Earthbound (Winston Science Fiction Book 1)

by Milton Lesser

  Several miles below and behind the plane, an alarm siren shrilled its message at the White Sands prison.

  Chapter 11 — Beyond the Land of Fire

  Pete awoke to the hissing, and it took him a while to realize it was not the same sound which had put him asleep. This noise he knew — the release of oxygen in a pressurized cabin.

  “Ah! I see you’re awake.”

  “Mr. Fairchild!”

  “Don’t be surprised. You’ll know us all,” Mr. Fairchild assured him. “Sleeping inside are Sam Smith and Clarence Roth, whom you’ve met. That figure huddled uncertainly over the controls is your friend Ganymede Gus. You see, you are among friends.”

  Pete looked around at the curving walls of the cabin. “Don’t tell me we’re in space?”

  “Hardly, young man. We’re flying south at the speed of sound, at an elevation of forty thousand feet. Gus!”

  “Yeah, boss?”‘

  “Where are we now, Gus?”

  “Well, near as I can make out from the instruments, we’re just about over the Equator. Four, five hours to go before we reach Ushuaia.”

  “Ushuaia?” Pete asked. “Where’s that?”

  Mr. Fairchild smiled. “That will come later. I’m sure you have some other questions first.”

  “As a matter of fact, yes. How did I get out of jail?”

  “That’s easy. We released a harmless gas into the White Sands jailhouse. It’s harmless, yes, but it quite effectively puts people to sleep. The rest was simple. Sam has broad shoulders and strong muscles; Sam carried you out.”

  “I didn’t want to escape!” Pete stormed. “That makes me a fugitive. I was ready to face whatever they had in store for me, but all you’ll do is make it worse. Why can’t you guys mind your own business?”

  “Peter! This is our business. That is precisely why we released you. In the first place, under persuasion of the authorities, you might have decided to say certain things which would have been infinitely embarrassing for us. You can’t deny the logic of that.”

  “I won’t try. But don’t tell me you’re going to all this trouble, taking me some place south of the Equator, just to make sure I won’t talk. It doesn’t make sense and you know it.”

  “Indeed I do. I have a logical mind, my boy, and, as you indicate, that would not be particularly logical. No, we’re going south for another purpose entirely.”

  “What’s that?”

  “I didn’t say I was ready to tell you. But why not? After all, you’ll be a part of it, an important part as you shall presently see. First, however, let me thank you for the latest orbit information you relayed to us.”

  “Don’t thank me,” Pete said coldly. “I changed that orbit and made sure it wouldn’t do you any good.”

  Mr. Fairchild shook his head sadly. “That is most unfortunate. It still seems, then, that we cannot altogether trust you. However, it didn’t matter. As things turned out, we had no time to use the information you gave us. But what you say is irksome — does it mean we’ll have to keep you in sight at all times?”

  “You can figure that one out!”

  “I’m happy to say it isn’t necessary. And please don’t play the bitter, misunderstood individual, Peter. It doesn’t fit your personality at all. I can see you doing big things, great things, not sniveling off in a corner and crying that no one understands you.”

  “The only trouble with that is your idea of great things doesn’t match mine, or anyone else’s.”

  “Never mind. You’ve indicated confusion as to why we head south. When you consider it logically, the answer is quite simple. Our endeavors must of necessity have two phases, and the first one you have already seen. By one means or another we have managed to hijack half a dozen spaceships in the last six months. Had we been permitted to continue our operations, you could have been of considerable help. But it occurred to me that we had not yet reaped the benefits of what we had done. Therefore, this trip south.”

  “I don’t get it.”

  “Several pirate vessels are waiting out in space with — ah, confiscated merchandise. Presently, they are hiding in the asteroids, but that can’t go on forever. Further, we receive no profits unless those ships are brought to Earth, unless we can sell our produce.

  “Hence this trip south. Today Earth is a civilized planet, Peter. Man’s culture has reached everywhere. It has pushed back the final barriers; it has claimed the African jungle, irrigated the great Sahara and Gobi Deserts, swept into the vast Brazilian wilderness known as the Matto Grosso. One area alone remains unclaimed, one place on all the Earth where a man can operate in comparative secrecy. Do you know what that place is, Peter?”‘

  “Why, I suppose it’s the Antarctic continent!”

  “Precisely! We can call our ships back to Earth and bring them down in Antarctica. After that, a slow trickle of goods north will assure us a steady profit, and before too long we’ll be ready for new trade. Meanwhile, we must first conclude the second phase of our operations. Namely, we must call the pirate vessels to an Antarctic rendezvous with us.

  “And that is where you come in. Currently, it is winter in the Southern Hemisphere. Late winter, to be sure, but at best, the Antarctic continent will have only a few hours of twilight each day. Fierce blizzards will hide the sky, visual landings will be all but impossible. As an orbiteer, you are a radar expert. Very well, you shall guide our ships into base by radar.”

  “But you can’t bring ships down at the bottom of the world in winter!” Pete protested.

  “Yes, you can, provided you take the proper precautions. We have a base ready for us several hundred miles from the South Pole, complete with every radar device you can use, Peter. It will be a dangerous job, but it can be done. Consider it as a challenge if you like. But one way or another, you will do it!”

  “Rio!” Ganymede Gus called back from his controls. “According to the instruments, we’re over Rio now.”

  “Good.” Mr. Fairchild rubbed his hands together. It won’t be long before we land at Ushuaia. We buy the clothing we’ll need; we refuel; and then we’re off for Antarctica.”

  In spite of himself, Pete was interested. By now he had resigned himself — he couldn’t go to space. But Mr. Fairchild was right: Earth’s civilization had pushed back all the frontiers, with one exception. Antarctica. There a wild, unknown wilderness still held man out, still kept its icebound secrets. They were traveling into the unknown, and in a way, it was like blasting off for the far planets....

  “What’s this Ushua . . .” Pete wanted to know.

  “Ushuaia? That’s the southernmost capital in the world, Peter. It’s the capital and only real city of Tierra del Fuego. Do you know Spanish?”

  “A little.”

  “Tierra del Fuego is an Argentine province, and its name means ‘Land of Fire.’ Though why they call it ‘Land of Fire’ when it’s a frigid, frozen little island — that I cannot understand.”

  “I can,” Pete told him. “We studied that in geography. Tierra del Fuego gets its name because of the southern aurora, the ‘fire in the sky.’ ”

  “Could be,” Mr. Fairchild nodded. “However, I’m inclined to think it’s wishful thinking on the part of the Indians who live there and must suffer with the intense cold.”

  Hours later, Ganymede Gus brought their jet plane down to a bumpy landing at Ushuaia’s one airport. It was tricky going, for the field was covered with ice and high-piled drifts of snow, and a blinding blizzard howled in from the south.

  Here stood Tierra del Fuego, last outpost of land in the southern ocean short of the Antarctic continent itself. And here the Indians lived timelessly in their mean hovels of ice and wood and frozen clay. You could almost sense the proximity of Antarctica, although actually thousands of miles of winter-gray ocean separated it from Tierra del Fuego. But civilization had made only small inroads. Oil lamps flickered and pulsed in the gloom outside, what looked like obsolete, propeller-type aircraft were covered by shrouds of canvas
and snow; several dim figures bundled in thick, ancient furs struggled through the storm toward their jet plane.

  Eagerly, Ganymede Gus opened the door, but a blast of frigid wind hurled him stumbling across the cabin. A gust of wind caught the door and threw it out all the way, banging it furiously against the fuselage.

  “Close that!” Mr. Fairchild roared over the wind. “We’ll freeze!”

  The three fur-bundled figures tumbled inside the ship while Pete leaned out into the cold with Gus and pulled the door back against the power of the wind. After a few moments they had it shut again, and soon the plane’s power plant had restored a snug warmth to the cabin.

  “That’s much better,” Mr. Fairchild observed. “Now, do any of you men speak English?”

  “English, yes!” one of the fur-bundled figures cried, throwing his hood back and letting it fall on his shoulders. The man looked like an Eskimo, Pete thought — but since this was the far south and not the north, he was an Indian of Tierra del Fuego.

  “Must talk English today,” he said, grinning broadly. “All over world people must talk English to do business with men who travel. Speak English dandy.”

  “Fine,” Mr. Fairchild muttered, while the two other Indians stared fascinated at the complicated control board. “My name is Fairchild. I believe we are expected.”

  “Sure, kid,” said the Indian, bowing profusely. He did it all quite seriously. Evidently he thought the word “kid” signified someone of high esteem.

  “We’ll need fuel,” Mr. Fairchild continued, “for which we’ll pay you, and we’ll need some of those light arctic suits, you know, the insulated kind that weigh only a couple of pounds.”

  “Don’t understand.”

  “Clothing — for cold weather. We’re going south.”

  “South? Bad. Very cold.”

  “We know that; that is why we want insulated clothing.”

  “Fur coat?” the Indian demanded brightly.

  “No! Insulated, insulated!”

  “No understand. Only thing for warm here is fur coat. You crazy to go south.”

  Pete said, “Probably, they don’t have that insulated stuff down here, Mr. Fairchild. You’ll have to settle for furs.”

  “But they’re not so good! They weigh more, maybe five times as much, and they don’t keep you as warm.”

  “That or nothing,” Pete persisted.

  “Well, I suppose you’re right. We could have stopped for proper equipment back in the States, except that we were in a hurry to get you out of the country, Peter. Fur coats, then.” He turned to the Indian. “We’ll need five outfits, complete with boots, snowshoes, everything. All right?”

  “Sure, kid.”

  “And we’ll need food concentrates, vitamin and mineral capsules, H and K-bars —”

  “Don’t understand.”

  “Oh, Lord!” Mr. Fairchild moaned. “They don’t have that, either. We’ll need food. You know — eat, eat! For many months.”

  “Oh! food! Dried blubber, smoked whale steak, walrus liver, dried beefsteak from Pampas —”

  “Beefsteak?” Pete grinned wryly. “what’s that?”

  “No like beef? Well, walrus steak good instead —”

  “Never mind,” Mr. Fairchild groaned. “Bring it all, anything you think is good. How soon can we have all of it?”

  “What you want again, please?”

  “Fuel, enough to fill our tanks and then enough to fill them again. Food for many months. Everything you don’t need here we’ll take. And clothing — complete winter outfits for five.”

  “What about the crews of the spaceships that’ll be coming in?” Ganymede Gus demanded.

  “Don’t worry about them. They’ll have their spacesuits, and that’s probably the best outfit you can wear down here, anyway. Now,” Mr. Fairchild turned back to the Indian, “when can you have that?”

  “Soon. Very soon. Two week all right?”

  “Two weeks? That’s ridiculous!”

  Smiling, the Indian shrugged. “We are on, what you say, vacation. No work ten day, two week.”

  “Please! I’ll pay you well.”

  The Indian nodded. “Wage terrible. You pay, we work. Two hour fine?”

  “Fine,” said Mr. Fairchild wearily.

  Once more,, Gus threw the door open into the teeth of the storm. Muttering cheerfully among themselves, the three Indians pushed their way out into the blizzard. Gus pulled the door in against the wind, slammed it, said, “Beautiful place, Ushuaia! And the spacemen think they have it rough.”

  “Wait till you see Antarctica,” Mr. Fairchild predicted.

  Two hours later, the Indians returned, pulling a long sled across the snow. With it they stopped a few feet from the ship, and after Gus had opened the door, they slowly set about transferring the supplies within the cabin. It was a long process, and by the time they finished, Pete was shivering with the cold,

  Mr. Fairchild began checking over the items. “Five hoods,, five fur coats, knee length, five pairs of fur leggings, five pairs of boots and snowshoes — ah! the boots are interlined with fur — fur mittens, a sort of fur vest you wear under the coat, I guess, and — will you look at this food!”

  Wrapped in paper, frozen with the cold, pale gray strips of dried and smoked meat were heaped about in profusion. A large sack of coffee beans had been included, and thoughtfully, some hard biscuits and cans of frozen orange juice.

  “There sure is enough of it!” Gus exclaimed. “I guess it will last, provided we do. . . .”

  Sam Smith had been quiet throughout the length of their journey. Pete guessed that he did not relish the idea of going south — all the way south. . . . Now the huge-muscled man grumbled, “What about water? We’ll need water.”

  Gus began to laugh. Soon he was laughing so hard that he had to hold his hands to his sides. “Water!” he roared. “He says we’ll need water.”

  “What Gus means,” Mr. Fairchild explained patiently, “is that the Antarctic continent is covered with hundreds of feet of ice and snow. Perfectly clean, Sam; probably the cleanest water supply in the world. All we’ll have to do is melt it.”

  “I got another question,” Sam insisted. “Don’t tell me we’ll have to live in these fur things all the time? It’s so cold down there from what I hear, we’ll still freeze.”

  “Don’t you worry about it, Sam,- said Mr. Fairchild. “As I’ve indicated, a base is waiting for us. When the explorers visited Antarctica back in the fifties and sixties, they left underground camps. Well, not underground, really, but under ice. They hewed the camp sites out of the ice itself, reinforcing their below-level vaults with wooden beams. If we’re lucky, we might even find some food stored there.

  “Further, an advanced party of our associates has already brought in radar equipment, although I imagine that by now they’ve left. We know the latitude and longitude, however, and there’ll be markers.”

  “Well. . . .” Plainly, Sam was still doubtful.

  The Indians had finished their work, and now the leader prodded Mr. Fairchild’s shoulder. “You pay friends, they be happy and go.”

  “Of course.”

  “But no pay me, kid. Pay me later. I no like work here — no work to do. Wage low like mad. You take me with you, pay later. South cold and bad. I help make it good.”

  Mr. Fairchild stroked his clean-shaven chin thoughtfully. “Why not? Why not? Yes, I suppose he could be of some help. Very well, you’ll come with us.”

  The Indian grinned happily. “I ready right now. You call me Ushuaia Joe.”

  “All right, Joe. Give this money to your friends and tell them to make tracks,” Ganymede Gus said as Mr. Fairchild counted out the bills. “We’ll need plenty of room for our take-off.”

  Pocketing their money, the two other Indians departed, and as he closed the door, Pete could see them hustling their sled away through the snow.

  ‘Ushuaia Joe said, “Big wind and snow bad for takeoff.” He grunted. “Even worse for fl
y south.”

  “Leave that to us,” Mr. Fairchild told him. “We’ll climb to forty thousand feet and leave that storm far below us.”

  And then Ganymede Gus was at the controls and they all fastened their safety belts. Its jets belching flame and fury, the plane rocketed skyward. It gained altitude rapidly, and when Pete looked down through the window, Ushuaia and its airfield was lost under a swirling blanket of wind-driven snow.

  Moments later, they had climbed above the storm altogether. Below them, the snow looked like a solid wall of white, and above, the aurora clashed and darted in silent thunder, piercing the skies with the mysterious fire that gave Tierra del Fuego its name.

  Then they were heading south, ever south, with nothing to see but the impenetrable white barrier beneath them and an occasional flash from the aurora. There was nothing to say. They sat silently while time fled by, their ship roaring on above the fierce, cold winter at the bottom of the world.

  Hours later, Gus said, “I think we’ve arrived!” And soon after that Pete could feel the pressure mounting in his cars as the ship was brought down.

  “Thirty thousand feet!” Gus cried. Then — “Twenty!”

  Suddenly, the storm was all about them, blinding, spinning the plane this way and that, throwing them about helplessly in its cabin.

  “Ten thousand feet!” Gus called. I can’t see anything. Air speed, four hundred miles per hour.”

  “Slow us down!” cried Mr. Fairchild. “You can’t land at that speed.”

  “I’m trying.”

  “Bad,” said Ushuaia Joe.

  “Five thousand feet!”

  “What speed?”

  “Two hundred, but the wind’s got us. . .”

  “Cut your jets, man! Cut your jets!” Pete cried. “It’s the only chance. Cut your jets and turn us into the wind to slow us. Then switch them on again.”

  Gus obeyed, and the droning of the engine stopped. The pressurized cabin effectively sealed off all sounds of the storm, and they tumbled along through ghostly white silence.

  Gus was amazed. “The wind got us, and it’s carrying us up again. Sixty-five hundred feet —”