The Space Opera Megapack

by John W. Campbell

  “Dick,” she said fiercely. “I would have been worried sick if I had known that you were way off there.”

  “I knew it, sweetheart. That’s why I didn’t tell you we were going. We both knew the Skylark was perfectly safe, but I knew that you would worry about our first trip. Now that we have been to the moon you won’t be uneasy when we go to Mars, will you, dear?”

  “I can’t help it, boy. I will be afraid that something terrible has happened, every minute. Won’t you take me with you? Then, if anything happens, it will happen to both of us, and that is as it should be. You know that I wouldn’t want to keep on living if anything should happen to you.”

  He put both arms around her as his reply, and pressed his cheek to hers.

  “Dorothy sweetheart, I know exactly how you feel. I feel the same way myself. I’m awfully sorry, dear, but I can’t do it. I know the machine is safe, but I’ve got to prove it to everybody else before I take you on a long trip with me. Your father will agree with me that you ought not to go, on the first trip or two, anyway. And besides, what would Madam Grundy say?”

  “Well, there is a way.…” she began, and he felt her face turn hot.

  His arms tightened around her and his breath came fast.

  “I know it, sweetheart, and I would like nothing better in the world than to be married today and take our honeymoon in the Skylark, but I can’t do it. After we come back from the first long trip we will be married just as soon as you say ready, and after that we will always be together wherever I go. But I can’t take even the millionth part of a chance with anything as valuable as you are—you see that, don’t you, Dottie?”

  “I suppose so,” she returned disconsolately, “but you’ll make it a short trip, for my sake? I know I won’t rest a minute until you get back.”

  “I promise you that we won’t be gone more than four days. Then for the greatest honeymoon that ever was,” and they clung together in the dark body of the car, each busy with solemn and beautiful thoughts of the happiness to come.

  They soon reached their destination. As they entered the house Dorothy made one more attempt.

  “Dad, Dick is just too perfectly mean. He says he won’t take me on the first trip. If you were going out there wouldn’t mother want to go along too?”

  After listening to Seaton he gave his decision.

  “Dick is right, Kitten. He must make the long trip first. Then, after the machine is proved reliable, you may go with him. I can think of no better way of spending a honeymoon—it will be a new one, at least. And you needn’t worry about the boys getting back safely. I might not trust either of them alone, but together they are invincible. Good-night, children. I wish you success, Dick,” as he turned away.

  Seaton took a lover’s leave of Dorothy, and went into the lawyer’s study, taking an envelope from his pocket.

  “Mr. Vaneman,” he said in a low voice, “we think the Steel crowd is still camping on our trail. We are ready for them, with a lot of stuff that they never heard of, but in case anything goes wrong, Martin has written between the lines of this legal form, in invisible ink A-36, exactly how to get possession of all our notes and plans, so that the company can go ahead with everything. With those directions any chemist can find and use the stuff safely. Please put this envelope in the safest place you can think of, and then forget it unless they get both Crane and me. There’s about one chance in a million of their doing that, but Mart doesn’t gamble on even that chance.”

  “He is right, Dick. I believe that you can outwit them in any situation, but I will keep this paper where no one except myself can ever see it, nevertheless. Good-night, son, and good luck.”

  “The same to you, sir, and thank you. Good-night.”

  CHAPTER VIII

  Indirect Action

  The author of this story, being a chemist of high standing and an excellent mathematician, gives us a rare gem in this interplanetary tale. For one thing, he suggests an interesting use of the action of acceleration. In this instalment it is made to take the place of gravity when the interplanetary vehicle is out in open space. In order to get the gravity effect, a positive or negative acceleration could be given out.

  This instalment retains its easy flow of language and continues to develop surprise episodes with a remarkable degree of realism.

  The afternoon following the homecoming of the Skylark, Seaton and Dorothy returned from a long horseback ride in the park. After Seaton had mounted his motorcycle Dorothy turned toward a bench in the shade of an old elm to watch a game of tennis on the court next door. Scarcely had she seated herself when a great copper-plated ball alighted upon the lawn in front of her. A heavy steel door snapped open and a powerful figure clad in aviator’s leather, the face completely covered by the hood, leaped out. She jumped to her feet with a cry of joyful surprise, thinking it was Seaton—a cry which died suddenly as she realized that Seaton had just left her and that this vessel was far too small to be the Skylark. She turned in flight, but the stranger caught her in three strides. She found herself helpless in a pair of arms equal in strength to Seaton’s own. Picking her up lightly as a baby, DuQuesne carried her over to the space-car. Shriek after shriek rang out as she found that her utmost struggles were of no avail against the giant strength of her captor, that her fiercely-driven nails glanced harmlessly off the heavy glass and leather of his hood, and that her teeth were equally ineffective against his suit.

  With the girl in his arms DuQuesne stepped into the vessel, and as the door clanged shut behind them Dorothy caught a glimpse of another woman, tied hand and foot in one of the side seats of the car.

  “Tie her feet, Perkins,” DuQuesne ordered brusquely, holding her around the body so that her feet extended straight out in front of him. “She’s a wildcat.”

  As Perkins threw one end of a small rope around her ankles Dorothy doubled up her knees, drawing her feet as far away from him as possible. As he incautiously approached, she kicked out viciously, with all the force of her muscular young body behind her heavy riding-boots.

  The sharp heel of one small boot struck Perkins squarely in the pit of the stomach—a true “solar-plexus” blow—and completely knocked out, he staggered back against the instrument-board. His out-flung arm pushed the speed lever clear out to its last notch, throwing the entire current of the batteries through the bar, which was pointed straight up, as it had been when they made their landing, and closing the switch which threw on the power of the repelling outer coating. There was a creak of the mighty steel fabric, stressed almost to its limit as the vessel darted upward with its stupendous velocity, and only the carefully-planned spring-and-cushion floor saved their lives as they were thrown flat and held there by the awful force of their acceleration as the space-car tore through the thin layer of the earth’s atmosphere. So terrific was their speed, that the friction of the air did not have time to set them afire—they were through it and into the perfect vacuum of interstellar space before the thick steel hull was even warmed through. Dorothy lay flat upon her back, just as she had fallen, unable even to move her arms, gaining each breath only by a terrible effort. Perkins was a huddled heap under the instrument-board. The other captive, Brookings’ ex-secretary, was in somewhat better case, as her bonds had snapped like string and she was lying at full length in one of the side-seats—forced into that position and held there, as the design of the seats was adapted for the most comfortable position possible under such conditions. She, like Dorothy, was gasping for breath, her straining muscles barely able to force air into her lungs because of the paralyzing weight of her chest.

  DuQuesne alone was able to move, and it required all of his Herculean strength to creep and crawl, snake-like, toward the instrument-board. Finally attaining his goal, he summoned all his strength to grasp, not the controlling lever, which he knew was beyond his reach, but a cut-out switch only a couple of feet above his head. With a series of convulsive movements he fought his way up, first until he was crouching on his elbows an
d knees, and then into a squatting position. Placing his left hand under his right, he made a last supreme effort. Perspiration streamed from him, his mighty muscles stood out in ridges visible even under the heavy leather of his coat, his lips parted in a snarl over his locked teeth as he threw every ounce of his wonderful body into an effort to force his right hand up to the switch. His hand approached it slowly—closed over it and pulled it out.

  The result was startling. With the mighty power instantly cut off, and with not even the ordinary force of gravitation to counteract the force DuQuesne was exerting, his own muscular effort hurled him up toward the center of the car and against the instrument-board. The switch, still in his grasp, was again closed. His shoulder crashed against the levers which controlled the direction of the bar, swinging it through a wide arc. As the ship darted off in the new direction with all its old acceleration, he was hurled against the instrument board, tearing one end loose from its supports and falling unconscious to the floor on the other side. After a time, which seemed like an eternity, Dorothy and the other girl felt their senses slowly leave them.

  With four unconscious passengers, the space-car hurtled through empty space, its already inconceivable velocity being augmented every second by a quantity bringing its velocity near to that of light, driven onward by the incredible power of the disintegrating copper bar.

  * * * *

  Seaton had gone only a short distance from his sweetheart’s home when over the purring of his engine he thought he heard Dorothy’s voice raised in a scream. He did not wait to make sure, but whirled his machine about and the purring changed instantly to a staccato roar as he threw open the throttle and advanced the spark. Gravel flew from beneath his skidding wheels as he negotiated the turn into the Vaneman grounds at suicidal speed. But with all his haste he arrived upon the scene just in time to see the door of the space-car close. Before he could reach it the vessel disappeared, with nothing to mark its departure save a violent whirl of grass and sod, uprooted and carried far into the air by the vacuum of its wake. To the excited tennis-players and the screaming mother of the abducted girl it seemed as though the great metal ball had vanished utterly—only Seaton, knowing what to expect, saw the line it made in the air and saw for an instant a minute dot in the sky before it disappeared.

  Interrupting the clamor of the young people, each of whom was trying to tell him what had happened, he spoke to Mrs. Vaneman.

  “Mother, Dottie’s all right,” he said rapidly but gently. “Steel’s got her, but they won’t keep her long. Don’t worry, we’ll get her. It may take a week or it may take a year, but we’ll bring her back,” and leaping upon his motorcycle, he shattered all the speed laws on his way to Crane’s house.

  “Mart!” he yelled, rushing into the shop, “they’ve got Dottie, in a bus made from our plans. Let’s go!” as he started on a run for the testing shed.

  “Wait a minute!” crisply shouted Crane. “Don’t go off half-cocked. What is your plan?”

  “Plan, hell!” barked the enraged chemist. “Chase ’em!”

  “Which way did they go, and when?”

  “Straight up, full power, twenty minutes ago.”

  “Too long ago. Straight up has changed its direction several degrees since then. They may have covered a million miles, or they may have come back and landed next door. Sit down and think—we need all your brains now.”

  Regaining his self-possession as the wisdom of his friend’s advice came home to him, Seaton sat down and pulled out his pipe. There was a tense silence for an instant. Then he leaped to his feet and darted into his room, returning with an object-compass whose needle pointed upward.

  “DuQuesne did it,” he cried exultantly. “This baby is still looking right at him. Now let’s go—make it snappy!”

  “Not yet. We should find out how far away they are; that may give us an idea.”

  Suiting action to word, he took up his stopwatch and set the needle swinging. They watched it with strained faces as second after second went by and it still continued to swing. When it had come to rest Crane read his watch and made a rapid calculation.

  “About three hundred and fifty million miles,” he stated. “Clear out of our solar system already, and from the distance covered he must have had a constant acceleration so as to approximate the velocity of light, and he is still going with full.…”

  “But nothing can possibly go that fast, Mart, it’s impossible. How about Einstein’s theory?”

  “That is a theory, this measurement of distance is a fact, as you know from our tests.”

  “That’s right. Another good theory gone to pot. But how do you account for his distance? D’you suppose he’s lost control?”

  “He must have. I do not believe that he would willingly stand that acceleration, nor that he would have gone that far of his own accord. Do you?”

  “I sure don’t. We don’t know how big a bar they are carrying, so we can’t estimate how long it is going to take us to catch them. But let’s not waste any more time, Mart. For Cat’s sake, let’s get busy!”

  “We have only those four bars, Dick—two for each unit. Do you think that will be enough? Think of how far we may have to go, what we may possibly get into, and what it will mean to Dottie if we fail for lack of power.”

  Seaton, though furiously eager to be off, paused at this new idea, and half-regretfully he replied:

  “We are so far behind them already that I guess a few hours more won’t make much difference. It sure would be disastrous to get out near one of the fixed stars and have our power quit. I guess you’re right, we’d better get a couple more—make it four, then we’ll have enough to chase them half our lives. We’d better load up on grub and X-plosive ammunition, too.”

  * * * *

  While Crane and Shiro carried additional provisions and boxes of cartridges into the “Skylark,” Seaton once more mounted his motorcycle and sped across the city to the brass foundry. The manager of the plant took his order, but blandly informed him that there was not that much copper in the city, that it would be a week or ten days before the order could be filled. Seaton suggested that they melt up some copper cable and other goods already manufactured, offering ten times their value, but the manager was obdurate, saying that he could not violate the rule of priority of orders. Seaton then went to other places, endeavoring to buy scrap copper, trolley wire, electric cable, anything made of the ruddy metal, but found none for sale in quantities large enough to be of any use. After several hours of fruitless search, he returned home in a towering rage and explained to Crane, in lurid language, his failure to secure the copper. The latter was unmoved.

  “After you left, it occurred to me that you might not get any. You see, Steel is still watching us.”

  Fire shot from Seaton’s eyes.

  “I’m going to clean up that bunch,” he gritted through his teeth as he started straight for the door.

  “Not yet, Dick,” Crane remonstrated. “We can go down to Wilson’s in a few minutes, and I know we can get it there if he has it. The “Skylark” is all ready to travel.”

  No more words were needed. They hurried into the space-car and soon were standing in the office of the plant in which the vessel had been built. When they had made their wants known, the iron-master shook his head.

  “I’m sorry, Crane, but I have only a few pounds of copper in the shop, and we have no suitable furnace.”

  Seaton broke out violently at this, but Crane interrupted him, explaining their inability to get the metal anywhere else and the urgency of their need. When he had finished, Wilson brought his fist down upon his desk.

  “I’ll get it if I have to melt up our dynamos,” he roared. “We’ll have to rig a crucible, but we’ll have your bars out just as soon as the whole force of this damned scrap-heap can make ’em!”

  Calling in his foreman, he bellowed orders, and while automobiles scoured the nearby towns for scrap copper, the crucible and molds were made ready.

  Nearl
y two days passed before the gleaming copper cylinders were finished. During this time Crane added to their already complete equipment every article he could conceive of their having any use for, while Seaton raged up and down the plant in a black fury of impatience. Just before the bars were ready, they made another reading on the object-compass. Their faces grew tense and drawn and their hearts turned sick as second followed second and minute followed minute and the needle still oscillated. Finally, however, it came to rest, and Seaton’s voice almost failed him as he read his figures.

  “Two hundred and thirty-five light-years, Mart. They’re lost, and still going. Good-bye, old scout,” holding out his hand, “Tell Vaneman that I’ll bring her back or else stay out there myself.”

  “You must be crazy, Dick. You know I am going.”

  “Why? No use in both of us taking such a chance. If Dottie’s gone, of course I want to go too, but you don’t.”

  “Nonsense, Dick. Of course this is somewhat farther than we had planned on going for our maiden voyage, but where is the difference? It is just as safe to go a thousand light-years as only one, and we have power and food for any contingency. There is no more danger in this trip than there is in one to Mars. At all events, I am going whether you want me to or not, so save your breath.”

  “You lie like a thief, Mart—you know what we are up against as well as I do. But if you insist on coming along, I’m sure glad to have you.”

  As their hands met in a crushing grip, the bars were brought up and loaded into the carriers. Waving good-bye to Wilson, they closed the massive door and took their positions. Seaton adjusted the bar parallel with the needle of the object-compass, turned on the coil, and advanced the speed-lever until Crane, reading the pyro-meters, warned him to slow down, as the shell was heating. Free of the earth’s atmosphere, he slowly advanced the lever, one notch at a time, until he could no longer support the increasing weight of his hand, but had to draw out the rolling support designed for that emergency. He pushed the lever a few notches farther, and felt himself forced down violently into the seat. He was now lying at full length, the seat having automatically moved upward so that his hand still controlled the lever. Still he kept putting on more power, until the indicator showed that more than three-quarters of the power was in operation and he felt that he could stand but little more.