Astounding Science Fiction Stories Vol 1

by Anthology

  "Yow!" Strike convulsed with delight, with one wary eye on Gerry as if half expecting a missile. "That's good. Y'know whose idea that is?"

  "Certainly. Nine Planets Pictures runs the Moon as they please, and this is that chimpanzee Von Zorn's idea of humor. He put Henri up to it. But boy-will I make a speech that'll singe his ears!"

  But Tommy wasn't to be put off by changing the subject; he was like a small boy at prospect of a fishing trip. "All right; you can't go. But nobody wants to take my picture or get my autograph. I'm not tied down here. Besides, I'm sick of sitting around. There isn't a reason in the world why I couldn't round up the crew and take The Ark myself!"

  "I remember the last time you started out alone! On Venus. Remember the lost continent?"

  Tommy Strike brushed that aside.

  "That was different. This'll be a cinch with The Ark's equipment and Lunde's ray and all the gang -- '

  "Well -- ' Gerry was weakening. "Might be arranged. Before we decide on anything definitely, though, there're three things I'd like to ask Professor Lunde."

  "Yes, Miss Carlyle?"

  "First, have you tried your ray on extra-terrestrial animals?"

  "Oh, yes, indeed. The curator of the local zoo permitted experiments on several Martian and Venusian specimens. All creatures of our Universe, it seems, transmit nerve impulses with the aid of acetylcholine. Provided this-this Cacus is not a vegetable, I'm sure the ray will work on him, too."

  "All right. Secondly, what's in this for you? Not money. Even if we found the ray practicable, you couldn't manufacture it for general distribution because your only market would be hunters like myself who wish to capture live specimens."

  Lunde put on a vague dignity.

  "Prestige, miss, is my sole motive. Prestige for Plymouth University and its faculty."

  "I see. And now tell me who put you up to this?"

  "I beg your pardon?"

  "I mean whose idea was it to write me notes about the Shipkey broadcast and so on? You're just not the type."

  "Er-no. Not entirely my idea. Trevelyan's, really. He's my assistant, or did I tell you that before? Smart lad -- '

  "Very well, Professor Lunde." Gerry cut the interview off abruptly. "You've been very entertaining. My secretary'll give you a written authorization to install your apparatus in The Ark. We may be able to give it a trial."

  As soon as Lunde had left Gerry immediately snapped open a circuit on the inter-office communicator.

  "Barney Galt? You and your partner come right in."

  Two men promptly entered through another door. Galt was tall and lean with a face like a good-natured chow dog. His partner was a nondescript man of middle age. Both were old-time policemen, retired from public duty to act as private investigators for Gerry Carlyle. She wasn't a woman to bother with bodyguards, but a woman in her position is besieged with all sorts of threats, rackets, fraudulent charities and fantastic schemes; Galt invariably discovered the good among the bad.

  "Fellow named Lunde just left here, a little gray-haired chap with a bundle under his arm. Follow him, make a complete check. Don't interfere with anything he may do; just report anything phony."

  The two detectives saluted casually and left on their unobtrusive mission. Strike snorted.

  "Why set those bloodhounds on Lunde's tail? He's all right. A bit of an old fool who has stumbled on something good, but too dumb to be anything but honest."

  "Just routine, Tommy. I don't think there's anything wrong with Lunde. Just a hunch. If he gets a clean bill of health, you can take The Ark and go."

  "Woman's intuition again?" Strike spoke with tolerant condescension.

  "So what if it is? Tommy, I take lots more precautions than this when I sign the lowliest member of my crew for a dangerous expedition. No doubt Lunde is all he appears, and I know you can take care of yourself, but you can't blame me for wanting to make sure when it concerns the man I love."

  They grinned at each other.

  "Okay, fluff. Snoop around while I rout the crew out of their sinful pleasures and provision the ship. That'll take several hours; you'll know by then everything's on the up and up. Call me as soon as Galt okays Lunde, because Jupiter's nearing conjunction and I want to take off as soon as possible. Bye."

  Chapter X.

  Flight of The Ark

  Events marched swiftly on their silent feet, moving inevitably into place in the strange pattern that spelt disaster. Tommy Strike was busy over radio and telephone, giving forth the rallying cry that brought the seasoned veterans of The Ark rushing from all corners, dropping unfinished business or pleasures at once to get to the spaceport in time to blast off on another adventurous journey. They'd tell you, those tough space-hounds, that Gerry Carlyle's expeditions were nothing but iron discipline and hardships with sudden death waiting to pounce on the unwary; but you couldn't bribe one of them with love or money to give up his berth on the famous ship.

  At the landing field itself, under the blazing carbon dioxide lamps, a small man drove up in a surface car, showed an authorization to the guard, passed into the burglar-proof enclosure. He carried a bundle to The Ark, again showed his pass, and went inside. He came out before long empty-handed.

  Gerry Carlyle worked without cessation in her office, while outside the city's lights went out one by one, and the muted torrent of traffic in the canyons of the city street grew thinner and thinner, dwindling away to trickles. Presently a light flashed above the door to the outer office. Someone wanted admittance. Gerry slid a heat-ray pistol into plain sight, then tripped the foot-switch which unlocked the door.

  "Come in!" she cried.

  It was Barney Galt. One hand bulged suggestively in his coat pocket. Before him, registering bewildered indignation, walked a short, stocky chap of about thirty, with bold, dark eyes. He strode aggressively up to Gerry.

  "I demand to know the meaning of this outrage!" he said. "Your-your hireling here has held me up at the point of a gun, without authority, and forced me to come to this office against my will. That's abduction, and I'll see this gangster go to the disintegrator chamber for it!"

  Gerry looked questioningly at Galt, who grinned faintly.

  "My buddy's still on Lunde's tail. We split when we seen this monkey come out o' the prof's place. He's the assistant, Trevelyan, an' he looks an awful lot like a bird we picked up ten-fifteen years ago for delinquency." Galt was famous for his memory. "Anyhow, be took the stuff to The Ark and installed it. Left instructions on how to work it, then beat it. I had the spaceport guards hang onto him while I sniffed around. Miss Carlyle, the junk he put into The Ark wouldn't paralyze a beetle! It's fake! I tried it!"

  Trevelyan sneered.

  "You just couldn't puzzle out bow to work it, that's all. I demonstrated it to a couple of the crew there. They'll tell you it was left in perfect shape. I demand --"

  "Shut up, you." Gerry's voice was like a mallet. The paralysis ray had been extremely simple to operate; Galt could have managed it easily. Gerry remembered her vague suspicions at Lunde's carefully arranged build-up, bow he insisted on a certain order of events, Shipkey's broadcast first, then his apparatus, all designed to intrigue her interest.

  It now seemed rehearsed, a routine entirely foreign to Lunde's vacillating character. And there had been the misty figure of the assistant in the background, "clever" and "ambitious" Trevelyan, the motivating force behind the innocuous Professor Lunde. There was something off-color here.

  "Then you wouldn't mind if we went back, picked up Lunde, and tried the apparatus again?"

  Trevelyan shifted uneasily.

  "Why not? Of course, the assembly is delicate, and the ray machine can easily be jarred out of kilter."

  "So that's what you did! After the test, you knocked one of the parts haywire so your superior would be blamed for sending people out to risk their lives with apparatus so delicately and unsubstantially built that it won't even last through an ordinary testing. Why?"

  "You're crazy, lady!
I didn't do anything! I just installed the stuff Lunde told me to install. If it's broken down already, that's not my fault!" He suddenly twisted free of Galt's grip. "I insist you allow me to go, or else suffer the consequences before the law!"

  Silence, then, while Gerry pondered. Finally she looked at Galt.

  "Well, Barney, what does your detective instinct dictate?"

  Galt laughed shortly.

  "Police methods ain't changed much in fifty years, Miss Carlyle. When we used t' want to find out things in a hurry, we persuaded people t' tell us."

  "You mean scopolamine-the truth serum?"

  "No, ma'am. That ain't always reliable. We used to use a rubber hose 'cause it didn't leave no marks. Science has give us gadgets like the psycho-probe that beat the old hose all hollow. They don't leave no marks, either, but they sure get the truth out of a man."

  Trevelyan's eyes held a horrified look of dawning comprehension.

  "You can't third-degree me"' he shouted. "It's unlawful! I won't --"

  Galt clapped his powerful fingers across the man's mouth.

  "Okay by you, Miss Carlyle?"

  Gerry nodded. She was a woman who had lived with blood and death and wasn't the one to quail before a little necessary brutality. When there might be lives at stake, the lives of her own men, she could be as Hard as any man.

  "Shoot the works, Barney. We'll use the back office. The walls are Vacuum-Brik with mineral fluff insulation, so we won't disturb anyone. And don't worry about the law. If anything happens, all the influence of the London Interplanetary Zoo will back you up."

  Galt grinned ominously at the trembling Trevelyan.

  "My buddy'll have a hemorrhage when he finds out what he missed!" And they grimly forced Trevelyan into the tiny inner room, locked the door behind.

  It was mid-morning when those three staggered out of that little black chamber. Galt and Gerry Carlyle were drawn and haggard, red-eyed from lack of sleep, grim-faced from the things they had had to do to break Trevelyan down. Trevelyan himself could scarcely stand. There was not a mark on his body; physically he was unharmed. Trevelyan had been a tough nut to crack, but Galt had done it. They had the story. The end had justified the means.

  It wasn't a pleasant tale to hear-a recounting of ugly passion, jealousy, treachery, hate. Under the American university system, for fifty years increasingly the centers of ultra-conservatism and reactionary tendencies, Trevelyan, in common with many underlings, had had no chance to express his own theories or receive credit for his own calculations and inventions. The silly and unjust ruling that required all papers to be published-and all discoveries to be announced-by the department heads only, regardless of who in the department might have been responsible, had stifled Trevelyan's restless soul too long. He couldn't stand by and see fools like Lunde take credit for scientific advances with which they had nothing to do. It galled him.

  So he had planned to discredit Lunde completely, have him ousted, and take what he felt was his rightful place as professor of physics at Plymouth University. If someone as famous as Gerry Carlyle tried out a Lunde "invention" and found it a failure, with probable loss of life, public indignation would ruin him. Then Trevelyan, turning up with the genuine paralysis ray and a story of Lunde's blind stupidity and the fact that he had refused to take advice from subordinates, would easily ride into office. So he had egged the professor, into saddling Gerry with the paralysis ray.

  The only thing Trevelyan didn't foresee was meeting an old-time copper like Barney Galt, who wouldn't hesitate to go any length to wrest the truth from a man he suspected.

  Gerry picked up a visiphone and called the space-port.

  "Put Mr. Strike on, please," she asked the attendant who appeared on the screen.

  "Mr. Strike, miss? I'm sorry. He left with The Ark for Jupiter at eight o'clock this morning."

  "For Jupiter!" she cried. "That's impossible. He promised to wait until I okayed everything!"

  "Well, miss, Mr. Strike and the crew were all ready to leave several hours ago. He became impatient and tried to get in touch with you two or three times. Finally I heard him say everything must be all right and you'd gone home to bed, and anyhow he wasn't going to wait while some er -- '

  "I know. 'While some woman spoiled his fun.' Go on from there."

  "Uh-exactly, miss. While some woman stalled around thinking up excuses to spoil the trip. And off he went." The attendant's face twisted slightly but remained heroically stolid.

  "All right. Don't stand there like a dummy!" Gerry snapped. "Plug me into the radio communications bureau!" Once the connection was made, she told the operator to get in touch with The Ark at once. Minutes passed. At intervals the operator cut in to say,

  "Sorry, Miss Carlyle. The Ark does not answer. We'll keep trying."

  After ten minutes of this, Gerry suggested they call some other ship nearby and have her contact The Ark.

  "We've already done so, Miss Carlyle. The Martian freighter Phobos is in the same sector as The Ark. The Phobos' signals are not answered, either."

  Gerry hung up abruptly as comprehension dawned on her.

  "That louse Trevelyan!" she cried aloud, wishing momentarily Galt hadn't taken the fellow away so she'd have something more satisfying than the desk to pound. "He wrecked the radio receiver, too. If Tommy tests the ray apparatus before reaching Jupiter, that reckless guy will be so far along on the trip that he won't want to come back."

  Quickly Gerry got busy on the phone, calling the major spaceports of the Earth, asking the same question over and over:

  "When does your next ship leave for the vicinity of Jupiter?"

  Luck was against her. Every passenger clipper in service was either out along the spaceways or undergoing repairs. Frantically, then, Gerry got in touch with those private concerns that had ships comparable in speed and power to The Ark. There were only a few-one or two utility companies, the big exploitation concerns. Again she failed. Sudden fear loosed ice in her veins. The fact had to be faced: nowhere on Earth was there a ship available to overtake Tommy.

  Gerry wasted no tears over spilt milk. She did the next best thing, buying passage at a fabulous price on a fast freighter leaving for Ganymede within the hour. She barely had time to see Lunde and explain what had happened, bully him into parting with the only remaining model of the paralysis ray -- a miniature low-power set for small-scale experimentation -- rush to the port in an air-taxi and dash through the freighter's air-lock ten seconds before deadline.

  Only when she was safely ensconced in one of the foul-smelling holes these freight lines used for cabins was Gerry able to relax and give vent to a wholehearted blistering of every one and everything connected with this ghastly game.

  Chapter XI.

  Outpost of Forgotten Men

  On Ganymede, fourth satellite outward from Jupiter, is the strangest community in the System, the center, in a way, of the vast mining activities that go on throughout practically every Jovian satellite, except Five, large and small.

  It would be impractical for the freighters which periodically bring supplies and take away the accumulated ores and concentrates to make the rounds of each individual satellite, scattered about Jupiter in different positions as they are. So a single base was established on Ganymede. Earth freighters stop only there to leave supplies and equipment; and all shipments are brought to the Ganymede depot by a local transport system.

  And the pilots of these local transport ships compose this unique village. Not ordinary pilots, these men and women, but the toughest, most bard-bitten crew of rocket-busters who ever spat into the teeth of Death herself. Gutter scrapings, many of them, society's outcasts-men with ugly blots on their records such as drunkenness on duty that cost the lives of passengers-criminals, murderers.

  There is a reason for this: the job these people do requires that they take their lives in their hands every time they leave the rocky soil of Ganymede. The terrible iron fingers of Jupiter's gravity threaten every instant to dra
g their puny ships down, down, to plummet into the heart of that pseudo-sun. Great magnetic storms tower high above the limits of Jovian atmosphere, the slightest breath of which would ruin the firing system of a rocket ship and leave it to spin disabled to destruction. Unrelaxing vigilance and incredible reserves of fuel is the price of survival.

  Wages are high here, but none but those who have little to live for consider the job. The law shuts its eye to criminals who take refuge there, because they are doing valuable work. Besides, just as surely as if they had been sentenced in a tribunal of law, they are men and women condemned.

  Yet this lonely outpost with its heavy-fisted, bragging, hard-drinking ruffians held Gerry Carlyle's only hope of reaching Strike in time to help him. When, after several restless days and sleepless nights during which the so-called "fast freight" seemed to crawl among the stars, it finally reached Ganymede, Gerry was first out of the ship. The place was unprepossessing, simply a barren landing field pitted and scarred from rocket blasts. The thin air was bitterly cold, and ugly yellow Jupiter-glow lighted the scene badly.

  While the crew unloaded the cargo, Gerry turned to a young under-officer.

  "Looks like this place was wiped out by the plague. Where is everyone?"

  The officer smiled.

  "Pretty self-important bunch, these bums. Act as if they were lords of creation and us ordinary mortals are only born to cater to their vanity. Here come a few of them now."

  There was a cluster of three or four barracks in the near distance. Out of the most pretentious of them, a half dozen sauntered casually. They were hard-faced, dressed in furs.

  The officer met them halfway.

  "Got a passenger for you this time. Wants to see your chief."

  One of the pilots, a huge hulk of a fellow, grinned.

  "You don't say! We ain't got any chief. We're all equals here; everybody's just as good as everybody else."