Fifteen minutes later Small came in and wanted to know how long it would be before the ship could be moved. With tongue in my cheek I told him twenty hours at the very least.
He had been out bedeviling the Lilliputians, a sport that I learned he had been indulging in during our stay in the ship, and later a long line of them came bearing dozens of carcasses of deer, while on eight or ten of their sledges fastened together they dragged a large basket of freshly ground meal. The basket was many times larger than anything they owned, and although there were a number of containers from the ship that could have been utilized for the purpose Small had forced them to weave this monster basket under his own supervision. The meal which was made from a grain they cultivated, together with ground dried vegetables, was the ingredient of the brown pellets they had fed us, and which was their staple food. In the ship’s galley Miss March set to work preparing man-sized cakes of the meal which were baked slowly in the ship’s oven. There were no longer any need of wood-fires for cooking.
Now that I no longer needed the regulator I was again deprived of it, and Beale again donned it with a heart-felt sigh of relief. It was his turn to smirk at me. Early the next morning Treat and Small disappeared, their destination being the 354 from which they decided to get some of Small’s personal belongings, and the rest of us were left in charge of Beale and his knife.
Thail and Bevel had cleared most of the mud from around the ship’s sides, and they, too, were at leisure. But there was to be no leisure for us under Small’s regime. We were ordered to clean out the ship from stern to stem, in preparation for its take-off while Beale, toying with his knife, watched us. His guardianship, however, did not prevent my imparting to the others the salient features of the plot that was soon to come to a head. Since he did not bother to follow us from room to room, as we scrubbed and polished, removing the mud that had been tracked within during our countless walks back and forth, we were free to talk. Thail and Bevel jumped at the plan, but they pointed out one or two of its weak features. We discussed it pro and con in the privacy of one of the staterooms until Beale grew suspicious and came seeking us out.
CHAPTER VIII
The Race Through Space
l As it was close to the time when we were expecting Small and Treat back we were glad to return to the main chamber where on hands and knees we pretended to be doing mop-duty. However, I made a point of staying close to the control desk, in easy reach of the nullifier-plates lever, with one eye ever on the ship’s entrance.
Suddenly Miss March came hurrying into the ship to tell us that Small was on the way back, his face dark as a thunder-cloud. It appears that Treat and he had received the 354, only to find its interior gutted with fire. The green men had done it, turning their vengeance upon us in the only manner they knew how, and everything inflammable within the ship had gone up in smoke. In retaliation the pair had fired every village in the vicinity, only to find afterwards that the tiny villagers had already deserted their homes and moved to other parts.
However, Miss March said that only Small was returning now. That sort of spoiled the plot we had so carefully laid, but there was nothing to do now, but to go through with things as they were and hope that Treat could be enmeshed safely on his later return. Bevel had edged over toward Beale where he sat in state on his chair, and Thail was moving toward the lock on his hands and knees. Then we heard Small’s boots resound on the metal flooring of the lock, and my hand raised to the control desk as I shot the nullifier lever over, just as Small stepped within the room.
I have to laugh now when I think of the silly expressions on the face of that pair when I activated the plates of the Red Arrow. With his regulator set at less than Earth-normal the moment he stepped within the ship Small lost his equilibrium, and went soaring toward the ceiling under the double impetus of the lessened gravity field thus created around him, while Beale, who made the mistake of jumping up from his chair in his surprise at seeing this happen, likewise rose toward the ceiling, but with more force than that of the renegade patrolman. The noise his head made against the low ceiling resounded throughout the ship.
But it was no laughing matter at that. Though slightly stunned Small managed to keep some of his wits around him and was reaching for the gun in his belt. I made a jump for his hand and pulled him down with me to the floor. He struggled with me, but an uppercut to his chin clouded his mind, and before he could recover again Thail was binding him with wire left over from my repairs on the motor. Beale was floating slowly toward the floor, an inert bundle as light as thistledown. He was still out from the blow on his head when we dragged him to the floor and bound him. More in a spirit of revenge than anything else, since both were our prisoners, we switched their regulators to Jupiter normal, thereby offsetting the nullifying qualities of the ship’s plates.
Miss March had been a quiet bystander during this little affair, and it was her cry that warned us all was not well. Like one man we turned in the direction of her shaking finger. There, standing in the doorway leading from the sleeping quarters was none other than Jerry Treat. And he had us covered with his revolver!
All the while we had believed him outdoors, he had actually been aboard the ship! He had come aboard just before Beale called us from our conspiracy in the stateroom at the other end of the flyer, having left Small at the nearest Lilliputian village, where that worthy had lingered to demand further meat tribute.
It was my turn to rave and rant that our fine plans had gone to pot. How easy it would have been to take Treat prisoner in his bunk. He saw the chagrin in our faces and smiled his slow smile. “Sorry, but I’ll have to ask you for that gun.” He meant Small’s gun that I had commandeered. It would have been easy to take a pot-shot at him instead of relinquishing it, but to do so would endanger the lives of the others since Treat’s finger was likewise on the trigger. With a sigh I dropped the weapon from my hand as if it burned. The others were ordered to unbind Small and Beale.
As soon as my late subordinate was on his feet he came toward me. A hamlike hand swung toward my head. I ducked it, but his other fist made contact, and I went down like a bag of meal, caught in the small space between generator and control desk.
When I came to, I found myself lying on damp ground feeling unnaturally heavy once more. Rousing myself I laboriously lifted my head to find Thail and Bevel were beside me. Brandon Thail was seated in the mud, his head sunk upon his hands while Bevel with arms hanging to his sides was staring dully at the sky. Where the ship had been, was only a hollow, and Miss March was not in sight!
The brigands had gone off with the girl and the ship, deserting the three of us on Jupiter, leaving us once more at the mercy of the Lilliputians!
I didn’t have to be told how Small had dumped the three of us unceremoniously into the mud. I could imagine the gloating as he executed this last revenge, sorry only that his blow had made me miss the fun. It would be something to tell about in the hangouts of Capan on the moons of Saturn, that is, if he should ever manage to reach there.
Neither Thail, Bevel, nor I, felt any too good in the face of things. We knew that as soon as the midget copper men learned we were unarmed, harmless, they would not take long in venting their spleen upon us. Make us pay for all the hurt Small had given them.
Bevel seemed unable to take his eyes from the bit of sky into which the Red Arrow had disappeared with the girl he had learned to love during her imprisonment among the Lilliputians. To think that three able-bodied men like ourselves were incapable of protecting one female! Our thoughts were pretty black when Bevel burst into a glad cry and pointed excitedly at the sky.
We all raised our heads and could scarcely believe our eyes. But it was true, the pirates were returning, falling rather, back to their starting place. The strain of the pull against Jupiter’s forces was too much for the weak motors, the generator had burnt out. I should have known that that would happen. It was surprising that the ship had been able to take off at all.
l It look
ed as if the ship would surely crash, only the thurla batteries sustained the nullifiers long enough so that the fall was not too rapid. However, the ship dug itself deeply into the mud, spattering us thickly as it came down a few yards from its first berth. Luckily, in falling, the air-lock stayed above the mud. A minute later the lock opened and out piled Beale and Treat.
They paid us no attention, but turned their eyes in the direction from which they had just come. Something in the sky had caught their eye. Small came hurrying out of the ship next, with a pair of binoculars in his hand. He motioned us back into the ship at the point of his gun.
Mystified, we entered to find Miss March staring out of the further window of the control room. When she saw Bevel she rushed into his arms and hysterically tried to tell us all about it. We caught the word “ship” and Thail and I rushed to the porthole. Flying low came a snub-nosed, two-man patrol ship!
It flew slowly, as if searching the terrain below. Although I could not see its name-plate, I knew it was either Patrol ship 355 or 356, a sister ship of the 354, long overdue.
Small came back into the ship. He had a smirking grin on his face. “It’s the 356,” he told us, “and it’s seen us. Thail and Bevel, you stay inside, Denny and Miss March, come with me, and by God, Denny, if you say anything but what I tell you to, you’ll get a bullet through your heart. Get me?”
The 356! That meant that Carl Dawson and Jack Blaine were aboard. Both were my chums, and Small was going to force me to lie to them. As we closed the lock behind us Small told me what I was to say.
The Patrol ship was coming at a swifter pace now. It had sighted the pirate ship, the waving arms of Treat and Beale. It landed beside us after some maneuvering, and all unsuspecting Carl and Jack piled out with broad welcoming grins upon their faces. Following them was Corey Morris of the 355, and two bearded strangers in ill-fitting Patrol uniforms. I had no chance to say anything as they crowded around me, pumping my arms. To warn them I could not have made my voice heard above the hubbub of their greetings. Small, they nodded to, and Corey had eyes only for Willa March. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Treat and Beale edging toward the wide open lock of the ship. Small was propelling the girl forward, slipping around us. I managed to shout the others down. “LOOKOUT! They’re taking your ship!” I yelled.
Miss March screamed, and there was the snarl of bullets as Treat and Beale used their guns. Corey went down, and Carl slapped a hand to his thigh as an exploding missive tore at the bone beneath the flesh. None of the patrolmen had guns out, for they hardly expected a reception like this although it’s the rule of the Patrol that no man go unarmed at any time.
How I missed being shot I don’t know, since I stood in Small’s line of fire. Possibly it was due to Miss March’s struggles that his aim was poor. The heavy door of the 356 clanged shut. We were all racing toward the bulldog, but the pirates threw in the starting clutch, and we had to jump back from the rocket blasts to save ourselves a cruel burn.
Once again Small had scored, leaving behind, in addition to Thail, Bevel and myself, a dead man, two more, wounded, for one of the strangers had been hit in the arm, and a cursing patrol captain who had lost his ship. Thail and Bevel joined us in the mud while Blaine proceeded to bandage the wounded with the stuff from his pocket emergency-kit. Then we all stumped into the Red Arrow, and we heard the stories of the new-comers.
The 355 and 356 had been practically on our heels when we plunged into the clouds of Jupiter, but the Red Spot had started some fireworks just as they arrived at the point where we had dived so they had to move back. Their instruments were knocked out just as ours had been, but they cruised for hours looking for either ourselves or the pirates. Now they knew they had gone in the opposite direction to the one we had taken. They would not have attempted a landing had they not seen, to their astonishment, two giant men surrounded by a crowd of what looked to them to be normal people.
They came down on the outskirts of a native village, that is the 355 landed, or rather crashed, first, since it was impossible for them to take correct bearings. From that accident, the 356 learned its lesson, and eased itself down with nothing more disastrous than some jammed landing gear. The giants turned out to be the survivors of the third Jovian expedition which had landed a week or two following Thail’s party, now captive of the Lilliputians, and whom they straightway rescued.
Only one of the crew of the 355 was alive; the other, Bill Tallman, was killed in the crack-up, and now Corey was likewise dead. Taking Corey and the two scientists aboard the 356 they proceeded to search for us and had been cruising ever since with five men crowded into the narrow confines of the bulldog which was intended for two. They were certain we were down, and that they would find us eventually.
In the meanwhile, they had sought to get in touch with the Ionian headquarters. Not sure whether their messages were getting through, they, nevertheless, explained conditions on Jupiter, warning the unwary about the faulty perspective. Then, just an hour before they had sighted the pirate ship, a message had come to them that a Patrol ship was on the way from Io to aid them in their search, a ten-man patrol under the command of Captain Kildaire.
On sighting the Red Arrow a message had been dispatched immediately to the 238, giving our position.
l In a few words I acquainted the newcomers with the tale of our experiences, of the perfidy of Small, and all joined me in cursing the traitor that he was. Thail had taken the two scientists aside and was discussing his theories concerning the phenomenon of the Red Spot. It was his belief that the core of the Spot was a solid body, possessing a highly magnetic nucleus. It imparted to the atmosphere that copperish red light, disturbing the atmosphere to such a degree that the light formed a jumbled patchwork misleading to the ships that had come under its weird influence.
While these discussions and story-tellings were going on Bevel had wandered around the control room of the Red Arrow like a lost soul, gazing out of the portholes, or pacing restlessly back and forth. On hearing that a ship was coming to our rescue he instantly became a man of action. “Possibly, a bonfire would help them find us,” he suggested, and straightway rushed outdoors to start a blazing fire in the mud. To his way of thinking Willa March was already rescued.
He was first to sight the 238. It was crossing our line of vision a mile or two distant. At first it did not appear to have seen us, and we all hurried pell-mell out-of-doors to dance up and down beside the bonfire, though we must have presented a ludicrous picture, fighting, as we had to, the power of Jupiter with every awkward motion. The ship had seen us, only it had been deceived by Jupiter’s queer lighting effects. Now it came racing toward us at full speed.
Warned by the 356 against trying to land, the big ship nosed toward us slowly, feeling its way; then it rested on its nullifiers a few feet above the ground. The lock opened and eager hands reached down to help us aboard. They had suspected that something was radically wrong when the 356 refused to answer any of their calls, but luckily for us they kept on the course already given them. Never was there a happier rescue. Of course, there is natural rivalry between the crews of the two-man and ten-man ships of the service, but today petty hostilities were forgotten. There was much back-slapping and jocose wise-cracking to cover our real emotions.
But little time could be given to handshakings. Three villains were loose in space. Not only had they gone off again with Miss March, but they had had the temerity to run away with a Patrol ship, adding murder to their slate! Bevel was not the only one impatient to be after them, to leave the unhospitable world of Jupiter behind. Flying parallel to the low ceiling we pushed forward several hundred miles before Kildaire took a chance of plunging inadvertently into the Red Spot. The 238’s instruments had gone haywire in their descent, but the crew had since managed to repair them, so it was possible to feel out the activity of that danger area. Slowly we edged into the clouds. We must have cleared the Spot by a large margin since we encountered but one storm, and that was of moderate in
tensity. The dials acted up, but didn’t blink out. Then the clouds dropped away and before our eyes sprang the welcome sight of the flaming orbit that was the sun with Io and Satellite No. I lying just abeam.
Gore, the radio operator, had advised Io of the escape of the renegades as soon as we climbed into the ship. He repeated the message. Io advised us that it had sighted the 356 through its telescopes, and by its queer antics, and its refusal to answer their signals, the suspicions of Headquarters were aroused. Two bulldogs had taken after it. They gave us the approximate position of the ship, and it was evident that the pirates were heading for the moons of Saturn.
Having had a good start before the Patrols started after them with full speed ahead, it actually looked as if the 356 would escape on the straight away. One by one it was passing the orbits of Jupiter’s nine moons, and we were powerless to stop it. Because of the fact that Willa March was aboard, we dared not use our long-range weapons.
And she would have gotten away if it had not been for the Patrol from Satellite IX!
Although it was 15,400,000 miles from the center of Jupiter, Satellite IX was highly treasured by the solar system, despite its remoteness and small size. The fact was that Satellite IX was fabulously rich in radium, and therefore one of the most valuable worlds in the entire Federation. A special Patrol base was maintained there to protect it against the depredations of pirates. Each cargo ship that left the mines had to have its escort.
As soon as it was evident that the 356 was bound for Saturn, two Patrol ships took off from that Satellite which, luckily, lay almost in the path the pirates had taken. Between Satellites No. VII and VIII the renegades grew aware of the fact they were to be trapped, and they changed their course so that they should come around Satellite No. VIII. This occasioned a long curve since the moon lay at right angles to their course. The two ships ahead of us almost shot past, but as we were further behind we were warned in time, and since the angle was not as great for us it was apparent we would arrive in the vicinity of Satellite VIII almost at the same time as the 356!
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