Chapter 3

I have no idea how long it was before Halsey came back. Snap and I were seated on a low metal bench against the wall. The effect of the paralysing ray was wearing off. We were tingling all over, our senses still confused.

Halsey stalked in upon us. “So you are recovered?”

Snap stammered, “We--I say, we’re sorry as hell we acted like that.”

“I know you are.” His voice softened. “If I could have done anything else, believe me, I would have. But I don’t think harm will come to them. They’re clever.”

“Are they outside?” I asked. “Did they find a way of meeting the Martians? How long have you been gone?”

Halsey merely stared at me as though he had no intention of answering. And then the audiphone on the desk buzzed.

“This is Halsey,” he said. “Yes, I have them here. Bring them--did you say bring them?”

We could not hear the answering voice, for Halsey had the muffler in contact.

“No, I would prefer not to come. I’m watching something. I’m at the Red Spark Cafe. Well, I’m going back to my office presently to wait there.”

He continued in code. Like Snap, I had never had occasion to learn it. The words were a strange sounding staccato gibberish. He ended, “I will send them, Grantline. Very well, I’ll tell them to locate him. At once, yes.” He closed off the audiphone.

Halsey swung on us. “You’re all right now?”

“Yes.” I stood up, drawing Snap up with me. “What is wanted of us Colonel?”

“That’s better, Gregg.” He smiled, but he was still grim. “I wanted you here to wait for this call from the Conclave of Public Safety. It met at midnight. They have ordered both of you there.”

“That’s a secret meeting, isn’t it?” asked Snap. “There was no report of it over the air tonight.”

“Yes. Secret.” He was leading us to the door. “They won’t need you for more than half an hour. When they finish, come back to my office. You can come openly.” He stood with his finger on the door lever. “Good-by, lads. Foley will lead you to the service room. You are to take a mail cylinder for Postal Switch-station 20. They’ll re-route you from there to the conclave auditorium.”

The door slid up. “When you disembark,” he added, “Ask for Johnny Grantline. You are to sit with him.”

He showed us out and the door slid down before him. We trudged the corridor, and Snap gripped me.

“For myself,” he whispered swiftly, “I’ll go to the damnable conclave because I’m ordered. But I won’t stay there long. Once we get out of it, if I don’t route myself back to the Red Spark, I’m a motor-oiler.”

I agreed with him. We had a mental picture of Anita and Venza in the Red Spark’s public room. Doubtless Orentino had created a way for them to meet Molo. They would sit there in the Red Spark with that drinking party, and in less than an hour we would be back.

But as we crossed diagonally across an end of the main room with Foley leading us, we caught a glimpse of Molo’s table. The party was still there, but Molo, Anita, and Venza were gone!

We had no time to get any information. Foley abruptly left us and another man took his place. In the service room a passenger cylinder was waiting. Our guide entered it with us.

At the switch station we had the breath knocked out of us. After another ten minutes in the vacuum tube, we reached our unknown destination. The cylinder-slide opened. We found ourselves with a lone guard; and through a gloomy arcade opening, Johnny Grantline was advancing, to greet us.

“Well, so here you are, Gregg. Hell to pay heaven, going on here. Come on in; I’ll tell you.”

“We were sent for,” Snap said.

“Yes, but they don’t want you yet. Come in here.”

He waved away the guard and led us through a padded arcade into a low-vaulted audience room, windowless and gloomy. Across it, a doorway panel stood ajar. Grantline peered through it. There was the glow of light from the adjoining room and the distant murmur of many voices.

Grantline closed the door. “Sit down and I’ll tell you...”

“Where are we?” I asked.

“The ninth Conclave Hall.”

I knew its location: Lower Manhattan, high under the city roof.

Grantline produced little cigarette cylinders. “Steady your nerves, lads; you’ll need it.”

He grinned at us. The hand with which he lighted my cylinder was steady as a tower-base, but he was excited. I could see it by the glint in his eyes, and hear it in his voice.

“What’s going on?” Snap demanded.

“It’s about this invading planet. By the gods, when you hear what’s really been learned about it!”

“Well, what?” I asked.

He sketched what he had heard this night at the conclave. The mysterious invader was inhabited.

“How do they know that?” Snap put in.

“Wait. I’ll tell you the rest of it. The accursed thing changes its orbit. It banks and turns like a spaceship! It stopped out in space; it’s poised out there now between Mars and Jupiter. A world about a fifth the size of the Moon, and the beings on it can control its movements. They’ve brought it in from interstellar space, into our solar system. Evidently the point they’ve reached now is far as they want to come. They’ve poised out there, getting ready to attack, not only us, but Mars and Venus simultaneously.”

Grantline gazed at us through the smoke of his cigarette. He was much like Snap, small, wiry, brisk of movement and manner, but older. His hair was graying at the temples; his voice carried the authority of one accustomed to commanding men.

“Don’t ask me for the technicalities of how they reached these conclusions. I’m no astronomer. I’m only telling you their conclusions and what their discussions have been here for the past hour.”

Heaven knows, we had no inclination to dispute him. What we had seen and heard at the Red Spark tallied with his words.

He went on swiftly, “The attack, of whatever nature it may be, is impending at once. Not next month, or next week, but now. Lord, Gregg, I don’t blame you for staring like that. You don’t know what’s been going on for the past two days on Earth, and Venus and Mars. It’s all been suppressed. Neither did I, until I heard it here tonight. The U.S.W., the Martian Union, the Venus Free State, are all preparing for war. Every government spaceship on Earth is being commissioned. We’re not going to sit around and wait for invaders to land; the war won’t be fought on Earth if we can help it.”

We stared. Snap asked, “What makes them so sure?”

“That war is coming? Plenty. This new planet has sent out spaceships. The planet itself is hovering sixty million miles away from us, about forty million miles from Mars and close to ninety million from Venus. Perhaps its leaders think that’s the most strategic spot.

“Then it sent out spaceships, three of them. One is hovering close to Venus. Another is near Mars, and the third is some 200,000 miles off Earth. Several of our interplanetary freighters are overdue; it seems now that they must have encountered these invading ships and been destroyed.

“Still more, and worse: these three hovering ships have already landed the enemy on Mars and Venus. The helio-reports mention mysterious encounters in Ferrok-Shahn and Grebhar. For three or four days, Mars has been in a panic of apprehension; Venus almost as bad. And some have landed here. Not many, perhaps; but one has been captured. A thing--God, it’s almost beyond description.”

We could well agree with that, since Snap and I had just seen one.

“They’ve got it here,” Grantline was saying. “They’ve tried to make it talk. They can’t but they’re going to try again.”

He jumped to his feet and went to the door. “They’re bringing it in.” Upon his face was a look of awed horror.