“Rather young. In fact, he had just graduated from a tech school on Venus when he took up his career and ended it in about a year. But the Mercurian Menace was older and more experienced. He knew how to handle a ship. I was hard-pressed, but soon—”
Jerry hung up. It was fantastic! How many men had been to Pluto and returned? If his hunch was right—and it sometimes was—at least one more than the records showed. He phoned room service for the Marsport Herald.
“Yes, sir. Morning or afternoon edition?”
“Both. Oh, yes—I want them as of this date fifteen years ago. Better get me the year’s file.”
Room service turned to linen and said, “That man is mad as a hatter.” Then hastened to the Herald building for the files.
In due course the files reached Jerry, who had been calculating the location of the Bluebell.
He flipped the pages to January and read a report of the King’s first appearance. He had struck like a demon at an excursion ship, gassing it and gutting it with thermite bombs, leaving a message pinned on the chest of the mutilated captain:
Old King Cole was a merry old soul,
And a pirate, too was he;
He wiggled his toes, and he thumbed his nose,
And said: ‘You can’t catch me!’
From that and subsequent clues his identity had been traced. He had been Chester Cole, honors student at Venusport Tech and had led his class at the Academy of Astronavigationbut was just a little cracked, it seemed. He had, as a student, fought a “duel” with another boy, crippling him. All that had saved him from prison then had been the loyal lies of his classmates. His crew, in the days of his career of crime, seemed also to have been made up of like contemporaries. It was a strange and striking picture, this mad boy roaming space in a ship of his own, striking out at will at women and children.
Now to the end of the files, to investigate his death.
CHAPTER FOUR
Pursuit Between the Planets
APPROXIMATELY on the line which Jerry had calculated, a ship of strange design was speeding for Pluto. Like every spaceship, it was highly specialized. The super-powerful motors and grapples of the salvage scows were not hers, nor the size and luxury of the passenger liners. This was no huge freighter, jammed to the blister and built for a maximum of space to store to a minimum of crew. Yet she had a purpose, and that purpose screamed from every line. This rocket was a killer, from bow to stern. Her prow was a great, solid mass of metal toughened and triply re-enforced for ramming; a terrible beak of death. Above her rear rockets protruded a stern-chaser that scattered explosive pellets behind her in an open pattern of destruction.
But this very efficient machine was not entirely lacking in comfort, for Alice Adams rested easily in a chamber that might have graced—and once, perhaps did—the costliest luxury liner. She had awakened there after that peculiar odor through the Bluebell had laid her out and her crew. Then a courteous knock sounded on her door. “Come in,” she said, baffled by the anomalous situation.
A man entered. “I welcome you,” he said, “to my vessel. I trust that you will find—” Alice looked at his face, and screamed.
THE man recoiled and muffled his features in a scarf. “I can hardly blame you,” he said savagely. “It is the wind of Pluto. You will find that my entire crew is like that, I warn you. Skin grey and dead, the scars of the Plutonian sleet over all the face. For five years we lived unsheltered in that hell—five years that might have been a thousand. Can you know what that means?”
“But who are you?” asked the girl. “And I’m—I’m sorry about . . .”
“I was once known,” said the man, “as King Cole. Bright boy of the space-lanes; pirate par excellence. The whimsical butcher—that was me. Fifteen years ago I died on Pluto, they think. Maybe I did; it’s hard to say for sure these days. We lived in the broken open hull of our ship where it fell, breathing in helmets, feeding from crates and cans of food. One kid thought he could melt the snow outside and drink it. He was very thirsty, and he went mad when he saw the snow boil up into yellow-green gas. It was chlorine. It’s cold out there where we’re going.
“Many years it was, and then another ship crashed, and we took off our helmets and lived in that and sang songs with the men of it who survived. They were technicians, and tried to fix their rocket, but one of my boys killed them. He thought he liked it there; he must have been crazy.
“A long time later a first class pirate ship landed. We crawled across the snow to her—two hundred kilos. They took us in because they hadn’t a mechanic worth the name, and all of us were fine tech men. I said I could fix her, and I could. Then one night my men killed all the crew of this new ship and I patched it with stuff from the other two rockets so we took off and sneaked into Mars.
“I had been a fool once, and that was enough, so I meant to do it the right way this time. You don’t strike without warning if you want to be a success; you give plenty of warning through agents and policemen you’ve hired, and steer them just a bit the wrong way so that they suspect nothing and honestly believe that they’ll get you the next time.
“I met a lot of friends I knew on Mars, and made some new ones when I’d disposed of the ship’s cargo. The boys and I have been cruising around for some time now, doing nothing spectacular—it doesn’t pay. We’ve been knocking off a ship here and there, laying the blame square onto a rival or somebody. Our home is still Pluto—we don’t like it, in a way, for what it did to us, but in a way we do because nobody else does, and it’s so damn far away from anything half the time.
“I’m sorry that you didn’t get the Carpathia. I thought that with a father like yours you could fly sideways and beat any other scow in the ether to a contract.”
She stared at the madman. “What did you know about my father?”
“He was my instructor on Venus. He got me out of a piece of trouble when I killed a man that swore at me. He was a good instructor, and I’m pleased that I have the chance to do him a favor through you. You see, I wrecked that bullion ship for you. Then I was going to pick you up and the junk, but I see I’ve only got you. Well—perhaps that’s enough. You can’t return to Mars even if you want to. I suppose the police have their cruisers out looking for you and your crew. I buttered the crime onto you for both our advantages. I hope you don’t mind?”
“No,” she said, “and you wanted to do my father a favor by permitting me to join your—band?”
“Exactly,” came from the muffled features. “And you will?”
The girl sobbed, “Never! Space is clean and cold; why must you make it a thing of Terror? Isn’t that pain enough without you and your kind?”
The pirate laughed. “The whimsical butcher is not displeased,” he said. “You will have your uses anyhow. It will be a long time before a soul suspects King Cole—the late King Cole—of the atrocities perpetrated by Miss Alice Adams and her cutthroat crew. I know how the police mind works. That’s my business, now. Good day—you may ring for food.” He left, and the door closed behind him.
Vainly the girl sprang to the door and tried the knob. It was locked firm. She returned to the bed and shut her eyes, trying to blot out the memory of that grey, horribly seamed face.
ON MARSPORT Jerry had not been idle. He had been to see the major again, and tried to convince him of the truth so self-evident to the younger man’s mind, but the placid old idiot listened blandly and blankly. When Jerry was finished he said, “Through an accident, I believe, we were cut off in our telephone conversation a while ago. I was about to describe the position in which Ironface and I found ourselves—”
But Jerry was gone with great curses on his lips. Patiently Skeane sighed. It had been six years since he had been able to finish that story; the last man to hear it complete had been a convict extradited to Venus from Jupiter. Skeane had strapped him down in the little two-man rocket and whiled away the long hours of space travel with the tale in its gruesome entirety. He thought, now, that it would be nice
if he could find somebody else to strap down and tell the story to. He was even a bit afraid that he was forgetting the details himself . . .
A taxi was driving through the muddy streets of Marsport; Jerry snapped a bill under the hackie’s nose. “This for you if you step on it,” he said. They pulled up, brakes squealing horribly, before a battered, weatherbeaten tenement. Jerry took four stairs at a time and burst into the close, dirty room. He shook the sleeping figure. “Sven! Sven, dammit! Wake up, you loose-brained lump of soggy Norwegian caviar! We have the biggest job we’ve tackled yet!”
The helmsman rolled over, and dizzily asked, “We tow, Captain?”
“Yeah, we tow—a full-armed battleship that doesn’t want to be towed. Get the men to the field in twenty minutes—fare is on Leigh Salvage, Incorporated.”
As the big man struggled into his clothes Jerry was down the stairs and into a taxi. “Salvage Field,” he snapped, “in a helluva rush.”
He had often boasted that the engines of scow Leigh were the most powerful things in the ether. Well—he would see how powerful they could be—shifting feed lines and adjusting nozzles to move the traction power, terrific as it was, into a different channel. The scow was to haul nothing but her own weight this trip, but it was essential, to put it mildly, that she haul it fast. The men lined up before her as the job neared completion. Briefly but clearly Jerry outlined the dangers and invited men to drop out.
“Wylie,” he said, “since I shipped you we’ve been getting complaints from your quarter about work. This is going to be work the like of which you never dreamed. You can take out that pistol of yours; sure as leather you’re going to us it this trip, unless somebody gets you first.
“Anybody leaving? No? Then pile in and strap tight. In ninety seconds we take off under fifteen Mars gravities acceleration.”
There was a little glow in his chest. These were men—his men! Comrades of flight and wreck, he’d stood by them and they were making good this day. And for a crazy woman? That was the part that baffled him—why? He had had practically no respect for her father; his ethics, or lack of ethics was notorious on the field. But she couldn’t fly a ship! That, he said to himself, was what had convinced him of her innocence of the highly technical charge of piracy.
“Strapped in?
“Eighty-nine—
“Fire!”
With a roar they took off. Such acceleration was unheard of, even on this field, where rules of astronavigation were scrapped daily and the laws of the space-lanes broken as a matter of course.
In a moment they had vanished from the sight of observers on the field; a moment more and they were into space, beyond air and warmth.
“All hands,” rang out over the Leigh Salvage annunciator. “These will be battle stations when so ordered. Sven, be ready to take the tiller if anything happens to me; Wylie, choose and arm eight men to form a boarding party. Two others stand by with repair-paste in the event that our periphery is punctured. One man stand by the manual controls in case the electric board is blown by anything they have in their bag of tricks. That is all—flight stations!”
A long silence followed, Sven’s hand white on the helm. “Deflect into first for particle in third,” said Jerry, at length. “Meteorite.” The ship shifted. “Good God, Sven—did you see that thing?” cried Jerry.
The helmsman said, puzzled, “Yes, Captain.”
“But Sven—we passed it—going in the same direction! The first time I’ve known that to happen. Swede, we’re traveling plenty fast.”
CHAPTER FIVE
Contact off Pluto
OUT in space time depends most of all on the man concerned, but for all those on the speeding little scow, the days flashed past. They saw Jupiter pale behind them, and Saturn, and Neptune; then, one day—
“Helmsman,” said Jerry tensely, “turn control to master’s board. I think I see them.” Uneasily the big man surrendered the guiding of the vessel; he was the sort who likes to know what is going to happen next. Jerry’s fingers touched the panel, his eyes never leaving the glinting speck far ahead of him; the speck that grew as he overhauled it with dizzying speed. His own exhausts glared less bright; he was slowing down that there might be no mistake. A telescope brought to bear on the point screened out the rocket’s dazzle and enlarged the features of the vessel. And there was something about it—he was almost sure.
He was sure. That tube astern was a chaser, meant for him and his scow. He turned on the annunciator, his jaw clenched. “Attention all hands,” he said. “To battle stations. Check on your paste, repair crew; check on your weapons, boarding party. Pirate ship—” he squinted through the telescope—“Pirate Ship King Cole in sight. That is all.”
He snapped on a beam of communication to the pirate ship, closing up the distance between them, and sent a call along it.
“Scow Leigh Salvage calling unregistered King Cole. Scow Leigh Salvage calling unregistered King Cole. Answer if you hear me, unregistered Cole. Scow Leigh to unregistered Cole.”
There were etheric cracklings, then a dry voice. “Answering, scow Leigh Salvage. If you know who we are, what do you want with us?”
Jerry was close enough to see their chaser turn into his quarter and extend for firing.
“Heave to, King Cole,” he said. “We’re commissioned as a converted warship of the Interplanetary Police.” This was neither strictly true nor untrue. As a matter of fact Skeane had said, “Go on and make a fool of yourself if you plan to. You and your ship have my full permission.”
“Captain,” said the voice from the pirate ship, “your letter of marque won’t take us. I advise you to turn your garbage can back to where it and you belong before we rake you just once.”
“Second of three warnings,” said Jerry, wetting his lips. “Heave to in the name of the Interplanetary Police.”
There was a long chuckle from the beam-grid.
“Third and last warning: heave to!” With the words Jerry tore the ship up and over into a great, ragged loop as the pirate gun belched pellets of destruction. He had thought he would be well outside the scattering pattern, but the scow trembled as a fragment exploded against its side. “Repair crew to larboard!” he shouted into the annunciator plate, his eye on the air-pressure gage. Its needle dipped once; then rose to normal. “Plate blown in and patched, sir,” came Hiller’s voice. “All clear.”
“Stand by, all,” said Jerry. “We’re going to attack.” This ship rose, under his sensitive fingers, above its foe. “Prepare to swing grapples,” Jerry warned. “Check magnetic plates. OK?” “Magnetic plates OK” answered Wylie.
“Then hold on!” The ship swooped and fluttered, at times seemingly inviting the fire of the pirates, at times seeming disabled, and darting away as the killer vessel swung itself to deliver a coup de grace.
THE scow’s grapples swung free—ponderous curved plates at the end of long osmiridium chains. Then down she darted, the grapples clanging against the sides of the pirate and sticking like plaster, and magnetized plates in the ship herself adhering to the other.
Jerry turned to the annunciator. “Wylie, cut through take over the board, Sven. I’m going down for the fun.”
“Yes, Captain,” said the big man.
Again in Wylie’s skilled hands the burning paste oozed from his tool and ate through the metal of the pirate’s hull as the crew bolted on their space helmets. Guns clicked in readiness; the oval of weakened metal was closed. The salvagers stood back as Jerry kicked down the section. Gun ready, he and his men stepped through. They were in an empty storage room, it seemed—one that would never again be crammed with loot.
Through his head-set Jerry ordered, “All out of the scow. Come through and bring sealing material.” The rest of the crew filed through the ragged opening, stepping cautiously. “Seal that,” said Jerry. “Either we fly the pirates’ ship to Marsport or we don’t fly at all.”
The breech was sealed, and the crew stripped off their spacesuits. Grimly, weapons p
oised, they moved in a solid line for the bulkhead that sealed them off from the rest of the ship. They heard running feet through the wall. There would be a corridor on the other side. Jerry flung open the bulkhead and stepped through, guns blazing. Before him was a mass of men, their faces grey, horribly seamed things. Three fell under his fire; others struggled vainly to raise a semi-portable gun against him and the men who came trooping through, their weapons hammering madly in their hands.
Tactics were discarded, and the two groups sprang together, locking in combat. Muffled groans and the thud of fists were heard; gunbutts rose and fell on skulls and faces. Finally the salvagers stood above their foes, bloody and victorious.
“Neat work,” said Jerry, wiping blood from his face. “Now let’s get up this cannon of theirs. That wasn’t a quarter of their crew.” Wylie spread the tripod of the gun and locked its barrel into place. “I think,” he said, “it’s in working order. Shall I try a squirt?”
Jerry nodded and the gun cut loose, hammering shells down the corridor, battering through the steel door.
“Enough,” he said. “The plan from now on is to stay in a lump and keep moving systematically. If we begin at one end and work towards the other we may get there. Otherwise . . .” He left the words unsaid. “Wylie, go ahead of us, carrying the barrel. Collins, carry the stand.”
CHAPTER SIX
Return from Battle
SLOWLY they advanced through the shattered door. They were in an engine room. “Wait,” said Jerry. He turned to the complicated maze of pipelines and tore one loose; he twisted valves and shut-offs. The trembling drone of the exhaust died slowly. The pirate ship was free in space.
“We go on from here,” he said. “Give me the gun-barrel.” Wylie surrendered it and his captain fired a short burst at the lock of the door. It sprung open and silently the men stepped through. It led to an ambush; a score of the grey-faced horrors sprang to the attack as his gun cut loose with violent, stuttering squirts of destruction. Men fell on both sides, and Jerry dropped the clumsy weapon to use his fists and pistol-butt.
Collected Short Fiction Page 9