The Beast of Space | Page 4

lured into the maw of this hellish monster by a robot calling for help in our television screen. This thing, known to man as Asteroid Moira, is, in actuality, one of the gigantic mineral creatures which inhabited a planet before it exploded, forming the asteroids. Somehow it survived the catastrophe, and, forming a hard, crustaceous shell about itself, has continued to live here in space as an asteroid.
"It is apparently highly intelligent and has acquired an appetite for human flesh. The singing spheres act as its sensory organs, separated from the body and given locomotion. It uses these to lure victims into its stomach in the first cave. I escaped its lure at first because of the 'squeaker' I carried with me. We set up these two doors as a protection from the beast while we stayed here to examine it. But the monster got me when I fell and the 'squeaker' was broken. My daughter rescued me after the acid of the pool had begun eating away my flesh.
"My Helena is locked in the room opposite this one. She has food and water to last until July 8th. Oxygen seeps in there somehow--the beast wants to keep her alive until it can get her out of the room to devour her."
Here the writing became more cramped and difficult to read.
"I have put the key in my mouth to prevent the spheres from opening the door should they force their way into this room. Some one must come to save my Helena. I can't breathe--"
The writing ended in a long scrawl angling off the page. The pencil lay some distance from the body.
July 8th! But that had been almost a week ago!
* * * * *
He unscrewed the man's helmet, tried to pry the jaws open. They would not move; the airless void surrounding the tiny planetoid had frozen the body until now it was as solid as the quartz cave-walls. There was but one thing to do: the other door must be melted down.
He leaped halfway across the room toward the door in the opposite wall. Could it be possible that he was in time? Anxiously he flung a bolt of energy from his heat rod toward the lock, holding a flashlight under the other stump of an arm. The molten metal flowed to the floor like a rivulet of lava.
The door, hanging off balance, screeched open; air swooshed past him in its sudden escape from the room. He squeezed himself through, peered carefully about to see a slim spacesuit start to crumple floorward in a corner. The girl was alive!
He started toward her; the slim figure pulled itself erect again. He saw a drawn, emaciated face behind the helmet. Then, with a fury that unnerved him, she whipped out a heat rod, shot a searing bolt in his direction. He felt the fierce heat of it as it whizzed past his shoulder; in his brain Digger's thoughts of attack came to him, he flung an arm around the spacehound, dragged it back as he withdrew toward the door. The girl continued to fire bolt after bolt straight ahead, her eyes wide and staring.
They made the door, waited outside while the firing within continued. When at last it was still within, he peered around the corner of the room. She lay in a crumpled heap in the corner; quietly he re-entered, picked her up awkwardly. Through the thin, resistant folds of the spacesuit, he could feel the warmth of her, but could not tell whether the heart still beat or not. They would have to take her to one of the ships.
Her limp form was held tightly under his good arm as Nat hurried down the main tunnel. Digger apparently realized the seriousness of the situation, for he received impressions of "must hurry" from the beast and another creature, looking much like him, surrounded by small creatures of the same type, trapped in a crevice. "Aren't you a bit premature, old fellow," he chided.
Halfway there, the globes met them again. The things were not singing; from their many eyes poured a fierce, angry blue light. They rolled with a determination that frightened him. Yet he strode on, until they were barely a foot away.
"Jump, Digger!"
The spheres stopped short, reversed their direction toward the little group at a furious rate, flinging out long, whip-like tentacles. One wrapped itself around Nat's ankle, drew him down. He shifted the limp form over to his shoulder, slipped out his heat-rod. Quickly the tentacle was severed. But now others took their place; he continued firing at them, making each bolt tell, but the numbers were too great.
Digger sprang into action, rending the globes with those claws that were capable of tearing the hulls of spaceships. But tentacles lashed around him from the rear, snaked