The Death Star ebook

Contents

CHAPTER I. THE NEW SUN

CHAPTER II. DOOM!

CHAPTER III. NEWS FROM THE HELPERS

CHAPTER IV. THE FIRST BRUSH WITH THE BLACK SHIP

CHAPTER V. THE POISONED CREW

CHAPTER VI. TREACHERY

CHAPTER VII. SNOW

CHAPTER VIII. THE BELL RINGS

CHAPTER IX. BATTLE IN THE HEIGHTS

CHAPTER X. BLIZZARD

CHAPTER XI. LIMPING HOME

CHAPTER XII. THE GREAT RESOLVE

CHAPTER XIII. THE STRANGE PLANE

CHAPTER XIV. NEWS FROM NEW ZEALAND

CHAPTER XV. FIRST BLOOD

CHAPTER XVI. THE SECOND BLOW

CHAPTER XVII. "WE ARE WAITING NOW FOR GRYDE TO TALK TERMS"

CHAPTER XVIII. DEX WAS RIGHT

CHAPTER XIX. THE TRIUMPH OF GRYDE

CHAPTER XX. THE SECOND CHANCE

CHAPTER XXI. THE ATTACK ON THE ARMOURY

CHAPTER XXII. THE MAN FROM K.I

CHAPTER XXIII. THE GREAT CAVE

CHAPTER XXIV. THE TREASURE HOUSE

CHAPTER XXV. BAD BUSINESS

CHAPTER XXVI. UNDER FIRE

CHAPTER XXVII. MASS ATTACK

CHAPTER I. THE NEW SUN

WITH a faint whine from her compact little radium engine the helicopter shot almost straight up into the vast mass of brutally black cloud which overhung London. It was the third hour of the great darkness, and the city, with its tremendous towers of glassite gleaming with multi-coloured lights, vanished almost instantly in the smother.

Frank Lynd, tall, slim, grey-eyed, looking younger than his eighteen years, sat at the control board and watched the altimeter. Ten–fifteen–twenty thousand feet were passed, and still the little ship ploughed upwards through a darkness like the plague of Egypt. He glanced at the thermometer, then stared at it: by all laws it ought to be registering at a temperature many degrees below zero, yet the mercury stood at sixty above.

“What’s it mean?” he asked of his companion in a strained voice. Dex Halstow, Frank’s companion and best friend, was stocky, dark-haired, had high cheekbones, and eyes of a peculiar hazel green. He frowned.

“What’s the use of asking me? Something wrong with the works. I’d say it was the end of all things. Must be pretty bad, or Sir Daniel wouldn’t have been so urgent.”

“How the mischief can we find him in this?” asked Frank. His pleasant face looked pinched, and his grey eyes were full of trouble. Dex shrugged.

“What’s the use of worrying?” he growled. “We’ve got to die some time.” Frank’s face relaxed. He laughed–this was so like Dex.

“I don’t want to die yet,” he retorted; “and you don’t either. I believe it’s getting a bit lighter.” He peered upwards. Sure enough, the awful blackness was not quite so black. A sullen red glow began to break through it.

“The sun!” Frank cried.

“About time, too!” grumbled Dex. “Keep her to it.” But the little helicopter, built only for travel in the lower atmosphere, was very near her ceiling. The air at this great height was almost too thin to hold her spinning vanes. In the blackness and confusion which reigned below there had been no time or opportunity to get one of the stratosphere flyers which were used for all long-distance journeys. The needle of the altimeter wavered at twenty-three thousand. The temperature had dropped a little, but was still extraordinarily high.

“Drive her west,” Dex suggested. “It may not be so thick over the sea.”

“That’s no good,” Frank told him; “we shall miss Sir Daniel. He said he’d meet us over London. I’m going to give her all she’ll take. It’s a bit risky, but better than going down into that black pit again.” As he spoke his long slim fingers were busy with the controls. The faint whine of the engine grew to a thin shriek. The vanes were spinning at almost incredible speed, and the brave little machine began to rise again. The black mirk turned to grey, the red glow grew stronger.

“Now perhaps we’ll see something,” said Frank. Dex was staring upwards.

“You’ll see something, all right!” he said grimly. “We’ve got a new sun.” As he spoke the helicopter broke out through the upper level of the vast canopy which covered the planet into the cloudless blue of the upper atmosphere, and such a blast of heat and light struck upon her as dazzled and almost blinded her crew. There was the sun, a little past the zenith, but, as Dex had said, there was also a second sun flaming in the north-west. It was smaller than the real sun, but it was burning with terrific heat and trailing behind it a blazing, comet-like tail.

“A new star!” gasped Frank. “And–and look at the way it’s moving. You were right, Dex. This is the end of all things.”

“Not of us,” snapped Dex. For once the two young men seemed to have changed characters, and it was Dex who refused to be discouraged. “Can’t you trust Sir Daniel?”

“I’d trust him above any man,” Frank said; “but even he can’t stop that star from burning up the Earth.”

“Then he’ll probably take us to the moon,” Dex answered coolly. As he spoke there was a sound like a chiming clock striking, a musical rhythm of three notes. It came from a small box of silvery metal next the instrument board. “There he is, calling,” Dex added sharply as he switched on a loud speaker.

“Well done!” came a deep voice. “I am above you, but coming down. I shall drop beneath you and remain poised. You can settle on top of my ship and enter by the air lock. Be quick–every minute counts.” The last word had hardly died away before a great dark object dropped like a thunderbolt out of the glare above. It passed the helicopter at a distance of less than a quarter of a mile, stopped, steadied, and moved swiftly towards the little machine.

It was so swiftly done that all that Frank and Dex could see was that she was a dirigible built of metal of a glowing purple hue, and that she was evidently under perfect control. Next instant she was poised, steady as a rock, immediately beneath the helicopter. Frank lowered his little machine carefully until it came to rest on the curved top of the dirigible. With a click a door shot open and a head showed in the opening.

“Quick, you chaps,” came the same deep voice as had spoken through the telephone.

Frank and Dex needed no urging; they had not even time to marvel at the amazing phenomenon of a huge mass of metal remaining suspended, motionless, in mid-air. Certainly this ship had no fans or vanes to hold her. She had not even a propeller. The two dropped swiftly through the open trap, and the door instantly closed behind them.

“But our ‘copter–can’t we make her fast?” Frank asked. The big man beside him shook his head.

“No time. Every minute counts.”

“But she may fall on London–she may kill some one!”

The big man shrugged.

“It makes no difference. They will all be dead within a few hours.” The words sent a thrill of horror through Frank, but the other was quickly opening the inner door of the air lock, and the three stepped on to a stairway leading down to the centre of the great hull. A moment or two later they entered a large cabin lit by a soft wireless light. The air, though warm, was deliciously cool compared with the blinding blaze outside.

Their conductor motioned them to two chairs, and spoke through a phone standing on a metal table. Instantly the great ship was under way again, and, by the pressure which forced him back against the pneumatic cushions of his chair, Frank realised that the speed was far beyond anything that he had yet experienced.

“You’ll have to sit still for a bit,” said Sir Daniel Counsellor. “As I told you, every minute counts. The star is travelling faster than I imagined. If we are not under cover in something less than an hour we shall share the fate of the rest of mankind.”

Frank stared at the speaker. He knew him well enough, for Sir Daniel was his dead father’s cousin and had acted as his guardian for the past five years. He had always been extremely kind, and it was to him that Frank and his friend Dex Halstow both owed their technical training. Sir Daniel was nearly sixty, but looked no more than forty-five. He was a magnificent man, with a great leonine head, an immensely deep chest, and possessed of vast physical strength and endurance. His brain matched his body. For years past he had been looked upon by the Inner Circle, the world’s master scientists, as the greatest of them all. Yet he himself had never been a member of that all-powerful body, but had preferred to devote his life to private research in his great laboratory in the northern mountains. This spot he had chosen by reason of its freedom from earthquakes.

“You’re thinking I left it to the last minute, Frank,” Sir Daniel went on. “That is not my fault–the ship was only completed this morning. This is her first trip.

“Her first trip!” Frank exclaimed in amazement. “And you risked coming after us like this?”

“I needed you, Frank–you and Dex both. I only wish I had time to collect a few more of the younger generation, but this terrible thing has come upon us so suddenly.”

“What is it, sir,” Dex asked: “a comet?”

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