The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Vibration Wasps, by Frank Belknap Long
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Title: The Vibration Wasps
Author: Frank Belknap Long
Release Date: March 15, 2021 [eBook #64820]
Language: English
Character set encoding: UTF-8
Produced by: Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE VIBRATION WASPS ***
THE VIBRATION WASPS
by FRANK BELKNAP LONG
_Enormous, they were--like Jupiter--and
unutterably terrifying to Joan--_
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Comet January 41.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
CHAPTER I
OUT IN SPACE
I was out in space with Joan for the sixth time. It might as well have
been the eighth or tenth. It went on and on. Every time I rebelled Joan
would shrug and murmur: "All right, Richard. I'll go it alone then."
Joan was a little chit of a girl with spun gold hair and eyes that
misted when I spoke of Pluto and Uranus, and glowed like live coals
when we were out in space together.
Joan had about the worst case of exploritis in medical history. To
explain her I had to take to theory. Simply to test out whether she
could survive and reach maturity in an environment which was hostile
to human mutants, Nature had inserted in her make-up every reckless
ingredient imaginable. Luckily she had survived long enough to fall in
love with sober and restraining me. We supplemented each other, and as
I was ten years her senior my obligations had been clear-cut from the
start.
We were heading for Ganymede this time, the largest satellite of
vast, mist-enshrouded Jupiter. Our slender space vessel was thrumming
steadily through the dark interplanetary gulfs, its triple atomotors
roaring. I knew that Joan would have _preferred_ to penetrate the
turbulent red mists of Ganymede's immense primary, and that only my
settled conviction that Jupiter was a molten world restrained her.
We had talked it over for months, weighing the opinions of Earth's
foremost astronomers. No "watcher of the night skies" could tell us
very much about Jupiter. The year 1973 had seen the exploration of the
moon, and in 1986 the crews of three atomotor-propelled space vessels
had landed on Mars and Venus, only to make the disappointing discovery
that neither planet had ever sustained life.
By 2002 three of the outer planets had come within the orbit of human
exploration. There were Earth colonies on all of the Jovian moons now,
with the exception of Ganymede. Eight exploring expeditions had set
out for that huge and mysterious satellite, only to disappear without
leaving a trace.
I turned from a quartz port brimming with star-flecked blackness to
gaze on my reckless, nineteen-year-old bride. Joan was so strong-willed
and competent that it was difficult for me to realize she was scarcely
more than a child. A veteran of the skyways, you'd have thought her,
with her slim hands steady on the controls, her steely eyes probing
space.
"The more conservative astronomers have always been right," I said.
"We knew almost as much about the moon back in the eighteenth century
as we do now. We get daily weather reports from Tycho now, and there
are fifty-six Earth colonies beneath the lunar Apennines. But the
astronomers knew that the moon was a sterile, crater-pitted world a
hundred years ago. They knew that there was no life or oxygen beneath
its brittle stars generations before the first space vessel left Earth.
"The astronomers said that Venus was a bleak, mist-enshrouded world
that couldn't sustain life and they were right. They were right about
Mars. Oh, sure, a few idle dreamers thought there might be life on
Mars. But the more conservative astronomers stood pat, and denied that
the seasonal changes could be ascribed to a low order of vegetative
life. It's a far cry from mere soil discoloration caused by melting
polar ice caps to the miracle of pulsing life. The first vessel to
reach Mars proved the astronomers right. Now a few crack-brained
theorists are trying to convince us that Jupiter may be a solid, cool
world."
Joan turned, and frowned at me. "You're letting a few clouds scare
you, Richard," she said. "No man on Earth knows what's under the mist
envelope of Jupiter."
"A few clouds," I retorted. "You know darned well that Jupiter's
gaseous envelope is forty thousand miles thick--a seething cauldron of
heavy gases and pressure drifts rotating at variance with the planet's
crust."
"But Ganymede is mist-enshrouded too," scoffed Joan. "We're hurtling
into _that_ cauldron at the risk of our necks. Why not Jupiter instead?"
"The law of averages," I said, "seasoned with a little common sense.
Eight vessels went through Ganymede's ghost shroud into oblivion. There
have been twenty-six attempts to conquer Jupiter. A little world cools
and solidifies much more rapidly than a big world. You ought to know
that."
"But Ganymede isn't so little. You're forgetting it's the biggest
satellite in the solar system."
"But still little--smaller than Mars. Chances are it has a solid crust,
like Callisto, Io, and Europa."
There was a faint, rustling sound behind us. Joan and I swung about
simultaneously, startled by what was obviously a space-code infraction.
A silvery-haired, wiry little man was emerging through the beryllium
steel door of the pilot chamber, his face set in grim lines. I am not
a disciplinarian, but my nerves at that moment were strained to the
breaking point. "What are you doing here, Dawson," I rapped, staring
at him in indignation. "We didn't send for you."
"Sorry, sir," the little man apologized. "I couldn't get you on the
visi-plate. It's gone dead, sir."
Joan drew in her breath sharply. "You mean there's something wrong with
the cold current?"
Dawson nodded. "Nearly every instrument on the ship has gone dead, sir.
Gravity-stabilizers, direction gauges, even the intership communication
coils."
Joan leapt to her feet. "It must be the stupendous gravity tug of
Jupiter," she exclaimed. "Hadley warned us it might impede the
molecular flow of our cold force currents the instant we passed
Ganymede's orbit."
Exultation shone in her gaze. I stared at her, aghast. She was actually
rejoicing that the Smithsonian physicist had predicted our destruction.
Knowing that vessels were continually traveling to Io and Callisto
despite their nearness to the greatest disturbing body in the Solar
System, I had assumed we could reach Ganymede with our navigation
instruments intact. I had scoffed at Hadley's forebodings, ignoring the
fact that we were using cold force for the first time in an atomotor
propelled vessel, and were dependent on a flow adjustment of the utmost
delicacy.
Dawson was staring at Joan in stunned horror. Our fate was sealed and
yet Joan had descended from the pilot dais and was actually waltzing
about the chamber, her eyes glowing like incandescent meteor chips.
"We'll find out now, Richard," she exclaimed. "It's too late for
caution or regrets. We're going right through forty thousand miles of
mist to Jupiter's _solid_ crust."
CHAPTER II
THROUGH THE CLOUD BLANKET
I thought of Earth as we fell. Tingling song, and bright awakenings and
laughter and joy and grief. Woodsmoke in October, tall ships and the
planets spinning and hurdy-gurdies in June.
I sat grimly by Joan's side on the pilot dais, setting my teeth as I
gripped the atomotor controls and stared out through the quartz port.
We were plummeting downward with dizzying speed. Outside the quartz
port there was a continuous misty glimmering splotched with nebulously
weaving spirals of flame.
We were already far below Jupiter's outer envelope of tenuous gases
in turbulent flux, and had entered a region of pressure drifts which
caused our little vessel to twist and lunge erratically. Wildly it
swept from side to side, its gyrations increasing in violence as I cut
the atomotor blasts and released a traveling force field of repulsive
negrations.
I thanked our lucky stars that the gravity tug had spared the atomotors
and the landing mechanism. We hadn't anything else to be thankful for.
I knew that if we plunged into a lake of fire even the cushioning force
field couldn't save us.
Joan seemed not to care. She was staring through the quartz port in an
attitude of intense absorption, a faint smile on her lips. There are
degrees of recklessness verging on insanity; of courage which deserves
no respect.
I had an impulse to shake her, and shout: "Do you realize we're
plunging to our death?" I had to keep telling myself that she was still
a child with no realization of what death meant. She simply couldn't
visualize extinction; the dreadful blackness sweeping in--
Our speed was decreasing now. The cushioning force field was slowing us
up, forcing the velocity needle sharply downward on the dial.
Joan swung toward me, her face jubilant. "We'll know in a minute,
Richard. We're only eight thousand miles above the planet's crust."
"Crust?" I flung at her. "You mean a roaring furnace."
"No, Richard. If Jupiter were molten we'd be feeling it now. The
plates would be white-hot."
It was true, of course. I hadn't realized it before. I wiped sweat from
my forehead, and stared at her with sombre respect. She had been right
for once. In her girlish folly she had out-guessed all the astronomers
on Earth.
The deceleration was making my temples throb horribly. We were
decelerating far too rapidly, but it was impossible to diminish the
speed-retarding pressure of the force field, and I didn't dare resort
to another atomotor charge so close to the planet's surface. To make
matters worse, the auxiliary luminalis blast tubes had been crippled by
the arrest of the force current, along with the almost indispensable
gravity stabilizers.
The blood was draining from my brain already. I knew that I was going
to lose consciousness, and my fingers passed swiftly up and down the
control panel, freezing the few descent mechanisms which were not
dependent on the interior force current in positions of stability and
maximum effectiveness, and cupping over the meteor collision emergency
jets.
Joan was the first to collapse. She had been quietly assisting me, her
slim hands hovering over the base of the instrument board. Suddenly as
we manipulated dials and rheostats she gave a little, choking cry and
slumped heavily against me.
There was a sudden increase of tension inside my skull. Pain stabbed at
my temples and the control panel seemed to waver and recede. I threw
my right arm about Joan and tried to prevent her sagging body from
slipping to the floor. A low, vibrant hum filled the chamber. We rocked
back and forth before the instrument board, our shoulders drooping.
We were still rocking when a terrific concussion shook the ship,
hurling us from the dais and plunging the chamber into darkness.
Bruised and dazed, I raised myself on one elbow and stared about me.
The jarred fluorescent cubes had begun to function again, filling the
pilot chamber with a slightly diminished radiance. But the chamber
was in a state of chaos. Twisted coils of _erillium_ piping lay at my
feet, and an overturned jar of sluice lubricant was spilling its sticky
contents over the corrugated metal floor.
Joan had fallen from the pilot dais and was lying on her side by the
quartz port, her face ashen, blood trickling from a wound in her cheek.
I pulled myself toward her, and lifted her up till her shoulders were
resting on my knees. Slowly her eyes blinked open, and bored into mine.
She forced a smile. "Happy landing?" she inquired.
"Not so happy," I muttered grimly. "You were right about Jupiter.
It's a solid world and we've landed smack upon it with considerable
violence, judging from the way things have been hurled about."
"Then the cushioning force field--"
"Oh, it cushioned us, all right. If it hadn't we'd be roasting merrily
inside a twisted mass of wreckage. But I wouldn't call it happy
landing. You've got a nasty cut there."
"I'm all right, Richard."
Joan reached up and patted my cheek. "Good old Richard. You're just
upset because we didn't plunge into a lake of molten zinc."
"Sure, that's it," I grunted. "I was hoping for a swift, easy out."
"Maybe we'll find it, Richard," she said, her eyes suddenly serious.
"I'm not kidding myself. I know what a whiff of absolute zero can do to
mucous membranes. All I'm claiming is that we've as good a chance here
as we would have had on Ganymede."
"I wish I could feel that way about it. How do we know the atomotors
can lift us from a world as massive as Jupiter?"
"I think they can, Richard. We had twelve times as much acceleration as
we needed on tap when we took off from Earth."
She was getting to her feet now. Her eyes were shining again,
exultantly. You would have thought we were descending in a stratoplane
above the green fields of Earth.
"I've a confession to make, Richard," she grinned. "Coming down, I was
inwardly afraid we _would_ find ourselves in a ghastly bubble and boil.
And I was seriously wondering how long we could stand it."
"Oh, you were."
"Longer than you think, Richard. Did you know that human beings
can stand simply terrific heat? Experimenters have stayed in rooms
artificially heated to a temperature of four hundred degrees for as
long as fifteen minutes without being injured in any way."
"Very interesting," I said. "But that doesn't concern us now. We've
got to find out if our crewmen are injured or badly shaken up. Chances
are they'll be needing splints. And we've got to check the atmosphere
before we can think of going outside, even with our helmets clamped
down tight.
"Chances are it's laden with poisonous gases which the activated carbon
in our oxygen filters won't absorb. If the atmosphere contains phosgene
we'll not be stepping out. I'm hoping we'll find only carbon monoxide
and methane."
"Nice, harmless gases."
"I didn't say that. But at least they'll stick to the outside of the
particles of carbon in the filter and not tear our lungs apart."
"A thought, Richard. Suppose we find nickel carbonyl. That's harmless
until it is catalyzed by carbon. Then it's worse than phosgene."
"There are lots of deadly ingredients we _could_ find," I admitted
with some bitterness. "Gases in solid toxic form--tiny dust granules
which would pass right through the filters into our lungs. Jupiter's
atmosphere may well be composed entirely of gases in solid phase."
"Let's hope not, Richard."
"We've been talking about lung corrosives," I said, relentlessly. "But
our space suits are not impermeable, you know. There are gases which
injure the skin, causing running sores. Vesicant gases. The fact that
there are no vesicants on Io and Europa doesn't mean we won't encounter
them here. And there are nerve gases which could drive us mad in less
time than it takes to--"
"Richard, you always were an optimist."
I stared at her steadily for an instant; then shrugged. "All right,
Joan. I hope you won't fall down on any of the tests. We've got to
project an ion detector, a barometer and a moist cloud chamber outside
the ship through a vacuum suction lock, in addition to the atmosphere
samplers. And we've got to bandage that face wound before you bleed to
death."
CHAPTER III
WHAT THE CAMERA SHOWED
A half hour later we had our recordings. Joan sat facing me on the
elevated pilot dais, her head swathed in bandages. Dawson and the two
other members of our crew stood just beneath us, their faces sombre in
the cube-light.
They had miraculously escaped injury, although Dawson had a badly
shaken up look. His hair was tousled and his jaw muscles twitched.
Dawson was fifty-three years old, but the others were still in their
early twenties--stout lads who could take it.
The fuel unit control pilot, James Darnel, was standing with his
shoulders squared, as though awaiting orders. I didn't want to take
off. I had fought Joan all the way, but now that we were actually on
Jupiter I wanted to go out with her into the unknown, and stand with
her under the swirling, star-concealing mist.
I wanted to be the first man to set foot on Jupiter. But I knew now
that the first man would be the last. The atmospheric recordings had
revealed that there were poisons in Jupiter's lethal cloud envelope
which would have corroded our flesh through our space suits and burned
out our eyes.
Joan had been compelled to bow to the inevitable. Bitterly she sat
waiting for me to give the word to take off. I was holding a portable
horizon camera in my hand. It was about the smallest, most incidental
article of equipment we had brought along.
The huge, electro-shuttered horizon camera which we had intended to use
on Ganymede had been so badly damaged by the jar of our descent that
it was useless now. We had projected the little camera by a horizontal
extension tripod through a vacuum suction lock and let it swing about.
I didn't expect much from it. It was equipped with infra-red and
ultra-violet ray filters, but the atmosphere was so dense outside I
didn't think the sensitive plates would depict anything but swirling
spirals of mist.
I was waiting for the developing fluid to do its work before I broke
the camera open and removed the plates. We had perhaps one chance in
ten of getting a pictorial record of Jupiter's topographical features.
I knew that one clear print would ease Joan's frustration and
bitterness, and give her a sense of accomplishment. But I didn't
expect anything sensational. Venus is a frozen wasteland from pole to
pole, and the dust-bowl deserts of Mars are exactly like the more arid
landscapes of Earth.
Most of Earth is sea and desert and I felt sure that Jupiter would
exhibit uniform surface features over nine-tenths of its crust. Its
rugged or picturesque regions would be dispersed amidst vast, dun
wastes. The law of averages was dead against our having landed on the
rim of some blue-lit, mysterious cavern measureless to man, or by the
shores of an inland sea.
But Joan's eyes were shining again, so I didn't voice my misgivings.
Joan's eyes were fastened on the little camera as though all her life
were centered there.
"Well, Richard," she urged.
My hands were shaking. "A few pictures won't give _me_ a lift," I said.
"Even if they show mountains and crater-pits and five hundred million
people gape at them on Earth."
"Don't be such a pessimist, Richard. We'll be back in a month with
impermeable space suits, and a helmet filter of the Silo type. You're
forgetting we've accomplished a lot. It's something to know that the
temperature outside isn't anything like as ghastly as the cold of
space, and that the pebbles we've siphoned up show Widman-statten lines
and contain microscopic diamonds. That means Jupiter's crust isn't
all volcanic ash. There'll be something more interesting than tumbled
mounds of lava awaiting us when we come back. If we can back our
geological findings with prints--"
"You bet we can," I scoffed. "I haven't a doubt of it. What do you
want to see? Flame-tongued flowers or gyroscopic porcupines? Take your
choice. Richard the Great never fails."
"Richard, you're talking like that to hide something inside you that's
all wonder and surmise."
Scowling, I broke open the camera and the plates fell out into my hand.
They were small three by four inch positive transparencies, coated on
one side with a iridescent emulsion which was still slightly damp.
Joan's eyes were riveted on my face. She seemed unaware of the presence
of the crewmen below us. She sat calmly watching me as I picked up the
top-most plate and held it up in the cube-light.
I stared at it intently. It depicted--a spiral of mist. Simply that,
and nothing more. The spiral hung in blackness like a wisp of smoke,
tapering from a narrow base.
"Well?" said Joan.
"Nothing on this one," I said, and picked up another. The spiral was
still there, but behind it was something that looked like an ant-hill.
"Thick mist getting thinner," I said.
The third plate gave me a jolt. The spiral had become a weaving ghost
shroud above a distinct elevation that could have been either a
mountain or an ant-hill. It would have been impossible to even guess at
the elevation's distance from the ship if something hadn't seemed to be
crouching upon it.
The mist coiled down over the thing and partly obscured it. But enough
of it was visible to startle me profoundly. It seemed to be crouching
on the summit of the elevation, a wasplike thing with wiry legs and
gauzy wings standing straight out from its body.
My fingers were trembling so I nearly dropped the fourth plate. On the
fourth plate the thing was clearly visible. The spiral was a dispersing
ribbon of mist high up on the plate and the mound was etched in sharp
outlines on the emulsion.
The crouching shape was unmistakably wasplike. It stood poised on the
edge of the mound, its wings a vibrating blur against the amorphously
swirling mist.
From within the mound a companion shape was emerging. The second
"wasp" was similar to the poised creature in all respects, but its
wings did not appear to be vibrating and from its curving mouth-parts
there dangled threadlike filaments of some whitish substance which was
faintly discernible against the mist.
The fifth and last plate showed both creatures poised as though for
flight, while something that looked like the head of still another wasp
was protruding from the summit of the mound.
I passed the plates to Joan without comment. Wonder and exaltation
came into her face as she examined them, first in sequence and then
haphazardly, as though unable to believe her eyes.
"_Life_," she murmured at last, her voice tremulous with awe. "_Life
on Jupiter._ Richard, it's--unbelievable. This great planet that we
thought was a seething cauldron is actually inhabited by--_insects_."
"I don't think they're insects, Joan," I said. "We've got to suspend
judgment until we can secure a specimen and study it at close range.
It's an obligation we owe to our sponsors and--to ourselves. We're here
on a mission of scientific exploration. We didn't inveigle funds from
the Smithsonian so that we could rush to snap conclusions five hundred
million miles from Earth.
"_Insectlike_ would be a safer word. I've always believed that life
would evolve along parallel lines throughout the entire solar system,
assuming that it could exist at all on Venus, Mars, or on one of
the outer planets. I've always believed that any life sustaining
environment would produce forms familiar to us. On Earth you have the
same adaptations occurring again and again in widely divergent species.
"There are lizards that resemble fish and fish that are lizardlike. The
dinosaur Triceratops resembled a rhinoceros, the duck-billed platypus
a colossal. Porpoises and whales are so fishlike that no visitor from
space would ever suspect that they were mammals wearing evolutionary
grease paint. And some of the insects look just like crustaceans, as
you know.
"These creatures _look_ like insects, but they may not even
be protoplasmic in structure. They may be composed of some
energy-absorbing mineral that has acquired the properties of life."
Joan's eyes were shining. "I don't care what they're composed of,
Richard. We've got to capture one of those creatures alive."
I shook my head. "Impossible, Joan. If the air outside wasn't poisonous
I'd be out there with a net. But there are limits to what we can hope
to accomplish on this trip."
"We've siphoned up specimens of the soil," Joan protested. "What's to
stop us from trying to catch up one of them in a suction cup?"
"You're forgetting that suction cups have a diameter of scarcely nine
inches," I said. "These creatures may be as huge as the dragonflies of
the Carboniferous Age."
"Richard, we'll project a traveling suction cup through one of the
vacuum locks and try to--"
Her teeth came together with a little click. Startled, I turned and
stared at her. Despite her elation she had been sitting in a relaxed
attitude, with her back to the control panel and her latex taped legs
extended out over the dais. Now she was sitting up straight, her face
deathly pale in the cube-light.
The creatures were standing a little to the right of the rigidly
staring crewmen, their swiftly vibrating wings enveloped in a pale
bluish radiance which swirled upward toward the ribbed metal ceiling of
the pilot chamber.
[Illustration: _The creature was standing, wings swiftly vibrating,
enveloped in a pale, bluish radiance._]
Enormous they were--and unutterably terrifying with their great,
many-faceted eyes fastened in brooding malignance upon us.
Joan and I arose simultaneously, drawn to our feet by a horror such as
we had never known. A sense of sickening unreality gripped me, so that
I could neither move nor cry out.
Dawson alone remained articulate. He raised his arm and pointed, his
voice a shrill bleat.
"Look out, sir! Look out! There's another one coming through the wall
directly behind you."
The warning came too late. As I swung toward the quartz port I saw
Joan's arm go out, her body quiver. Towering above her was a third
gigantic shape, the tip of its abdomen resting on her shoulders, its
spindly legs spread out over the pilot dais.
As I stared at it aghast it shifted its bulk, and a darkly gleaming
object that looked like a shrunken bean-pod emerged from between Joan's
shoulder blades.
Joan moaned and sagged on the dais, her hands going to her throat.
Instantly the wasp swooped over me, its abdomen descending. For an
awful instant I could see only a blurred shapelessness hovering over me.
Then a white-hot shaft of pain lanced through me and the blur receded.
But I was unable to get up. I was unable to move or think clearly. My
limbs seemed weighted. I couldn't get up or help Joan or even roll over.
My head was bursting and my spine was a board. I must have tried to
summon help, for I seem to remember Dawson sobbing: "I'm paralyzed too,
sir," just before my senses left me and I slumped unconscious on the
dais.
How long I remained in blackness I had no way of knowing. But when I
opened my eyes again I was no longer on the dais. I was up under the
ceiling of the pilot chamber, staring down at the corrugated floor
through what looked like a glimmering, whitish haze.
Something white and translucent wavered between my vision and the
floor, obscuring the outlines of the great wasps standing there.
There were five wasps standing directly beneath me in the center of the
pilot chamber, their wings a luminous blur in the cube-light.
My perceptions were surprisingly acute. I wasn't confused mentally,
although my mouth felt parched and there was a dull, throbbing ache in
my temples.
The position in which I found myself and the whitish haze bewildered
me for only an instant. I knew that the "haze" was a web the instant I
studied its texture. And when I tried to move and couldn't the truth
dawned in all its horror.
I was suspended beneath the ceiling of the chamber in a translucent,
hammock-like web. I was lying on my stomach, my limbs bound by fibrous
strands as resistant as whipcords.
Minutes which seemed like eternities passed as I lay there with fear
clutching at my heart. I could only gaze downward. The crewmen had
vanished and the wasps were standing like grim sentinels in front of
the control panel.
I was almost sure that Joan and the crewmen were suspended in similar
webs close to me. I thought I knew what the wasps had done to us.
I had talked to Joan about life evolving along parallel lines
throughout the Solar System, but I hadn't expected to encounter life as
strange and frightening as this--insectlike, and yet composed of some
radiant substance that could penetrate solid metal and flow at will
through the walls of a ship.
Some radiant substance that had weight and substance and could touch
human flesh without searing it. Nothing so ghastly strange and
yet--indisputably the creatures were wasplike. And being wasplike their
habit patterns were similar to those of so-called social wasps on Earth.
Social wasps sting caterpillars into insensibility, and deposit eggs in
their paralyzed flesh. When the wasp-grubs hatch they become ghoulish
parasites, gruesomely feasting until the caterpillars dwindle to
repulsive, desiccated husks.
CHAPTER IV
EDDINGTON'S OSCILLATIONS
Horror and sick revulsion came into me as I stared down at the great
wasps, with their many-faceted eyes seeming to probe the Jovian mists
through a solid metal bulkhead!
They thought we were Jovian caterpillars! Evidently there were flabby,
white larva-shapes out in the mist as large as men--with the habit
perhaps of rearing upright on stumpy legs like terrestrial measuring
worms. We looked enough like Jovian caterpillars to deceive those
Jovian wasps.
They had apparently seen us through the walls of the ship, and their
egg-laying instincts had gone awry. They had plunged ovipositors into
our flesh, spun webs about us and hung us up to dry out while their
loathsome progeny feasted on our flesh.
The whitish substance exuding from the mouth-parts of one of the
photographed wasps had evidently been mucilaginous web material.
There was no other possible explanation. And suddenly as I lay there
with thudding temples something occurred which increased my horror
ten-fold.
Zigzagging, luminous lines appeared on the ribbed metal wall opposite
the quartz port and a wasp materialized amidst spectral bands of
radiance which wavered and shimmered like heat waves in bright sunlight.
A coldness itched across my scalp. Dangling from the wasp's right
fore-leg was the web-enmeshed form of the fuel unit control pilot.
Young Darnel's hair was tousled, and his metacloth pilot tunic had been
partly torn away, leaving his ribs exposed.
I had never seen anything quite so horrible. Embedded in Darnel's
flesh was a huge, faintly luminous grub, its rudimentary mouth-parts
obscurely visible beneath the drum-tight skin over his breastbone.
His hands closed and unclosed as I stared down at him. His forehead was
drenched with sweat and he writhed as though in unbearable anguish, a
hectic flush suffusing his cheeks.
My throat felt hot and swollen but I managed to whisper: "Darnel.
Darnel, my lad."
Slowly his eyelids flickered open and he stared up at me, a grimace of
agony convulsing his haggard features.
"Nothing seems quite real, sir," he groaned. "Except--the pain."
"Is it very bad?"
"I'm in agony, sir. I can't stand it much longer. It's as though a
heated iron were resting on my chest."
"Where did that wasp take you?"
"Into the chart room, sir. When I struggled in the web it carried me
into the chart room and stung me again."
I swallowed hard. "Did you experience any pain before that, lad?"
"I felt a stab the first time it plunged its stinger into me, but when
I came to in the web there was no pain. The pain started in the chart
room."
I was thinking furiously. Stinger--ovipositor. A few species of
stinging terrestrial insects possessed organs which combined the
functions of both. Evidently the wasps had simply stung us at
first--to paralyze us. Now they were completing the gruesome process of
providing a feast for their avaricious progeny. One of the wasps had
taken Darnel from the web, and deposited a fertile, luminous egg in his
flesh.
It was becoming hideously clear now. The wasp's retreat into the chart
room had been motivated by a desire to complete its loathsome task
in grim seclusion. It had withdrawn a short distance for the sake of
privacy, passing completely through the wall out of sight.
My stomach felt tight and hollow when I contemplated the grub, which
had apparently hatched out almost instantly. It seemed probable that
Darnel's anguish was caused by the grub's luminosity searing his flesh,
as its mouth-parts were still immobile.
"Darnel," I whispered. "The paralysis wore off. They couldn't sting us
into permanent insensibility. The pain may go too."
He looked at me, his eyes filming. "I don't understand, sir. Paralysis?"
I had forgotten that Daniel wasn't even aware of what we were
up against. He couldn't see the grub. He didn't know that we
were--caterpillars.
He was in torment, and I was powerless to help him. I was glad he
didn't know, despite my certain knowledge that I was about to share his
fate. I whispered hoarsely: "Can you see Joan, lad. Is she--"
"She's lying in the web next to you, sir. Dawson and Stillmen have been
out."
"_Taken out._"
"There are two empty webs, sir. Oh, God, the pain--I can't stand it."
The great wasp was moving now. It was moving slowly across the chamber
toward the quartz port, between its motionless companions. Its wings
were vibrating and it was raising Darnel up as though it were about to
hurl him out through the inches-thick quartz into the mist.
Suddenly as I stared the utter strangeness of something that had
already occurred smote me with the force of a physical blow. The wasp
had carried Darnel _right through the wall_--from the pilot chamber to
the chart room, and back again.
Apparently the great wasps could make us tenuous too! Close and
prolonged contact with the energies pouring from them had made Darnel's
body as permeable as gamma light. Horribly it was borne in on me that
Darnel's anguish was caused by a _pervasive_ glow which enveloped him
from head to foot. It was fainter than the radiance which poured from
the wasps and was almost invisible in the fluorescent cube-light, but I
could see it now.
The wasp didn't hurl Darnel out. It simply vanished with him through
the quartz port, its wings dwindling to a luminous blur which hovered
for an instant before the inches-thick crystal before it dwindled into
nothingness.
The same instant a voice beside me moaned. "Richard, I can't move."
"Joan," I gasped. "Oh, my dearest--"
"Richard, I can't move. I'm in a sort of web, Richard. It's--it's like
a mist before my eyes."
I knew then that Joan was trussed up on her side, gazing through her
web directly at me. I was glad that she couldn't see the wasps.
"Joan."
"Yes, Richard."
"Did you just wake up?"
"Wake up? You mean I've been dreaming, Richard. Those wasps--"
"Darling, do you want it straight?"
"You don't need to ask that, Richard."
I told her then--everything I suspected, everything I _knew_. When I
stopped speaking, she was silent for ten full seconds. Then her voice
came to me vibrant with courage.
"We can't live forever, Richard."
"That's what I've been thinking, darling. And you've got to admit
we've had the best of everything."
"Some people I know would call it living," she said.
"Darling?"
"Yes, Richard."
"I've a confession to make. I've liked being out in space with you.
I've liked the uncertainty, the danger--the desperate chances we both
took with our lives."
"I'm glad, Richard."
"I don't glow outwardly--you know that. You've had a lot to contend
with. I've reproached you, and tried to put a damper on your
enthusiasm, and--"
"You've been a wonderful husband, Richard."
"But as a lover--"
"Richard, do you remember what you said to me when we were roaring
through the red skies above Io? You held my fingers so tightly I was
afraid you'd break them, and your kisses were as fiery as a girl could
ask for. And you said I reminded you of someone you'd always loved, and
that was why you'd married me.
"And when I scowled and asked her name you said she had no name and had
never existed on Earth. But that I had her eyes and hair and thoughts,
and was just as slim, and that when I walked I reminded you of her, and
even when I just sat on the pilot dais staring out into space.
"I knew then that you had always been in love with love, and that means
everything to a woman."
"I didn't do so badly then?"
"Richard, you've never done badly at any time. Do you think I could
love a man who was all flattery and blather?"
"I've always loved you, Joan."
"I know, Richard my darling."
"If only it didn't have to end."
"It will be over swiftly, dearest. They'll take us out into the mist
and into one of their nests, but we'll be beyond pain ten seconds after
the atmosphere enters our lungs. Darnel and Dawson are at peace now."
"But we could have gone on, and--" I broke off in stunned bewilderment.
The vibrating wings of the wasps beneath me seemed to be casting less
massive shadows on the walls of the pilot chamber. The wasps themselves
seemed to be--
My heart gave a sudden, violent leap. For perhaps ten seconds utter
incredulity enveloped me. Unmistakably the wasps had grown smaller,
dimmer.
Even as I stared they continued to dwindle, shedding their awesome
contours and becoming no larger than ourselves.
"Good God!" I exclaimed.
"Richard, what is it?"
"The wasps, Joan. They're getting smaller!"
"Richard, you're either stark, raving mad, or your vision is swimming
from the strain of watching them."
"No, Joan. I'm quite sane, and my eyes are all right. I tell you,
they're shrinking."
"Richard, how _could_ they shrink?"
"I--I don't know. Perhaps--wait a minute, Joan. _Eddington's
oscillations._"
"Eddington's _what_?"
"Oscillations," I exclaimed, excitedly. "A century ago Eddington
pictured all matter throughout the universe as alternating between a
state of contraction and expansion. Oh, Joan, don't you see? These
creatures are composed not of solid matter, but of some form of
vibrating energy. They possess an oscillatory life cycle which makes
them contract and expand in small-scale duplication of the larger pulse
of our contracting and expanding universe. They become huge, then
small, then huge again. They may expand and contract a thousand times
before they die. Perhaps they--"
A scream from Joan cut my explanation short. "Richard, the web's
slackening. I'm going to fall."
Fifteen minutes later we were rocketing upward through Jupiter's
immense cloud blanket, locked in each other's arms.
Joan was sobbing. "It's unbelievable, Richard. We were saved by--by a
miracle."
"No, Joan--Eddington's oscillations. Although I'll admit it seemed like
a miracle when those tiny wasps became frightened by enormous _us_
descending upon them, and flew straight through the quartz port into
the mist."
"What do you suppose made the web slacken?"
"Well," I said. "That web was spun out of the bodies of those dwindling
wasps. It seems to have been a sort of energy web, since it shriveled
to a few charred fibers before we could pluck it from our tunics.
Apparently it was sustained by energies emanating from the wasps which
burned out the instant the wasps dwindled."
"Richard, hold me close. I thought we would never see Earth again."
"I'm not sure that we will," I warned her. "We've lost our crew and we
can't even set our course by the stars. Perhaps the direction gauges
will function again when the atomotors carry us beyond Jupiter's orbit,
but I wouldn't bank on it."
"Oh, Richard, how could you? You said you liked uncertainty, danger.
You said--"
"Never mind what I said. I'm just being realistic, that's all. Do you
realize how heavily the cards are stacked against us?"
"No, and I don't particularly care. Kiss me, Richard."
Grumblingly I obeyed. It would have been better if we could have saved
our energies for the grim ordeal ahead of us, but it was impossible to
reason with Joan when she was in one of her reckless moods.
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