Men Against the Stars - [Adventures in Science Fiction 01]

by Edited By Martin Grrenburg

  “Right, Major!” piped a clear old voice from the direction of the hall. White-haired Ernie, pausing on some errand, had stepped into the office. Both policemen stared truculently at him.

  “Who’s this?” grumbled Inspector Baynes to Noel.

  “He’s Ernie. Rocket mechanic, second class. What’s your last name, Ernie?”

  “Moessner,” said the old fellow. “Major Tallentyre, stand your ground. You can’t let them take you—not when you’re needed here so badly.”

  Noel was looking at Ernie with widened eyes. “You’re— you say your name’s Moessner?”

  “That’s right.”

  Tallentyre and the officers were also watching the aged mechanic. “Hm-m-m,” said Baynes, “that’s the name of the guy who invented moessnerol.”

  “He was my father.”

  The silence that fell was as effective as though it had come at the high point of a stage drama. Ernie Moessner, who had brought about that silence, broke it again.

  “I’m the last Moessner, folks. I’m getting old—so old that I was supposed to retire—but I hope I can die with my boots on, like the rest of my family.”

  His old eyes met Noel’s, and they glowed as palely as the heart of a rocket-blast. He laughed shortly.

  “You’re breaking down under the bloodshed, aren’t you, lady? How’d you feel if these men who kept dying were your own flesh and blood? Answer me that.”

  Her lips trembled open. “I never knew-”

  “But I did!” cried the mechanic, tossing back the white locks from his burning eyes. “I know how they died, and why. Listen!”

  Everyone was listening.

  “I’m seventy-six years old. My first memory was when my dad held me up on his shoulder, so that I could see a parade. The air was all snowy with paper confetti, and sitting on the folded-back top of the Mayor’s car was a tall young fellow without a hat. That was Charles Lindbergh, in 1927, and my dad said, ‘This is only the beginning, son.’

  “You all know how he studied atomic hydrogen for a fuel, and how he was killed by it when he perfected it. His kid brother, my uncle, died flying the first rocket to the Moon. I was in the second, the successful flight—though why I was spared when better men were taken, I don’t know.”

  Baynes and Dunlap were gazing, rapt and abashed. Noel again attempted to speak. “But Ernie, others are dying and-”

  “I’m coming to that. Remember when Major Tallentyre here killed this mutinous captain, and made over the command to a chap named Joe? Like me, he got along without folks worrying about his last name. Well, it was the same as mine. Moessner.”

  “Your son!” cried Noel.

  “My son. My only son. He almost backed out, I guess. But he went, and I’m glad he went. The old prophet was wrong—a living dog isn’t better than a dead lion. I’m glad, too, that I sneaked out of retirement to do plain greasy labor here. And one thing more; everything else can crack, but the rockets will keep going to Mars if Major Tallentyre and I are the only ones to shove them along!”

  Noel spun around. “Talley,” she began, “I want to say something that I didn’t think I-”

  But Tallentyre was gone.

  In the midst of the old man’s speech he had backed out into the vestibule and turned down the hallway to an airlock. There hung space-armor, into which he fairly plunged, making its metal-mounted fabric airtight with a single tug of the seal-zipper. On went metal-shod sandals, the heavy girdle that supported oxygen tank and breathing apparatus, and the helmet, a transparent globe clouded against the pitiless sunrays of space.

  Up the hall rose a clamor of voices, a fall of excited feet. Tallentyre was in the airlock, through it, clanging across the metal face of the landing field. He meant to flee, but only for a while. Perhaps the officers would follow. Then he could slip back into the unguarded port building, organize his defense. He would make the Rocket Service Board listen to him over the radio, exonerate him. Meanwhile, which way lay sanctuary?

  ~ * ~

  Deeper and deeper into the blackness walked Tallentyre, half groping, half trusting to his memories of many journeys along the trail to the crag.

  Funny to feel so heavy on the Moon, where gravity is only one-sixth that of Earth. Surely it wasn’t because of Noel—he, Tallentyre, had never thought of her as a lover until she had admitted her own secret. Now she had turned into an enemy, one who would keep silent when a single truthful word would clear him of the murder charge. Better put her out of mind.

  Lights danced in the gloom behind him—those who hunted him. He made some degree of speed, gained the foot of the rock. Three thousand feet upward it soared, but he, even in armor, would weigh less than forty pounds against Moon’s feathery pull. Up the hewn trail he scrambled, scarcely pausing for breath until he gained the topmost shelf. There he felt safe in turning on his head-lamp. Far below he saw the landing field, its lights undiluted and unrefracted. It was a gold coin on tarry blackness. He turned away and entered the observatory building.

  His glow-lamp revealed the inside of the dome—a metal-lined compartment, pierced above with a starry slit into which sloped the tube of the telescope like a gun at an embrasure. At its lower end the sensitized screen—even on the Moon, this new device had replaced the old reflection mirror—displayed a segment of the heavens. A blob of light showed in the center. Mars, of course. Tallentyre switched off his lamp again, in order to see more clearly.

  The image was not of Mars. That egg-shape could be but one thing: a spaceship. To judge by the direction of the rocket-blasts, it was heading Moonward. The same craft, Tallentyre made no doubt, that he had observed earlier as doubled about and returning along its track. Now it was very close indeed. He judged that it would make port within an hour—within minutes, perhaps-

  A new glow was creeping into the observatory.

  Spinning on his metal-shod heel, Tallentyre stared. A human silhouette paused on the threshold, a figure made bulky and mysterious by space-overall and helmet.

  This meant capture. The newcomer bore a gun in a holster at one side, and he, Tallentyre, was unarmed. But the gauntleted right hand did not reach for the weapon. Instead it beckoned to Tallentyre, then pointed outward and downward.

  “Go back to the port,” said the gesture.

  Tallentyre lifted his own arms in token of surrender, but his heart was far from concurring. He walked across the floor, made to push past the other and step outside. Then he spun and sprang. His two hands clutched like lightning. His right caught and imprisoned his discoverer’s right wrist. His left found and captured the automatic pistol. A moment later he pressed the muzzle into the midst of the stranger’s inflated jumper. Tallentyre’s helmet-front grated against the glass that covered the other’s face. He could see dimly—features that he recognized.

  Noel Crispin.

  Plainly she expected him to shoot. He grinned scornfully, and tossed the gun away. It sailed out into darkness, over the hidden ledge and into the abyss. Tallentyre gave her a little shove across the doorsill. She moved away, stooping dejectedly in her clumsy armor, and her glowing lamp showed her the direction of the down trail. Another moment, and she was lowering herself out of sight.

  Alone again, Tallentyre gazed into the stars. That bright new gleam would be the incoming ship. It meant to land here. Then what? He, the port commander, could play hide-and-seek no longer. He must be on hand to receive those mutineers, to pass judgment upon them. He sighed as though in exhaustion, and said “Damn!” all to himself, in the little bubble of air that was confined about him in this immensity of void.

  Minutes later he turned on his own lamp and began the descent.

  As he scrambled, alone in the empty dark, he thought glumly about Noel, then about women in general. Womankind must be considered in this whole great Martian adventure. It couldn’t be all a stag party. Sooner or later, the feminine angle would have to be introduced, made room for. What then? Would women help or hinder, simplify or complicate? Would women even t
rust themselves in those danger-ridden rocket-ships?

  ~ * ~

  Engineer Dague of Number Forty-Five stared blankly at the stowaway whom the spacehands had just dragged from hiding. “You, Ethel!”

  “Me,” she replied ungrammatically, and smiled her sauciest. “I told you that I’d follow you. It’s Mars or bust, right beside you, darling.”

  “You know that it’s more than an even chance of bust.”

  “Then we’ll bust together!”

  As if in acceptance of that proposition, the ship exploded around them like a shell. Poppy fire bloomed briefly in requiem.

  ~ * ~

  Nobody challenged the port commander as he strode across the landing field and let himself through the lock-panel. He paused in the hall to unship his helmet. At once he heard a hub-bub of voices. Noel Crispin’s troubled soprano dominated them for an instant.

  “I found him, by a hunch—he was up at the observatory. I tried to signal to him that everything was all right, and to come back, but for a moment I thought he’d kill me. Then he almost pushed me down the rock.”

  “He thought you were hunting him,” rejoined the growl of Inspector Baynes. “I say once more, you ought to have spoken up and cleared him when he asked you to.”

  “Never mind scolding her, inspector,” chimed in Ernie Moessner, as authoritatively as though he were the chairman of the World League instead of a simple mechanic. “She’s a woman, and women have a way of changing their minds. The thing is to find Major Tallentyre before something happens to him.”

  “I’m here,” called the man they were seeking, and walked into the office. The four searchers crowded around him, but he silenced their questions with a quick gesture.

  “A ship’s coming into port,” he announced crisply. “From Mars. Prepare to help it to land.”

  They all gasped at that, and their surprised exclamations overlapped each other.

  “A ship . . . From Mars . . . Coming back!” Tallentyre’s pose of official sternness forsook him.

  “The fools,” he groaned. “Oh, the utter fools! To turn around in space and come back here—mutiny! I’ll have to put them under arrest, send them to Earth, maybe kill some of them if they resist. And all the time maybe they’re only showing good sense in not fighting Nature.”

  Noel’s strong little fingers dug into his shoulder, as though she was holding together his crumbling resolve. His own big hand went up to close upon hers. Then, once more the commander, he spoke into the house microphone.

  “Attention, machine shop!” he rasped. “Stand by to help approaching craft into port.” To Dunlap and Baynes he said, “There’s something for you to do. Arrest the crew as soon as it disembarks.”

  The two policemen nodded. They were good men of their trade, hardened to arresting and subduing law-breakers. Zipping tight their loosened space-overalls and once more donning their helmets, they tramped out. Moessner followed.

  Tallentyre and Noel gazed through the window. The craft was settling down outside. Tallentyre could not make out its number, for it seemed to be mended and patched all over in a way he did not remember, as he checked over the ships in his mind. From many tiny nozzles in the metal face of the landing field came the strong gush of steamy vapor. High-pressure gas jets, to break the descent of the ship. It paused, danced overhead like a ball on a fountain-spray, then came gently to rest. A moment later the lock-panel opened and two space-overalled figures emerged. The officers were hurrying toward them, hands on weapons. The four men came together, formed a single party, and passed slantwise across the field, out of range of the window.

  Tallentyre sighed. Noel patted his shoulder. After a moment, metal shoes rang flatly in the vestibule. The door opened. Four men came in, tugging at their helmets.

  A pudgy man disclosed his face first. He was ruddy and bearded, his sun-mottled face grinning. “Major Tallentyre, sir,” he boomed, “I don’t know whether you remember me or not. I’m Waddell, spacehand, first-class. Acting skipper of-”

  “You’re neither,” interrupted Tallentyre. “I put you under arrest, Waddell. Why didn’t you go on to Mars?”

  Waddell looked blank. Then the grin reappeared and widened. “Because I’d been there once, sir.”

  ~ * ~

  Tallentyre felt himself stumble. Noel’s hands helped him to a chair and to sit down. He listened, comprehending by degrees.

  “Yes, sir. Number Six, that ship was. There’s a colony there now, getting ready to gather up the last bunch that came through. You remember the orders—orbital speed, and land on Diemos. Photograph maps of Mars made from there. It worked perfectly. With the telephoto lenses we had regular air-maps of the planet.

  “There aren’t any canals, sir. But there is vegetation, lots of it. Spiny growths like cacti, and tougher’n rubber. But the pith of some of ‘em makes a flour we can eat.

  “Most important, they throw off oxygen. There’s damn little air on Mars, but what there is is mostly oxygen. No trick at all to blow it into the ships—into the dome we set up from hull plates. And—there’s oil there, Major! Fuel!

  “Now with that there,” Waddell’s face split in a broad grin, “and a gang of men that were all hard-boiled technicians, it wasn’t much of a trick to set up some of the auxiliary-power Diesels for power.”

  He stopped for a while, and looked at Tallentyre’s seamed face. “Been a damned tough life you’ve had here, hasn’t it? Sending men out in those firecrackers.

  “Well, that’s gone too.” His hand dipped into his tunic pocket to come out with a nodule of blue-silvery metal. He tossed it to Tallentyre. “That’s the answer. That’s why our ships went through—and the others blew their tubes. We had something to work on that you birds didn’t. Tubes that had been proven. The metal changes in the tubes, under the long, heavy firing. The alloy shifts. If it crystallizes that way—you land. There’s another modification though. If it crystallizes that other way—you blow. That other way is catalytic on the hydrogen, that’s the trouble. The fuel’s all right. It’s the metal. If those cockeyed crystals form—they catalyze the burning. It doesn’t burn then, it blows. You get a flash-back, a sort of special explosion wave that sets off the whole tank.

  “We found out how to make those crystals every time, controlled. Old Six’s tubes were torn out, and the new ones put in. She rode back to Luna here as smooth as an engineer’s theory. Somebody had to come through. We need more men out there. Grayson’s trying to set a station on Diemos. His figures look right, and he thinks he can make Callisto.”

  “Callisto!” Noel’s hand left Tallentyre’s shoulder, crept around him. Her arm hugged his body. Still sitting, he leaned against her as though to find rest.

  ~ * ~

  This, he knew in his heart, was the beginning of the triumph. Men could go—men had gone—to Mars and back. The labors and the sorrows had not been vain. Hadn’t Waddell brought back the secret—the secret men on Earth couldn’t learn —that made fleets possible? Wasn’t Grayson, there on Mars, already looking on, beyond the asteroids to Jupiter-?

  The officers had taken off their helmets again. Tallentyre turned and smiled at them. “Sorry, gentlemen,” he said. “It’s a dry haul for you this time. Why don’t you go back to Earth— take Waddell here with you to make his report to the Board— and-”

  “Hey,” Waddell interrupted, “nothing doing. That ship out there is O.K. right now for the trip back home—Mars, I mean. Gimme some moessnerol and we’ll hop that hole like a frog-puddle. I’m going back there.

  “And I wouldn’t ride in one of those ships just out from Earth now. That’s the only ship in the System I’d trust to ride anyway. Give him the metal samples, and the books and notes Grayson and Hudson fixed up. They said it’s all there. I’m no metallurgist—just a spacehand, first-class.”

  Tallentyre shook his head. A tight little grin tucked in the corners of his mouth. “I’m ordering you to Earth, Wad-dell. You make that report in person for three reasons; they need to see a ma
n that’s been to Mars and back. It will give them courage again. We’ll fix the tubes on the ship that takes you back. And—you’ll be taking my resignation.”

  “But the ship!” Waddell protested. “If it doesn’t go today, sir, Mars’ll get away from us for nearly two years!”

  Tallentyre rose from his chair. He looked smug. “Oh, the ship will start today. But I’ll command. I’m going to Mars for a change. And perhaps-”

  He broke off and looked at Noel. Her face became radiant. She whirled about as tears brimmed her eyes, but her words were a song.

  “I’ll start packing,” she said. “This can’t be a stag party forever!”

  <>

  ~ * ~

  Robert Moore Williams

  THE RED DEATH OF MARS

  With better space ships, exploration of other worlds brings more unpredictable hazards of mystery and death.