THE COMET KINGS

Edmond Hamilton

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CHAPTER I

Vanishing Spaceships

MILLIONS of miles out beyond Jupiter, the battered old space-freighter Arcturion plodded through the void.

“I’d just as soon walk to Uranus!” disgustedly exclaimed Norton, the young second mate. “I wish I’d got a berth on a passenger liner. They don’t spend weeks crawling along between planets.”

Brower, the veteran first mate, smiled tolerantly at the impatient young officer.

“You’ll get used to it,” he predicted. “Me, I kind of like it. It’s restful, plugging along day after day through these big empty spaces.”

“But nothing ever happens!” the younger man complained. “There’s never even a close brush with a meteor swarm. I can’t stand this deadly monotony.”

Ironically, it was at that moment that the catastrophe broke upon them.

The plodding, droning Arcturion suddenly seemed to go crazy in space. Its steelite hull plates screamed beneath the grasp of unearthly forces. The ship hurtled suddenly sideward in space, as though it had been gripped by a giant, invisible hand.

The sharp shock of that invisible grasp was so powerful that it nullified the Arcturion’s artificial gravitation. Young Norton felt himself hurled against the cabin wall, and his brain saw stars.

His last sensation was of mysterious and mighty forces sweeping the old freighter at undreamable speed through the void. Then he knew nothing at all.

That was only the first disappearance.

“But there aren’t any uncharted meteor swarms out in that sector of space, sir!”

The man who spoke was a Martian who wore the dark uniform of the Planet Patrol. He wore a captain’s insignia, too, for Tzan Thar was head of this Jovopolis Maintenance Division.

His red, solemn face was wrinkled with dismay and there was anxiety in his large-pupilled black eyes, as he protested to the Venusian superior officer who looked at him out of the square televisor screen.

“Don’t try to evade responsibility. Captain Thar!” snapped the higher officer. “You’re in charge of the Maintenance Division for that sector of space. You’ve been lax in your meteor-sweeping, and a score of ships have come to grief as a result.

“Twenty-three ships gone, since that old freighter Arcturion first disappeared! And every one of them vanished in that sector beyond Jupiter, and hasn’t reported since.”

“I can’t understand it any more than you can sir,” said the Martian captain. “We swept all lanes in that sector only a few weeks ago.”

“Then you missed plenty of meteors!” rapped his superior. “You get out there with every sweep you’ve got—and be fast about it! I want that sector cleaned up at once. And see if you can’t find the wreckage of those ships.”

The connection was broken. Tzan Thar turned and looked helplessly at his junior officers—lanky Earthmen, squat Jovians, bronzed Mercurians.

“You all heard him,” the Martian captain said worriedly. “You know we swept that sector thoroughly, that every space-lane was clear. But something’s drifted in that has been wrecking ships. We’ve got to get busy!”

Six broad-beamed, dumpy meteor-sweeps soon rose up through the thin sunlight of Jupiter, blasted their tortuous path out through the maze of moons, and then laid a course outward in space.

The six ships, built with steelite walls of massive strength, droned steadily out through the starry void. Their far-ranging spotter beams fanned space ahead. Wherever those beams encountered meteors or other debris, they would be reflected back to indicate the location. Then the sweeps would advance and destroy the meteors by concentrated atom-blasts.

But their spotter apparatus found no trace of meteors as they droned out along the space-lane. Captain Tzan Thar became deeply puzzled.

“I can’t figure it,” he admitted anxiously. “There are no meteors in this sector. There isn’t even any wreckage from all those vanished ships.”

His immediate superior, a young Mercurian, looked uneasy.

“It’s queer, all right—”

Cataclysm suddenly interrupted their discussion. A colossal, invisible hand seemed suddenly to seize their heavy ship. They were flung to the floor as that giant, unseen hand scooped up all six great meteor-sweeps.

Nor did the tragic disappearances cease.

“Fifty-two ships! Do you hear that—fifty-two ships! Freighters, liners, tankers, even meteor-sweeps. This can’t go on!”

North Bonnel’s face was agitated as he paced to and fro in his office, on a high level of Earth’s Government Tower at New York. It was a comparatively small office, yet it was the very brain and nerve center of the far-flung Planet Patrol.

Halk Anders, commander of the Patrol, sat at his desk and said nothing. His bulldog face was stolidly grim as he hunched there, staring out through the window at the soaring towers and gleaming lights of this night-shrouded metropolis of the Solar System.

“Commander, something’s got to be done,” North Bonnel continued vehemently. “Those ships held thousands of people, millions of dollars’ worth of cargoes. Shipping companies, planetary officials, anxious relatives are all besieging the Government. You’ve got to send cruisers out there to stop these disasters!”

Halk Anders did not turn from his grim contemplation of the lights of New York, as he answered.

“We sent two Patrol cruisers into that sector to investigate weeks ago—after our meteor-sweeps vanished.”

“You did?” Bonnel said hopefully. “What did they report?”

“They didn’t report anything,” the commander replied. “They never came back—just disappeared like the others.”

The Government official was appalled.

“Patrol cruisers disappeared, too?”

Anders nodded.

“Yes. We kept it quiet because we didn’t want to add to the general alarm.”

“But what are we going to do about it?” Bonnel asked dismayedly.

“I’ve already done something,” the commander told him. “I sent out another cruiser to investigate. Two of my crack agents are aboard. You know them—old Marshal Ezra Gurney and Joan Randall.

“It may look queer, sending a girl,” he added quickly. “But Joan’s not only the smartest agent of our secret investigation division—she knows the spaceways better than most men. And as for Ezra Gurney—well, he knows the whole System like the back of his hand.”

“Have they found out anything yet?” Bonnel demanded eagerly.

Halk Anders shrugged stolidly.

“I don’t know. They were to report by televisor today. I’ve been expecting their call any minute.”

But though the two men waited expectantly, it was not until four hours later that the televisor on the desk buzzed sharply. From it came the urgent voice of a headquarters switchboard man.

“Cruiser Ferronia calling, Commander. Agent Randall to speak to you.”

“Switch her on at once!” snapped Halk Anders.

In the square glass screen of the televisor appeared the vivid face of a dark, pretty girl. Joan Randall’s eyes were shadowed with anxiety as she spoke to them across the millions of miles of space.

“Ferronia reporting, Commander,” she said rapidly. “We’ve been cruising back and forth over the whole sector in which those ships vanished. And we’ve found—nothing.”

“Nothing?” echoed Anders incredulously. “You mean—”

“I mean just that. There’s nothing here but empty space!” Joan Randall declared. “There’s not a meteor in this whole region big enough to wreck a ship. Further-more, there’s no sign whatever of any wreckage of all those ships. It’s just as though space itself swallowed them up!”

The white head of an old man appeared over the girl’s shoulder. Marshal Ezra Gurney’s wrinkled face and faded blue eyes were bleak as he corroborated the girl’s report.

“It sounds cursed queer, but it’s so,” he told the commander. “This is the dangdest, most puzzlin’ mystery I ever—”

At that moment, something happened. It happened so swiftly that neither Commander Anders nor North Bonnel got more than a glimpse of it.

They saw something like a blaze of white across the televisor screen, instantly blotting out the suddenly alarmed faces of Joan and Ezra. And then the televisor had gone dark.

Anders jabbed its call-button.

“Joan! Ezra! What’s happened?”

There was no answer. Anders flung a switch and shot an order to the headquarters operator.

“Contact the Ferronia again at once!”

Ten minutes later, the switchboard division called back.

“No success at all, sir. The Ferronia simply doesn’t answer.”

Anders slowly turned and looked at the Government official, and his bulldog face was heavier than ever.

“It happened to Joan and Ezra, right in front of our eyes,” he muttered. “Whatever struck at the other ships struck at theirs, too.”

Bonnel was appalled.

“But what was it? There was nothing but a blaze of force in the screen!”

Anders shook his leonine head helplessly.

“I can’t figure it. I thought I’d seen everything in space but this is something new—and dangerous.”

He rose to his feet.

“There is nothing to do but to send a full squadron of Patrol cruisers out there. And if they disappear, too—”

“There’ll be a panic that will cripple space travel in the whole System,” breathed Bonnel, his face pale. Then his eyes flashed.

“Commander, this mystery can’t be met by force. It’s a job for someone who can scientifically ferret out what is really happening. Someone who can use every resource of science to solve the riddle.”

Halk Anders understood this at once.

“You’re thinking of Captain Future?”

The official nodded emphatically.

“If anybody could crack this mystery, that scientific wizard and his Futuremen could.”

“Maybe so,” muttered the commander. “Future has plenty of tricks the rest of us don’t know. But if you call him in, will he come?”

“Will he come?” echoed North Bonnel. He strode toward the televisor. “Why, Ezra Gurney is one of his oldest friends, and as for Joan—you ought to know what Future thinks of her!

“Will he come? He’ll split space itself getting here when he learns that Joan and Ezra are in danger!”