Rocket from Infinity

by Lester Del Rey

  “I see.”

  “There are a lot of dead people aboard. I think Barco Village was an experimental pioneering station for a race of people who were much farther advanced thousands of years ago than we are even now.”

  There was no excitement in Doctor LeRoy’s voice when he replied. No unbelief, either. He could have been brightly interested in Pete’s solution of a reasonably difficult problem.

  “These bodies you found, Peter—were they…?”

  “Definitely two races, also, men, women, and children,” Peter said exultantly. “They fit the indications of the artifacts perfectly.”

  “Then I think you’ve hit on something. Congratulations.”

  “Thank you, sir. It’s my theory that the race we’re talking about gave up the station after giving it ample time to prove out. For some reason, anyhow, they decided to leave Mars and sent this ship after the colonists. They loaded the balance of their supplies and themselves on the ship and took off. On the way back to wherever it was taking them, it crashed into an asteroid and ended up in the Badlands in the Asteroid Belt. That was where we found it.”

  “Wonderful,” Doctor LeRoy enthused. “Now we’ll have actual specimens of the Barco Village races.”

  “We’ll have more than that if we can get back, Doctor. There’s something funny about this ship. We tried to fix the cybernetic brain that controls it and made a mistake. The ship didn’t even move, but we’re millions of light-years out in space right now.”

  There was the silence of consternation. Then, “Are you sure?”

  “As sure as I can be from what I know about star patterns. And I’m pretty good at them.”

  “I—I don’t know what to say.”

  Pete remembered something. “The last time I saw you, sir, you told me you had a theory on how the Village came to be. Does the discovery of the ship prove or disprove it?”

  “I think examination of the bodies will tend to disprove it. I had an idea that Barco Village might have been a prison colony for one of the Outer Planets. It occurred to me that testing the possibilities of colonization and using prisoners as test pieces so to speak, might have gone together. That might have accounted for the primitive conditions we found—primitive that is, when balanced against the sort of colony an advanced civilization might have set up.”

  “Finding the ship exploded another idea we had,” Pete said. “That the civilization collapsed and wasn’t able to send for its colonists.”

  “That’s true.”

  “And as to your prison theory, I suppose the presence of women and children does hurt it.”

  “Another idea I had—that the second, smaller race constituted slaves and servants doesn’t speak well for an enlightened civilization.”

  “Maybe they were just testing the staying power of two different races on their planet.”

  “That could be. We’ll learn more about that later, after checking into the new data. Another interesting field of investigation is open to us now, also. Instantaneous transportation looks pretty obvious. This, you’ve definitely proven. Yet the ship hit something out in space while apparently on the way home.”

  “It would seem to me, sir,” Pete said, “that whatever happened to fault the home voyage had to happen at the moment of takeoff from the Village. The trip was started or the ship would have remained on Mars. But it was never finished. Therefore, the telescoping of the distance between the planets can obviously be reversed in a microsecond. That microsecond put the ship out in space where it later collided with an asteroid. It must have drifted helplessly, with all on board dead, before that happened.”

  The intense scientific interest of both Pete and LeRoy, had created a bizarre situation—a calm discussion under the most perilous of circumstances.

  This thought hit LeRoy starkly. “Pete! You said you were millions of light-years out in space! And I sit here chattering as though—”

  “I sort of forgot the situation for a minute myself, sir.”

  “Something must be done! I’ll have to find a specialist to put you in touch with. Someone here on Mars—or on Earth—Someone who can advise you—”

  Pete started to reply. Then, strangely, he smiled as he turned to look at Jane. There was pride in his eyes, and maybe something more as he said, “No thanks, Doctor. I’ll ride with the adviser I’ve got right here on the ship.”

  Static cut in sharply, crackling across the voice. Pete waited for a few moments and then turned from the panel. Jane was regarding him with a slanted gaze.

  “Did you mean that?”

  He grinned. “Don’t get any ideas. I was referring to Colleen.”

  “If I could pick this thing up I’d hit you with it.”

  “Just try fixing it. Now I’m going to try and get in touch with my Dad.”

  Jane’s lips trembled just slightly. “I wish you’d tell me something.”

  “What?”

  “Where are they going to send the bill for that radiophone call you just made to Mars?”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  SPACE LUCK

  Catching her lower lip between her teeth, Jane turned quickly back to the cybernetic brain. Pete, emotionally stirred also, put his attention again on the radio panel, switching on the power.

  The static was still there, but within a few moments, it faded and Pete sent out his call letters. The faraway voice asking identification came more quickly, this time, and was clearer. He re-identified himself and then asked to be connected with his father in the Asteroid Belt. There was a little more static.

  Then his heart jumped into his throat as the raspy voice of Betcha Jones came back to him.

  “Betcha! It’s me! I mean, it’s Pete.”

  “Great stars! Where are you? We’ve been waiting for a call. Your Dad’s fit to go through the ceiling and take his bed with him!”

  “I’m in a little trouble, Betcha. Let me talk to Dad.”

  Joe Mason’s voice was already coming in. “Pete! Pete boy! Where have you been? What have you been doing? You’ve had us plenty worried.”

  Pete gulped. “It’s a long story, Dad. I hope I can see you again and tell you.”

  “What do you mean, you hope? Are you in some kind of a real jam?”

  “I guess you’d call it that. We found a bonanza, Dad. A spaceship. There are millions in the salvage! But—”

  “What do you mean, we?”

  “I’ve got the Barrys with me. The whole family. We own the salvage together.”

  “Have you gone crazy, boy?”

  “Dad, I’ve got to talk fast before the static comes in again. I can’t explain; I can just state facts. We’ve got the ship but it’s a strange kind—one like nobody ever saw before and we’re thousands of light-years away. I—I don’t know whether we’ll get back or not.”

  Betcha’s rasp cut in again. Pete listened. His jaw dropped. “Are you kidding?”

  Betcha’s tones became more strident. He wasn’t kidding and he resented being accused of it.

  Pete laughed with touches of reactionary hysteria in the sound. He held up a defensive hand as though Betcha was there and could actually see it.

  “All right! All right. I’ll explain later. I’ve got to cut out now. I’ll be seeing you, Dad. And when I do well be able to buy the biggest luxury liner ever made, just for you to ride around in!”

  Pete snapped the connection and turned on Jane. She came around to face him and he grabbed her into his arms and kissed her.

  Rachel Barry entered the cabin at that precise moment and her eyes flashed. “Now stop that, you two! Fine example you’re setting for your sisters!”

  Jane stared in stunned amazement, overcome by what seemed to Pete’s sudden madness. But then he astounded both of them even further by grabbing Rachel and repeating his performance.

  “He’s gone out of his m
ind!” Jane cried as her mother struggled in desperation.

  “Not exactly,” Pete shouted. He looked around at the walls of the cabin. “The plates up here are different. You can’t see through them. Come back to the empty hold.”

  He pushed them ahead of him and herded them along like two amazed sheep. Then he picked up two more sheep on the way—Colleen and Ellen—and shepherded the four of them into the hold.

  “I was talking to Betcha,” he exulted, “and I told him where we were. He said I was crazy—that he’d just taken a fix on us and he told me where we really were. Look out there. What do you see?”

  They rushed to the bulkhead and looked out through four different windows.

  “It’s light!” Colleen screamed. “I see the sun.”

  “We’re back in the System!” Jane cried.

  “We’re on Mars!” Pete said. “That ruin you see is Barco Village.” He whirled Jane around. “You were changing the connections while I was calling home, weren’t you?”

  “Yes… I…”

  “And you were wrong again. But it was the luck of space. This must have been the ship’s original destination. It was patterned into the brain. It left here for a return to its home port, wherever that is, when it got into trouble. What you did was to rewire it to the original orbit pattern. So the ship brought us back here.”

  Ellen was on her knees patting the floor. “Oh, you lovely, lovely ship!” she crooned.

  Rachel Barry, undisturbed by the miracle, moved briskly toward the door. “Well, I’m glad all this nonsense is straightened out. We can use our headpiece radio units again. I’ve got to go and call for help. We have injured people aboard, you’ll recall. Come, children.”

  Pete and Jane stood alone in the hold. They were quiet for a few moments. Then Jane sighed. “I’m glad it’s over,” she said.

  “Are you—really?”

  “Well, yes and—and no.”

  It was another new mood. He’d never seen Jane so uncertain, so—he searched for a term—so feminine. Or so plain wonderful!

  “Things are going to start happening now,” he said.

  “Yes, I suppose so.”

  “We’ve made the scientific find of the century—of the age. Scientists and industrialists will flock in. Research on this ship will open the Infinite to our System.”

  “Yes, I guess it will,” Jane said. There was a certain reluctance in her voice.

  “And you’ll be of vital importance to them—the things you’re in rapport with. I probably won’t be seeing much of you from now on. You’ll be too busy.”

  Jane smiled. “As Mother would say, let’s stop this nonsense. There’s work to be done.”

  Obviously happier than she’d been for some time, Jane, after a manner of speaking, took charge.

  She hooked her arm firmly through Pete’s, and together they hurried toward the lower companion-way.