphemous.

There came a shrill bleat, and Xuerl, proprietor of the infamous Cosmobar, minced across the floor, grotesque in the rigid habiliments that lent him a humanoid shape.

"Sssalvation," he pleaded, "Thisss wasss none of my doing, sssir! I have kept the peace, as I promisssed—"

"Silence!" roared the old man, and frowned. "Your foul den is a stench in the nostrils of Heaven. I am tiring swiftly of your iniquitous ways, Xuerl! One day I—shall—who started this, anyway?" he demanded.

"Thisss man!" Xuerl pointed a quavering tentacle at Chip. Salvation gazed at the young man sternly.

"You are new around here. What is your name?"

"Chip Warren. I'm just out from Earth a week or so ago. Free-lance prospector. But—but I didn't start this, sir. I merely interfered when that man and his thugs tried to steal a ball of ekalastron from this dead miner—"

Chip paused suddenly, staring at the drunken miner.

"But he's still alive! I thought—"

Salvation was at his side in an instant. They both kneeled beside the miner, whose eyes had flickered open. He was no longer influenced by drink. His eyes were clear with prevision of a longer flight than he had ever known. For a moment he struggled for breath. There was recognition in his feeble tones.

"S-salvation—"

"Peace, my son. We will take you to a hospital."

"N-never mind that, Padre. It's too late. But the ekalastron—"

"You stole it, my son? You wish to confess?"

"N-no, Padre! Not stolen. I found it. A mine—" His breath was coming in tiny, tortured gasps; he spoke more swiftly as if aware that he must tell his secret ere silence claim him. "Danger ... on Titania! The caves ... natives ... and the furnace of flame ... beware!"

"But he survived!" Chip burst in. "He got some and returned. Ask him how, Padre!"

The miner's head moved slightly as if to signify he understood the query, but even as his lips moved to frame an answer, a swift, cold shadow frosted his eyes with glaze. A moment later his breath stopped. Then it shuddered back as with a violent effort the dying man dragged himself back from death itself. A convulsion shook him. He cried weakly the single word:

"Shadrach!"

Then a blood-specked spume gushed from his lips and he lay still. "May the Lord have mercy on his soul!" begged Salvation Smith. He pushed Chip gently away, fumbled at the dead man's clothing, arranging it more neatly, then rose.

"He is gone," he told the spellbound assembly. "He is gone, bearing with him to the world beyond the secret for which you jackals strove. Thus be it, O Lord God of Hosts!"

But one man did not accept this as final. That man was Blaze Amborg who, bolstered now by his hard-bitten group of outlaws, strode forward belligerently.

"Not so fast, psalm-singer! He and I were partners. Anything he had belongs to me now!" He bent over and with a jerk disarranged the clothing Salvation had smoothed. "And by the Comet, I'm going to have it—" His hands moved with deft assurance, then with tense, hardening suspicion. "It's gone!" He wheeled to face Chip. "You stole it! You—"

But the old missionary barred his rush with a steel forearm. "Slowly, my friend! What is gone?"

"The ball of ekalastron! It's worth a fortune, and it's mine! This snoopy young thief—"

Salvation turned to Chip sternly. "Well, young man—is this true? Did you steal it? If so—"

"I didn't. I swear I didn't!"

"He was bending over Jenkins," Amborg raged, "when the lights went on. He's got it! Let me at him!"

"There has been sufficient violence!" snapped Salvation Smith. He turned to Chip. "Young man, I order you to let your accuser search you. If you are truly innocent, you will not demur. If you refuse—" He shifted his rifle from one horny palm to another significantly. "Justice shall prevail!"

"Very well!" said Chip. He submitted himself to Amborg's triumphant search. His flesh ran cold at the feel of the man's icy fingers, and a dull resentment suffused him—but he got his reward in the look of bafflement that grew on Amborg's face as it became clear that the missing sphere was not on his person. "Are you satisfied now?" he demanded.

Amborg's normally pale face was whiter still with impotent fury; his eyes flamed with hatred. "It's not on you," he admitted. "But I know you took it. You've hidden it somewhere. I'm not through with you yet, sailor! I'll have that metal or—"

"There will be no 'or'!" proclaimed Salvation Smith stridently. "The lad has passed the test and proven himself guiltless; the case is closed. He will walk from this place unharmed—in my company! 'The true man shall suffer no hurt, neither shall the righteous fail.' Come, my son!"

And he lifted his gun. Blaze Amborg's lips thinned to a hard, white line. But he made no reckless move as the two men stalked silently from the room....

II

The Martian night was clear and cold. Its thin air was sweetly welcome to Chip's nostrils. When they gained the street outside, Salvation spoke to him suddenly. "Where is your ship, my son?"

"Ship, sir?" queried Warren. "But why—?"

"Don't waste time!" snapped the old man. "We're in grave danger. Blaze Amborg is a man of violence. In a few minutes he'll figure out what happened to the ekalastron and be out looking for us."

Chip stared at him. "The ekalastron? But what did happen to it? It disappeared—"

"Into," grunted Salvation, "my pocket! While I was arranging Jenkins' clothing. 'He who taketh in the cause of righteousness hath done the will of the Lord!' Amborg is an evil, wilful man. He would have used the ekalastron for his own wicked purposes. In our hands, all mankind shall profit of its beneficence. But, come! Where?"

"C-churchill Field," stammered Chip. "Dock 31, Bin A. T-this way, Padre."

They moved at quickened stride through the darkened streets. As they neared the cradles wherein lay the vessels of a thousand diverse ports, Salvation questioned Chip still further.

"What type of ship is it, lad?"

"Not a very new one, sir. A Challenger 7-jet, four berth explorer. But in good shape. My friend and I managed to get it cheap, reconditioned it—"

"Then you have a companion?"

"Yes, Padre. Syd Palmer. He's waiting aboard. We had planned to lift gravs tomorrow for a prospecting tour of the planetoids. I visited the Cosmobar because I thought I might run into some old space-dodger who would give me a tip on a lode-rock—"

"And you ran into," said the missionary, "something which may turn out to be the greatest discovery ever made by man. Murder ... thievery ... wealth ... is this the ship?"

They had stopped before one of the smaller cradles. Chip pressed a signal button, a buzzer responded, there came from within the familiar wheeze of an air-lock generator.

"This is it, sir. Please step in. 'Lo, Syd. This is Doctor—Mister—"

"Call me 'Salvation'," said the old man. "I'm used to it. Palmer, I take it you're the chief engineer of this jaloppy?"

Syd Palmer was short and chubby; his hair was a tow colored bristle that stood up like a cock's-comb when he was excited or annoyed. It stood up now, and his pale blue eyes danced with tiny, indignant sparks.

"I'm the engineer of this ship!"

"Call it what you will," grunted Salvation. "Is it fast?"

Palmer grinned. "Puh-lenty! I've hepped the hypos to super-max. The Chickadee can outrun anything its size in space, and a lot of bigger ones, besides!"

"Good! And have you got clearance papers?"

"Why, yes, but—"

"Excellent: 'Verily, He taketh care of His own nor faileth them in time of need.'" Salvation nodded to Warren. "We'll lift gravs," he said, "immediately!"

Palmer stared at him, then at his companion.

"What is this, Chip? Old boy off his jets?"

"Far from it," said Chip seriously. "Can't explain everything now, Syd; time's too short. But you like a good, old-fashioned fight, don't you?"

"Fight? Sa-a-ay, now—"

"Then warm the hypos," ordered Chip, "while I plot a course. We're lifting gravs immediately—for Titania."

During the long days that followed, there was time and to spare in which to clarify the situation to Syd. When he heard of Chip's adventure at the Cosmobar, his pale eyes gleamed and fists less chubby than they appeared tightened at his sides. "Wish I'd been there—" he muttered. Salvation glared at him and snorted, "'Verily they are fools who do not rejoice that they have escaped woe!'"

And when Chip showed him the ball of ekalastron—

"Glory be!" exclaimed Syd. "There's enough to dip a whole battle unit in that one ball! What are we going to Titania for? Why not fly this to Earth immediately and let the Council know—"

"Because Amborg knows," replied Chip grimly, "that this came from Titania. He was nearby when Jenkins said so in his dying breath. That was probably the secret Amborg's thugs had been trying to probe from the miner all night. I have a hunch that Amborg is out there somewhere right now!"

He nodded toward the quartzite view-pane. Outside lay space—the long, dreary reaches of space between Mars and Uranus. But it didn't look like space. Not like space as navigators a short ten years ago had known it, an eternal pall of blackness spangled with the livid dots of a myriad stars.

This was a blotched, striped, crazy-quilt of color. Crimson, ochre, emerald—all the hues of the rainbow merged into a faery, magic loveliness. This was space as seen when Man traveled at the terrific speed attainable only through the use of the recently developed V-I unit, velocity intensifier, invented by that mad genius of the spaceways, Lancelot Biggs of the lugger, Saturn.

Five years ago, in the year 2210, the fastest craft in the ether had had a top speed of approximately 200,000 miles per hour. Now almost every ship was equipped with the V-I adapter that gave it a flight-potential limited only by the critical velocity of light. Where once it would have required almost ten months to reach Titania, second satellite of far Uranus, the trio could now expect to gain their destination, traveling at a speed of more than 650,000,000 mph., in something less than half that many days!

"I have a hunch," repeated Chip, "that Amborg and his crew are somewhere out there right now, speeding, as we are, to Titania. Of course we can't tell. We're not equipped with a magno-tector, and we couldn't see them unless by sheer chance they should approach within our visibility parellax.

"But when we get to Titania and slow down, we must go on the alert. Salvation has told me about Amborg. He's a hard, brilliant man with a dangerously criminal mind. Let him find Jenkins' ore-deposit and the Federation of Planets would pay through the nose for his discovery. Jenkins said there was a whole mine of ekalastron. With that at his disposal, Amborg could make himself a robber baron. An Emperor of the outlaw world."

"Which is why," Salvation offered gravely, "we must get there before he does. Lay claim to the deposit, somehow secure its safety against the arrival of I.P.S. troops. Can we but find the mine, soldiers will come in jigtime from New Oslo on Uranus. But—"

Syd nodded.

"I see. But we couldn't walk into the garrison and hand them a line about a "mine" of ekalastron. They'd shove us into the nearest looney-bin. And I wouldn't blame them a bit. If I didn't know Chip Warren like I know my own lovely pan—but suppose we meet Amborg?"

"'The Lord,'" said Salvation, "'is my strength and my salvation. In His hands do I place my guidance.'" His lean hands flexed powerfully. "We destroy them," he said gently, "like the rats they are...."

Thus four days sped by in plan and conjecture. And on the fifth day Syd Palmer cut the velocity-intensifiers to normal, and a scant thousand miles beneath them, so accurate had been Chip's astrogation, gleamed the silvery mote which was Titania, second child of the mother planet, Uranus.

"Well done, my son!" approved Salvation. "The best landcast I've ever seen!"

Palmer was less exuberant. He stared at Titania, scratched his yellow crest morbidly.

"A damn snowball!" he mourned. "A damned snowball, eight hundred miles in diameter! Sweet crimes of Beelzebub, Chip, how do you ever expect to find a pinpoint of a mine on that huge hunk of ice? It will take us ages!"

"We'll cruise at low elevation," said Chip, "until we see something. There must be a dark spot showing against that sheen of white somewhere. Jenkins spoke of caverns and natives and flame. We have plenty of supplies—look out!"

He leaped even as he shouted. Leaped to the panels and jammed the full strength of his six foot plus frame to a deflecting lever. The control room of the Chickadee whirled giddily as the little ship spun into a crazy spiral; Palmer yelped, skidding helplessly across the floor. Salvation let loose a roar and clung ardently to a stanchion, his silvery locks whipping straight out from his head with the force of the drive.

Chip threw himself into the bucket-shaped pilot's-chair, gained possession of the controls. An instant later, the Chickadee was tossing through the maddest gyrations Chip could devise. Fore, loft and jet, with hypos throbbing, the little craft was blasting, shaking, quivering like a leaf in a cyclone.

And above the tumult of racing hypos came the sound of Syd's voice: "What is it, Chip? Amborg?"

Chip nodded tightly, his hands gripping the control levers, his eyes glued to the perilens through which he saw the enemy craft. A larger ship, with a red fang darting from its prow, slashing viciously at the bobbing Chickadee. "It's Blaze Amborg, all right! And he means business! He's got an Ingermann ray-rotor on that crate of his; he's trying to burn us clean out of the ether!"

Chip Warren and Syd Palmer were the co-owners of the Chickadee; it was Chip whose alertness had saved them in that first, terrifying moment, Chip it was who still held the controls. But it was Salvation Smith who usurped the mastership during the crisis.

"Hell's flaming damnation!" he cried, and there rang in his voice a rage above weak need of profanity. "Lend now Thy servant strength, O Lord, to smite these sons of Hurkan!" He whirled on Palmer, snarling. "Break out bulgers for us in case they should pierce the hull! Chip, son, do the controls answer well? Good! Keep dodging. Swing aft; the beam can't nip you there! You've armament aboard this heap?"

Syd, tugging three spacesuits from the store-closet, puffed over his shoulder, "Only a low-cycle heat-gun. There! Under that tarp. Press the green stud to clear the nose from the hull-plates. It's retractable—"

"You're telling me," bellowed Salvation, "how to rig a cannon? I was teethed on a lanyard, praise be to Jehovah!" He had the tarpaulin off in a jiffy, the fore-irons open, and shot an experimental burst from the small weapon. He smiled. "Good! But you've got to get closer to him, Chip; this thing is only effective at short range."

Chip said dubiously, "I don't know, Padre. Perhaps we should cut and run for it. If that beam hits us—"

"Are we mice," bellowed Salvation, "or men? You've got to get closer! The Lord is our right hand. 'Surely the evil shall fail, yea, the way of the transgressor shall perish!'" He loosed another blast from the small gun, breathed a sigh of satisfaction. "Aaah! that's better! Closer!"

"You're the skipper!" decided Chip suddenly. A jab of the finger, the stern-jets crackled and the Chickadee cut suddenly to starboard, swinging straight toward the craft of Blaze Amborg.

So unexpected was the move that it caught the enemy gunner napping. For an instant he had a clear target before him. But he had not been expecting such luck, and before he could center his sights on the Chickadee, the smaller vessel was streaking down upon and over his own.

And Salvation Smith's voice shouted triumph through the room. "'Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord!'" he intoned, "'I shall repay!'" His hand jerked the release-stud.

And as though the metal skin of the enemy boat were tinfoil held above a flame, there appeared suddenly upon its hull a leprous spot of black, from the curling edges of which silvery alloy sloughed off in rolling, sluggish waves. From within the ship small motes poured forth, sucked out by the frigid vacuum of space to explode and die frightfully; sore, raw, pressured clots of matter that had been men. The other ship reeled for a moment like a stricken hart, then crumpled upon itself, a wildly spinning boomerang of death.

"You got 'em!" squealed Syd Palmer from his vantage spot at the perilens. "Got 'em all, Padre! No—there goes a life-skiff from the wreck!" His voice rose in sharp fear. "Omigod! Swing out, Chip! Swing—"

But Chip had seen the new danger as quickly as his comrade. Here was peril beyond Amborg's fondest devising. As the stricken ship, folding upon itself, spun aimlessly in space, its forejet wheeled like a flaming spiral—and from the prow still flamed the withering, crimson ray now untended by living hands!

Like a gigantic scythe it flailed the ether, swinging a huge curve directly toward the Chickadee. Vainly Chip jammed the studs before him, striving to escape above, below or beyond that sword of doom.

There came the ear-splitting crash of impact, metal screamed thin agony, rending itself to shreds somewhere aft; the Chickadee shuddered like a pole-felled steer under its mortal wound.

Instinct shot Chip's hands to the lock-stud which sealed the control chamber airtight from the rest of the ship; that action alone spared them for a few minutes. But each of them knew the ship was doomed to crash. Syd croaked, "Here! The bulgers! Get in them—quick!"

Split seconds later, they were three grotesque figures huddled before the control board, staring through quartzite globular headpanes at Chip's last, frenzied efforts to break the fall of the Chickadee. The studs beneath his fingers were unresponsive as the inarticulate phalanges of a broken limb. In vain and desperately he struggled to gain a modicum of control over the falling craft, now firmly gripped by Titania's gravitational field. They had fallen into the high atmosphere of the little globe, now; thin winds howled and bansheed about their sharded hull, and the walls of the room began to heat.

The aft jets were dead, the anti-gravs broken, helpless. There remained but one possible way in which to keep them from being crushed to bits. A prow landing, braked by the fore jets. It was dangerous, but—

"There!" cried Syd. "Look there, Chip! Below us!"

Chip risked a brief glance, saw that the smooth and icy surface of Titania was broken by a long, ragged swatch of black. Ironic laughter curled the corners of his tight-set lips. What a quirk of fate that here, with death but a hair's-breadth removed, they should unwittingly find that for which under happier circumstances they might have sought endlessly and in vain. The promised spot of habitation on the bleak little moon of Uranus.

"I'm fore-jetting!" he crisped. "Stand by for—a fadeout!"

Salvation's hand was on his shoulder, reassuringly, somehow warm despite its casement of rubberoid fabric. "Be of strong heart, my son," he said simply, "He who watcheth the fall of the smallest sparrow, He shall not fail His own in their hour of need."

Then Chip pressed the necessary, the only remaining responsive keys. And the control room trembled like a hurt thing, seemed to stop stock-still in space, shake itself for a moment—then plunge on. Forejets flamed blast upon roaring blast. Chip felt the gravitational force seem to lessen as the flares beat stubbornly against the adamant breast of the globe below. Drop ... stagger ... drop again ... the shocking concussion of brakes ... then a swift, dizzy, headlong fall....

Wild winds howled, and the din of metals tortured beyond endurance slashed at Chip's eardrums. He was aware of the last cry of Syd Palmer, his life-long friend. "Luck, Chip, old pal—!" And the remembered ghost of Salvation's promise. "He shall not fail His own—"

Then a horrendous crash jarred his head back on the seat. A smashing veil of crimson settled before his eyes ... then there was darkness. And silence.

He felt some mad conceit that this was death ... that the restless fingers of the gray unalive plucked at his arm, bidding him rise and stir forward toward he knew not what.

Then suddenly he was awake, alive, and conscious—and it was not death, but life; fingers did tug at him, but they were the figures of—

"'Ranies!" cried Chip. "Hands off, you! Or—"

The green complexioned native growled some guttural comment, moved closer rather than away, and pinioned Chip's arms to his sides. Chip saw, now, that the Chickadee, though battered and broken beyond hope of repair, had miraculously grounded without destroying them all. For Syd was stirring, and Salvation, too, but each of them was surrounded by green natives, as was Chip. These creatures, the nearest approach to Man's physiology that had ever been found in the System, were tall and rugged, masterfully built. They were equipped with native lariats or bolas; these they whipped cuttingly about their captives.

Chip strained lashed fingers toward the heat-pistol in his belt. But Salvation, seeing his motion, stopped him.

"No, lad! Relax! Don't make a hostile move!"

Chip growled, "No damned greenie is going to make a trussed duck out of me. If I can reach this gun—"

"If you value your life," said Salvation, "and your welfare, keep your hands quiet and your wits active! These creatures aren't Uranians. They're Titanians. An offspring of the parent race, but as savage and untamed as beasts.

"I don't know what they plan to do with us. I have heard they are a strange, mystical race; their tribal rites and taboos are many and—dangerous! Our only chance is to be quiet, try to reason with them, convince them we are not foes but friends—"

All three were securely tied, now, save for their legs. The tallest Titanian, evidently the group chieftain, grunted a word of command. Strong arms prodded Chip and his fellows forward, out of the broken Chickadee, into the bleak landscape of Titania.

They had crashed in the dark spot Chip had viewed from above. They discovered, now, that this spot was dark because—incredibly—here the thick, icy blanket had been stripped away to discover the raw and rocky core of the Uranian moon.

Black rocks thrust jagged spires skyward, mountains of stone girdled this one clear space on the whole of Titania; greater wonder still, gnarled and stunted trees, lichens of hardiest verdure, eked a precarious existence from the grudging soil.

And here the natives had—a village. One coarser, cruder, than the village of the meanest of Earth's savages, but a village nonetheless. Slab dwellings dabbed with thick black clay, a central structure, larger than the rest, something that looked like a market—or community gathering-spot.

Chip's wonderment had made him impervious at first to such trivia as personal comfort and discomfort. He found now, though, that he was cold. By dint of much effort, he managed to squirm a hand to his belt-studs, operate the tiny needle that increased the warmth of his space-suit.

Almost immediately there came a howl from the green native maintaining a vigilant grip on Chip's arm; the fellow leaped away, bellowing angry, guttural speech at his leader.

And Salvation spun to Chip swiftly.

"Chip—turn down that heat, boy!"

"B—but—" stammered Chip.

"Quickly!"

Chip obeyed. It was well he did so, for the leader was moving toward him menacingly. With a cautious finger he touched Chip's suit. Then, apparently mollified to discover it satisfactorily cold, he snarled a word or two and the little party moved on.

Chip stared at the old missionary.

"But, why?" he demanded. "What did I do wrong? I don't get it. I was freezing, and—"

"Then you've got to freeze," said Salvation Smith, "and like it. Until we can escape from these creatures. Do you have any idea how cold it is here on Titania, my boy?"

Chip said, "Why, plenty cold, I suppose—"

"About minus 380° Fahrenheit!" said Smith. "That's all. Uranians and Titanians may look like Earthmen, lad, but they're built entirely different. They are not children of the Sun, as we are. Their bodies are so constituted as to be able to stand extremes of frigidity that would quick-freeze us like salmon. Sluggish basal metabolism, dermal, rather than pneumonic respiration—these enable them to endure what to us appear the impossible living conditions of a world on which mercury and gallium are adamant solids, liquid hydrogen forms seas, and the snow is carbon dioxide.

"When you turned on the heating unit of your bulger you subjected that native's hand to what was to him a burning, unendurable heat!"

Chip nodded.

"I see. That makes sense. But—but there must be some warmth around here? A cleared patch—"

"I haven't yet decided whether this patch was cleared by heat or labor," said Salvation. "If we can make them believe we are friends, I may learn. I can sling their talk a little. It's not unlike the Uranian language. But—"

He stopped, and his voice rose to a shout. "Behold! Thou hast delivered mine enemy into mine hands, O Lord; Thou hast brought the wicked even unto judgment!"

And Chip, following his gaze, saw a second party of Titanians approaching the central gathering place from the opposite direction. These natives held captive, even as he and Salvation and Syd were held, an ill-assorted foursome in spacemen's bulgers. A giant Venusian, a greenie, a dwarfed Jovian and an Earthman!

"Amborg!" yelled Chip. "Blaze Amborg and his crew! They got away on that life-skiff, but they were caught when they landed! Padre—"

It had not occurred to him that the arms of Amborg and his men would not be, like their own, lashed securely. Thus it came as a heart-stopping shock to hear Amborg's cry ring in their ears, a sharp cry of command—then suddenly there flamed from the sidearms of the other captive group the withering blasts of heat-guns!

III

Chip Warren had bitterly resented the close guard with which the Titanians had surrounded him and his comrades; he had reason, now, to be grateful for that very protection. Otherwise his dreams of space adventure would have ended suddenly and terribly in that moment.

As it was, the foremost wall of Titanians took the brunt of Amborg's vicious attack. They screamed as pencils of crimson scorched the life from their unprotected bodies, screamed and died horribly, falling in blackened piles that whimpered futilely for an instant and were still.

Chip had never known a moment of such dreadful impotence as this. Arms lashed to his sides, his own weapon as securely removed from his grasp as if it no longer existed, there was nothing he could do but attempt to evade the flame of the lethal guns.

With a choking cry to his mates, he threw himself forward; his knees struck rocky ground, grit slashed his unprotected headpane as he fell, and for an instant he feared the impact might shatter the quartzite, exposing him to the deadly, ammoniac atmosphere of Uranus' second moon.

Then he was entrenched behind the still-smouldering bodies of the slain Titanians, watching the speed of their fellows' reprisal.

And it was speedy. Salvation had spoke truly when he said these creatures were savage and untamed as beasts. Reckless of their own lives, green-casted features snarling, they swooped down on the treacherous quartet. In the split of a second they had seized them, bound them, removed their weapons.

But Chip and his companions suffered the same fate as their adversaries. The Titanians stripped them of their sidearms, as they had taken those of Amborg's men. Ungentle hands herded them into one of the nearby hovels, and there, as two guards held the single doorway, they were deserted.

Salvation groaned his rage and discomfiture.

"A judgment on that beast in man's flesh!" he proclaimed. "He has destroyed us all! Had I been given an opportunity to talk with their chief, quietly, peaceably, this matter might have been settled with no harm done to anyone. But as it is—" He shook his head.

Syd said, "What do you think they'll do next?"

"Whatever it is," said Chip tightly, "I've got an idea it isn't going to be pleasant. They're gathering; hear their footsteps and voices? And there's something like the beat of a tom-tom—" He stared at Salvation speculatively. "Padre—torture?"

Salvation stroked his long, lean jaw. "I hope not, my son. But—I don't know. They are savages, and I have heard they place much faith in rites and ceremonies. But we will learn soon. Meanwhile, keep faith with Him who watches us all."

They learned sooner than they dared expect. Whatever else might lay in store for them, they were at least spared the agony of waiting. The Titanian preparations took but little time. Within scant hours after their incarceration, the three Earthmen were once again dragged from their prison to meet their judgment and their fate.

That some form of ritual was in progress was immediately apparent. From hillside, rock, cranny and hovel had come the Titanians; there were more of them than Chip would have believed could subsist in this hostile environment. A solid phalanx of them walled the avenue up which they were led. As they walked, the Titanians chanted a slow and ominous threnody. There was a dirgelike quality to the chant; despite the surface courage with which Chip bolstered himself he felt the chill of nervous apprehension upon him. Palmer must have felt the same way. He edged closer to Chip, spoke from the corner of his mouth in a tone that belied the forced gaiety of his words.

"Swell end to our trip, pal. Piece de resistance for a gang of green choristers!"

Salvation overheard him. "We have not yet come to the end of our journey," he said. "The line stretches up the side of yonder hill. To those caves." He lifted his voice sonorously, drawing curious stares from the green-skinned Titanian guards. "I shall lift up mine eyes unto the hills," he cried, "whence cometh my strength and my salvation—"

"Caves!" Sudden memory flashed back upon Chip Warren. "Jenkins said something about caves, Padre, remember? Caves and flame—"

"There's Amborg," interrupted Syd. His plump face was tightly pale behind his globular mask. "I don't care so much about checking out," he said, "but I wish I could get my hands on that rat just for a minute before—"

His words dwindled into silence. It was, Chip believed, an impressed silence. For they had reached the foot of the hill, now, and were climbing between two chanting rows of natives toward a huge, ornate, altarlike structure placed before the largest of the cave-mouths.

The dirge rose and soared, filling their ears with numbing fear; they moved upward inexorably, monotonously, almost mechanically. And finally they stood before the high altar.

Chip saw, then, what he would never have credited if it had been told him by another; what he could not have believed had he not seen it with his own eyes. He saw into the cave-mouth—and what he viewed there was so incredible that it brought a gasp unbidden to his lips.

This cave, deepset in the mouths of icy Titania—this cave, which by all laws of nature, of logic and reason, should be a dank, forbidding gateway to frightful cold—was bright-gleaming with orange, crimson, ochre tongues of flame! Within it, high-rising to the very lofted vaults, roared a staggering, tremendous holocaust of fire!

And beyond the altar was a precipice overlooking a sunken vale. This vale, like the interior of the cave, was shimmering like the plains of Abaddon with coruscating fingers, sheets, spires of red.

He was aware that he had gasped, for he detected a similar gasp from Syd, and he heard Salvation Smith say a single, incredulous word. "Sheol!" Then the chieftain, or high priest—Chip did not know which—spoke from the altar. Shortly he spoke, but with strident emphasis, jabbing his fingers at the two groups of captives in turn.

"What is he saying?" demanded Chip.

Salvation interpreted hastily. "We have violated their land. We have been brought to the Place of Destruction to meet judgment for our crime. The test of fire will prove our guilt—" Then he raised his voice, spoke to the Titanian ruler.

The outland ruler heard him through, then answered. Salvation turned to Chip and Syd. "I told him," he explained, "that we were friends, come in amity. That we intended them no harm or offense—"

"And what did he say?"

"He said," relayed Salvation grudgingly, "that they were forced to distrust us because our 'companions' were men of sin and violence—"

"Companions!" interjected Syd angrily.

"—and he said, also, that he realized we might be gods. He says there are two types of white creatures, those who are mortals and evil, and those who are Masters of Fire. We must be tested to see which we are."

"Two types?" cried Chip. "Masters of Fire? Padre, what does he mean?"

Salvation shrugged helplessly. "I don't know. But wait—he is talking again."

This time the green chieftain's speech was longer, more dramatic. He postured, gestured; once he strode to the edge of his raised platform and pointed majestically down into the chasm below. Then, concluding his words with a tone of finality, he folded his arms across his chest.

Chip noticed that a few rods away Amborg's Uranian companion was interpreting his decision to Blaze. Salvation performed the same function.

"He says," explained Salvation, "we must walk into this cave of fearful flame. It leads through burning corridors to the valley below. In that valley is the life-skiff which brought Amborg and his men here.

"If we are good men, gods, and guiltless, the flame will not destroy us. There was one not long ago who walked unscathed through the fires, he says. That man was surely a god."

"Jenkins!" broke in Chip. "It must have been—"

Salvation nodded. "That is what I thought, too, my son. But—but how? How could Jenkins survive the flames?" And he stared sombrely, questioningly, at the sheet of ruddy fire filling the cave from base to arch. He shook himself. "Well—that is a problem we must solve, and soon. For the ceremony has begun. Amborg!" he cried.

The dark man turned. Chip saw that his face was set in granite lines. Nearest to the cavern mouth, his men were being prodded toward the awful test they must endure.

Even in this critical moment, Salvation was the man of god. "Amborg," he said, "you have been ever an evil man, living and thinking the thoughts of Satan. But there is yet time for you to repent and confess your sins. As a fellow man, I loathe and despise you. But as His emissary, I offer you even in this hour of trial the peace that surpasseth all human understanding—"

Amborg laughed at him. His voice crackled harshly, metallically, in the audio-phones of Chip's space-helmet.

"Save that stuff for the suckers, old man. You and your pals are just worried because we get first chance to go down into the valley. Well—you'd better worry! There's a rotor-gun mounted in that life-skiff. If we hadn't all been jarred cold when we landed, we'd have given these greenies a sweet greeting. We're going to lift the ship out of that ditch and bring it back over here. Save your prayers; you'll need them when we come over!"

Salvation reminded him stonily, "The flames—"

"Flames be damned! Superstitious poppycock! Spacesuits will protect us from heat or cold alike. Well—come on!"

He gestured his mates to him. The wailing chant of the Titanian natives increased in tone and volume as the four outlaws left their guards and boldly strode the last few rods up the hill, past the dais—and into the roaring hell-mouth of the cave!

And as they entered, Chip Warren knew a swift sinking of heart. His apprehensions had been unfounded, Amborg's claim that the lethal power of the flame was "superstitious poppycock" was true. The spacesuits were adequate protection, and in short moments, Amborg would be soaring back across the plateau, the jets of his rotor-gun spewing death and destruction upon them all....

Then, "My God!" gasped Syd Palmer, his voice awed.

Chip looked, and shuddered to see, the last judgment of Blaze Amborg and his men. A scant dozen yards they strode into the cavern. Vast spirals of fire played about them, but they did not falter. Their suits, ingeniously woven of metal, rubber, asbesto-quartz, defied the combustive powers of fire. But despite this—one of the figures staggered. The stunted Jovian was first to succumb. He had just pitched forward to his face when the second figure reeled. Raat 'Aran, the Uranian. He reeled and clutched at the tall Venusian, Torth—but the Venusian, too, had dropped to his knees; his hands clawed frenziedly at his breast.

Then the mysterious death struck Amborg. His voice rang out in a piercing scream; Chip saw him stare wildly at the three now-motionless bodies of his comrades, whirl, race back toward the safety of the hillside.

But he never reached it. He had taken no more than a dozen strides when he fell. A moment his incoherent cries babbled sickening delirium into his watchers' ear-phones....

Then all was still, save for the inexorable chanting of the natives. And the grave, judicial voice of the Titanian on the altar.

"They have been tested in the flame," interpreted Salvation Smith soberly, "and found guilty. Now it is our turn...."

Chip Warren was not a religious man. He lived by a simple code: do good and keep your sidearms primed. But now there faced him the inevitable finality of death; he felt an urge to meet that last, great mystery in comfort. He turned to his friends gravely.

"Now," he said, "it is our turn. So I guess this is goodbye, Syd. And Padre—it might help if you could say a few words for us ... just something...."

"So be it, my son!" said Salvation, understandingly. He lifted his head; his fine old eyes sought the murky gray skies of Titania, so different from the sweet blue Earthly skies for which all space-farers' hearts yearned when their journey's end was reached.

"If this be the way," he said quietly, "thy servants must depart, then so be it, O Lord. Yet even now in extremis we do not forget Thee and Thy might. We remember even yet—" He looked at the flaming cave-mouth toward which they must in a moment walk. "Even yet we remember a fellowship like ours who met and defied the dread embrace of fire.

"'And in those days,'" he said, "'there were three children of Israel which the king Nebuchadnezzar ordered to be cast without raiment into the fiery furnace. And their names were Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego—'"

"Shadrach!" cried Chip. There was no intentional irreverence in his interruption. Understanding had burst upon him so suddenly that the words hurtled from his lips.

"Peace, my son!" counseled the old man. "Let not your heart be troubled—"

"It's not! We're all right, Padre! If my hunch is right—and it must be! Look, they are bidding us walk into the caves. We haven't a moment to spare. Hurry, get off your spacesuits!"

There was biting cold upon Chip Warren's limbs and body as he cast the limp shell of his bulger behind him. But as he neared the cavern's mouth, the cold grew less intense. Less intense! That in itself was final, convincing proof he had been right! He was barely two yards from the writhing gouts of flame now. Were that the true fire it appeared to be, its searing blasts would already be parching his skin to black flakes—

But it was not! It was merely—pleasantly warm!

"I was right!" he cried exultantly. "Syd ... Padre! Come on in!" His voice was almost hysterical with relief as he stepped gingerly over the prostrate bodies of those who had gone into the fiery furnace garbed in suits of metallic substance. "Come on in—the fire's fine!"

And together the three new Children of Israel walked unharmed into the fiery furnace of Titania....

The corridors led, as the Titanian chieftain said, downward, winding, through the hill to the vale below, where rested Amborg's navigable life-skiff. The small cruiser in which they were to fly to neighboring Uranus, there find aid and eager ears into which to pour their story.

And it did not surprise Chip Warren in the least to discover, about halfway down the flickering tunnel, a ledge of brightly gleaming ore that was resilient to the touch but broke the keen edge of the knife with which Chip attempted to scratch it.

"Ekalastron!" he cried. "See—a whole mountain of it! Not just a mine; a mountain! Enough to fill Man's needs for centuries!"

Syd's eyes, behind the quartzite globe, were big as saucers. He gulped, "C-chip—are you sure we're alive? Do you think maybe we died back there in the first cave, maybe? And this is all some wild illusion—?"

"It is not illusion," proclaimed Salvation serenely. "I understand, now, what Chip divined in time to save us from a dreadful fate." And he looked at the young man affectionately. "Radiation was what killed the others, my boy?"

Chip nodded. "Must have been, Padre. The 'flames' were not true flames at all. Not as we Earthlings, children of a warm Sun, masters of combustive fire, understand flame.

"Different elements have different combustive temperatures. On bitter-cold Uranus and Titania, the kindling point of certain rare gases is necessarily in ratio to the outer cold. The kindling point of the gases in this tunnel is a temperature which—though fiery-hot and deadly to the Titanians—is only pleasantly warm to us!"

"So Amborg," continued Syd, "walked into the flaming tunnel wearing a space-suit—"

"A metallic space-suit," reminded Chip, "which was a transmitter for certain lethal radiations inherent to this 'cold heat.' Blaze Amborg did not die of flame. He died of—electrocution."

Then a strange thought struck him and he turned suddenly to Salvation Smith. "Padre—?"

"Yes, my son?"

"The story you started to tell. The one that gave me my inspiration. About Shadrach. I wonder if some time long ago in the past, that legend may not have sprung from an adventure such as ours?"

Salvation smiled and shook his head.

"That is not mine to say, my boy, not yet thine to question. Perhaps some day the truth shall be known to you and me. But meanwhile—"

But meanwhile, the life-skiff was theirs for the taking. This was no question to long plague Chip Warren or any other space-adventurer, before whom stretched a whole, wide universe of wonder.

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The Project Gutenberg eBook of "Shadrach", by Nelson S. Bond

"SHADRACH"

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