“This is your doing, you clumsy idiot! We must have crashed through the surface ice into an underground hole or something.”
She turned to the radio and switched it on. Then as I leaned over and prevented her seizing the microphone she stared at me fixedly.
“If you’re going to send for help from Casper, or try and get him to remote control the ship out of this mess, you’ve another think coming, Angel!”
“Don’t be an idiot! We can’t just wait here and die!”
“If there’s any way out we’ll find it for ourselves,” I said grimly. “Get away from that instrument. Go on!” I roared, as she hesitated.
I think it was her surprise at my action more than anything else that made her obey. Roughly I elbowed her aside and switched on the instruments for myself. My earlier plan to convert the radio-apparatus was unnecessary now since she’d done it for me.
“Calling Space Patrol,” I intoned into the microphone, and watched the girl out of the corner of my eye. “Calling Space Patrol…”
Her expression changed, and the moment it did so she dived for me furiously, made to grab the microphone and smash it. I struck her over the wrist with it. She fell back, holding her hand painfully.
“I owed you that one,” I said dryly, tugging out the gun and leveling it at her. “Take it easy—Hallo there! Space Patrol? Special agent Stanley speaking. Pick up a pirate space machine by the name of Silver Eagle and hold the crew and first mate Casper for full inquiry. The charge is illegal ore trading. The ship is located on Ganymede, north position. You will hold it there until further orders from me.”
Suddenly, my attention diverted from her for a moment, Valcine Drew acted. She lifted a heavy stool and whirled it with devastating force. It crashed into the microphone and shattered it, drove a dent through the control panel. Instantly of course, the apparatus went dead.
“A space cop, eh?” she shouted hoarsely. “I might have known it! Well, you might get Casper but you’ll not get me! A space cop!” she went on savagely. “You’re worse than we are! You were willing to do a deal in tranite-x, and now it’s failed you are trying to get me, Casper, and my critanium mineral. You cheap, dirty double crosser!”
“Finished?” I asked impassively.
“Not yet! You’re nothing but a—”
“There is no tranite-x,” I stated quietly; then as her green eyes blazed in furious amazement I went on: “That was a simple gag to get you away from the Eagle. I wasn’t fool enough to think I could capture you and Casper single-handed when you had the radio and all the advantages. The only way was to divide your forces, so to speak. Casper will be nabbed by the S.P., just as I’d planned, but my original intention to fly you in this globe to the S.P. headquarters in the Asteroid Belt will have to be altered. So far as you are concerned the plan’s slipped up. But believe me, Angel, your racket’s busted wide open from now on. Especially so with the evidence I’ve got with a micro-camera, providing I ever get away to use it. Even without it, though, your mining days are over.”
She folded her arms and smiled cynically. “And what does the copper do now?”
“Nothing,” I shrugged. “Thanks to what you’ve done to the radio we’re stuck. I can’t tell the Space Patrol to come for us, as I’d intended a moment ago. Anyway I doubt if their big machine could risk the gravity and hurricanes. So our only course is to find the way out for ourselves.”
“And it we do, you hand me over? Count me out!”
I got up, eyed her grimly. “Listen, Angel, I’m not asking for death even if you are. There’s got to be some way out, and I’m going to find it.”
“All right; I’m not stopping you. But if we get out it means death to me, so why should I help?”
“Only because death here means slow suffocation,” I said quietly. “But maybe you prefer it that way?”
She was silent, dropping her gaze. Then as though suddenly thinking of something she fingered inside the pouches on the belt she wore and pulled out a phial—that same phial I had seen her use aboard the Eagle. She took the cork out of it, then stared at its emptiness dumbly. A curious expression was on her face as she put the phial back.
“Perhaps you’re right,” she said abruptly. “I’ve got to get away from here—I’ve got to. If I don’t, it means far more than death for me.”
CHAPTER 4
Atonement
I puzzled over her remark for a moment.
She seemed on the verge of explaining herself; then suddenly changed her mind.
“We’ll look around outside,” she said, and hauled two spacesuits to view. We were inside them in a few seconds, then armed with cutters and flashlamps we scrambled through the airlock.
We were in an ice cavern all right, virtually buried. Looking around, we could see clearly what had happened. The ship had smashed through a mass of surface ice into a depression in the ground, bringing tons of ice blocks down on top of it. Inside here, where the ship was buried, was the pocket in the ice with heaven knew how much thickness of ice above us. We were inside a natural bubble with unguessably thick walls. To strike upward was far too dangerous: we might precipitate an avalanche.
I linked up our helmet phones and said, “We might stand a chance at the end of the pocket there,” and I nodded to where the hollow came to an end. “If that is where the bubble ends we can work our way upwards at an angle; that should prevent any chance of a collapse.”
She nodded inside her helmet and, nailed down by the huge gravity and our studded boots skidding on the ice, we struggled forward, finally reached the solid, glittering wall that barred our one possible avenue to escape.
We went to work with our vibrator gauges first, devices that told us by etheric recoil waves exactly how thick was the barrier in front of us. It was fifteen feet, as compared to forty and fifty feet in other directions.
“Well?” the girl asked finally, looking at me.
“We drive through,” I said. “Let’s get started.”
I trailed the extension cables of our cutters back to the ship and connected them to the power plant, then each of us with a cutter apiece we set to work on the wall, standing our ground amidst the bombardment of flying ice fragments and solidified mineral deposits. It was dangerous work for the stuff was as sharp as glass. One direct impact on our space suits might very easily have made a fatal tear. However, fortune was with us.
But it was slow, grueling work in that crushing gravity. And at the end of an hour our spacesuit air tanks were running low; we had consumed a surprising amount of oxygen with our exertions and strain, and all we had to show for it was a penetration of two feet and a width of perhaps ten, just enough for the globe to pass through.
Wearied, we went back to the ship and relaxed gratefully in the Earth-norm gravity. Once I’d locked the door, I switched on the air supply to the full for a while, but a quick glance at the gauge showed me we had to husband every scrap of our supply.
“Any rations aboard?” I asked Valcine anxiously.
She nodded her blonde head tiredly toward a cupboard. In it I found a plentiful supply of canned concentrates. Far more food indeed than we could ever use with our air supply so low. In silence I put out a meal.
“Pull up,” I said briefly, and Valcine drew a chair over and sat down, to moodily regard the meal. I ate in silence for a long time before I noticed she wasn’t touching anything. All she did was take a drink then relapse into moody quiet again.
As on that other occasion on the Eagle she had at the moment lost her look of frozen viciousness and instead looked distressed, human. I was trying to figure it out to myself when she glanced at me sharply as though divining my thoughts.
“How long do you think it’ll take us to get free?” she asked.
I shrugged. “Five more shifts, I guess—if we’re lucky. It depends if the air supply will hold out that long.”
At that she unbuckled the pouched belt from about her waist and began a meticulous search of its various pockets. I wat
ched in puzzled interest. She tipped out a variety of feminine trifles onto the table—then at last with almost a yelp of delight she pounced upon a small round tablet and flaked away the dust that was adhering to it.
Her whole manner had changed miraculously. Gone utterly was her tiredness. Quickly she hurried to the water faucet and filled up a glass, but before she could drop the tablet into the water I had grabbed it from her outstretched palm. I had remembered that other tablet back on the ship.
“What is this stuff?” I asked her curtly.
“Give it to me, please!” Her voice wasn’t cold and commanding; no, it was desperately entreating. She put the glass down and stared at me urgently.
“Why?” I insisted. “What does a girl like you in the prime of health need with tablets anyway?”
“Prime of health!” She laughed hollowly. “If you only knew how funny that is!”
I stared at her. “But I don’t understand.”
“If you must know, I have space fever,” she interrupted. “I’ve had it for a year now. You know what it does unless tablets of calrax are taken regularly every five hours. It seeps into your bones, slowly destroys the nerves, brings horrible agonizing death. Only by these tablets can I keep myself in anything like normal health. Give it to me! All this is Casper’s fault. I came off on this trip without getting a fresh supply from him. I’m lucky to find this odd one.”
I looked at her fixedly, still holding the tablet. I have seen space fever in all its phases, and I know it produces certain unmistakable signs even when the sufferer uses calrax to antidote it. For instance, it leaves the whites of the eyes muddy and yellow; it contracts the pupils; it makes the hands knotted as though with acute arthritis. Yet Valcine Drew had none of these symptoms.
“Who told you that you have space fever?” I demanded.
“Casper of course. I got it on one of our trips and he made up these tablets for me—has done ever since…Oh please give me that tablet!” she nearly screamed. “I feel ill! I’ve got to have it!”
“In a moment,” I said, and hurrying over to the microscope I put the tablet on the slide, studied it carefully. She did not interfere but watched with itching impatience. I saw plenty through the lenses that startled me.
“Valcine,” I said slowly, looking up, “there’s a lot about you that I’m only just beginning to understand. For instance, your harshness, your disregard of all law, your stubborn courage. To speak plainly, you’ve poisoned yourself with these tablets until you couldn’t help but be that way! Or rather Casper has seen to it that you have poisoned yourself!”
“What do you mean?” She stared at me bewilderedly.
“I mean that this pill is not calrax! I know the stuff backwards. It’s olvis-root powder made into a pill and bound with some sort of glucose. Do I have to tell you what even a few grains of olvis-root will do?”
The color drained still more from her pale face. From the utter horror in her eyes I could see she knew as well as I that olvis-root is a deadly poison, obtainable from Venus’ toxic lands.
“It—it deadens the nerves, alters the impulses, destroys fear, operates on every gland secretion,” she breathed, half to herself. “Yes, yes, I know what it does. God, now I begin to see! What 1 contracted was nothing more than a touch of space radiation perhaps; it’s common enough. That devil Casper started to feed me olvis-root poison tablets in quantity enough to change my entire nature as long as the effect lasted. Yes—that’s it! Now I know the reason why he never missed telling me the times for my pills. I thought it was concern for my welfare— The beast! The filthy, dirty beast!”
She sat down heavily, staring at me. Then she went on,
“Before I had space fever, or whatever it was, I used to work with my father in legitimate ore mining. Casper wanted us to do it illegally and make a fortune. I think, though I can’t prove it, that he killed dad in order to put his devilish plans into effect. When dad died, I was left alone in space with Casper. He tried to force me to agree to piracy, and I wouldn’t. It was against all my natural principles.
“Then I was taken ill, and I see now that it was since then that I have been a changed woman. Cruelty suddenly appealed to me; sadism was as natural as breathing. I was proud of my name of ‘The Granite Angel’. So Casper deliberately destroyed my real nature to make me a willing ally—to make me the scapegoat for everything when justice caught up.”
Suddenly she dropped her flaxen head to her restless hands. Just as quickly she got up and started pacing agitatedly.
“Don’t you see what he’s done to me? I cannot live now without the drug! Every time I lost my sense of courage and harshness he gave me a tablet, and in this one tablet here is my one chance of preserving my life until I can get more. Without them the reaction is deadly. Insufferable weariness; a slow decline into death. Anybody knows that olvis-root victims die swiftly if the supply is stopped.”
She stopped, staring at me. I wish I could fully describe the wild loveliness of her now she was temporarily herself. I freely admit I wanted nothing more than to take her in my arms and swear the most impossible resolutions in order to save her. But being a trained realist I tried instead to find a way round the problem.
“Whatever happens,” I said quietly, “you are not going back to your old role. I’d sooner see you dead than that. If I read your true character aright you’d sooner be dead than…”
She stood facing me, hands clenched at her sides. Abruptly I decided the issue by dropping the pill on the floor and grinding it under my heel. She watched my action dumbly. Quietly I went to the medicine chest and shook restorative powder into the water she’d drawn.
She drank it off, then sat down again wearily.
“Listen, Valcine,” I said seriously, taking her limp hand, “if we once get out of this jam there are hospitals on Earth fully equipped to deal with your problem. You can be cured, and though in honor bound I shall be forced to hand you over to the law, I have no doubt of the verdict. A victim of olvis-root poisoning isn’t responsible to anybody or anything. It is Casper—and he alone—who’ll take the rap. Understand?”
“I’m answerable to my conscience,” she said bitterly. “The unspeakable things I have done. Nothing can eradicate the penalty due me for that.” She stopped and winced with transient pain, then said, “I—I must rest awhile.”
With that she coiled herself up on the single bunk by the wall and was soon asleep. Finally, after a long study of her beautiful features in repose I cursed and damned Casper until I could curse no more. Then I lowered the air pressure and lay down on the floor to doze.
I awakened again to find Valcine shaking me.
“We must get busy again,” she said urgently. “The air is getting so much weaker!”
I nodded and scrambled up, studied her quickly. She looked wan, her eyes dead with weariness even though she had slept. We had a small meal then got into our spacesuits once more and recharged the air cylinders. This revived us a little and we set out on our task again. We kept at it until fatigue got us down again, but our cutters had done good work. I almost dared to hope that we could cut things short by a sudden forward impetus that might smash the remaining barrier and drive us right out into space.
I told this to Valcine when we got back into the ship. She turned from studying the air gauge.
“We shall have to do so,” she said seriously. “Our air will only last that long anyway. Don’t forget that in getting away from Jupiter we shall draw enormously on the air because of the strain on our lungs with the acceleration. We’ve barely enough to get away with.”
I went to her side and looked at the ominous needle. Barely enough was right.
“Of course,” I said, thinking, “there is another way. By this time the space patrol will have picked up Casper. Suppose I were to stay behind in the cavern outside here, protected by a spacesuit? I’d have the air cylinder. You could go ahead and tell the S.P. Then recharge the globe with air and come back for me. You’d have ample ai
r to make that journey from here alone.”
“Walk right into the lion’s jaws, eh?” she asked somberly.
“Only as a means to your final escape from your beastly other self. Only as a means to absolute cure.”
She smiled faintly. “Cure? I wonder. I feel burned out. Dead. I doubt if I’d ever live long enough to reach a hospital anyway. Besides, how do you know I’d ever come back for you?”
“I just…know,” I said.
Her eyes looked into mine, reflecting something of what I was thinking. But at last she shook her head slowly.
“No—I can’t go to the S.P. and tell them to return here. I can’t even face them. I’ve my conscience to reckon with. There is a better way. You go alone and I’ll stay behind in a spacesuit. You can arrange the details for the S.P. to come and take me.”
“I won’t do it,” I said firmly.
“If you love me, Stanley—you will.”
It was the first time she had ever used what she thought was my Christian name and it made me stare at her for the moment. Then almost before I had realized it I was covering her face with kisses and telling her my real name was Curtis Stanley.
“And Val, I do love you,” I whispered.
“Then, Curt, do as I say, please! Every minute is precious. It’s the only way I can feel easy in my mind. For you to explain things away a bit about me first to the S.P. If I know you’re coming back I’ll last out, until we get to a hospital.”
Then she had turned quickly and was clambering into her spacesuit. Before she put on the helmet she gave a long, lingering gaze with wistful eyes. Then her helmet snapped in place and she climbed out through the airlock.
I watched through the port until she was at a safe distance, then clamping the airlock I moved to the control board. Carefully, I let in the power switches. The globe started vibrating on the ice. Ahead of me was the brief tunnel with its rearing wall, into which I might easily smash to destruction. And behind was—
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