The Space Opera Megapack

by John W. Campbell

  “We’ll expect you at the Pallas first hour to-morrow, and we’ll start searching the wreck-pack with a dozen of our men,” he said.

  He then extended his hand to the girl. “Good-by, Miss Mallen. I hope we can have a talk soon.”

  He had said the words with double meaning, and saw understanding in her eyes. “I hope we can, too,” she said.

  Kent’s nod to Jandron went unanswered, and he and Liggett adjusted their helmets and entered the airlock.

  Once out of it, they kicked rapidly away from the Martian Queen, floating along with the wreck-pack’s huge mass to their right, and only the star-flecked emptiness of infinity to their left. In a few minutes they reached the airlock of the Pallas.

  * * * *

  They found Captain Crain awaiting them anxiously. Briefly Kent reported everything.

  “I’m certain there has been foul play aboard the Martian Queen,” he said. “Krell you saw for yourself, Jandron is pure brute, and their men seem capable of anything.

  “I gave the suit-phone to the girl, however, and if she can call us with it, we can get the truth from her. She dared not tell me anything there in the presence of Krell and Jandron.”

  Crain nodded, his face grave. “We’ll see whether or not she calls,” he said.

  Kent took a suit-phone from one of their space-suits and rapidly, tuned it to match the one he had left with Marta Mallen. Almost at once they heard her voice from it, and Kent answered rapidly.

  “I’m so glad I got you!” she exclaimed. “Mr. Kent, I dared not tell you the truth about this ship when you were here, or Krell and the rest would have killed you at once.”

  “I thought that was it, and that’s why I left the suit-phone for you,” Kent said. “Just what is the truth?”

  “Krell and Jandron and these men of theirs are the ones who killed the officers and passengers of the Martian Queen! What they told you about the explosion was true enough, for the explosion did happen that way, and because of it, the ship drifted into the dead-area. But the only ones killed by it were some of the tube-men and three passengers.

  “Then, while the ship was drifting into the dead-area, Krell told the men that the fewer aboard, the longer they could live on the ship’s food and air. Krell and Jandron led the men in a surprise attack and killed all the officers and passengers, and threw their bodies out into space. I was the only passenger they spared, because both Krell and Jandron—want me!”

  There was a silence, and Kent felt a red anger rising in him. “Have they dared harm you?” he asked after a moment.

  “No, for Krell and Jandron are too jealous of each other to permit the other to touch me. But it’s been terrible living with them in this awful place.”

  “Ask her if she knows what their plans are in regard to us,” Crain told Kent.

  Marta had apparently overheard the question. “I don’t know that, for they shut me in my cabin as soon as you left,” she said. “I’ve heard them talking and arguing excitedly, though. I know that if you do find fuel, they’ll try to kill you all and escape from here in your ship.”

  “Pleasant prospect,” Kent commented. “Do you think they plan an attack on us now?”

  “No; I think that they’ll wait until you’ve refueled your ship, if you are able to do that, and then try treachery.”

  “Well, they’ll find us ready. Miss Mallen, you have the suit-phone: keep it hidden in your cabin and I’ll call you first thing to-morrow. We’re going to get you out of there, but we don’t want to break with Krell until we’re ready. Will you be all right until then?”

  “Of course I will,” she answered. “There’s another thing, though. My name isn’t Miss Mallen—it’s Marta.”

  “Mine’s Rance,” said Kent, smiling. “Good-by until to-morrow, then, Marta.”

  “Good-by, Rance.”

  Kent rose from the instrument with the smile still in his eyes, but with his lips compressed. “Damn it, there’s the bravest and finest girl in the solar system!” he exclaimed. “Over there with those brutes!”

  “We’ll have her out, never fear,” Crain reassured him. “The main thing is to determine our course toward Krell and Jandron.”

  Kent thought. “As I see it, Krell can help us immeasurably in our search through the wreck-pack for fuel,” he said. “I think it would be best to keep on good terms with him until we’ve found fuel and have it in our tanks. Then we can turn the tables on them before they can do anything.”

  Crain nodded thoughtfully. “I think you’re right. Then you and Liggett and Krell can head our search-party to-morrow.”

  Crain established watches on a new schedule, and Kent and Liggett and the dozen men chosen for the exploring party of the next day ate a scanty meal and turned in for some sleep.

  * * * *

  When Kent woke and glimpsed the massed wrecks through the window he was for the moment amazed, but rapidly remembered. He and Liggett were finishing their morning ration when Crain pointed to a window.

  “There comes Krell now,” he said, indicating the single space-suited figure approaching along the wreck-pack’s edge.

  “I’ll call Marta before he gets here,” said Kent hastily.

  The girl answered on the suit-phone immediately, and it occurred to Kent that she must have spent the night without sleeping. “Krell left a few minutes ago,” she said.

  “Yes, he’s coming now. You heard nothing of their plans?”

  “No; they’ve kept me shut in my cabin. However, I did hear Krell giving Jandron and the rest directions. I’m sure they’re plotting something.”

  “We’re prepared for them,” Kent assured her. “If all goes well, before you realize it, you’ll be sailing out of here with us in the Pallas.”

  “I hope so,” she said. “Rance, be careful with Krell in the wreck-pack. He’s dangerous.”

  “I’ll be watching him,” he promised. “Good-by, Marta.”

  Kent reached the lower-deck just as Krell entered from the airlock, his swarthy face smiling as he removed his helmet. He carried a pointed steel bar. Liggett and the others were donning their suits.

  “All ready to go, Kent?” Krell asked.

  Kent nodded. “All ready,” he said shortly. Since hearing Marta’s story he found it hard to dissimulate with Krell.

  “You’ll want bars like mine,” Krell continued, “for they’re damned handy when you get jammed between wreckage masses. Exploring this wreck-pack is no soft job: I can tell you from experience.”

  Liggett and the rest had their suits adjusted, and with bars in their grasp, followed Krell into the airlock. Kent hung back for a last word with Crain, who, with his half-dozen remaining men, was watching.

  “Marta just told me that Krell and Jandron have been plotting something,” he told the captain; “so I’d keep a close watch outside.”

  “Don’t worry, Kent. We’ll let no one inside the Pallas until you and Liggett and the men get back.”

  * * * *

  In a few minutes they were out of the ship, with Krell and Kent and Liggett leading, and the twelve members of the Pallas’ crew following closely.

  The three leaders climbed up on the Uranus-Jupiter passenger-ship that lay beside the Pallas, the others moving on and exploring the neighboring wrecks in parties of two and three. From the top of the passenger-ship, when they gained it, Kent and his two companions could look far out over the wreck-pack. It was an extraordinary spectacle, this stupendous mass of dead ships floating motionless in the depths of space, with the burning stars above and below them.

  His companions and the other men clambering over the neighboring wrecks seemed weird figures in their bulky suits and transparent helmets. Kent looked back at the Pallas, and then along the wreck-pack’s edge to where he could glimpse the silvery side of the Martian Queen. But now Krell and Liggett were descending into the ship’s interior through the great opening smashed in its bows, and Kent followed.

  They found themselves in the liner’s upper navigation
-rooms. Officers and men lay about, frozen to death at the instant the meteor-struck vessel’s air had rushed out, and the cold of space had entered. Krell led the way on, down into the ship’s lower decks, where they found the bodies of the crew and passengers lying in the same silent death.

  The salons held beautifully-dressed women, distinguished-looking men, lying about as the meteor’s shock had hurled them. One group lay around a card-table, their game interrupted. A woman still held a small child, both seemingly asleep. Kent tried to shake off the oppression he felt as he and Krell and Liggett continued down to the tank-rooms.

  They found their quest there useless, for the tanks had been strained by the meteor’s shock, and were empty. Kent felt Liggett grasp his hand and heard him speak, the sound-vibrations coming through their contacting suits.

  “Nothing here; and we’ll find it much the same through all these wrecks, if I’m not wrong. Tanks always give at a shock.”

  “There must be some ships with fuel still in them among all these,” Kent answered.

  They climbed back, up to the ship’s top, and leapt off it toward a Jupiter freighter lying a little farther inside the pack. As they floated toward it, Kent saw their men moving on with them from ship to ship, progressing inward into the pack. Both Kent and Liggett kept Krell always ahead of them, knowing that a blow from his bar, shattering their glassite helmets, meant instant death. But Krell seemed quite intent on the search for fuel.

  The big Jupiter freighter seemed intact from above, but, when they penetrated into it, they found its whole under-side blown away, apparently by an explosion of its tanks. They moved on to the next ship, a private space-yacht, small in size, but luxurious in fittings. It had been abandoned in space, its rocket-tubes burst and tanks strained.

  They went on, working deeper into the wreck-pack. Kent almost forgot the paramount importance of their search in the fascination of it. They explored almost every known type of ship—freighters, liners, cold-storage boats, and grain-boats. Once Kent’s hopes ran high at sight of a fuel-ship, but it proved to be in ballast, its cargo-tanks empty and its own tanks and tubes apparently blown simultaneously.

  Kent’s muscles ached from the arduous work of climbing over and exploring the wrecks. He and Liggett had become accustomed to the sight of frozen, motionless bodies.

  As they worked deeper into the pack, they noticed that the ships were of increasingly older types, and at last Krell signalled a halt. “We’re almost a mile in,” he told them, gripping their hands. “We’d better work back out, taking a different section of the pack as we do.”

  Kent nodded. “It may change our luck,” he said.

  It did; for when they had gone not more than a half-mile back, they glimpsed one of their men waving excitedly from the top of a Pluto liner.

  They hastened at once toward him, the other men gathering also; and when Kent grasped the man’s hand he heard his excited voice.

  “Fuel-tanks here are more than half-full, sir!”

  * * * *

  They descended quickly into the liner, finding that though its whole stern had been sheared away by a meteor, its tanks had remained miraculously unstrained.

  “Enough fuel here to take the Pallas to Neptune!” Kent exclaimed.

  “How will you get it over to your ship?” Krell asked. Kent pointed to great reels of flexible metal tubing hanging near the tanks.

  “We’ll pump it over. The Pallas has tubing like this ship’s, for taking on fuel in space, and, by joining its tubing to this, we’ll have a tube-line between the two ships. It’s hardly more than a quarter-mile.”

  “Let’s get back and let them know about it,” Liggett urged, and they climbed back out of the liner.

  They worked their way out of the wreck-pack with much greater speed than that with which they had entered, needing only an occasional brace against a ship’s side to send them floating over the wrecks. They came to the wreck-pack’s edge at a little distance from the Pallas, and hastened toward it.

  They found the outer door of the Pallas’ airlock open, and entered, Krell remaining with them. As the outer door closed and air hissed into the lock, Kent and the rest removed their helmets. The inner door slid open as they were doing this, and from inside almost a score of men leapt upon them!

  Kent, stunned for a moment, saw Jandron among their attackers, bellowing orders to them, and even as he struck out furiously he comprehended. Jandron and the men of the Martian Queen had somehow captured the Pallas from Crain and had been awaiting their return!

  The struggle was almost instantly over, for, outnumbered and hampered as they were by their heavy space-suits, Kent and Liggett and their followers had no chance. Their hands, still in the suits, were bound quickly behind them at Jandron’s orders.

  Kent heard an exclamation, and saw Marta starting toward him from behind Jandron’s men. But a sweep of Jandron’s arm brushed her rudely back. Kent strained madly at his bonds. Krell’s face had a triumphant look.

  “Did it all work as I told you it would, Jandron?” he asked.

  “It worked,” Jandron answered impassively. “When they saw fifteen of us coming from the wreck-pack in space-suits, they opened right up to us.”

  Kent understood, and cursed Krell’s cunning. Crain, seeing the fifteen figures approaching from the wreck-pack, had naturally thought they were Kent’s party, and had let them enter to overwhelm his half-dozen men.

  “We put Crain and his men over in the Martian Queen,” Jandron continued, “and took all their helmets so they can’t escape. The girl we brought over here. Did you find a wreck with fuel?”

  Krell nodded. “A Pluto liner a quarter-mile back, and we can pump the fuel over here by connecting tube-lines. What the devil—”

  Jandron had made a signal at which three of his men had leapt forward on Krell, securing his hands like those of the others.

  “Have you gone crazy, Jandron?” cried Krell, his face red with anger and surprise.

  “No,” Jandron replied impassively; “but the men are as tired as I am of your bossing ways, and have chosen me as their sole leader.”

  “You dirty double-crosser!” Krell raged. “Are you men going to let him get away with this?”

  The men paid no attention, and Jandron motioned to the airlock. “Take them over to the Martian Queen too,” he ordered, “and make sure there’s no space-helmet left there. Then get back at once, for we’ve got to get the fuel into this ship and make a getaway.”

  * * * *

  The helmets of Kent and Krell and the other helpless prisoners were put upon them, and, with hands still bound, they were herded into the airlock by eight of Jandron’s men attired in space-suits also. The prisoners were then joined one to another by a strand of metal cable.

  Kent, glancing back into the ship as the airlock’s inner door closed, saw Jandron giving rapid orders to his followers, and noticed Marta held back from the airlock by one of them. Krell’s eyes glittered venomously through his helmet. The outer door opened, and their guards jerked them forth into space by the connecting cable.

  They were towed helplessly along the wreck-pack’s rim toward the Martian Queen. Once inside its airlock, Jandron’s men removed the prisoners’ space-helmets and then used the duplicate-control inside the airlock itself to open the inner door. Through this opening they thrust the captives, those inside the ship not daring to enter the airlock. Jandron’s men then closed the inner door, re-opened the outer one, and started back toward the Pallas with the helmets of Kent and his companions.

  Kent and the others soon found Crain and his half-dozen men who rapidly undid their bonds. Crain’s men still wore their space-suits, but, like Kent’s companions, were without space-helmets.

  “Kent, I was afraid they’d get you and your men too!” Crain exclaimed. “It’s all my fault, for when I saw Jandron and his men coming from the wreck-pack I never doubted but that it was you.”

  “It’s no one’s fault,” Kent told him. “It’s just something
that we couldn’t foresee.”

  Crain’s eyes fell on Krell. “But what’s he doing here?” he exclaimed. Kent briefly explained Jandron’s treachery toward Krell, and Crain’s brows drew ominously together.

  “So Jandron put you here with us! Krell, I am a commissioned captain of a space-ship, and as such can legally try you and sentence you to death here without further formalities.”

  Krell did not answer, but Kent intervened. “There’s hardly time for that now, sir,” he said. “I’m as anxious to settle with Krell as anyone, but right now our main enemy is Jandron, and Krell hates Jandron worse than we do, if I’m not mistaken.”

  “You’re not,” said Krell grimly. “All I want right now is to get within reach of Jandron.”

  “There’s small chance of any of us doing that,” Crain told them. “There’s not a single space-helmet on the Martian Queen.”

  “You’ve searched?” Liggett asked.

  “Every cubic inch of the ship,” Crain told him. “No, Jandron’s men made sure there were no helmets left here, and without helmets this ship is an inescapable prison.”

  “Damn it, there must be some way out!” Kent exclaimed. “Why, Jandron and his men must be starting to pump that fuel into the Pallas by now! They’ll be sailing off as soon as they do it!”

  Crain’s face was sad. “I’m afraid this is the end, Kent. Without helmets, the space between the Martian Queen and the Pallas is a greater barrier to us than a mile-thick wall of steel. In this ship we’ll stay, until the air and food give out, and death releases us.”

  “Damn it, I’m not thinking of myself!” Kent cried. “I’m thinking of Marta! The Pallas will sail out of here with her in Jandron’s power!”

  “The girl!” Liggett exclaimed. “If she could bring us over space-helmets from the Pallas we could get out of here!”

  Kent was thoughtful. “If we could talk to her—she must still have that suit-phone I gave her. Where’s another?”

  Crain quickly detached the compact suit-phone from inside the neck of his own space-suit, and Kent rapidly tuned it to the one he had given Marta Mallen. His heart leapt as her voice came instantly from it: