(3/15) The Golden Age of Science Fiction Volume III: An Anthology of 50 Short Stories
Page 95
I waited to hear no more. Charlie checked our route while we were stopped. And we took off; we crossed the Rio Grande and flew across the rocky, brush-scattered hills of Mexico, in a direct line for the rock in the sea.
"If anything happens so we have to land again--well, it's just too bad," Charlie said grimly. "But we've got to go this way. It's something over six hundred miles in a straight line. Fifteen minutes to four, now. We have to average nearly three hundred miles an hour to get there."
He was silent and intent over his maps and instruments as we flew on over the lofty Sierra Madre Range, and over a long slope down to the Gulf of California. Head-winds beset us as we were over the stretch of blue water, and we flew on into a storm.
"We had hardly time to make it, without the wind against us," Charlie said. "If it holds us back many miles--well, it just mustn't!"
* * * * *
Purple lightning flickered ominously in the mass of blue storm-clouds that hung above the mountainous peninsula of Lower California. I had a qualm about flying into it in our untested machine. But Charlie leaned tensely forward and sent the Golden Gull on at the limit of her speed. Gray vapor swirled about us, rent with livid streaks of lightning. Thunder crashed and rumbled above the roar of our racing engine. Wild winds screeched in the struts; rain and hail beat against us. The plane rose and fell; she was swirled about like a falling leaf. The stick struggled in Charlie's hands like a living thing. With lips tightened to a thin line, he fought silently, fiercely, desperately.
Suddenly we were sucked down until I had an uneasy feeling at the pit of my stomach. I saw the grim outline of a bare mountain peak dangerously close below us, shrouded in wind-whipped mist.
In sudden alarm I shouted, "We'd better get out of this, Charlie! We can't live in it long!"
In the roar of the storm he did not hear me, and I shouted again.
He turned to face me, after a glance at the clock. "We've less than an hour, Hammond. We've got to go on!"
I sank back in my seat. The plane rolled and tossed until I thanked my lucky stars for the safety strap. In nervous anxiety I watched Charlie bring the ship up again, and fight his way on through the storm. For an eternity, it seemed, we battled through a chaos of wind-driven mist, bright with purple lightning and shaken with crashing thunder.
Charlie struggled with the controls until he was dripping with perspiration. He must have been utterly worn out, after thirty-six hours of exhausting effort. A dozen times I despaired of life. The compass had gone to spinning crazily; we dived through the rain until we could pick up landmarks below. Three times a great bare peak loomed suddenly up ahead of us, and Charlie averted collision only by zooming suddenly upward.
Then slate-gray water was beneath us, running in white-crested mountains. I knew that we were at last out over the Pacific.
"We've passed Point Eugenia," Charlie said. "It can't be far, now. But we have only fifteen minutes left. Fifteen minutes to get to her--before the attraction of the meteor jerks her away, perhaps to a horrible fate."
* * * * *
We flew low and fast over the racing waves. Charlie looked over his charts and made a swift calculation. He changed our course a bit and we flew on at top speed. We scanned the vast, mad expanse of sea below the blue-gray clouds. Here and there were lines of white breakers, but nowhere did we see a rock with a girl upon it. Presently the green outline of an island appeared out of the wild water on our right.
"That's Del Tiburon," Charlie said. "We missed the rock."
He swung the plane about and we flew south over the hastening waves. I looked at the little clock. It showed two minutes to six. I turned to Charlie.
"Seven minutes!" he whispered grimly.
On and on we flew, in a wide circle. The motor roared loud. An endless expanse of racing waves unreeled below us. The little hand crawled around the dial. One minute past six. Only four minutes to go.
We saw a speck of white foam on the mad gray water. It was miles away, almost on the horizon. We plunged toward it, motor bellowing loud. Five miles a minute we flew. The white fleck became a black rock smothered in snowy foam. On we swept, and over the rock, with bullet-like speed.
As we plunged by, I saw Virginia's slender form, tattered, brine-soaked, straggling in the hideous tentacles of the monster octopus. It was the same terrible scene that we had viewed, through the amazing phenomenon of distortion of light through space-time, four thousand miles away and twelve hours before.
In a few minutes the time would come when Charlie had ended our view of the scene by his attempt to draw the girl through the fourth dimension to our apparatus in Florida. What terrible thing might happen then?
Charlie brought the ship about so quickly that we were flung against the sides. Down we came toward the mad waves in a swift glide. In sudden apprehension, I dropped my hand on his shoulder.
"Man, you can't land in a sea like that! It's suicide!"
Without a word, he shook off my hand and continued our steep glide toward the rock. I drew my breath in apprehension of a crash.
* * * * *
I do not blame Charlie for what happened. He is as skilful a pilot as I know. It was a mad freak of the sea that did the thing.
The gray waste of mountainous, white-crested waves rose swiftly up to meet us, with the rock with the girl clinging to it just to our right. The Golden Gull struck the crest of a wave, buried herself in the foam, and plunged down the long slope to the trough. We rose safely to the crest of the oncoming roller, and I saw the black outline of the rock not a dozen yards away.
Charlie had landed with all his skill. It was not his fault that the blustering wind caught the ship as she reached the crest of the wave and flung her sidewise toward the rock. It is no fault of his that the white-capped mountain of racing green water completed what the wind had begun and hurled the frail plane crashing on the rock.
I have a confused memory of the wild plunge at the mercy of the wave, of my despair as I realized that we were being wrecked. I must have been knocked unconscious when we struck. The next I remember I was opening my eyes to find myself on the rock, Charlie's strong arm on my shoulder. I was soaked with icy brine and my head was aching from a heavy blow.
Virginia, shivering and blue, was perched beside us. I could see no sign of the plane: the mighty sea had swept away what was left of it. Clinging to the lee side of the rock I saw the black tentacles of the giant octopus--waiting for a wave to dash us to its mercy.
"All right, Hammond?" Charlie inquired anxiously. "I'm afraid you got a pretty nasty bump on the head. About all I could do to fish you out before the Gull was swept away."
* * * * *
He helped me to a better position to withstand the force of the great roller that came plunging down upon us like a moving mountain. Virginia was in his arms, too exhausted to do more than cling to him.
"What can we do?" I sputtered, shaking water from my head.
"Not a thing! We're in a pretty bad fix, I imagine. In a few seconds we will feel the attraction of the meteor's field--the force with which I tried to draw Virginia to the crater through the fourth dimension. I don't know what will happen; we may be jerked out of space altogether. And if that doesn't get us, the tide and the octopus will!"
His voice was drowned in the roar of the coming wave. A mountain of water deluged us. Half drowned, I clung to the rock against the mad water.
Then blinding blue light flashed about me. A sharp crash rang in my ears, like splintering glass. I reeled, and felt myself falling headlong.
* * * * *
I brought up on soft sand.
I sat up, dumbfounded, and opened my eyes. I was sitting on the steep sandy tide of a conical pit. Charlie and Virginia were sprawled beside me, looking as astonished as I felt. Charlie got to his knees and lifted the limp form of the girl in his arms.
Something snapped in my brain. The sand-walled pit was suddenly familiar. I got to my feet and clambered out of it. I saw that we were on our o
wn landing field.
Astonishingly, we were back in the meteor crater. Charlie's vanished apparatus was scattered about us. I saw the gray side of the rough iron meteorite itself, half-buried in the sand at the bottom of the pit.
"What--what happened?" I demanded of Charlie.
"Don't you see? Simple enough. I should have thought of it before. The field of the meteorite brought Virginia--and us--through to this point in space. But it could not bring us back through time; instead, the apparatus itself was jerked forward through time. That is why it vanished. We got here just twelve hours and forty minutes after I closed the switch, since we had been looking that far into the future. The mathematical explanation--"
"That's enough for me!" I said hastily. "We better see about a warm, dry bed for Virginia, and some hot soup or something."
* * * * *
Now the rough gray meteorite, in a neat glass case, rests above the mantel in the library of a beautiful home where I am a frequent guest. I was there one evening, a few days ago, when Charlie King fell silent in one of his fits of mathematical speculation.
"Einstein again?" I chaffingly inquired.
He raised his brown eyes and looked at me. "Hammond, since relativity enabled us to find the Meteor Girl, you ought to be convinced!"
Virginia--whom her husband calls the Meteor Girl--came laughingly to the rescue.
"Yes, Mr. Hammond, what do you think of Einstein now?"
Table of Contents
The Man Who Came Early, Poul Anderson
The Cuckoo Clock, Wesley Barefoot
Zen, Jerome Bixby
Say Hello for Me, Frank Coggins
The Guardians, Irving Cox
Martians Never Die, Lucius Daniel
Foundling on Venus, John and Dorothy De Coucy
Vital Ingredient, Charles De Vet
The Skull, Phillip K. Dick
The Eye of Allah, Charles W. Diffin
Tree, Spare that Woodman, Dave Dryfoos
Service With a Smile, Charles L. Fontenay
The Monster, Randall Garrett
The Last Supper, T.D. Hamm
The Passenger, Kenneth Harmon
Goodbye Dead Man!, Tom W. Harris
The Velvet Glove, Harry Harrison
Prelude to Space, Robert W. Haseltine
Tight Squeeze, Dean C. Ing
The Jameson Satellite, Neal R. Jones
A Matter of Importance, Murray Leinster
The One and the Many, Stephen Marlowe
Shepherd of the Planets, Alan Mattox
Planet of Dreams, James McKimmey
Stolen Brains, S.P. Meek
The Hoofer, Walter M. Miller Jr.
PRoblem, Alan Nourse
The Return, H. Beam Piper & John G. McGuire
Time and Time Again, H. Beam Piper
The Day of the Boomer Dukes, Frederick Pohl
The Hohokam Dig, Theodore Pratt
Make Mine Homogenized, Rick Raphael
Revolution, Mack Reynolds
Spawn of the Comet, H. Thompson Rich
Runaway, Joseph Samachson
DP, Arthur Dekker Savage
Pirates of the Gorm, Nat Schachner
Gone Fishing, James H. Schmitz
Alien Offer, Al Sevcik
Forever, Robert Sheckley
The Hour of Battle, Robert Sheckley
The Happy Unfortunate, Robert Silverberg
The Street That Wasn’t There, Clifford D. Simak & Carl Jacobi
The Delegate from Venus, Henry Slesar
The Big Fix, George O. Smith
Vortex Blaster, E.E. "Doc" Smith
The Planet of Dread, R.F. Starzl
Sweet Their Blood and Sticky, Albert F. Teichner
Homesick, Lyn Venable
The Meteor Girl, Jack Williamson
Table of Contents
The Man Who Came Early, Poul Anderson
The Cuckoo Clock, Wesley Barefoot
Zen, Jerome Bixby
Say Hello for Me, Frank Coggins
The Guardians, Irving Cox
Martians Never Die, Lucius Daniel
Foundling on Venus, John and Dorothy De Coucy
Vital Ingredient, Charles De Vet
The Skull, Phillip K. Dick
The Eye of Allah, Charles W. Diffin
Tree, Spare that Woodman, Dave Dryfoos
Service With a Smile, Charles L. Fontenay
The Monster, Randall Garrett
The Last Supper, T.D. Hamm
The Passenger, Kenneth Harmon
Goodbye Dead Man!, Tom W. Harris
The Velvet Glove, Harry Harrison
Prelude to Space, Robert W. Haseltine
Tight Squeeze, Dean C. Ing
The Jameson Satellite, Neal R. Jones
A Matter of Importance, Murray Leinster
The One and the Many, Stephen Marlowe
Shepherd of the Planets, Alan Mattox
Planet of Dreams, James McKimmey
Stolen Brains, S.P. Meek
The Hoofer, Walter M. Miller Jr.
PRoblem, Alan Nourse
The Return, H. Beam Piper & John G. McGuire
Time and Time Again, H. Beam Piper
The Day of the Boomer Dukes, Frederick Pohl
The Hohokam Dig, Theodore Pratt
Make Mine Homogenized, Rick Raphael
Revolution, Mack Reynolds
Spawn of the Comet, H. Thompson Rich
Runaway, Joseph Samachson
DP, Arthur Dekker Savage
Pirates of the Gorm, Nat Schachner
Gone Fishing, James H. Schmitz
Alien Offer, Al Sevcik
Forever, Robert Sheckley
The Hour of Battle, Robert Sheckley
The Happy Unfortunate, Robert Silverberg
The Street That Wasn’t There, Clifford D. Simak & Carl Jacobi
The Delegate from Venus, Henry Slesar
The Big Fix, George O. Smith
Vortex Blaster, E.E. "Doc" Smith
The Planet of Dread, R.F. Starzl
Sweet Their Blood and Sticky, Albert F. Teichner
Homesick, Lyn Venable
The Meteor Girl, Jack Williamson