by Various
"Now, dammit!" he grated. "You'll do like I tell you! And you get back there an' see that those tubes recharge okay!"
Phillips felt a hard anger swelling his throat. From the corner of his eye, he saw Truesdale shrinking back against the bulkhead. He glanced about desperately for something with which to parry Brecken's bar.
It was the girl who broke the tense silence. With a gasping intake of breath, she reached up to claw at Brecken's face. Cursing, the man twisted his head away to protect his eyes. He released his grip on the girl's neck and swung a clumsy, backhand blow at her head. Donna stumbled, and collapsed to the deck.
Now or never, Phillips told himself. Without waiting to think, he hurled himself forward.
Brecken saw him coming, and tried to shift around to meet the engineer's charge. Phillips crashed into him shoulder first, and they both brought up against the opposite bulkhead with a thud. He concentrated all his strength into wringing the other's forearm until he heard the bar clang to the deck.
Brecken clubbed him on the side of the head with a wild left swing, and Phillips found the big man's foot in the way when he tried to sidestep. He lost his balance, but kept his grasp on the other so that they went down together, thrashing about for some opening. Brecken was red-faced with a maniacal rage. Beads of saliva sprayed from his twisted lips as he sputtered curses.
The engineer let go suddenly and jolted the other under the chin with the heel of his left hand. The man arched backward, but Phillips caught a knee in the chest that sent him slithering across the deck. As he strove to twist to his hands and knees, he saw Brecken groping for the bar.
Never reach him, thought Phillips frantically.
Thrusting one foot against the leg of an anchored data desk, he raised himself half upright as he lunged desperately at Brecken. Strangely, it occurred to Phillips for a fleeting lapse of time that old Varret had been reasonably astute in his selections, if he desired violent-tempered throwbacks. Then the breath was knocked out of him as he smashed into Brecken with a force that sent them both hurtling into the bulkhead.
The other's grunt of pain was almost lost beneath the sharp smack of bone against metal. Phillips scrambled up hastily, but his opponent lay still.
Over by the data desk, Donna was beginning to squirm quietly and make groping motions with her outstretched hands. Truesdale had retreated to the forward end of the control room, his features blanched by apprehension.
I'll bet, thought Phillips, that old Varret slipped up in your case, my lad. Your reaction to violence must be what they call normal.
He beckoned brusquely. "Give me a hand with him," he ordered.
Brecken still showed no sign of consciousness. Truesdale approached warily, and with his aid Phillips lifted the unconscious man. With their burden limp in their hands, they staggered down the corridor to one of the sleeping compartments. There, they slung him into a bunk.
"He needs attention," said Truesdale.
"He won't get it from me," snapped Phillips. "Lumps on the head were his idea; there's no time to fool with him."
He pulled the sliding door shut, noticing that it had no lock. Since Brecken would probably be some time recovering, however, he put that out of his mind.
* * * * *
Having returned to the control room, they discovered Donna sitting up. At the sight of them, she pulled herself somewhat shakily to a standing position, and brushed back her blonde hair.
"What happened?" she asked.
"He bumped his head on the bulkhead," said Phillips shortly.
This was accepted without comment. They turned to the instruments and examined the dial of the range indicator.
"They aren't very far away," said Donna quietly. "Where do you stand now, Phillips?"
"I suppose we'd better do it," he admitted. "Pretty vicious, aren't you?"
"No!" she snapped. "I don't like it either; I've never caused the death of any human being."
"Oh, sure. That's why you were on Luna!"
She looked at him levelly in the eye, but her shoulders drooped a trifle with the resignation of one who has often been disbelieved.
"My husband was a nice guy," she murmured, "but he never did know when he had a drink too many for piloting his jet. He passed out trying to give me a wild ride, and I got to the controls just in time to crash-land the rocket; that's where they found me before I came to."
"Oh," said Phillips.
"I'm not half as hard as I'm trying to pretend," Donna went on, "even after a year on Luna. But I was a nurse before I was married. I'm thinking about what it will be like if this plague hits the planets before they find something to fight it with. The children ... imagine that, will you?"
Phillips stared at the range indicator. It seemed there were times when an ugly thing had to be done for the common good. He wondered how the old-time executioners had felt, in the days when there had been judicial homicide. There were still jailers, for that matter, and men who butchered cattle.
"Call it a mercy killing," murmured Donna between pale lips. "Maybe you think that isn't still done once in a while, in spite of modern society."
"Ummh," Phillips grunted. "Well, if you can watch at this end, Truesdale and I can go set up a couple of torpedoes. I hope those rocket blasts didn't give us away."
"According to Varret," said Truesdale, "there can't be many of them still able to think straight enough to stand on watch. I wonder what it's like...."
Phillips glanced askance at him, but led the way into the corridor. First of all, he stopped at the rocket room to check the tube readings. The fired jets had been automatically recharged.
* * * * *
They left the rocket room and climbed the ladder to the turret. Once inside, Phillips spent the first few minutes inspecting the equipment and thumbing through the manuals left there by Varret. Finally, the bored Truesdale broke in upon his study.
"That old goat must be crazy to think he could toss us out here and have us act like a trained crew. How can we even hope to do anything right, without blowing ourselves up?"
"We can try," said Phillips coldly. "It shouldn't be impossible to get one started, at least."
He found the twin control panels in the bulkhead, and pulled a pair of switches. There was a smooth humming and a slight click as two hatches in the deck slid open. Slanting metal chutes rose out of the dark apertures, just behind the conveyor belts.
"Look at those babies!" breathed Phillips.
The snouts of two miniature spaceships protruded from the storage hold. Phillips touched other switches, and the sleek missiles were prodded onto the belts and moved forward until the full, twenty-foot lengths were in view.
"Phillips, you better be careful with those things!" quavered Truesdale as the engineer unscrewed a small hatch on one.
"Afraid I'll blow it up?" asked Phillips, peering inside.
"Why not? You never touched one before."
"You go ahead and believe that," retorted the engineer. "Now, I'll just turn on the radio controls, check the batteries, and feed the bad news into the launching tubes. Watch!"
Replacing the hatch and securing it, he thought out the procedure to use at the remote control panels. Turning on the screen above one of them produced a cross-haired image of the bulkhead directly in front of the near torpedo. He tried various manipulations until he had focused the view and caused it to sweep all around the interior of the turret. After idly watching himself and Truesdale appear on the screen, he returned the view to dead ahead, switched it off, and turned to the other panel.
"I guess I can finish checking," he said.
Truesdale clambered hastily down the ladder. Phillips shook his head. "Don't know what use he'll be," he muttered. "Too bad Brecken wouldn't listen. He at least ... oh, well!"
He wondered whether he himself would stand up when the time came. What Varret had asked did not sound like much. Just a quick shot and watch them blow apart. What inhibitions made men black out rather than carry it through? It
was not as if there were any hope for these people. Surely, it was obvious that to permit them, in their deranged state, to spread a catastrophic plague was inconceivable. But perhaps emotions were stronger than reason.
"I'll find out pretty soon," he reflected.
There was little more to do in the turret, except to run the torpedoes into the launching tubes and bring up a new pair in reserve. With that much done, he closed the hatch and climbed down the ladder.
* * * * *
In the control room, he found Donna and Truesdale peering into the screen. He crowded close to look over their shoulders. A small blob of light floated near the center of the view. "That it?" he asked.
"Yes," answered Donna. "Just enough Mars-light to show it."
"How near are we?" asked Phillips.
"About a hundred and fifty miles. I have quite a large magnification, but they may spot us if they're alert. Are you ready to ... do something?"
"Reasonably," said Phillips. "Where's Brecken?"
"You probably killed him!" Truesdale broke in accusingly.
"I found a first-aid kit and gave him a shot," said Donna. "He has a nasty lump on the head, but he might sleep it off."
Phillips was watching Truesdale. The youth was visibly nervous. Was it the thought of Brecken, the engineer wondered, or fear of what they were planning to do? Perhaps it would be best to clear the air now, before it was too late.
"I guess you can handle it here, Donna," he said. "Truesdale and I will go to the turret and stand by."
The youth shrank away. "No! I won't go up there again! You can't make me do this!"
"Do what?" demanded Phillips.
"It's murder! You both know it is! They won't even have any warning."
"I hope not," said Phillips drily. "They might get us!"
"You would put it that way," sneered Truesdale; "you're homicidal at heart anyway!" He turned on Donna, wiping perspiration from his forehead. "Are you going to let him do it?" he shrilled. "Are you going to help him commit such a crime?"
The girl stared at him with a worried look in her blue eyes but said nothing.
"Come on, Truesdale," said Phillips, making an effort at a peaceful, persuasive tone. "It will be either their lives or ours if they spot us--and millions more if they get by. They'll be too desperate to think of us. Do you want to die?"
The instant he spoke the last words, he remembered the other's record and wished he had kept quiet. He saw, a strange, wild expression creep over Truesdale's features. It changed into a look of hateful cunning as the youth, began to sidle toward the door.
"I'm not afraid to die!" he boasted in a low-pitched but tense voice. "But how about you, Phillips? How about the big, brutal space engineer who is proud of smashing men's skulls against steel walls, who would like nothing better than to blow up a shipload of innocent people. How do you really know they're dangerous? But you don't care, do you?"
"Truesdale!" snapped Phillips. "Calm down!"
"I'll calm you down with me!" shouted the other hysterically. "I'll show you who's afraid to die!"
He ducked through the door toward which he had been backing. Phillips lunged after him, just barely missing a grip.
"On your toes!" he shouted over his shoulder to Donna, and turned on all jets.
But Truesdale, driven by his peculiar fury, not only stayed ahead as they raced along the corridor, but actually gained.
He was fifteen or twenty feet out in front as they reached the midway point. Phillips, expecting him to take refuge in the rocket room, was completely fooled when Truesdale leaped for the ladder in the vertical well. He stumbled, and grabbed a handrail to stop himself. The other was swarming upward. Phillips sprang to follow.
Hardly had he climbed half a dozen rungs, however, than he saw he was outdistanced. Truesdale's feet were already disappearing beyond the hatchway. Phillips waited for the airtight door to slam shut. It remained open....
Then a thrill of instinctive fear shot through him as he thought of what Truesdale might do--probably was doing at that very instant!
Throwing his feet clear of the rungs, he plunged back toward the deck, guided only by his hands brushing the sides of the ladder. As Phillips reached the junction of the passages, he kicked desperately away from the ladder. He landed with a thump that would have hurt had he been in a calmer state.
Rolling over toward the control room, he came to his feet in time to glimpse Donna looking out the doorway before a jarring shock floored him again.
The deafening roar of an explosion resounded in the corridor as a brilliant light was luridly reflected from somewhere behind him. The bewildering force hurled him at the deck; he saw he could not prevent his head from striking--
Phillips found himself on hands and knees, staring stupidly at the deck a few inches past his nose. As in a nightmare, he seemed to spend an eternity pushing himself painfully to his feet. Clutching a handrail, he finally made it.
He saw Donna kneeling in the doorway, hand to head. As he watched, the girl looked at her hand, and dazedly pulled out a handkerchief to wipe off the blood.
Then Phillips became aware of a high breeze in his face. Behind him, the sound of rushing air rose to a moan, then to a shriek. That shocked him to his senses.
"Button up!" he screamed above the noise, bringing his hands together in an urgent gesture understood by all spacemen.
As the girl staggered to her feet, he whirled and leaped toward the junction of the cross corridors. He wasted no time in a vain glance upwards--he knew what Truesdale had done. Only setting off the torpedoes' rockets in the enclosed turret compartment would have caused an explosion just severe enough to rupture the ship's skin; if the warheads had gone off, he never would have known it.
Diving headlong through the opening in the deck, he experienced a dizzying shift of gravity as he passed through the plane of the main deck. When he had his bearings again, he scrambled "up" the ladder toward the belly turret. By the time he got the airtight hatch open, he was beginning to pant in the thinning air. He pulled himself through at last, and sealed the compartment.
Phillips sucked in a deep, luxurious breath while he glanced about. This turret, he saw, was a duplicate of the other. He immediately located the intercom screen and called the control room. Donna's worried face appeared. "Where are you?" was her relieved inquiry.
Phillips explained what had happened. "The only thing," he concluded, "is to try it from here."
"I think they must have spotted the flash," Donna told him. "The instruments show a shift in their course."
"Blast right at them!" said Phillips. "We might get away with it if we're quick."
He turned away, leaving the intercom on. A few quick steps took him to the control panels in the bulkhead. Guided by his lessons in the other turret, and by faded memories of space school on Earth, he brought up two of the torpedoes. He checked the radio controls and ran the missiles into their launching tubes. As he worked, with nervous sweat running down into his eyes, he was aware of the intermittent jar of rocket blasts.
"Run 'em down!" he muttered, trying to steady his hand on the controls.
He had a hand at each panel, with the torpedoes poised viciously in the tubes, when he heard Donna's shout, shrill with excitement, over the intercom.
Instantly, he launched the missiles. He started the rockets by remote control, and scanned the screens for a sight of the other vessel.
For a moment, his view was confused by the expanding puff of air; then that froze, and drifted back to the hull, and he could see the stars.
* * * * *
Donna's voice, strained but coldly controlled, came over the intercom with readings from her instruments. He corrected his courses accordingly.
Then he saw the image of their target centered on one screen, so he concentrated on steering the other missile. He made the nose yaw, but was unable to locate anything on its screen.
"You're sending one of them too far above, I think," Donna reported.
/> "I have something wrong," he shouted. "I can't spot them at all for that one. The jets must be out of line and shooting it in a curve."
Nevertheless, he fired a corrective blast on the weight of the guess, before returning his attention to the first torpedo.
This one was right on the curve. He could see the massive hull of the cruiser plainly now. It was almost featureless until, as he watched, several sections seemed to slide aside.
The screen showed him a momentary glimpse of a swarm of small, flame-tailed objects spewing forth from one of the openings. Then the view went dark. "Interceptor rockets with proximity fuses," he muttered. "They'll be after us next, crazy-mean and frantic!"
Over the intercom, he heard Donna exclaim in dismay. He caught a fleeting sight of her face and realized that the situation must be torture for the girl, as for himself or any normal person of their civilization.
Cursing himself for an optimist, he raised two more of the missiles from the magazine. Hopping about like a jet-checker five minutes before take-off time, he made them ready. It seemed like hours before he got them into the launching tubes and blew them out into the void.
Again, he watched the other vessel appear ahead of his torpedoes, this time on both screens. Before the gap narrowed, he had a better opportunity to see the defenses of the cruiser in action.
A whitish cloud of gas was expelled from his target's hull, bearing a myriad of small objects which promptly acquired a life of their own. Both screens were filled with flashing, diverging trails of flame. Then--nothing.
"They're heading at us!" called Donna. "Hang on!"
Phillips had already pulled the switches to bring up a new pair of torpedoes. Hearing the urgency in Donna's tone, he leaped toward a rack of spacesuits and grabbed.
* * * * *
The next instant, he was pinned forcibly against the rack by acceleration, as Donna made the ship dodge aside. From one side, he heard a screech of grating metal. The fresh missiles must have jammed halfway out of the storage compartment.