The Lost Master - The Collected Works

by Stanley G. Weinbaum

  "Got what?" I asked. "What was he digging for up there?"

  Her blue eyes widened in amazement. "Don't you know?"

  "I certainly don't. I seem to know less about this damn trip than anybody else on it."

  She gazed steadily at me. "I knew Stefan was wrong," she said softly. "I don't care what you were when you wrecked the Hera, Jack Sands; on this trip you've been decent and brave and a gentleman."

  "Thanks," I said dryly, but I was a little touched for all that because, after all, the Golden Flash was a very beautiful girl. "Then suppose you let me in on a few of the secrets. For instance, what was Coretti wrong about? And what did Gogrol dig for?"

  "Gogrol," she said, watching me, "was digging in Gunderson's cairn."

  I looked blank. "Gunderson's what? This is news to me."

  She was silent for a moment. "Jack Sands," she said at last, "I don't care what Stefan or the government or anybody thinks of you. I think you're honest, and I think you've had an injustice done you somehow, and I don't believe you were to blame in the Hera crash. And I'm going to tell you all I know about this matter. But first, do you know the object of Gunderson's expedition to Europa?"

  "I never knew it. I'm a pilot; I took no interest in their scientific gibberish."

  She nodded. "Well, you know how a rocket motor works, of course. How they use a minute amount of uranium or radium as catalyst to release the energy in the fuel. Uranium has low activity; it will set off only metals like the alkalis, and ships using uranium motors burn salt. And radium, being more active, will set off the metals from iron to copper; so ships using a radium initiator usually burn one of the commoner iron or copper ores."

  "I know all that," I grunted. "And the heavier the metal, the greater the power from its disintegration."

  "Exactly." She paused a moment. "Well, Gunderson wanted to use still heavier elements. That required a source of rays more penetrating than those from radium, and he knew of only one available source—Element 91, protactinium. And it happens that the richest deposits of protactinium so far discovered are those in the rocks of Europa; so to Europa he came for his experiments."

  "Well?" I asked. "Where do I fit in this mess?"

  "I don't quite know, Jack. Let me finish what I know, which is all Stefan would tell me. Gunderson succeeded, they think; he's supposed to have worked out the formula by which protactinium could be made to set off lead, which would give much more power than any present type of initiator. But if he did succeed, his formula and notes were destroyed when the Hera crashed!"

  I began to see. "But what—what about that cairn?"

  "You really don't know?"

  "I'll be double damned if I do! If Gunderson built a cairn, it must have been that last day. I had the take-off, so I slept through most of it. But—why, they did have some sort of ceremony!"

  "Yes. Gunderson mentioned something about it when your ship touched at Junopolis on Io. What the government hopes is that he buried a copy of his formula in that cairn. They do, you know. Well, nobody could possibly know of the location except you and a man named Kratska, who had disappeared.

  "So Interplanetary, which is in bad anyway because of some stock transactions, was ordered to back this expedition with you as pilot—or at least, that's what Stefan told me. I guess I was taken along just to give the corporation a little more publicity, and, of course, Stefan was sent to watch you, in hopes you'd give away the location. The formula's immensely valuable, you see."

  "Yeah, I see. And how about Gogrol?"

  She frowned. "I don't know. Stefan hinted that he had some connections with Harrick of Interplanetary, or perhaps some hold over him. Harrick insisted on his being a member."

  "The devil!" I exploded suddenly. "He knew about the cairn! He knew where to look!"

  Her eyes grew wide. "Why, he did! He's—could he be the representative of some foreign government? If we could stop him! But he's left us absolutely helpless here. Why didn't he kill us?"

  "I can guess that," I said grimly. "He can't fly the Minos alone. Henshaw's dead, and if Coretti dies—well, one of us is due for the job of pilot."

  A tremor shook her. "I'd rather be dead, too," she murmured, "than to travel with him alone."

  "And I'd rather see you so," I agreed glumly. "I wish to heaven you had stayed out of this. You could be home enjoying your money."

  "My money!" she flashed. "I haven't any money. Do you think I take these chances for publicity or thrills or admiration?"

  I gaped; of course, I'd thought exactly that.

  She was literally blazing. "Listen to me, Jack Sands. There's just one reason for the fool things I do—money! There isn't any Avery fortune, and hasn't been since my father died. I've needed money desperately these last two years, to keep the Connecticut place for my mother, because she'd die if she had to leave it. It's been our family home for two hundred years, since 1910, and I won't be the one to lose it!"

  It took a moment to adjust myself to what she was saying. "But a racing rocket isn't a poor man's toy," I said feebly. "And surely a girl like you could find—"

  "A girl like me!" she cut in bitterly. "Oh, I know I have a good figure and a passable voice, and perhaps I could have found work in a television chorus, but I needed real money. I had my choice of two ways to get it: I could marry it, or I could gamble my neck against it. You see which way I chose. As the Golden Flash, I can get big prices for endorsing breakfast foods and beauty preparations. That's why I gambled in that race; my racing rocket was all I had left to gamble with. And it worked, only"—her voice broke a little—"I wish I could stop gambling. I—I hate it!"

  It wasn't only pity I felt for her then. Her confession of poverty had changed things; she was no longer the wealthy, unattainable being I had always imagined the Golden Flash to be. She was simply a forlorn and unhappy girl; one who needed to be loved and comforted. And then I remembered the evening of the eclipse, and Coretti's arms about her. So I gazed for an instant at the sunlight on her hair, and then turned slowly away.

  After a while we gathered some liver-leaves and cooked them, and I tried to tell Claire that we were certain to be rescued. Neither of us believed it; we knew very well that Gogrol would carry no living companion to Io; whoever helped him run the Minos would certainly be dead and cast into space before landing. And we knew that Gogrol's story, whatever it might be, would not be one likely to encourage a rescue party. He'd simply report us all dead somehow or other.

  "I don't care," said Claire. "I'm glad I'm with you."

  I thought of Coretti and said nothing. We were just sitting in glum silence near the fire when Gogrol came over the hills again.

  Claire saw him first and cried out. Despite his helmet, neither of us could mistake his broad, squat figure. But there was nothing we could do except wait, though we did draw closer to the area of wild and tumbled boulders about the central pool.

  "What do you suppose—" asked Claire nervously. "Coretti may have died, or may be too injured to help." Pain twisted her features. "Yes, or—Oh, I know, Jack!

  It's that Gogrol can't plot a course. He can pilot; he can follow a course already laid out, but he can't plot one—and neither can Stefan!"

  Instantly I knew she must be right. Piloting a ship is just a question of following directions, but plotting a course involves the calculus of function, and that, let me tell you, takes a mathematician. I could do it, and Claire handled a simple route well enough—one had to in rocket racing—but astrogators were not common even among pilots.

  You see, the difficulty is that you don't just point the ship at your destination, because that destination is moving; you head for where the planet will be when you arrive. And in this case, assuming Gogrol meant to make for Io, a journey from Europa to that world meant speeding in the direction of the colossal mass of Jupiter, and if a rocket once passed the critical velocity in that direction—good night!

  A hundred feet away Gogrol halted. "Listen, you two," he yelled, "I'm offering Miss Aver
y the chance to join the crew of the Minos."

  "You're the crew," I retorted. "She's not taking your offer."

  Without warning he leveled his revolver and fired, and a shock numbed my left leg. I fell within the shelter of a boulder, thrusting Claire before me, while Gogrol's bellow followed the crash of his shot: "I'll shut your mouth for you!"

  There began the weirdest game of hide and seek I've ever played, with Claire and me crawling among the tumbled boulders, scarcely daring to breathe. Gogrol had all the advantage, and he used it. I couldn't stand upright, and my legs began to hurt so excruciatingly that I was afraid each minute of an involuntary groan forcing its way through my lips. Claire suffered with me; her eyes were agonized blue pools of torment, but she dared not even whisper to me.

  Gogrol took to leaping atop the boulders. He glimpsed me, and a second bullet struck that same burning leg. He was deliberately hunting me down, and I saw it was the end.

  We had a momentary shelter. Claire whispered to me, "I'm going to him. He'll kill you otherwise, and take me anyway."

  "No!" I croaked. "No!"

  Gogrol heard, and was coming. Claire said hastily. "He's —bestial. At least I can plot a course that will—kill us!" Then she called, "Gogrol! I'll surrender."

  I snatched at her ankle—too late. I went crawling after her as she strode into the open, but her steps were too rapid. I heard her say, "I give up, if you won't—shoot him again."

  Gogrol mumbled, and then Claire's voice again, "Yes, I'll plot your course, but how can I cross the peaks?"

  "Walk," he said, and laughed.

  "I can't breathe up there."

  "Walk as far as you can. You won't die while I take you the rest of the way."

  There was no reply. When I finally crept into the open, they were a hundred feet up the slope.

  Helpless, raging, pain-maddened, I seized a stone and flung it. It struck Gogrol in the back, but it struck with no more force than if I'd tossed it a dozen feet on Earth. He spun in fury, thrust the screaming Claire aside, and sent another bullet at me. Missed me, I thought, though I wasn't sure, for pain had numbed me. I couldn't be sure of anything.

  Claire saw that I still retained some semblance of consciousness. "Goodbye!" she called, and added something that I could not hear because of the red waves of pain, but I knew Gogrol laughed at it. Thereafter, for what seemed like a long time, I knew only that I was crawling doggedly through an inferno of torture.

  When the red mist lifted, I was only at the base of the rise. Far above I could see the figures of Claire and Gogrol, and I perceived that though he strode with easy steps, protected by his helmet, the girl was already staggering from breathlessness. While I watched, she stumbled, and then began to struggle frantically and spasmodically to jerk away from him. It wasn't that she meant to break her promise, but merely that the agonies of suffocation drove her to attempt any means of regaining breathable air.

  But the struggle was brief. It was less than a minute before she fainted, passed out from air starvation, and Gogrol slung her carelessly under one arm—as I said, she weighed about twelve pounds on Europa—and pressed on. At the very crest he paused and looked back, and in that thin, clear air I could see every detail with telescopic distinctness, even to the shadow he cast across Claire's drooping golden head.

  He raised the revolver to his temple, waved it at me with a derisive gesture, and then flung it far down the mountainside toward me. His meaning was unmistakable; he was advising me to commit suicide. When I reached the revolver, there was a single unused catridge in the clip; I looked up, tempted to try it on Gogrol himself, but he was gone across the ridge.

  Now I knew all hope was gone. Perhaps I was dying from that last bullet anyway, but whether I were or not, Claire was lost, and all that remained for me was the madness of solitude, forever imprisoned by empty space in this valley. That or—suicide.

  I don't know how many times I thought of that single cartridge, but I know the thought grew very tempting after a few more hours of pain. By that time, for all I knew, the Minos might have taken off on its dash to death, for the roar of its blast could not carry over the airless heights, and it would be so high and small by the time I could see it above the hills that I might have missed it.

  If only I could cross those hills! I began to realize that more important than my own life was Claire's safety, even if it meant saving her for Coretti. But I couldn't save her; I couldn't even get to her unless I could walk along the hills like a bladder bird.

  Like a bladder bird! I was sure that it was only the delirium of fever that suggested that wild thought. Would it work? I answered myself that whether it worked or failed it was better than dying here without ever trying.

  I stalked that bladder bird like a cat. Time after time I spent long minutes creeping toward a copse of song-bushes only to have the creature sail blithely over my head and across the valley. But at last I saw the thing crouched for flight above me; I dared not delay longer lest my wounds weaken me too much for the trial of my plan, and I fired. There went my single cartridge.

  The bladder bird dropped! But that was only the beginning of my task. Carefully—so very carefully—I removed the creature's bladder, leaving the vent tube intact. Then, through the opening that connects to the bird's single lung, I slipped my head, letting the bloody rim contract about my throat.

  I knew that wouldn't be air-tight, so I bound it with strips torn from my clothing, so closely that it all but choked me. Then I took the slimy vent tube in my mouth and began an endless routine. Breathe in through the vent tube, pinch it shut, breathe out into the bladder—over and over and over. But gradually the bladder expanded with filthy, vitiated, stinking, and once-breathed air.

  I had it half filled when I saw that I was going to have to start if I were to have a chance of living long enough for a test. Breathing through the vent tube as long as there was air enough, peering dully through the semitransparent walls of the bladder, I started crawling up the hill.

  I won't describe that incredible journey. On Earth it would have been utterly impossible; here, since I weighed but eighteen pounds, it was barely within the bounds of possibility. As I ascended, the bladder swelled against the reduced pressure; by the time I had to start breathing the fearful stuff, I could feel it escaping and bubbling through the blood around my neck.

  Somehow I made the crest, almost directly above the Minos. It was still there, anyway. Gogrol hadn't come this way, and now I saw why. There was a sheer drop here of four hundred feet. Well, that only equaled fifty on Earth, but even fifty— But I had to try it, because I was dying here on the peaks. I jumped.

  I landed with a wrench of pain on my wounded leg, but much more lightly than I had feared. Of course! Jumping down into denser air, the great bladder had acted like a parachute, and, after all, my weight here was but eighteen pounds. I crawled onward, in agony for the moment when I could cast off the stinking, choking bladder.

  That moment came. I had crossed the peaks, and before me lay the Minos. I crawled on, around to the side where the air lock was. It was open, and a voice bellowed out of it. Gogrol!

  "You'll trick me, eh!" he screeched. "You'll lay a course that will crash us! We'll see! We'll see!" There came the unmistakable sound of a blow, and a faint whimper of pain.

  Somewhere I found the strength to stand up. Brandishing the empty automatic, I swayed into the air lock, sliding along the walls to the control room.

  There was something about the figure that bent in the dusk above a sobbing girl that aroused a flash of recognition. Seeing him thus in a shadowed control room with the sun shields up—I knew what I should have known weeks ago. Gogrol was—Kratska!

  "Kratska!" I croaked, and he whirled. Both he and Claire were frozen into utter rigidity by surprise and disbelief. I really think they were both convinced that I was a ghost.

  "How—how—" squeaked Gogrol, or rather Kratska.

  "I walked across. I'd walk across hell to find you, Kratska.
" I brandished the gun. "Get out and get away quick, if you expect to escape the blast. We're leaving you here until police from Io can pick you up—on that Hera matter among others." I spoke to the dazed Claire. "Close the air lock after him. We're taking off."

  "Jack!" she cried, comprehending at last. "But Stefan's wired to a tree out there. The blast will incinerate him!"

  "Then loose him, and for Heaven's sake, quickly!"

  But no sooner had she vanished than Kratska took his chance. He saw how weak I was, and he gambled on the one shot he thought remained in the magazine of my weapon. He rushed me.

  I think he was mad. He was screaming curses. "Damn you!" he screeched. "You can't beat me! I made you the goat on the Hera, and I can do it here."

  And I knew he could, too, if he could overcome me before Claire released Coretti. She couldn't handle him, and we'd all be at his mercy. So I fought with all the life I had left, and felt it draining out of me like acid out of burette. And after a while it was all drained, and darkness filled up the emptiness.

  I heard curious sounds. Some one was saying, "No, I'll take off first and lay out the course after we reach escape velocity. Saves time. We've got to get him to Io." And a little later, "Oh, Lord, Stefan! If I roll her now—Why am I such a rotten pilot?" And then there was the roar of the blast for hours upon hours.

  A long time later I realized that I was lying on the chart room table, and Coretti was looking down at me. He said, "How you feel, Jack!" It was the first time he had used my name.

  "O.K.," I said, and then memory came back. "Gogrol! He's Kratska!"

  "He was," said Coretti. "He's dead."

  "Dead!" There went any chance of squaring that Hera mess.

  "Yep. You killed him, smashed in his head with that automatic before we could pull you off. But he had it coming."

  "Yeah, maybe, but the Hera—"

  "Never mind the Hera, Jack. Both Claire and I beard Kratska admit his responsibility. We'll clear you of that, all right." He paused. "And it might make you feel a little more chipper it I tell you that we got the formula, too, and that there's a reward for it that will leave us sitting in the clover field, even split three ways. That is, Claire keeps insisting on three ways; I know I don't deserve a split."