The Golden Age of Science Fiction Novels Vol 05

by Anthology

  The three boys entered the one-room building cautiously. The floor was covered with sand, and sand was piled in heaping drifts in front of the open windows and door.

  "Nothing--not a thing," said Roger disgustedly. "This place must be at least a hundred and fifty years old."

  "Probably built by a miner," commented Tom.

  "What do you mean 'nothing'?" said Astro. "Look!"

  They followed Astro's pointing finger to the ceiling. Crisscrossed, from wall to wall, were heavy wooden beams.

  "Raft!" Tom cried.

  "That's right, spaceman," said Astro, "a raft. There's enough wood up there to float the Polaris. Come on!"

  Astro hurried outside, with Tom and Roger following at his heels. They quickly climbed to the roof of the old building and soon were ripping the beams from the crumbling mud. Fortunately the beams had been joined by notching the ends of the crosspieces. Astro explained that this was necessary because of the premium on nails when the house was built. Everything at that time had to be hauled from Earth, and no one wanted to pay the price heavy nails and bolts demanded.

  One by one, they removed the heavy beams, until they had eight of them lined up alongside the edge of the canal.

  "How do we keep them together?" asked Roger.

  "With this!" said Tom. He began ripping his space cloth into long strips. Astro and Roger tugged at the first beam. At last they had it in the water.

  "It floats," cried Astro. Tom and Roger couldn't help but shout for joy. They quickly hauled the remaining beams into the water and lashed them together. Without hesitation, they shoved the raft into the canal, climbing aboard and standing like conquering heroes, as the raft moved out into the main flow of the canal and began to drift forward.

  "I dub thee--Polaris the Second," said Tom in formal tones and gave the nearest beam a kick.

  Astro and Roger gave a lusty cheer.

  Steadily, silently, the raft bore them through the never-changing scene of the canal's muddy banks and the endlessness of the desert beyond.

  Protecting themselves from the sun during the day by repeated dunkings in the water, they traveled day and night in a straight course down the center of the canal. At night, the tiny moon, Deimos, climbed across the desert and reflected light upon the satin-smooth water.

  The third day on the raft they began to feel the pangs of hunger. And where during their march through the desert, their thoughts were of water, now visions of endless tables of food occupied their thoughts. At first, they talked of their hunger, dreaming up wild combinations of dishes and giving even wilder estimates of how much each could consume. Finally, discovering that talking about it only intensified their desire, they kept a stolid silence. When the heat became unbearable, they simply took to the water. Once Tom's grip on the raft slipped and Roger plunged in after him without a moment's hesitation, only to have Astro go in to save both of them.

  On and on--down the canal, the three boys floated. Days turned into nights, and nights, cooling and refreshing, gave way to the blazing sun of the next day. The silent desert swept past them.

  One night, when Astro, unable to sleep, was staring ahead into the darkness, he heard a rustling in the water alongside the raft. He moved slowly to the edge of the raft and peered down into the clear water.

  He saw a fish!

  The big cadet watched it dart around the raft. He waited, his body tense. Once the fish came to the edge of the raft, but before Astro could move his arm, it darted off in another direction.

  At last the fish disappeared and Astro sank back on the timbers. He trailed one hand over the side in the water, and suddenly, felt the rough scales of the fish brush his fingers. In a flash, Astro closed his hand and snatched the wriggling creature out of the water.

  "Tom--Roger--" he shouted. "Look--look--a fish--I caught a fish with my bare hands!"

  Tom rolled over and opened his eyes. Roger sat in bewilderment.

  "I watched him--I was watching him and then he went away. And then I held my hand over the side of the raft and he came snooping around and--well, I just grabbed him!"

  He held the fish in the viselike grip of his right hand until it stopped moving.

  "You know," said Tom weakly, "I just remembered. When we were in the Science Building in Atom City, one of their projects was to breed both Earth and Venus fish in the canals."

  "I am going to shake, personally, the hand of the man who started this project when we get back to Atom City," said Astro.

  Suddenly Roger gripped Tom's arms. He was staring in the direction the raft was going. "Tom--" he breathed, "Astro--look!"

  They turned and peered into the dusk. In the distance, not a mile away, was the huge crystal-clear dome of the atmosphere booster station, its roaring atomic motors sending a steady purring sound out across the desert.

  "We made it," said Tom, choking back the tears. "We made it!"

  "Well, blast my jets," said Astro. "We sure did!"

  * * * * *

  "And you mean to tell me, you walked across that desert?" asked Captain Strong.

  Tom glanced over at Astro and Roger. "We sure did, sir."

  "With Astro doing the last stretch to the canal carrying me and dragging Tom," said Roger as he sipped his hot broth.

  The room in the chief engineer's quarters at the atmosphere station was crowded with workers, enlisted Solar Guardsmen and officers of the Solar Guard. They stood around staring in disbelief at the three disheveled cadets.

  "But how did you ever survive?" asked Strong. "By the craters of Luna, that blasted desert was hotter this past month than it has ever been since Mars was first colonized by Earthmen. Why--why--you were walking through temperatures that reached a hundred and fifty degrees!"

  "You don't have to convince us, sir," said Roger with a smile. "We'll never forget it as long as we live."

  Later, when Tom, Roger and Astro had taken a shower and dressed in fresh uniforms, Strong came in with an audioscriber and the three cadets gave the full version of their adventure for the official report back to the Academy. When they had finished, Strong told them of his efforts to find them.

  "We knew you were in trouble right away," said Strong, "and we tracked you on radar. But that blasted storm fouled us all up. We figured that the sand would have covered up the ship, and that the chances of finding you in a scout were very small, so I got permission from Commander Walters to organize this ground search for you." He paused. "Frankly we had just about given up hope. Took us three weeks finally to locate the section of desert you landed in."

  "We knew you would come, sir," said Tom, "but we didn't have enough water to wait for you--and we had to leave."

  "Boys," said Strong slowly, "I've had a lot of wonderful things happen to me in the Solar Guard. But I have to confess that seeing you three space-brained idiots clinging to that raft, ready to eat a raw fish--well, that was just about the happiest moment of my life."

  "Thank you, sir," said Roger, "and I think I can speak for Tom and Astro when I say that seeing you here with over a hundred men, and all this equipment, ready to start searching for us in that desert--well, it makes us feel pretty proud to be members of an outfit where the skipper feels that way about his crew!"

  "What happens now, sir?" asked Tom.

  "Aside from getting a well-deserved liberty, it's back to the old grind at the Academy. The Polaris is at the spaceport at Marsopolis, waiting for us." He paused and eyed the three cadets with a smile. "I guess the routine at Space Academy will seem a little dull now, after what you've been through."

  "Captain Strong," said Astro formally, "I know I speak for Tom and Roger when I say that routine is all we want for a long time to come!"

  "Amen!" added Tom and Roger in unison.

  "Very well," said Strong. "Polaris unit--Staaaaand TO!"

  The three boys snapped to attention.

  "You are hereby ordered to report aboard the Polaris at fifteen hundred hours and stand by to raise ship!"

  He retur
ned their salutes, turned sharply and walked from the room.

  Outside, Steve Strong leaned against the wall and stared through the crystal shell of the atmosphere station into the endless desert.

  "Thank you, Mars," he said softly, "for making spacemen out of the Polaris crew!" He saluted sharply and walked away.

  Tom suddenly burst from the room with Roger and Astro yelling after him.

  "Hey, Tom, where you going?" yelled Roger.

  "I've got to get a bottle of that water out of the canal for my kid brother Billy!" shouted Tom and disappeared down a slidestairs.

  Roger turned to Astro and said, "That's what I call a real spaceman."

  "What do you mean?" asked Astro.

  "After what we've been through, he still remembers that his kid brother wants a bottle of water from a canal as a souvenir!"

  "Yeah," breathed Astro, "Tom Corbett is--is--a real spaceman!"

  * * *

  Contents

  LION LOOSE

  By James H. Schmitz

  For twelve years at a point where three major shipping routes of the Federation of the Hub crossed within a few hours' flight of one another, the Seventh Star Hotel had floated in space, a great golden sphere, gleaming softly in the void through its translucent shells of battle plastic. The Star had been designed to be much more than a convenient transfer station for travelers and freight; for some years after it was opened to the public, it retained a high rating among the more exotic pleasure resorts of the Hub. The Seventh Star Hotel was the place to have been that season, and the celebrities and fat cats converged on it with their pals and hangers-on. The Star blazed with life, excitement, interstellar scandals, tinkled with streams of credits dancing in from a thousand worlds. In short, it had started out as a paying proposition.

  But gradually things changed. The Star's entertainment remained as delightfully outrageous as ever, the cuisine as excellent; the accommodations and service were still above reproach. The fleecing, in general, became no less expertly painless. But one had been there. By its eighth year, the Star was dated. Now, in its twelfth, it lived soberly off the liner and freighter trade, four fifths of the guest suites shut down, the remainder irregularly occupied between ship departures.

  And in another seven hours, if the plans of certain men went through, the Seventh Star Hotel would abruptly wink out of existence.

  * * * * *

  Some fifty or sixty early diners were scattered about the tables on the garden terraces of Phalagon House, the Seventh Star Hotel's most exclusive eatery. One of them had just finished his meal, sat smoking and regarding a spiraling flow of exquisitely indicated female figures across the garden's skyscape with an air of friendly approval. He was a large and muscular young man, deeply tanned, with shoulders of impressive thickness, an aquiline nose, and dark, reflective eyes.

  After a minute or two, he yawned comfortably, put out the cigarette, and pushed his chair back from the table. As he came to his feet, there was a soft bell-note from the table ComWeb. He hesitated, said, "Go ahead."

  "Is intrusion permitted?" the ComWeb inquired.

  "Depends," the guest said. "Who's calling?"

  "The name is Reetal Destone."

  He grinned, appeared pleasantly surprised. "Put the lady through."

  There was a brief silence. Then a woman's voice inquired softly, "Quillan?"

  "Right here, doll! Where--"

  "Seal the ComWeb, Quillan."

  He reached down to the instrument, tapped the seal button, said, "All right. We're private."

  "Probably," the woman's voice said. "But better scramble this, too. I want to be very sure no one's listening."

  Quillan grunted, slid his left hand into an inner coat pocket, briefly fingered a device of the approximate size and shape of a cigarette, drew his hand out again. "Scrambling!" he announced. "Now, what--"

  "Mayday, Quillan," the soft voice said. "Can you come immediately?"

  Quillan's face went expressionless. "Of course. Is it urgent?"

  "I'm in no present danger. But we'd better waste no time."

  "Is it going to take real hardware? I'm carrying a finger gun at the moment."

  "Then go to your rooms and pick up something useful," Reetal said. "This should take real hardware, all right."

  "All right. Then where do I go?"

  "I'll meet you at your door. I know where it is."

  When Quillan arrived, she was standing before the door to his suite, a tall blonde in a sleeveless black and gold sheath; a beautiful body, a warm, lovely, humorous face. The warmth and humor were real, but masked a mind as impersonally efficient as a computer, and a taste for high and dangerous living. When Quillan had last met Reetal Destone, a year and a half before, the taste was being satisfied in industrial espionage. He hadn't heard of her activities since then.

  She smiled thoughtfully at him as he came up. "I'll wait outside," she said. "We're not talking here."

  Quillan nodded, went on into his living room, selected a gun belt and holstered gun from a suitcase, fastened the belt around his waist under the coat, and came out. "Now what?"

  "First a little portal-hopping--"

  He followed her across the corridor and into a tube portal, watched as she tapped out a setting. The exit light flashed a moment later; they stepped out into a vacant lounge elsewhere in the same building, crossed it, entered another portal. After three more shifts, they emerged into a long hall, dimly lit, heavily carpeted. There was no one in sight.

  "Last stop," Reetal said. She glanced up at his face. "We're on the other side of the Star now, in one of the sections they've closed up. I've established a kind of emergency headquarters here. The Star's nearly broke, did you know?"

  "I'd heard of it."

  "That appears to be part of the reason for what's going on."

  Quillan said, "What's going on?"

  Reetal slid her arm through his, said, "Come on. That's my, hm-m-m, unregistered suite over there. Big boy, it's very, very selfish of me, but I was extremely glad to detect your name on the list of newly arrived guests just now! As to what's going on ... the Camelot berths here at midnight, you know."

  Quillan nodded. "I've some business with one of her passengers."

  Reetal bent to unlock the entrance door to the indicated suite. "The way it looks now," she remarked, "the odds are pretty high that you're not going to keep that appointment."

  "Why not?"

  "Because shortly after the Camelot docks and something's been unloaded from her, the Camelot and the Seventh Star Hotel are scheduled to go poof! together. Along with you, me, and some twelve thousand other people. And, so far, I haven't been able to think of a good way to keep it from happening."

  Quillan was silent a moment. "Who's scheduling the poof?" he asked.

  "Some old acquaintances of ours are among them. Come on in. What they're doing comes under the heading of destroying the evidence."

  * * * * *

  She locked the door behind them, said, "Just a moment," went over to the paneled wall, turned down a tiny silver switch. "Room portal," she said, nodding at the wall. "It might come in handy. I keep it turned off most of the time."

  "Why are you turning it on now?" Quillan asked.

  "One of the Star's stewards is working on this with me. He'll be along as soon as he can get away. Now I'll give you the whole thing as briefly as I can. The old acquaintances I mentioned are some boys of the Brotherhood of Beldon. Movaine's here; he's got Marras Cooms and Fluel with him, and around thirty of the Brotherhood's top guns. Nome Lancion's coming in on the Camelot in person tonight to take charge. Obviously, with all that brass on the job, they're after something very big. Just what it is, I don't yet know. I've got one clue, but a rather puzzling one. Tell you about that later. Do you know Velladon?"

  "The commodore here?" Quillan nodded. "I've never met him but I know who he is."

  Reetal said, "He's been manager of the Seventh Star Hotel for the past nine years. He's involved in
the Beldon outfit's operation. So is the chief of the Star's private security force--his name's Ryter--and half a dozen other Star executives. They've got plenty of firepower, too; close to half the entire security force, I understand, including all the officers. That would come to nearly seventy men. There's reason to believe the rest of the force was disarmed and murdered by them in the subspace section of the Star about twelve hours ago. They haven't been seen since then.