The Golden Age of Science Fiction Novels Vol 03

by Anthology

  * * * * *

  By short and infrequent applications of power to the dirigible projectors of the life-boat, Stevens slowly shifted the position of the fragment which bore their craft until it was well clear of the other components of the mass of wreckage. He then exerted a very small retarding force, so that their bit would lag behind the procession, as though it had accidently been separated. But the crew of the captor was alert, and no sooner did a clear space show itself between them and the mass than a ray picked them up and herded them back into place. Stevens then nudged other pieces so that they fell out, only to see them also rounded up. Hour after hour he kept trying--doing nothing sufficiently energetic to create any suspicion, but attempting everything he could think of that offered any chance of escape from the clutches of their captors. Immovable at the plate, his hands upon the controls, he performed every insidious maneuver his agile brain could devise, but he could not succeed in separating their vehicle from its fellows. Finally, after a last attempt, which was foiled as easily as were its predecessors, he shut off his controls and turned to his companion with a grin.

  "I didn't think I could get away with it--they're keen, that gang--but I had to keep at it as long as it would have done us any good."

  "Wouldn't it do us any good now?"

  "Not a bit--we're going so fast that we couldn't stop--we're out of even radio range of our closest power-plant. We'll have to put off any more attempts until they slow us down. They're fairly close to at least one of the moons of Jupiter, we'll have our best chance--so good, in fact, that I really think we can make it."

  "But what good would that do us, if we couldn't get back?" Dire foreboding showed in her glorious eyes.

  "Lots of things not tried yet, girl, and we'll try them all. First, we get away. Second, we try to get in touch with Norman Brandon...."

  "How? No known radio will carry half that far."

  "No, but I think that a radio as yet unknown may be able to--and there is a bare possibility that I'll be able to communicate."

  "Oh wonderful--that lifts a frightful load off my mind," she breathed.

  "But just a minute--I said I'd come clean with you, and I will. The odds are all against us, no matter what we do. If that unknown radio won't work--and it probably won't--there are several other things we can try, but they're all pretty slim chances. Even if we get away, it'll probably be about the same thing as though you were to be marooned on a desert island without any tools, and with your rescue depending upon your ability to build a high-powered radio station with which to call to a mainland for help. However, if we don't try to get away, our only alternative is letting them know we're here, and joining our friends in captivity."

  "And then what?"

  "You know as much as I do. Imprisonment and restraint, certain; death, possible; return to Earth, almost certainly impossible--life as guests, highly improbable."

  "I'm with you, Steve, all the way."

  "Well, it's time to spring off--we've both been awake better than fifty hours. Personally, I'm all in, and you're so near dead that you're a physical wreck. We'll get us a bite of supper and turn in."

  An appetizing supper was prepared from the abundant stores and each ate a heartier meal than either would have believed possible. Stevens considered his unopened package of cigarettes, then regretfully put it back into his pocket still unopened and turned to Nadia.

  "Well, little fellow, it's time to shove off, and then some. You might as well sleep here, and I'll go in there. If anything scares you, yell. Good-night, old trapper!"

  "Wait a minute, Steve." Nadia flushed, and her brown eyes and black eyebrows, in comparison with her golden-blond hair, lent her face a quizzical, elfin expression that far belied her feelings as she stared straight into his eyes. "I've never even been away from the Earth before, and with all this happening I'm simply scared to death. I've been trying to hide it, but I couldn't stand it alone, and we're going to be together too long and too close for senseless conventions to affect us. There's two bunks over there--why don't you sleep in one of them?"

  He returned her steadfast gaze for a moment in silence.

  "All x with me, Nadia," he answered, keeping out of his voice all signs of the tenderness he felt for her, and of his very real admiration for her straightforward conduct in a terrifying situation. "You trust me, then?"

  "Trust you! Don't be silly--I know you! I know you, and I know Brandon and Westfall--I know what you've done, and exactly the kind of men you are. Trust you!"

  "Thanks, old golf-shootist," and promises were made and received in a clasp from which Nadia's right hand, strong as it was, emerged slightly damaged.

  "By the way, what is your first name, fellow-traveller?" she asked in lighter vein. "Nobody, not even Dad or Breckie, ever seems to call you anything but 'Steve' when they talk about you." She was amazed at the effect of her innocent question, for Stevens flushed to his hair and spluttered.

  "It's Percy!" He finally, snorted. "Percival Van Schravendyck Stevens. Wouldn't that tear it?"

  "Why, I think Percival's a real nice name!"

  "Silence!" he hissed in burlesque style. "Young woman, I have revealed to you a secret known to but few living creatures. On your life, keep it inviolate!"

  "Oh, very well, if you insist. Good-night--Steve!" and she gave him a radiant and honest smile: the first smile he had seen since the moment of the attack.

  CHAPTER III

  Castaways Upon Ganymede

  Upon awakening, the man's first care was to instruct the girl in the operation of the projectors, so that she could keep the heavily-armored edge of their small section, which she had promptly christened "The Forlorn Hope," between them and the grinding, clashing mass of wreckage, and thus, if it should become necessary, protect the relatively frail inner portions of their craft from damage.

  "Keep an eye on things for a while, Nadia," he instructed, as soon as she could handle the controls, "and don't use any more power than is absolutely necessary. We'll need it all, and besides, they can probably detect anything we can use. There's probably enough leakage from the ruptured accumulator cells to mask quite a little emission, but don't use much. I'm going to see what I can do about making this whole wedge navigable."

  "Why not just launch what's left of this lifeboat? It's space-worthy, isn't it?"

  "Yes, but it's too small. Two or three of the big dirigible projectors of the lower band are on the rim of this piece-of-pie-shaped section we're riding, I think. If so, and if enough batteries of accumulators are left intact to give them anywhere nearly full power, we can get an acceleration that will make a lifeboat look sick. Those main dirigibles, you know, are able to swing the whole mass of the Arcturus, and what they'll do to this one chunk of it--we've got only a few thousand tons of mass in this piece--will be something pretty. Also, having the metal may save us months of time in mining it."

  He found the projectors, repaired or cut out the damaged accumulator cells, and reconnected them through the controls of the lifeboat. He moved into the "engine-room" the airtanks, stores, and equipment from all the other fragments which, by means of a space-suit, he could reach without too much difficulty. From the battery rooms of those fragments--open shelves, after being sliced open by the shearing ray--he helped himself to banks of accumulator cells from the enormous driving batteries of the ill-fated Arcturus, bolting them down and connecting them solidly until almost every compartment of their craft was one mass of stored-up energy.

  Days fled like hours, so furiously busy were they in preparing their peculiar vessel for a cruise of indefinite duration. Stevens cut himself short on sleep and snatched his meals in passing; and Nadia, when not busy at her own tasks of observing, housekeeping, and doing what little piloting was required, was rapidly learning to wield most effectively the spanner and pliers of the mechanic and electrician.

  "I'm afraid our time is getting short, Steve," she announced, after making an observation. "It looks as though we're getting wherever it is we
're going."

  "Well, I've got only two more jobs to do, but they're the hardest of the lot. It is Jupiter, or can you tell yet?"

  "Jupiter or one of its satellites, I think, from the point where they reversed their power. Here's the observation you told me to take."

  "Looks like Jupiter," he agreed, after he had rapidly checked her figures. "We'll pass very close to one of those two satellites--probably Ganymede--which is fine for our scheme. All four of the major satellites have water and atmosphere, but Ganymede, being largest, is best for our purposes. We've got a couple of days yet--just about time to finish up. Let's get going--you know what to do."

  "Steve, I'm afraid of it. It's too dangerous--isn't there some other way?"

  "None that I can see. The close watch they're keeping on every bit of this junk makes it our only chance for a get-away. I'm pretty sure I can do it--but if I should happen to get nipped, just use enough power to let them know you're here, and you won't be any worse off than if I hadn't tried to pull off this stunt."

  He donned a space-suit, filled a looped belt with tools, picked up a portable power-drill, and stepped into the tiny air-lock. Nadia deftly guided their segment against one of the larger fragments and held it there with a gentle, steady pressure, while Stevens, a light cable paying out behind him, clambered carefully over the wreckage, brought his drill into play, and disappeared inside the huge wedge. In less than an hour he returned without mishap and reported to the glowing girl.

  "Just like shooting fish down a well! Most of the accumulator cells were tight, and installing the relays wasn't a bad job at all. Believe me, girl, there'll be junk filling all the space between here and Saturn when we touch them off!"

  "Wonderful, Steve!" Nadia exclaimed. "It won't be so bad seeing you go into the others, now that you have this one all rigged up."

  * * * * *

  Around and around the mass of wreckage they crept, and in each of the larger sections Stevens connected up the enormous fixed or dirigible projectors to whatever accumulator cells were available through sensitive relays, all of which he could close by means of one radio impulse. The long and dangerous task done, he stood at the lookout plate, studying the huge disk which had been the upper portion of the lower half of the Arcturus and frowning in thought. Nadia reached over his shoulder and switched off the plate.

  "Nix on that second job, big fellow!" she declared. "They aren't really necessary, and you're altogether too apt to be killed trying to get them. It's too ghastly--I won't stand for your trying it, so that ends it."

  "We ought to have them, really," he protested. "With those special tools, cutting torches, and all the stuff, we'd be sitting pretty. We'll lose weeks of time by not having them."

  "We'll just have to lose it, then. You can't get 'em, any more than a baby can get the moon, so stop crying about it," she went over the familiar argument for the twentieth time. "That stuff up there is all grinding together like cakes of ice in a floe; the particular section you want is in plain sight of whoever is on watch; and those tools and things are altogether too heavy to handle. You're a husky brute, I know, but even you couldn't begin to handle them, even if you had good going. I couldn't help you very much, even if you'd let me try; and the fact that you so positively refuse to let me come along shows how dangerous you know the attempt is bound to be. You'd probably never even get up there alive, to say nothing of getting back here. No, Steve, that's out like a light."

  "I sure wish they'd left us weightless for a while, sometime, if only for an hour or two," he mourned.

  "But they didn't!" she retorted, practically. "So we're just out of luck to that extent. Our time is about up, too. It's time you worked us back to the tail end of this procession--or rather, the head end, since we're traveling 'down' now."

  Stevens took the controls and slowly worked along the outer edge of the mass, down toward its extremity. Nadia put one hand upon his shoulder and he glanced around.

  "Thanks, Steve. We have a perfectly wonderful chance as it is, and we've gone so far with our scheme together that it would be a crying shame not to be able to go through with it. I'd hate like sin to have to surrender to them now, and that's all I could do if anything should become of you. Besides..." her voice died away into silence.

  "Sure, you're right," he hastily replied, dodging the implication of that unfinished sentence. "I couldn't figure out anything that looked particularly feasible anyway--that's why I didn't try it. We'll pass it up."

  Soon they arrived at their objective and maintained a position well in the van, but not sufficiently far ahead of the rest to call forth a restraining ray from their captors. Already strongly affected by the gravitational pull of the mass of the satellite, many of the smaller portions of the wreck, not directly held by the tractors, began to separate from the main mass. As each bit left its place another beam leaped out, until it became apparent that no more were available, and Stevens strapped the girl and himself down before two lookout plates.

  "Now for it, Nadia!" he exclaimed, and simultaneously threw on the power of his own projectors and sent out the radio impulse which closed the relays he had so carefully set. They were thrown against the restraining straps savagely and held there by an enormous weight as the gigantic dirigible projectors shot their fragment of the wreck away from the comparatively slight force which had been acting upon it, but they braced themselves and strained their muscles in order to watch what was happening. As the relays in the various fragments closed, the massed power of the accumulators was shorted dead across the converters and projectors instead of being fed into them gradually through the controls of the pilot, with a result comparable to that of the explosion of an ammunition dump. Most of the masses, whose projectors were fed by comparatively few accumulator cells, darted away entirely with a stupendous acceleration. A few of them, however, received the unimpeded flow of complete batteries. Those projectors tore loose from even their massive supports and crashed through anything opposing them like a huge, armor-piercing projectile. It was a spectacle to stagger the imagination, and Stevens grinned as he turned to the girl, who was staring in wide-eyed amazement.

  "Well, ace, I think they're busy enough now so that it'll be safe to take that long-wanted look at their controls," and he flashed the twin beams of his lookout light out beyond the upper half of the Arcturus--only to see them stop abruptly in mid-space. Even the extremely short carrier-wave of Roeser's Rays could not go through the invisible barrier thrown out by the tiny, but powerful globe of space.

  "No penetration?" Nadia asked.

  "Flattened them out cold. 'However,' as the fox once remarked about the grapes, 'I'll bet they're sour, anyway.' We'll have some stuff of our own, one of these days. I sure hope the fireworks we started back there keep those birds amused until we get out of sight, because if I use much more power on these projectors we may not have juice enough left to stop with."

  "You're using enough now to suit me--I'm so heavy I can hardly lift a finger!"

  "You'd better lift 'em! You must watch what's going on back there while I navigate around this moon."

  "All x, chief.... They've got their hands full, apparently. Those rays are shooting around all over the sky. It looks as though they were trying to capture four or five things at once with each one."

  "Good! Tell me when the moon cuts them off."

  * * * * *

  At the awful acceleration they were using, which constantly increased the terrific velocity with which they had been traveling when they made good their escape, it was not long until they had placed the satellite between them and the enemy; then Stevens cut down and reversed his power. Such was their speed, however, that a long detour was necessary in order to reduce it to a safe landing rate. As soon as this could be done, Stevens headed for the morning zone and dropped the "Hope" rapidly toward the surface of that new, strange world. Details could not be distinguished at first because of an all-enshrouding layer of cloud, but the rising sun dispelled the mist, and when they h
ad descended to within a few thousand feet of the surface, their vision was unobstructed. Immediately below them the terrain was mountainous and heavily wooded; while far to the east the rays of a small, pale sun glinted upon a vast body of water. No signs of habitation were visible as far as the eye could reach.

  "Now to pick out a location for our power-plant. We must have a waterfall for power, a good place to hide our ship from observation, and I'd like to have a little seam of coal. We can use wood if we have to, but I think we can find some coal. This is all sedimentary rock--it looks a lot like the country along the North Fork of the Flathead, in Montana. There are a lot of coal outcrops, usually, in such topography as this is."

  "We want to hide in a hurry, though, don't we?"

  "Not particularly, I think. If they had missed us at all, they would have had us long ago, and with all the damage we did with those projectors they won't be surprised at one piece being missing--I imagine they lost a good many."

  "But they'll know that somebody caused all that disturbance. Won't they hunt for us?"

  "Maybe, and maybe not--no telling what they'll do. However, by the time they can land and get checked up and ready to hunt for us, we'll be a mighty small needle, well hidden in a good big haystack."

  For several hours they roamed over the mountainous region at high velocity, seeking the best possible location, and finally they found one that was almost ideal--a narrow canyon overhung with heavy trees, opening into a wide, deep gorge upon a level with its floor. A mighty waterfall cascaded into the gorge just above the canyon, and here and there could be seen black outcrops which Stevens, after a close scrutiny, declared to be coal. He deftly guided their cumbersome wedge of steel into the retreat, allowed it to settle gently to the ground, and shut off the power.