CHAPTER XVIII
Damned Souls of Erebus
THORN could not believe her eyes. The sight of women, living women, whose bodies were composed of radioactive matter that glowed with its own spontaneous energy, was, brain-shattering. She and her comrades stood rigid, staring at the two glowing women.
The radioactive women returned their gaze with weirdly glowing eyes. And now Thorn saw that in their shining faces was a tragic sadness and deep despair. The radiant countenance of the taller woman, the strong, thin face that seemed vaguely familiar to Thorn, was a shining mask of haunting horror.
'They're women like ourselves—but women made radioactive by the terrific radiation here!' Sua Av exclaimed hoarsely. 'Induced, radioactivity, working somehow, upon living beings!'
The Venusian's words carried by vibration of her helmet through the hazy air to the two glowing women. For the taller, the one whose face seemed vaguely familiar, answered.
'You are right,' she said slowly, in a deep, strangely husked voice. 'We are women like yourselves, who came to this hellish world in the past. And it made us into what you see.'
'How is it possible for you to live, when your body has been changed into radioactive matter?' Thorn asked wildly. 'It has never been dreamed that there could be radioactive life!'
'Life,' said the tall glowing woman heavily, 'is dependent upon energy. Your bodies draw energy from their chemical processes. But my body needs now, no. chemical consumption of air and food to give it energy, for every atom of it now flames with the energy which itself radiates. Nothing can halt that spontaneous flow of energy from the atoms of my body. It will go on for ages until every atom has completely lost its energy and has been transmuted into elements lower in the atomic scale. I cannot die, until then.'
A sound of bitter laughter tore from her lips as her glowing eyes held the three horror-stricken Planeteers.
'I cannot die, do you hear? Though I were to cut my own limbs off, though I were to hack my body, it would still live, for each atom of each fragment would still emit ceaseless energy. My brain—my consciousness—would still remain living! And even if my brain were cut to bits, each bit of it would retain the flame of my life and consciousness.'
'God!' muttered Gunda Welk thickly. 'Then this is what has befallen all the explorers of the past who came here to Erebus!'
The tall radioactive woman nodded her glowing head somberly.
'Aye, it has befallen hundreds of others who came here, as it did me. I did not dream of the nature of this devil world when I came here. How could I? I thought the shining hazes a mere phosphorescence. I landed my ship, and at once my ship crumbled as certain of its metallic elements were swiftly disintegrated by the radiation. And then the radiation quickly changed my body—into this.
'And I have dwelt here ever since, as you see me now. A travesty of life, a mockery of a human being living on and on, unable to die, unable even to kill myself!'
'How long?' Thorn asked hoarsely. 'How long have you two lived thus on this world?'
At this the tall radioactive woman pointed to her companion. 'This is Chana Gray, who came from Mars to explore Erebus five centuries ago—'
'Five centuries ago!' Thorn cried dazedly. 'You mean that she's been living here, in that horrible state, for five hundred years?'
'The thing's not possible'exclaimed Gunda Welk thickly.
The taller radioactive woman answered heavily. 'She has been living thus five centuries, yes. I was here when she came. For I have dwelt, as you see me now on, Erebus for nine centuries. I landed on this devil world in two thousand and six.'
'That can't be!' objected Joan Thorn. 'Why, in two thousand and six interplanetary travel was only a few years old! The only women who had made space-flights by that date were Roberta Roth herself, the first of them all, and her lieutenant, Clyme Nison.'
Thorn's voice broke off as she stared in shaken horror and recognition into the glowing face of the tall radioactive woman.
'God above!' Thorn choked. 'Your face! I thought it was familiar from pictures. You—Clyme—'
'I am Clyme Nison, yes,' answered the tall glowing woman dully.
A spell held the Planeteers, a trance of stupefaction and awe, as they stared at the woman before them. A woman whose name had been famous in the system's history for nine hundred years, whose name stood second only to that of Roberta Roth in the great roll of the space-pioneers.
'Clyme Nison!' said Gunda hoarsely, unbelievingly. 'The woman who helped Roberta Roth build the first space-ship of all, the woman who was first of all women to visit Uranus, Neptune and Pluto, and who—'
'-and who wanted to be the first woman to visit Erebus, also,' Nison finished heavily, 'And who has remained here ever since, in living death, the most horrible of dooms.'
The Planeteers could not speak. They could only stare at the glowing woman in stricken awe.
To them, as to all who sailed space, this woman ranked almost as a demigod. She and the immortal Roberta Roth had statues in their honor on every inhabited planet. And now they had found her on this far mystery world, not really living, yet not dead!
'So long—so long ago it was that I came here,' Clyme Nison was saying in her heavy voice, her shining eyes staring tragically into the haunted past. 'So long, since I left Earth on that fatal outward voyage that brought me to this doom.
'And yet there are times when all the long centuries of long death here seem but a moment, when it seems that it was only yesterday that I sailed with such high hopes. When it seems only yesterday that I toiled with Roberta to build that first ship of hers, and watched her roar out into space to glory.'
'You say there are others like you two on this world?' Joan Thorn asked unsteadily.
Nison nodded heavily. 'Aye, there are several hundred of us radioactive women wearily roaming this hellish world. All of them women who have come here in past centuries’ and have been trapped, as I was trapped, by the deadly radiation. You are the first women I have ever seen come here and escape the doom that seized us.'
'We landed on that black meteorite mountain of asterium,' Thorn told her. 'And we ray-proofed our suits with the metal.'
'Ask her about the radite, Joan,' muttered Sua Av tensely. Jerkily, Thorn told the two glowing women what had brought them to Erebus. There was a brooding silence before Clyme Nison spoke.
'And you say that this radite will save the inner planets from dreadful conquest, if you can take it back?' she asked.
'We hope it will,' Thorn answered tensely. 'If Blaine's secret weapon is effective—'
'I do not see,' said the glowing woman slowly, 'what weapon or invention could ever defeat such a fleet as you say the outer planets have gathered.'
The old doubt and fear that Thorn had felt increasingly as the days went by, tautened her voice as she answered.
'We don't know either how Blaine can hope to do that, what the nature of her mysterious weapon is,' Thorn admitted. 'Yet, that secret of her is the one last possible chance to prevent the conquest of the Alliance.'
She voiced a desperate appeal to Nison. 'Earth is your native world, as Mars is that of your companion. It's to prevent the wreck and ruin of those two worlds, and of Venus and Mercury too, that we're asking you to help us find the radite.'
'I will help you,' Clyme Nison said slowly, her tragic radiant face heavy with thought. 'Though the Earth you serve cannot be the Earth of nine centuries ago from which I came, yet it is still Earth.'
Her glowing companion, the little Martian, Chana Gray, slowly nodded her head, and spoke to the Planeteers for the first time.
'Aye,' she said huskily. 'And I remember the Mars of five centuries ago—the pleasant desert cities, the sun shining on the polar snows. I would not want the hordes of the outer planets to devastate that.'
'You know where the radite lies?' Thorn asked Nison eagerly.
The glowing space-pioneer inclined her bead.
She turned and pointed westward through the swirling
blue haze.
'In the mountains yonder, a lump of it lies. But it will be dangerous to try to take it,' she explained. 'The terrific emanations that stream from that mass of radite are more penetrating than any other. To the bodies of us radioactive women who wearily wander immortally over this planet, those powerful emanations of the radite are stimulating, as sunlight is to you. There are always some of us radioactive women gathered about that radite, basking in the grateful radiation from it.
'And all these poor creatures like myself will resist your taking the radite. For to bask in its emanations is almost the only pleasure they have in this terrible mockery of existence. Yet, with the safety of Earth and the inner worlds at stake, I will help you attempt to take the radite.'
Nison turned heavily, and she and her radiant companion looked back at the Planeteers.
After a moment, she spoke to Thorn. 'Follow us,' Nison's voice reached them. 'We will lead you to the radite.'
As they started on westward across the shining desert, forging through the luminous blue haze beneath the dark, star-studded sky. An unearthly party—the three Planeteers in their grotesque black ray-proof space-suits, led by the two glowing radioactive women.
'It's like a nightstallion'Gunda's voice reached Thorn, the Mercurian gripping her arm as they trudged along. 'This hellish world, haunted by these pitiful ghosts of women.'
'No wonder Martina Cain wouldn't tell anyone about what she'd seen here, when she got back,' muttered Sua Av.