Lunar Vengeance: A Collection of Science Fiction Stories Read online

  LUNAR VENGEANCE

  John Russell Fearn

  © John Russell Fearn 1942, 1943, 1946, 1947, 1954.

  © Philip Harbottle 2017

  John Russell Fearn has asserted his rights under the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.

  This edition published in 2017 By Venture Press, an imprint of Endeavour Press Ltd.

  Table of Contents

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  INTRODUCTION

  Philip Harbottle

  LUNAR VENGEANCE

  CHAPTER I - Disastrous Flight

  CHAPTER II - Sahara Secret

  CHAPTER III - Desperate Journey

  CHAPTER IV - The Final Gamble

  DEADLINE IN SPACE

  THE ARBITER

  THE MENTAL GANGSTER

  MARCH OF THE ROBOTS

  SOLAR ASSIGNMENT

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  These stories were previously published as follows, and are reprinted by permission of the author’s estate and his agent, Cosmos Literary Agency.

  “Lunar Vengeance” was first published in Amazing Stories, September 1943, copyright © 1943 by John Russell Fearn; copyright © 2017 by Philip Harbottle.

  “Deadline in Space” was first published as “Reverse Action” in Vargo Statten SF Magazine # 4, 1954, copyright 1954 by John Russell Fearn; copyright © 2017 by Philip Harbottle.

  “The Arbiter” was first published in Startling Stories, May 1947, copyright © 1947 by John Russell; copyright © 2003 by Philip Harbottle.

  “The Mental Gangster” was first published in Fantastic Adventures, August 1942; copyright © 1942 John Russell Fearn; copyright © 2017 Philip Harbottle.

  “March of the Robots” was first published in Vargo Statten SF Magazine # 1, 1954, copyright © 1954 by John Russell Fearn; copyright © 2017 by Philip Harbottle.

  “Solar Assignment” was first published in New Worlds # 1, 1946, copyright © 1946 by John Russell Fearn; copyright © 2017 by Philip Harbottle.

  INTRODUCTION

  Philip Harbottle

  John Russell Fearn (1908-1960) was an English author who began his career as a science fiction writer in the American pulp magazines in 1933, when his first novel The Intelligence Gigantic was serialised in AMAZING STORIES. The following year he sold a short story “The Man Who Stopped the Dust” to ASTOUNDING STORIES, the first of many outstanding ‘thought variants’ he was to contribute to the magazine over the next several years.

  Over the next 15 years, Fearn published some 120 magazine stories in all of the leading pulp magazines under his own name and numerous pseudonyms, creating a variety of plot-forms under different styles that ranged from universe-destroying thought variants to the intensely human story. His most popular pen names were Thornton Ayre and Polton Cross. As Ayre he introduced detective story techniques to science fiction and also created the first female super-heroine, Violet Ray (the ‘Golden Amazon’) with four stories in FANTASTIC ADVENTURES (19439-43).

  Post-war, using numerous pseudonyms, Fearn increasingly began to write novels for UK book publication, mainly science fiction, but he had equal success with westerns, detective thrillers and romances. When he died of a sudden heart attack, aged only 52, he had published over 150 books, most of them over a ten year period.

  His grief-stricken widow fell seriously ill herself, and was unable to promote his work, or answer publishers’ letters. His work quickly fell out of print, and since much of it was under pseudonyms that were not generally known to be his, Fearn was in danger of becoming completely forgotten.

  His reputation was only revived by the publication in 1968 of the present writer’s biography of Fearn, The Multi-Man, which included a detailed bibliography and revealed dozens of pseudonyms for the first time, and in 1970 his widow asked me to take over his representation.

  Over the next 45 years, publishers on both sides of the Atlantic publishers began an extensive ongoing reprinting of his novels in all of the genres in which he had worked—this time under his own name.

  They are now joined by Venture Press, who are issuing new collections of his best early science fiction pulp stories, beginning with The Best of John Russell Fearn in two volumes.

  In recent years several posthumous Fearn collections have appeared, but there yet remains a large number of Fearn’s early science fiction stories that have not so far been reprinted simply because they are now known to be ‘scientifically impossible’ in that they feature Martians and the like, and as such have become fantasy. What was still possible to speculative writers in the past is no longer believable today.

  But should such entertaining stories be allowed to slip into oblivion and be entirely forgotten? Cannot such stories, with due allowances made for the time when they were written, still entertain and amuse modern readers willing to suspend their disbelief and simply enjoy these stories in their historical context?

  Gathered together for the first time in Lunar Vengeance are three vintage Fearn novelettes and three short stories.

  I hope you will agree that they still have the power to astonish and entertain!

  LUNAR VENGEANCE

  CHAPTER I

  Disastrous Flight

  New York Airport Number 1 was filled to capacity. Cars were jammed in the tens of thousands side by side; men, women and children were sitting or standing on their roofs. Some had field glasses, others had resorted to twenty-cent spy glasses. There were television cameras by the dozen, radio commentators and newsreel men.

  New York had gone mad. The most thrilling of days had arrived. The first flight to the moon was about to begin! In the centre of this cyclone of surging humanity, in an area kept clear by the struggles of police officers and militia, stood the rocket ship—devised and invented by Hartley Dean. Right now he stood shaking hands with Brice Mynak, the toughest stratosphere aviator the World State Air Force had yet produced, indeed about the only man deemed fit enough by medical science to make this daring leap into infinity.

  Hartley Dean was massive, big shouldered, strong-faced, with a wide intelligent forehead and deep grey eyes. He was definitely one of the finest astrophysicists science had yet produced…Brice Mynak on the other hand was smallish, olive-skinned, with a hint of his revered Egyptian heritage about his features.

  “Good luck!” Hart breathed, gripping the slender, steel-strong hand. “You’re probably the pioneer of a space empire, and don’t go forgetting it! Everybody, the world over, is expecting big things.”

  “I know,” Brice Mynak said simply. “And they’ll get them!” he added—then he climbed through the airlock and closed it.

  There was a long, tense pause. Civic authorities, engineers, the mass of the people, Hartley Dean in particular—they all waited. Beside Hart, Beryl Mason was standing tensely, her dark eyes fixed on the machine. Further away still was her father, biting his lip steadily.

  “We’ve waited a long time for this, Hart,” the girl whispered.

  “Yes.” His mind flashed back over the years he had spent with the girl and her father working out the intricacies of space travel in the great Mason Aircraft Corporation laboratories. And now—

  Suddenly the rocket ship moved. There was a flash of flame from the gleaming exhaust tubes, a backdraft of scorching air that sent the people pressing backwards with arms flung over their faces. Hart and the girl turned away quickly…

  Then with cyclonic force the machine swept from level keel over the heads of the people, over the giant buildings, roared with a meteoric scream into the calm morning sky—turned—went upwards— Higher— higher, watc
hed now by millions of eager eyes. It became a speck, left a trail of condensation…and was gone!

  Din exploded everywhere. Sirens blew, people yelled, automobile horns shrieked. Babel rolled back and forth and rebounded in the crowd. Hart stood grinning and frowning by turns—triumphant as an engineer; anxious as a man.

  “He must make it, Berry,” he breathed, clutching the girl to him. “He must! It’s man’s greatest progressive leap ever!”

  *

  Six hours later came the stunning news. It jolted the world from equator to arctic, suddenly rendered needless the observation of the rocket by trained armies of astronomers. Those other armies, the radio technicians in touch with Brice Mynak, realized before anybody how hopes had been smashed. They were the first to get Mynak’s single message—a forlorn, desperate cry—

  “I can’t stand it! It’s breaking me! I can’t—!”

  That was all! But observers in the moonward hemisphere reported that a meteor had been seen. Falling to earth. Location? Unknown as yet…

  In the big central-operations office of the Mason Corporation, Hart was grey with worry, Beryl and her father at his side just as anxious as he was. Their attention was glued to the world reports being flashed to them…And so at last their worst fears were confirmed.

  The rocket ship had crashed! Had come down in a blaze of unholy glory somewhere in the Sahara desert, probably near the ruins of the half excavated city of Tri-Konam. Already the emergency squads were flying to the scene of the disaster.

  “My God!” Hart whispered, staring in stunned horror In front of him. “My God—it failed!”

  “But how the devil could it?” Mason demanded. He was a realist, mature, and a keen business man. “We’ve checked everything—gravity strain, accelerative fields, radiation— And there was plenty of fuel!” He frowned in puzzlement. “I didn’t get what Brice meant by that one radio message. What was breaking him, anyway—?”

  Hart jerked out of his trance and cut the older man short.

  “What the blazes are we doing standing here, anyway? We’ve got to get out to that fallen ship as fast as we can. Come on!”

  An express airplane was ready for the three of them in a few minutes. With Hart at the controls it streaked like lightning from the city, maintained its stratosphere height and eight-hundred mile an hour speed for the whole eastward journey.

  Beryl kept a check on the radio so they could make their course. Gradually they turned toward Egypt. Here it was late afternoon. Desert, the eternal Sahara, spread below them, its surface marred only by the Sphinx and Pyramids and the partly completed restoration of the recently discovered city of Tri-Konam.

  But the attention of the three was mainly focused upon a swarming mass of men and sand-tractors gathered around a still smoking object in the sand. Hart dropped the plane swiftly, put out the sand-skids, then taxied forward to the site of operations.

  Jumping out, he hurried over to Freeman, the chief engineer in charge of excavating Tri-Konam.

  “What happened?” Hart demanded.

  Freeman’s sun-dried face was grim. “Guess this is all that’s left of that rocket ship, Mr. Dean. It landed on its emergency underjets so it didn’t actually crash: this heat was generated in the atmosphere fall. We managed to get Brice Mynak out before he burned but— Well, he’s in a gosh-awful mess.”

  “Take me to him!” Hart’s voice was impatient with worry.

  The engineer led the way across the sand to where Brice Mynak lay under a sunshield, stretched out flat, badly blackened on the face and hands. Healing ointment gleamed on his skin. His breathing came and went in shallow gasps.

  “Take it easy,” said the medico in the sun-suit attending him. “He’s in mighty poor shape.”

  Hart nodded and took the aviator by the shoulder.

  “Brice, what happened? Tell me! Brice!”

  Brice opened his eyes at that and Hart felt a strong inclination to recoil. The look in those eyes was unnerving, horrible. It was the blank, ghastly stare of a man who has had reason blasted. Certainly there was no spark of recognition in the dead orbs.

  “No use, I’m afraid,” the medico sighed. “He’s insane. He says queer things at times —impossible things about chariots of fire. Delusions, obviously.”

  Hart looked at Beryl and her father sharply, then again tried with Brice.

  “Brice! It’s me, old man—Hart Dean. You know me? Your pal?”

  Brice tossed uneasily as though something had indeed stirred his outraged brain. Then he lay flat again and stared blindly up at the canvas sun-shield.

  “Chariots,” he whispered, through cracked lips. “Chariots of fire—in the sky—dropping to the city—! They’re falling!” He breathed rapidly. “Must load the towers!” he panted. “Must load them quickly…”

  He stopped suddenly to grip Hart’s wrist with a hot hand. The blank face turned to stare at him.

  “They must be loaded,” he whispered, almost inaudibly. “The square towers—” Then suddenly he shuddered, relaxed.

  Beryl turned away sharply from that sudden death, face averted. The medico pulled the dust sheet slowly over the stricken visage.

  “But—but what killed him?” Hart demanded, clenching his fists. “Surely you’ve some idea, doc?”

  He shrugged. “Might have been one of a number of things. Too rapid a speed in space; sudden clot on the brain causing insanity—. Poor devil! He died crazy all right…”

  Hart looked around on the wastes of sand; the ruins of the half excavated city. Thoughts were twisting in his keen mind—odd thoughts.

  “I suppose it was chance that he landed here,” he muttered. “The Earth would have rotated far enough from New York, his initial starting point, to cause it. Yet somehow, because he was of Egyptian descent…”

  “What the devil does that matter?” Mason asked bitterly. “The whole thing is a fizzle, and one of the best aviators in the world is dead. And I’m a cool two million out of pocket. I guess we’d better see what the ship will fetch as scrap.”

  The three of them turned to the site of operations again. With something of an effort, still dazed by the ruin of his plans, Hart made an examination—but not with the ruthless business eye of Mason. His aims were scientific, as usual.

  The curious thing was that there was nothing amiss with the ship, except its blackened exterior. The instruments were okay, the fuel ample. Nothing whatever should have stopped Brice Mynak going right ahead to the Moon. Yet, out in space, an unknown power had blasted every sane thought out of him.

  “Just what do we do?” Mason asked sharply, when the examination was over and they were having tea in the mobile canteen. “As a business man this is a serious matter for me. It throws my financial foresight into disrepute; and it clouds your profession, Hart, as a first class engineer.”

  “Those are side issues,” Hart grunted, staring moodily at the flaming sunset. “I’m trying to figure out Brice’s dying words — That stuff about loading square towers…”

  He broke off and Beryl and her father saw that he was looking at the ruins of Tri-Konam against the lurid sky, ruins quite close to the ageless Pyramids, ruins sprouting towers, minarets, and domes…

  “I suppose,” he finished slowly, “he couldn’t have meant those towers?”

  “Not very likely, is it?” Mason asked bluntly. “Doc Andrews, the archaeologist, says those are only some sort of ventilation shafts. Know better when the excavations are finished.”

  “Queer to have ventilation shafts to a city that once stood above ground,” Hart reflected, still gazing.

  To his imagination, as the night deepened, they looked—those towers—like four mammoth guns pointing skywards. But whoever heard of a gun being square? Besides, hadn’t the excavators discovered that each tower was set in a solid block of stone? Guns!

  Hart laughed ruefully, looked beyond the Pyramids to the eastern horizon. The moon, waning to her last quarter, was just poking into the darkened sky. Brice Mynak had of c
ourse taken off at full moon to secure full visibility.

  “Looks very inscrutable, sailing here, doesn’t it?” Beryl sighed, watching it with chin on hand. “Just as though it feels proud of having beaten us miserable little humans!”

  “But between us and it there is the unknown something which smashed Brice!” Hart’s jaws set tightly; then he clenched his big fists and looked towards the dim bulk of the battered spaceship. Fiercely he went on, “But Brice told us something—and if I spend the rest of my life on the job I’m going to find out what he meant! We’re going to build another space ship—or at least remodel this one—and I’m going to pilot it!”

  Mason and the girl stared at him in surprise.

  “But, Hart,” the girl said anxiously, “your medical report shows you are not capable of standing it! You’ve never been a stratosphere man and — ”

  “Be damned to that!” he interrupted brusquely. “My best friend is dead, and your father’s and my reputations are at stake. I’m going to alter all that! Tomorrow we start back for New York and begin all over again. No mystery in space is going to balk this effort to make the Moon the first stop in a regular space line.”

  CHAPTER II

  Sahara Secret

  Fired with new enthusiasm Hart cracked the whip to full effect in the Mason workshops and the salvaged space machine was brought back to its original glory—a job that took nearly two months of ceaseless work.

  In this time the unhappy death of Brice Mynak and the fiasco of the first lunar effort had died from public memory—and this time Hart killed all publicity about his intentions. He had gotten through the first debacle by the skin of his teeth: a second one might have grave commercial and professional repercussions.

  So when at last the machine was ready it was placed in the private testing yard of the Mason works. The day set for departure grew nearer: each night brought a waxing Moon in the early autumn sky. And with it Beryl Mason became increasingly anxious.