The Space Opera Megapack

by John W. Campbell

* * * *

  As the meal progressed, Dorothy noticed that DuQuesne’s left arm seemed almost helpless, and that he ate with great difficulty because of his terribly bruised face. As soon as they had removed the trays she went into her room, where she had seen a small medicine chest, and brought out a couple of bottles.

  “Lie down here, Doctor DuQuesne,” she commanded. “I’m going to apply a little first-aid to the injured. Arnica and iodine are all I can find, but they’ll help a little.”

  “I’m all right,” began the scientist, but at her imperious gesture he submitted, and she bathed his battered features with the healing lotion and painted the worst bruises with iodine.

  “I see your arm is lame. Where does it hurt?”

  “Shoulder’s the worst. I rammed it through the board when we started out.”

  He opened his shirt at the throat and bared his shoulder, and Dorothy gasped—as much at the size and power of the muscles displayed, as at the extent and severity of the man’s injuries. Stepping into the gallery, she brought out hot water and towels and gently bathed away the clotted blood that had been forced through the skin.

  “Massage it a little with the arnica as I move the arm,” he directed coolly, and she did so, pityingly. He did not wince and made no sign of pain, but she saw beads of perspiration appear upon his face, and wondered at his fortitude.

  “That’s fine,” he said gratefully as she finished, and a peculiar expression came over his face. “It feels one hundred per cent better already. But why do you do it? I should think you would feel like crowning me with that basin instead of playing nurse.”

  “Efficiency,” she replied with a smile. “I’m taking a leaf out of your own book. You are our chief engineer, you know, and it won’t do to have you laid up.”

  “That’s a logical explanation, but it doesn’t go far enough,” he rejoined, still studying her intently. She did not reply, but turned to Perkins.

  “How are you, Mr. Perkins? Do you require medical attention?”

  “No,” growled Perkins from the seat in which he had crouched immediately after eating. “Keep away from me, or I’ll cut your heart out!”

  “Shut up!” snapped DuQuesne. “Remember what I said?”

  “I haven’t done anything,” snarled the other.

  “I said I would throw you out if you made another break,” DuQuesne informed him evenly, “and I meant it. If you can’t talk decently, keep still. Understand that you are to keep off Miss Vaneman, words and actions. I am in charge of her, and I will put up with no interference whatever. This is your last warning.”

  “How about Spencer, then?”

  “I have nothing to say about her, she’s not mine,” responded DuQuesne with a shrug.

  An evil light appeared in Perkins’ eyes and he took out a wicked-looking knife and began to strop it carefully upon the leather of the seat, glaring at his victim the while.

  “Well, I have something to say.…” blazed Dorothy, but she was silenced by a gesture from Margaret, who calmly took the pistol from her pocket, jerked the slide back, throwing a cartridge into the chamber, and held the weapon up on one finger, admiring it from all sides.

  * * * *

  “Don’t worry about his knife. He has been sharpening it for my benefit for the last month. He doesn’t mean anything by it.”

  At this unexpected show of resistance, Perkins stared at her for an instant, then glanced at his coat.

  “Yes, this was yours, once. You needn’t bother about picking up your coat, they’re both gone. You might be tempted to throw that knife, so drop it on the floor and kick it over to me before I count three.

  “One.” The heavy pistol steadied into line with his chest and her finger tightened on the trigger.

  “Two.” He obeyed and she picked up the knife. He turned to DuQuesne, who had watched the scene unmoved, a faint smile upon his saturnine face.

  “Doctor!” he cried, shaking with fear. “Why don’t you shoot her or take that gun away from her? Surely you don’t want to see me murdered?”

  “Why not?” replied DuQuesne calmly. “It is nothing to me whether she kills you or you kill her. You brought it on yourself by your own carelessness. Any man with brains doesn’t leave guns lying around within reach of prisoners, and a blind man could have seen Miss Vaneman getting your hardware.”

  “You saw her take them and didn’t warn me?” croaked Perkins.

  “Why should I warn you? If you can’t take care of your own prisoner she earns her liberty, as far as I am concerned. I never did like your style, Perkins, especially your methods of handling—or rather mishandling—women. You could have made her give up the stuff she recovered from that ass Brookings inside of an hour, and wouldn’t have had to kill her afterward, either.”

  “How?” sneered the other. “If you are so good at that kind of thing, why didn’t you try it on Seaton and Crane?”

  “There are seven different methods to use on a woman like Miss Spencer, each of which will produce the desired result. The reason I did not try them on either Seaton or Crane is that they would have failed. Your method of indirect action is probably the only one that will succeed. That is why I adopted it.”

  “Well, what are you going to do about it?” shrieked Perkins. “Are you going to sit there and lecture all day?”

  “I am going to do nothing whatever,” answered the scientist coldly. “If you had any brains you would see that you are in no danger. Miss Spencer will undoubtedly kill you if you attack her—not otherwise. That is an Anglo-Saxon weakness.”

  “Did you see me take the pistols?” queried Dorothy.

  “Certainly. I’m not blind. You have one of them in your right coat pocket now.”

  “Then why didn’t you, or don’t you, try to take it away from me?” she asked in wonder.

  “If I had objected to your having them, you would never have got them. If I didn’t want you to have a gun now, I would take it away from you. You know that, don’t you?” and his black eyes stared into her violet ones with such calm certainty of his ability that she felt her heart sink.

  “Yes,” she admitted finally, “I believe you could—that is, unless I were angry enough to shoot you.”

  “That wouldn’t help you. I can shoot faster and straighter than you can, and would shoot it out of your hand. However, I have no objection to your having the gun, since it is no part of my plan to offer you any further indignity of any kind. Even if you had the necessary coldness of nerve or cruelty of disposition—of which I have one, Perkins the other, and you neither—you wouldn’t shoot me now, because you can’t get back to the earth without me. After we get back I will take the guns away from both of you if I think it desirable. In the meantime, play with them all you please.”

  “Has Perkins any more knives or guns or things in his room?” demanded Dorothy.

  “How should I know?” indifferently; then, as both girls started for Perkins’ room he ordered brusquely:

  “Sit down, Miss Vaneman. Let them fight it out. Perkins has his orders to lay off you—you lay off him. I’m not taking any chances of getting you hurt, that’s one reason I wanted you armed. If he gets gay, shoot him; otherwise, hands off completely.”

  Dorothy threw up her head in defiance, but meeting his cold stare she paused irresolutely and finally sat down, biting her lips in anger, while the other girl went on.

  “That’s better. She doesn’t need any help to whip that yellow dog. He’s whipped already. He never would think of fighting unless the odds were three to one in his favor.”

  * * * *

  When Margaret had returned from a fruitless search of Perkins’ room and had assured herself that he had no more weapons concealed about his person, she thrust the pistol back into her pocket and sat down.

  “That ends that,” she declared. “I guess you will be good now, won’t you, Mr. Perkins?”

  “Yes,” that worthy muttered. “I have to be, now that you’ve got the drop on me and DuQuesne’s gone
back on me. But wait until we get back! I’ll get you then, you.…”

  “Stop right there!” sharply. “There’s nothing I would rather do than shoot you right now, if you give me the slightest excuse, such as that name you were about to call me. Now go ahead!”

  DuQuesne broke the silence that followed.

  “Well, now that the battle is over, and since we are fed and rested, I suggest that we slow down a bit and get ready to start back. Pick out comfortable seats, everybody, and I’ll shoot a little more juice through that bar.”

  Seating himself before the instrument board, he advanced the speed lever slowly until nearly three-quarters of the full power was on, as much as he thought the others could stand.

  For sixty hours he drove the car, reducing the acceleration only at intervals during which they ate and walked about their narrow quarters in order to restore the blood to circulation in their suffering bodies. The power was not reduced for sleep; everyone slept as best he could.

  Dorothy and Margaret talked together at every opportunity, and a real intimacy grew up between them. Perkins was for the most part sullenly quiet, knowing himself despised by all the others and having no outlet here for his particular brand of cleverness. DuQuesne was always occupied with his work and only occasionally addressed a remark to one or another of the party, except during meals. At those periods of general recuperation, he talked easily and well upon many topics. There was no animosity in his bearing nor did he seem to perceive any directed toward himself, but when any of the others ventured to infringe upon his ideas of how discipline should be maintained, DuQuesne’s reproof was merciless. Dorothy almost liked him, but Margaret insisted that she considered him worse than ever.

  When the bar was exhausted, DuQuesne lifted the sole remaining cylinder into place.

  “We should be nearly stationary with respect to the earth,” he remarked. “Now we will start back.”

  “Why, it felt as though we were picking up speed for the last three days!” exclaimed Margaret.

  “Yes, it feels that way because we have nothing to judge by. Slowing down in one direction feels exactly like starting up in the opposite one. There is no means of knowing whether we are standing still, going away from the earth, or going toward it, since we have nothing stationary upon which to make observations. However, since the two bars were of exactly the same size and were exerted in opposite directions except for a few minutes after we left the earth, we are nearly stationary now. I will put on power until this bar is something less than half gone, then coast for three or four days. By the end of that time we should be able to recognize our solar system from the appearance of the fixed stars.”

  He again advanced the lever, and for many hours silence filled the car as it hurtled through space. DuQuesne, waking up from a long nap, saw that the bar no longer pointed directly toward the top of the ship, perpendicular to the floor, but was inclined at a sharp angle. He reduced the current, and felt the lurch of the car as it swung around the bar, increasing the angle many degrees. He measured the angle carefully and peered out of all the windows on one side of the car. Returning to the bar after a time, he again measured the angle, and found that it had increased greatly.

  “What’s the matter, Doctor DuQuesne?” asked Dorothy, who had also been asleep.

  “We are being deflected from our course. You see the bar doesn’t point straight up any more? Of course the direction of the bar hasn’t changed, the car has swung around it.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “We have come close enough to some star so that its attraction swings the bottom of the car around. Normally, you know, the bottom of the car follows directly behind the bar. It doesn’t mean much yet except that we are being drawn away from our straight line, but if the attraction gets much stronger it may make us miss our solar system completely. I have been looking for the star in question, but can’t see it yet. We’ll probably pull away from it very shortly.”

  * * * *

  He threw on the power, and for some time watched the bar anxiously, expecting to see it swing back into the vertical, but the angle continually increased. He again reduced the current and searched the heavens for the troublesome body.

  “Do you see it yet?” asked Dorothy with concern.

  “No, there’s apparently nothing near enough to account for all this deflection.”

  He took out a pair of large night-glasses and peered through them for several minutes.

  “Good God! It’s a dead sun, and we’re nearly onto it! It looks as large as our moon!”

  Springing to the board, he whirled the bar into the vertical. He took down a strange instrument, went to the bottom window, and measured the apparent size of the dark star. Then, after cautioning the rest of the party to sit tight, he advanced the lever farther than it had been before. After half an hour he again slackened the pace and made another observation, finding to his astonishment that the dark mass had almost doubled its apparent size! Dorothy, noting his expression, was about to speak, but he forestalled her.

  “We lost ground, instead of gaining, that spurt,” he remarked, as he hastened to his post. “It must be inconceivably large, to exert such an enormous attractive force at this distance. We’ll have to put on full power. Hang onto yourselves as best you can.”

  He then pushed the lever out to its last notch and left it there until the bar was nearly gone, only to find that the faint disk of the monster globe was even larger than before, being now visible to the unaided eye. Revived, the three others saw it plainly—a great dim circle, visible as is the dark portion of the new moon—and, the power shut off, they felt themselves falling toward it with sickening speed. Perkins screamed with mad fear and flung himself grovelling upon the floor. Margaret, her nerves still unstrung, clutched at her heart with both hands. Dorothy, though her eyes looked like great black holes in her white face, looked DuQuesne in the eye steadily.

  “This is the end, then?”

  “Not yet,” he replied in a calm and level voice. “The end will not come for a good many hours, as I have calculated that it will take at least two days, probably more, to fall the distance we have to go. We have all that time in which to think out a way of escape.”

  “Won’t the outer repulsive shell keep us from striking it, or at least break the force of our fall?”

  “No. It was designed only as protection from meteorites and other small bodies. It is heavy enough to swing us away from a small planet, but it will be used up long before we strike.”

  He lighted a cigarette and sat at case, as though in his own study, his brow wrinkled in thought as he made calculations in his notebook. Finally he rose to his feet.

  “There’s only one chance that I can see. That is to gather up every scrap of copper we have and try to pull ourselves far enough out of line so that we will take an hyperbolic orbit around that body instead of falling into it.”

  “What good will that do us?” asked Margaret, striving for self-control. “We will starve to death finally, won’t we?”

  “Not necessarily. That will give us time to figure out something else.”

  “You won’t have to figure out anything else, Doctor,” stated Dorothy positively. “If we miss that moon, Dick and Martin will find us before very long.”

  “Not in this life. If they tried to follow us, they’re both dead before now.”

  “That’s where even you are wrong!” she flashed at him. “They knew you were wrecking our machine, so they built another one, a good one. And they know a lot of things about this new metal that you have never dreamed of, since they were not in the plans you stole.”

  * * * *

  DuQuesne went directly to the heart of the matter, paying no attention to her barbed shafts.

  “Can they follow us through space without seeing us?” he demanded.

  “Yes—or at least, I think they can.”

  “How do they do it?”

  “I don’t know—I wouldn’t tell you if I did.”
<
br />   “You’ll tell if you know,” he declared, his voice cutting like a knife. “But that can wait until after we get out of this. The thing to do now is to dodge that world.”

  He searched the vessel for copper, ruthlessly tearing out almost everything that contained the metal, hammering it flat and throwing it into the power-plant. He set the bar at right angles to the line of their fall and turned on the current. When the metal was exhausted, he made another series of observations upon the body toward which they were falling, and reported quietly:

  “We made a lot of distance, but not enough. Everything goes in, this time.”

  He tore out the single remaining light-wire, leaving the car in darkness save for the diffused light of his electric torch, and broke up the only remaining motor. He then took his almost priceless Swiss watch, his heavy signet ring, his scarf pin, and the cartridges from his pistol, and added them to the collection. Flashing his lamp upon Perkins, he relieved him of everything he had which contained copper.

  “I think I have a few pennies in my pocketbook,” suggested Dorothy.

  “Get ’em,” he directed briefly, and while she was gone he searched Margaret, without result save for the cartridges in her pistol, as she had no jewelry remaining after her imprisonment. Dorothy returned and handed him everything she had found.

  “I would like to keep this ring,” she said slowly, pointing to a slender circlet of gold set with a solitaire diamond, “if you think there is any chance of us getting clear.”

  “Everything goes that has any copper in it,” he said coldly, “and I am glad to see that Seaton is too good a chemist to buy any platinum jewelry. You may keep the diamond, though,” as he wrenched the jewel out of its setting and returned it to her.

  He threw all the metal into the central chamber and the vessel gave a tremendous lurch as the power was again applied. It was soon spent, however, and after the final observation, the others waiting in breathless suspense for him to finish his calculations, he made his curt announcement.

  “Not enough.”

  Perkins, his mind weakened by the strain of the last few days, went completely insane at the words. With a wild howl he threw himself at the unmoved scientist, who struck him with the butt of his pistol as he leaped, the mighty force of DuQuesne’s blow crushing his skull like an eggshell and throwing him backward to the opposite side of the vessel. Margaret lay in her seat in a dead faint. Dorothy and DuQuesne looked at each other in the feeble light of the torch. To the girl’s amazement, the man was as calm as though he were safe in his own house, and she made a determined effort to hold herself together.