Machine Monsters of Morad

James Abraham Carter

Chase Hawk’s one-man exploration ship, the Seeker, tumbled out of hyperspace, sparks furiously leaping from its damaged drive unit. The crippled craft rushed toward an unknown crimson world, the young pilot bravely fighting with all his skill to stabilize the crazily spinning ship; but despite his valiant efforts, it was hopeless. The vessel’s systems had been badly damaged by the cosmic energy storm, and the doomed craft was beyond control. His routine survey mission to Tappas IV had just become a bleak nightmare.

The heavy sweat of fear was upon Chase’s brow as the wildly tumbling ship plunged, screaming through the planet’s atmosphere. With a final oath, the young man slammed the eject button, and controlled explosions blasted the escape module clear of the stricken craft. Repulsion fields blazed strongly, slowing the pod; then parachutes ballooned, and the module drifted down to the surface of the unknown planet. Chase looked out of the pod’s small window. The scene below swelled, and its features clarified into a sprawling continent surrounded by a vivid blue ocean into which the remnants of his craft had crashed. Grotesque, carmine trees forested the land, and although there was some terrestrial green, red predominated and gave the alien world its distinctive crimson hue. As the escape pod descended further, a strange, unearthly city, irregular in plan with its major buildings resembling stepped pyramids constructed of outlandish violet masonry, came into view.

Chase gazed at it in wonder, his mind full of speculations. Who had built the amazing, ancient metropolis? Were the beings men or monsters? The module thudded against stone, its shock absorbers cushioning the impact. Chase, sidearm at his hip, stepped out warily and found himself in the middle of a trapezoidal plaza thronged with a huge crowd of alien humanoids. The escape pod had landed on top of a large square stone platform in the middle of the city’s public square, and as he looked cautiously around, he saw a man and a young woman standing on the far side of the podium. They could have passed for humans, except their skin was dark purple in color and their hair was glossy black. Both were dressed in the unisex apparel of their culture - a single, kilt-like garment that left their torsos bare. The woman, like the crowd, was awestruck by Chase’s astonishing and unexpected arrival. She turned to the throng, dramatically pointing at the Earthman, and shouted, “Kamsai.”

The crowd fell to their knees, hands raised, and the plaza was suddenly filled with the roar of their voices as they repeated the woman’s exultant cry. The man standing next to the woman gripped her arm, his vulpine face scowling as he said something to her in harsh tones. Chase had taken an instant dislike to the arrogent looking fellow the moment he had laid eyes on him, and now his temper flared when he saw the frightened look in the woman’s large, expressive eyes. The Earthman quickly crossed the distance separating them, his sense of chivalry preventing him from being a passive bystander.

“Let go of her,” he said firmly, a dangerous look in his eye.

The brute, not at all awed by the Earthman, turned toward him with a contemptuous sneer and grasped the long dagger at his hip. Chase didn’t wait. He struck. The blow, lightning-fast and powerful, knocked the fellow onto the platform before he could even draw his blade. The Earthman, satisfied that this threat, at least, had passed, turned from his unconscious antagonist to the girl, possibly no more than 18 by human standards. She gazed at him, wide-eyed with wonder; then she composed herself and quickly knelt beside the fallen man, a worried look on her face as she examined him.

Satisfied that he was not badly injured, she stood and summoned two warriors from among the squad of guards surrounding the platform. Chase tensed, his hand automatically grasping his sidearm, expecting the worst as he warily watched the men ascend the podium’s broad stairway. But his cause for alarm proved unfounded, and he relaxed a little as the guards gently picked up the injured man and carefully carried him away. The girl then turned to Chase and beckoned. The Earthman followed her, hesitantly descending the platform and wondering what he had gotten himself into. He had impulsively come to the aid of the girl, but had his actions tossed him from the frying pan into the fire? Girding his courage, he suspected he’d soon find out.

The people prostrated themselves fully as he and his companion threaded their way between them as they walked toward the largest of the stepped pyramidal buildings. His guide touched her bare breast. “Ulia,” she said, then pointed at him questioningly.

“Chase,” he replied, and thus his lessons in Iano, the name of the language and the city, the sole surviving metropolis on this world called Morad, commenced.

**********

Two months had gone by. Chase watched the gathering of the purple twilight that cloaked the hills surrounding Iano with mauve shadows. He was standing in the large garden of crimson plants on the topmost terrace of the central stepped pyramid that was the residence of the kamsai, or ruler of the city of Iano. After hard and relentless study, the young man was now fluent in the language of these people and understood the fantastic situation that the vagaries of fate had thrust upon him.

The man on the platform that he had struck unconscious was Naxon, the son of Jarin, the recently deceased Kamsai of Iano. But for Chase’s amazing arrival, which had been considered by Ulia, Naxon’s sister, to be a sign of divine will, Naxon would have been the ruler and not the Earthman. Chase doubted that Ulia considered him sent by the gods. From what he understood, Naxon and Ulia were to be wed, thus legitimizing her brother’s rule. But if he had read the situation correctly, brother and sister didn’t get along. Ulia had no desire to abide by custom and commit herself to an incestuous relationship with a man she didn’t like, and was using his arrival, which had disrupted the announcement of the royal nuptials, as a pretext to avoid wedlock.

The sound of Ulia’s voice interrupted Chase’s musings. “The others have arrived,” she announced. “We can begin planning for our wedding ceremony. Now that you are fluent in our language, you will be able to make your vows before the Idol of Vena, goddess of love and marriage.”

He turned and saw her standing in the doorway that provided access to the terrace. She was an attractive lass with a good figure and a pleasant personality. He liked Ulia, but he wasn’t in love with her. Chase felt trapped. If he were to survive, it appeared he had no choice but to abide by the customs of these people, whom he could ill afford to offend. Earth was lost to him. There was no other city on the planet; there was nowhere else for him to go. With a sigh of resignation, he followed her into the room, consoling himself with the knowledge that a far worse fate could have easily befallen him.

A circular table stood in the middle of the sparse chamber. Naxon was seated and met Chase’s gaze with a bland expression. There had been no further violence from the noble. He was polite to the Earthman in a very formal way, hiding his feelings behind a neutral facade. Chase couldn’t read the man, and this made him even more suspicious of the fellow. He felt that Naxon wasn’t the type to give up the throne quietly. He was up to something, but what? The Earthman’s eyes shifted to Modan, commander of the palace guard who was also responsible for royal security, and then to Laxor, chief advisor to the deceased Kamsi.

But before Chase could take his seat, the strident blare of alarm horns interrupted the proceedings, causing the occupants of the room to rush out onto the terrace to ascertain the cause of the disturbance. Chase looked up and gasped. Two ovoid aircraft of strange design were rushing toward the terrace where they stood, their sleek green airframes glowing with a scintillating, levitating force.

"By the gods,” gasped Modan in disbelief. “The Machine Monsters should not be able to get this close to our city. Our repulsion rays should have stopped them.”

Laxor looked up at the apex of the pyramid. “The emitter crystal is dark,” he cried in consternation as he pointed at a gem-like device. “Someone has sabotaged the mechanism, thus creating a breach in our defenses. Quick, everyone inside.”

Chase, who wore his sidearm at all times, wasn’t one to flee in the face of danger. He drew his weapon and aimed at the leading vessel. He squeezed the trigger, and a blazing crimson ray erupted from the muzzle of the blast-pistol. The raging beam struck the ship. Sparks fountained as the alloy was instantly vaporized. The ship dropped, lost speed, but its momentum carried it forward, and it crashed onto the large terrace garden with a mighty bang, smoke coiling from the hole the Earthman’s ray had drilled in its fuselage.

A hatch in the vessel was flung open, and three man-like robots staggered from the stricken craft, their electronic brains disarranged by the impact. Chase aimed his weapon at the clanking metal monsters, but before he could fire again, a scream rang out. He turned and swore in rage and disbelief. Naxon had grabbed Ulia. Her single garment had been torn away in the brief but violent struggle, and now he held a gleaming dagger to his naked sister’s throat.

“Drop your weapon,” Naxon growled, “or she dies.”

Chase could see the fiend was serious. He cast aside his blast-pistol as Naxon dragged the frightened girl toward the second vessel that now hovered near the terrace’s balustrade. ‘What the hell are you doing?” The outraged Earthman cried hotly.

“I’ve made an alliance with the machine monsters,” Naxon grinned. “They have promised me I’ll be Kamsi when they conquer Iano - a reward for the information I’ll give them that will enable them to neutralize the all the city’s defenses.”

“You base traitor,” yelled Mordan, his face a study in fury. “How can you betray your sister, your people?”

Naxon merely laughed as he dragged Ulia up the ramp and into the Machine Monster’s hovering ship. Ulia stretched out her hands to Chase in a silent, terrified plea. The helpless Earthman gritted his teeth. He knew that if he so much as moved an inch, Naxon would ruthlessly kill the girl.

Naxon read his expression and laughed harshly. He shouted a command to the robots of the downed ship, who had now recovered from the impact of the crash. “Kill them,” he stridently cried.

The door of the ship the traitor had boarded slammed shut. It lifted and sped away as the robots from the other craft rushed toward the shocked trio. Chase dived for his blast-pistol as the clanking machines came upon them. The Earthman rolled aside, barely avoiding the foremost robot’s hissing beam that lanced from its finger and would have blasted his skull into a gory ruin had it struck. Chase swiftly fired, and the hulking machine came crashing down. Two more shots followed in quick succession, and the remaining attackers toppled to the flagstones, sparks erupting from the holes his ray had made.

Chase climbed to his feet, and his companions gathered around him, their faces a mix of rage and high anxiety, as was his. “What the hell were those things?” He asked, “Where have they taken Ulia?”

“The mechanical monsters are the creations of the Ancients,” explained Laxor. “Originally, they were constructed as servants. But our ancestors made them too intelligent, and they rebelled. There was a mighty war between men and machines, a war that destroyed the old civilization. Our city was founded by the few survivors of that terrible conflict. We still have some technology from those ancient days, such as the repulsion mechanisms, of which there is one at the apex of every building in the city.

“The metal monsters inhabit a floating citadel, and this is where the traitor no doubt has fled, for by his own admission, he has allied himself with them. Unfortunately, we do not have flying machines, and so we cannot breach their stronghold. I greatly fear Ulia and the rest of us are doomed to become slaves to these inhuman monsters, who have never relinquished their desire to subjugate us.”

“Not if I can help it,” replied Chase, resolutely. “If I can repair that crashed ship of theirs, we have a chance. Come on,” he said as he ran toward the downed aircraft.

The others boarded the machine, and Chase, with his greater technical knowledge and experience, soon ascertained the extent of the damage, which was not as bad as it had initially appeared. The Earthman’s ray had severed an electrical conduit, and this loss of power had brought the ship down. Under Chase's expert guidance, the damaged cable was soon repaired. The vessel’s hull was badly dented in places, but the essential mechanisms still operated, and within an hour, the battered craft was under way with Chase as pilot and Mordan as his guide.

Both men knew there wasn’t much time to act. Once Naxon revealed the method of neutralizing the repulsive rays that kept the mechanical monsters from overrunning Iano, the clanking fiends would launch their attack, and with only swords and bows as weapons, the city’s defenders, brave though they were, would easily be defeated.

A little over an hour later, the floating citadel of their enemies came in sight. The metallic stronghold glittered in the light of Zaris and Innu, Morad’s twin moons, as it drifted lightly like a cloud in the sky above the crimson wilderness. It was a hemisphere, about half a mile in diameter, flat side facing up, with three towers soaring from its center, each slightly taller than the other and fused in a trifoil arrangement.

Chase turned to Mordan, his expression grim. “Where would they be holding Ulia,” he asked.

“If our sketchy records are accurate,” replied the warrior uncertainly, “then probably in the most important place, which is the uppermost floor of the tallest of the towers.”

“Well, you had better pray to all your gods that they’re right,” said Chase as he steered their vessel toward the highest one. “Because we only get one chance at this.”

The tallest of the towers swiftly loomed. Chase concentrated, his face set in lines of focus. Huge, round windows encircled the apex of the structure. He steered the ship closer, slowed the hurtling craft, and peered within the building.

An oath exploded from his throat. As Chase sped past a window, he glimpsed a female figure strapped to a device that was being operated by robots. It could only be Ulia, the girl about to become the victim of torture or some vile experiment.

The grim-faced Earthman swiftly turned the craft around. The huge circular window was his target; the ship - his battering ram. Too hard an impact would destroy the craft; too soft, and the thick pane would fail to shatter. He had to judge and time things right. Chase, tense and alert, slammed the deceleration lever. The vessel slowed sharply and struck the window. Crystal shattered, and the entire vessel penetrated the vast chamber at the tower’s apex.

Both men burst from the ovoid ship. Rays shot past them in narrow misses. Chase fired his blast-pistol, quicker and more accurately than his clanking foes. Sparking robots crashed thunderously to the floor as he sprinted toward Ulia. Naxon, a heartless witness to his sister’s torment, saw him. The traitor cursed and fled. Chase fired at the villain, but the wily blackguard moved in an erratic run, and the Earthman’s stabbing ray merely grazed him.

Chase cursed. He refocused on Ulia. She had been strapped to a torture device. Her legs and arms had been spread wide and a purple ray bathed her entire body in an agonizing light that caused the helpless, sobbing girl to writhe in agony as she desperatly tried to free herself from the hideous torment.

The furious Earthman drew his dagger and quickly slashed her bonds as a horde of robots, alerted by the fray, clanked swiftly up a spiral staircase toward the apex of the tower.

“More metal monsters are coming. We must flee immediately,” warned Mordan as Chase lifted the fainting girl onto his shoulder in a fireman’s carry, gritting his teeth against the agony of the ray that touched him as he freed her.

The Earthman nodded, his eyes shifting to the huge mechanism that dominated the vast chamber. It looked important. He raised his blast-pistol and fired. The ray struck the device. Sparks erupted, then bolts of lightning began to leap from the mechanism’s interlocking spheres in wild, erratic discharges. The citadel of the mechanical monsters tilted alarmingly and began to sink groundward. Chase, the girl, and Mordan tumbled and slid in the direction of the ship.

Chase paled. Their craft, the only possible means of escape, was slipping out of the shattered window and, in just moments, would fall beyond any hope of reaching. The frantic Earthman struggled up with the unconscious girl in his arms, fighting for balance on the crazily tilting floor. He staggered wildly for the sliding ship, Mordan stumbling by his side.

They barely gained the craft and tumbled through its open hatch. Chase passed the unconscious girl to Mordan and raced madly for the controls. As he hit the power button, he saw Naxon, eyes wide with terror and face pale with fear, racing to the lifting ship. “Save me,” the traitor cried shrilly. “Don’t leave me.”

Chase contemptuously ignored him and swiftly threw the craft into reverse. The ship pulled free of the stricken citadel. He saw Naxon teeter at the window’s edge, a look of unadulterated horror on his face. Then the citadel’s levitation mechanism completely failed. Naxon shrieked. The fortress plunged like a granite boulder. It turned completely over and struck the ground a thousand feet below. There was a tremendous explosion that engulfed the entire structure in a vast fireball, and thus the menace of the machine monsters was forever ended.

**********

Several days had passed. Chase sat next to Ulia on a stone bench in the terrace garden. The minor damage that the crashed ship had caused had been repaired. Now, only memory told of the violent events. The Earthman looked at Ulia. She had largely recovered from the ordeal physically, but her brother’s betrayal was still an open wound. The machine monsters had tortured her at his behest in an attempt to force her to reveal knowledge he did not possess. His callous cruelty would not be something she could easily forget.

Ulia brought herself to the present as she felt Chase's eyes on her. “The last time we stood here, we were in the process of planning the royal wedding. I admit I used you to avoid having to marry my brother, and I’m sorry for that. But although the menace is over, I still want to proceed with our nuptials, if you desire me,” she added, unable to meet his gaze.

Chase smiled. “I liked you from the start, and I don’t blame you for what you did. No woman should be forced by custom or any other means to marry her brother. But when you were taken from me, and when I saw you being cruelly tortured by those horrid machines, such were my feelings that I realized that “like” had turned into “love.” I would be honored if you consented to be my wife.”

Ulia gave him a radiant smile. The couple embraced, and their passionate kiss was a seal of approval for a new and wondrous beginning.

The End