“. . needs no reworking at all,” muttered Jeff finally.
Lucille looked at Jeff once more. Again she shook her head. Horne was completely selfish and absolutely ruthless. He had the ability to talk a victim into bankruptcy and leave him firmly convinced that Horne was still a good friend. He was a first-class confidence man of about the same level of ethics and morals as a rattlesnake.
She was in a spot. Knowing Horne as she did, Lucille would have no compunction about clipping him over the head with the file she held in her small right hand and leaving him abandoned on a doomed earth as she and Jeff took off for a new future. Obviously Horne had no intention of following through with such a Noel Cowardish plan as having the three of them crossing the void to set up a new civilization on a distant planet.
It was, and she faced it squarely, merely a matter of whether she could murder Horne before Horne could murder Jeff.
But she could not call upon Jeff. He stood there lost in thought, twiddling his slide rule and making hentracks on a sheet of paper. It was time to forget the math he knew and apply the knowledge of human nature that was hers by heritage and experience.
Yet, if she tried to convince Jeff of Horne’s duplicity, he would probably take off on a long discussion of how the trip could be made. It would be her show to keep Horne from killing Jeff and to see that Jeff—not Horne—was the final male survivor of that interstellar trip.
For if she were to face a new future with either of them, it would be with Jeff Benson rather than with Charles Horne.
Horne said, “At one gravity constant acceleration it will take two hundred and sixty-odd days to reach a velocity of three-quarters the speed of light. We have power enough, perhaps, to go higher, but that will have to be computed by .Benson,
“There are planets around Procyon. We must trust Moranthem’s Hypothesis that most stars have planets and that most planetary families will run the same gamut of characteristics as the planets of Sol.”
Jeff looked up, still deep in thought. “It will do the job,” he said absently. “The big jet will do it as it is now.”
Horne blinked. “No changes necessary?” he asked pointedly.
“None,” said Jeff. “I am certain that the velocity of the wide-open jet will be high enough to hurl the solar-combustion products far and fast enough to relatively safe.”
He turned to the work-table and picked up a tiny working model of the Roman Jet which he had been using in his investigations. He snapped the switch on the driving equipment and glanced down into the open cylinder.
“It’s certain,” he said. “And to think that I hadn’t thought of it before!”
“Too late,” grunted Horne.
“Huh?”
“All I wanted to hear from you was that the big Jet would do the trick,” said Horne. “That’s all!”
Horne slipped his hand into his side jacket pocket and it came out holding a flat, blue automatic. His left hand hit the ejector slide, cocking it.
Lucille screamed and leaped forward, raising the file. Horne turned snarling. The gun came halfway up but Horne had no desire to harm Lucille. A dead or crippled mate was not Horne’s idea of good company for a number of years in space.
Lucille’s file came around in a wide vicious arc. Horne caught her across the face with his wicked backhand slap that turned her head and threw her off balance. Horne slid aside and let the wild swing of the file go past. Then he moved in again, blocking Lucille with his shoulder and hurling her aside.
She bounced from his blow like a sack of meal and fell sprawling on the floor.
Horne laughed shortly as his automatic came up to dead point in his right hand.
There was a flat bursting bark followed by a shrill screech. The room flared with an intolerable brightness as the miniature jet in Jeff Benson’s hands flashed a nine-foot lance of sheer energy that drilled a one-inch hole through Horne’s chest.
Horne had been killed instantly from the cone of ultra-hard gamma radiation that came from the jet before the material energy could cross the gap that separated him from Benson.
He fell, unseen.
“Jeff! My eyes!”
“They’ll be all right”
“But Horne—”
Jeff snorted. “You don’t need eyes,” he said. “Can’t you smell?”
CHAPTER XVI
“But I thought you trusted him.”
“Why should I?”
“You sounded as though you did.”
“I might have, excepting for a couple of things that did not add up.”
“For instance?”
Jeff smiled. “His first mistake was in trying to fob off that patently phony story on the papers through the Universal News, because he insisted that it go on the wire pretty much as he’d written it. And Jerry assures me that, although Horne might have been a power in finance, he wouldn’t have lasted two minutes in the working press. The Herald, which, along with other papers, pays Universal an annual franchise fee for their service, was both sore and suspicious when they got the story that Horne’s man, planted as a news service employee, put on the wire. The Herald took up that end of the investigation.
“For myself, I was worried about the anonymity of the so-called ‘group of eminent scientists’ who claimed that the Roman Jet was responsible for the nova. Already I had gathered evidence that subsequently proved that theory completely wrong. Who were these people who furnished their hidden ‘spokesman’ with such a convenient springboard to attack Roman—the springboard used as the murder-weapon in Dr. Phelps’s tragic death? Horne forgot that I know a few scientists myself and that I could do some digging on my own.
“Another mistake was that Horne only wanted that story to get to the Blade and similar scare-sheets that would jump at that sort of explosive, sensational bait, and who were experts in squirming out of libel suits.
“Jerry’s newspaper friends on the Herald and I, though working independently and in different fields, came up with the same answer at just about the same time. The man behind it’—Jeff nodded toward the now covered figure of the dead Horne—“lies there.”
“Why did he do that?”
Jeff shrugged. “I think that he hoped to get his hands on the rocket after the riot at your place. Then, after you escaped, Horne tipped the authorities off that I was working with the stuff/’
“Again—why?”
Jeff groped for cigarettes and, as the match burned, breathed a sigh of deep relief.
“I can see the flame,” he muttered. “Another half hour or so and we can get to work.” He turned to Lucille. “ Horne wanted to get his hands on the rocket. He knew that until you felt free to return to civilization you’d hide out somewhere. He knew that I could tell the truth and convince the authorities of the facts. Doctor Logan had the F.B.I. track down the source of that tip. They found the trail that led to Horne.”
“But why didn’t they do something?”
Jeff grinned, “You can’t slap a man in the calaboose for telling the truth. I was monkeying with solar power/’
“But you sounded convinced that Horne—”
“Did I? I’m sorry. I was busy thinking. Horne gave me a grand idea. But I’m afraid that I paid very little attention to his talk.”
“Yet, you were prepared with the little jet,” said Lucille. She blinked and peered at him with unfocused eyes. “Move,” she said. “All I can see is a couple of yards of bright streak and a haze of background color.”
Jeff moved.
“Thanks. I’m clearing up, too.”
Jeff nodded. ‘‘Horne was too glib. He forgot that nature
is inclined to be a nasty beast at times. You see, Lucille, nature might well permit a couple of women to share a man but the reverse is not true.
“All too often I’ve seen the firmest of boyhood chums become the bitterest of adult enemies merely because they both happened to want the same woman. If Horne had been honest in his proposition he would have provided a gal for me—
or for himself.”
Lucille looked down at the floor and screamed. “Oh!” she said. “To think that the first thing I have to see when I can see anything—is Horne!”
“We can blame him for a lot of trouble and a very timely bit of help. Is your vision all right now?”
“Better—enough to navigate.”
“Come on then. We’ve got work to do.”
“What is my job?”
Jeff smiled. “Pack. Right now!”
While she was gone, Jeff went to work on the equipment that furnished the force-fields for the big jet. He made cables to replace certain of the impromptu connections, and then he fastened some loose breadboard-stacked circuits on to a metal panel and tested the circuit.
He packed the various cabinets and cases, stacked some of them for easy handling and bound them together with steel bands. When Lucille returned with a handbag, leading the twins, Jeff was waiting.
“You re very necessary,” he grinned at her. “I don’t know how to handle the rocket.”
“Thanks. Though Horne did it.”
“Horne took time to find out. He had to. But now that I’ve a chauffeur, I’ll be a very busy man.” He looked down at Janey and Jimmy. “Bundle them into the ship,” he said. “Naturally. We can’t leave them here.”
Jeff patted Jimmy on top of the head. “Come on, Butch,” he told the child. “We’re going on a little jaunt.”
“To see mommy?”
“Were going to see a new star,” said Lucille.
Jeff shook his head. “A new sun,” he said.
Lucille stuck her tongue out at him. “Go on,” she said. “Be technical.”
Jeff stood in the open spacelock and called directions through the telephone as Lucille lifted the big rocket gently and cautiously on its jets. She went up and over and made a soft landing on the roof of Jeff’s laboratory. The backsplash burned the tar and gravel of the roof and sent up a smoking stench that blinded and choked.
Jeff tied a wet handkerchief over his face and dropped to the smouldering roof. He took a pickaxe and drove a number of holes through the surface, peering from time to time through the rough apertures to be sure that the ring of holes encircled the position of the big jet and its associated equipment.
Then he dropped a number of cables from the spacecraft, the same cables used by Horne to pirate his supply of ships.
Jeff went below and climbed into the trusses that held up the roof and cinched the cables to the roof.
At his signal, Lucille lifted the spacecraft and the roof came off with a rending crash. Dust and debris toppled into the laboratory. A beam fell and shorted the electrical wiring and there was a flash and a sputtering arc until the fuse blew.
They dropped into the vacant lot while Jeff unleashed the cables and then once more they rose above the laboratory and descended through the hole in the roof until the sloping sides of the ship filled it.
There the ship hung, its bulk suspended a few feet above the monster jet. Again Jeff went into the laboratory and slung the big jet from the cables, fastening it tight against the side of the ship; pointed down.
The driving equipment was hauled into the spacelock with the small crane once used to trundle automobile engines back and forth when Jeff Benson’s laboratory had been a mammoth garage. Then Jeff took a last look at the place, picked up an item or two and entered the lock, closing it behind him.
“Up!” he ordered.
Jets flared and their backsplash hit the concrete floor and spread. The ends of the lances of raw energy licked at table and chair, at bench and equipment before the big ship went up with its load.
By the time they were a half mile high Jeff Bensons laboratory was a roaring holocaust.
Jeff chucked Janey under the chin. “Were off,” he told the child. “Let’s go open a can of beans and make ourselves at home.”
“Eat?” That was Jimmy, anticipating his most favorite pastime.
“Uh-huh,” chuckled Jeff. “Eat. This is going to be a bit cramped, but we had no one to leave you with.”
Lucille started. “Jeff?”
“Huh?”
“But Jeff, we couldn’t leave them here while we go to Procyon.”
Jeff looked at her wide-eyed. “We’re not going to Procyon,”
“Not—going—?”
“Shucks,” he said, snapping his fingers in exasperation, “I must have forgotten to explain what I was thinking about when you were all stewed up over Horne. That was a bright idea.”
“Do go on,” replied Lucille in a pettish tone. “If we aren’t going to Procyon, where are we going?”
“Just—out there,” chuckled Jeff.
“But you said something about another sun.”
“So I did.”
“But—”
“So were going to make it,” said Jeff grandly.
Lucille sat back and scowled at Jeff. Jeff nodded thoughtfully. “Its been right in front of my nose ever since Lasson and I and Jerry Woods talked over the nova theory months ago. Right here,” he said, passing a hand in front of his face. “And 1 was so blind that I couldn’t see it.
“Remember the theory? Sub-space is warped because of the excess amounts of energy hurled into it by the solar nuclear reaction. A nova takes place when sub-space is ruptured, just as a balloon will rupture when you blow it too full.
“The returning energy, coming in all at once, mingle with the solar energy and the resulting increase in temperature and pressure raises the nuclear activity to explosion levels. It’s something like oxidation in chemistry.
“Look: A log of wood will oxidize slowly at room temperature. It takes years. In a fireplace, at or near the kindling temperature, the log bums swiftly. Toss the log into a vat of molten steel and it goes puff!” “Get to the point.”
“Its a long tale, and we have a long way to go.”
“But my patience isn’t that long and you know it.” “Okay. What do they do to keep boilers from blowing up?”
“Put a safety valve on them.”
“Correct.”
“And the big jet is our safety valve?”
Jeff nodded. “We can drain the excess energy out at some spot in space where the returning energy will not interfere with Sol. Nor,” he added with a half-smile, “with any of Sol’s planets.”
“Were here,” said Jeff, peering at the radar screen. “Here?” asked Lucille.
“Horne’s pirate hoard is right handy.”
“Jeff, you bother me,” said Lucille in an exasperated voice.
“Two weeks ago you tell me we’re not going to Procyon. Obviously we don’t need a few millions of tons of groceries if we don’t try to cross interstellar space.”
Hands on her hips, she faced him. “Now, after manipulating the ship around to come to a stop out here in space, you start looking for the stuff. Just what are we going to do —and how am I ever going to begin to understand the way you think?”
“Study practical physics,” he grinned. “Have you any idea of where that jet will go if we turn it on with all the energy of a sun behind it?”
“Off in one grand heck of a rush,” said Lucille. “But is that bad?”
“It would be. In sub-space there are islands of energy clustered around the backpressure of every sun. Once this jet gets closer to another sun than our own, the energy from that other sun will be coming through. I want this little safety valve to remain as Sol’s own. We need the grand mass of that junk to hold the jet down.”
“Okay. But it’ll still move.”
“Right, Miss Galileo. It will still move. But with enough mass I can make it circle by setting the angle of the jet. Then it’ll stay in the near neighborhood.”
It took several days to collect the ships. Horne had done a good job of sending the later ships faster than the earlier ones and along the same course towards Procyon. Their own mass, inconsiderable as celestial masses go, had been of only minute benefit in mutual attraction to keep them together.
&n
bsp; But it had helped, and once the grinding, bumping group of ships had been trussed together by cable and chain, with the spacecraft acting as tender, spacetug and donkey engine, Jeff was ready.
By remote control he opened the jet.
It flashed once and then a cylindrical tongue of blazing energy started to extend from the maw of the great jet. It moved with apparent slowness out from the mass of chained ships, from where Jeff and Lucille watched— but they knew that the jet was punching out at speed very close to the velocity of light. For minutes it jetted out, ever extending, always in a straight line.
Then it curved as the moving mass turned and the searing tongue of flame became sickle-shaped as it cut a swath through space. The distant end of the tongue dispersed and spread in a cooling cloud of gas that ran down through the spectrum and vanished.
The spearhead of intense brightness swung around in a vast arc, resembling a comet in majestic flight,
But no such comet was ever seen before. It seared the eyeballs as it curved its way across the sky. It seemed to move ponderously but it was only vast distance that gave the illusion of slowness.
The head of the arc made its first complete circle and cut back through its own trail.
Light burst from the hot center of the trail and the trail bulged. Then, from within its confines, emerged vast licking, darting lances of sheer energy. Like a fast-growing cauliflower of blinding brightness, space ruptured at the point where the jet had crossed its own train and the pent-up energy of Sol came roaring through the breach.
“Get!” yelled Jeff.
‘“What is it?” cried Lucille.
“Just get—and hope we can outrun that explosion!”
The rocket turned and the jets flared into the back sky.
“But what is it?”
“I think the thing turned into its own trail, burned the barriers down and opened the whole aperture—sort of like having the stopcock blow out of a high pressure tank.”
“But what will happen?”
“I was kidding about making another sun. But time will tell. Maybe in a few years that thing will have expanded to a size large enough to make Sol a double star.”
Fire in the Heavens (1958) Page 15