“Let’s see where we are,” said Dorothy, and switched off the lights.
Below them a luminous haze seemed to bathe the floor.
“Moonlight on the earth, being reflected back at us,” she remarked.
They sat in awed wonder, watching the spectacle. Click reached over, took her hand. Nor did she make any move to withdraw it. Hand in hand they watched.
At length there was a ribbon of light, a great horn that grew in volume.
“We’re swinging clear of the world,” she announced. “Now to check our lateral speed and start falling again. Leave the gravitational indicator over at about half gravitation. I’ll shove the lateral speed back and we’ll see how we come.”
Click moved the controls.
“I’d better see how Badger’s getting on,” he said, smiled at her in the light that was streaming into the shell from the sun’s disk as it swung around the edge of the world, and flung open the door.
He stepped into the outer shell, saw a little wad of rope lying on the floor; just the rope, nothing more.
“How did that get there?” he asked, and, of a sudden, knew the answer. Badger had slipped from his bonds. Where, then, was he?
Click turned, saw the huddled shape of menace, caught the outthrust rifle as it held upon him, steady as a rock, and gave one wild leap.
The bullet spattered squarely on the edge of the door, glanced, and hit the control box. Click slammed the metal door shut, snapped a bar into place.
“He’s in command outside. We’re cooped up in here like rats in a trap,” he said.
Dorothy Wagner nodded. “Lucky we’ve got the controls here, though. We can land almost where we want to, and we’ll land him f.o.b. Police Station at Centerberry.”
Click grinned at her.
“S’pose they’ll believe the story we tell by way of complaint?”
It was her turn to smile.
She advanced to the controls, glanced down at the earth.
“We seem to be coming in all right. Guess I’ll let it check a little bit.”
She pushed at the indicator.
“It doesn’t work. His bullet must have smashed the control wires. We’re out of control, falling into the earth, and we’ll pick up speed. I don’t think we’re over a hundred miles away, and our lateral speed has checked a lot.”
They exchanged glances.
“Can we make some sort of repairs? After all, we could come to a truce with Badger. He’ll realize that we’re all threatened by the same danger.”
She shook her head.
“The last discovery, the last experiment that gave the missing link in his invention was perfected by Dad while I was away. Then you know what happened. Dad never had a chance to explain it to me. Even if we could get out there, I couldn’t fix the controls, I’m afraid.”
Click scratched his head.
“And this box is entirely out of order?”
She had been experimenting with the keys.
“No-o-o. It isn’t quite wrecked. But it seems to have lost about nine-tenths of its control effectiveness.”
“Then,” remarked Click, “there’s nothing to do but to wait.”
Wait they did. Once more their hands touched, held.
“Dot,” said Click, his voice choking. “Now’s no time to say what I want to say, but if anything should happen, I want you to know—”
She raised her face to his, smiled at him with deep eyes, half parted lips.
“Yes, dear. I know, have known ever since I saw the look on your face when you came to rescue me.”
She gave him her lips. For a long minute they stood clasped together. Then they separated and looked destiny in the face.
The earth showed as a vast curved plain now, and the tumbled sea of water below seemed endless, sparkling in the rays of the morning sun.
Click opened the outer door a crack.
“Badger, throw down the gun. I want a truce. We’re in a bad situation.”
A taunting laugh was his only answer.
“Bluff!” snapped the man. “You’ve got another control in there.”
And the roaring of the gun punctuated his comment.
Of a sudden, as Click slammed the door and bolted it, he noticed a peculiar sound that had been gradually springing up, gathering force. It sounded like a weird whistle, long drawn, wailing.
He glanced at the girl.
“Atmosphere,” she said. “We’re getting into the air of the earth, and it’s whirling around at a speed of perhaps a thousand miles an hour, following the motion of the earth.”
Louder and louder shrilled the whistling air. The shell had been lagging behind the motion of the globe. Now as the air caught it, the shell was hurtled ahead, constantly increasing its velocity. And, as the air grew more dense, the atmospheric pressure became more pronounced.
The girl worked the lateral lever, easing the strain as much as she could. Closer and closer came the globe. And the sun ceased to sweep across the heavens, the globe ceased to whirl below them, spinning at terrific speed. Instead, the world became more fixed, and the sun resumed an orderly march across the heavens.
Minutes lengthened into anxious hours. Night enveloped them. They were within some twenty miles of the earth’s surface now, falling, but not rapidly.
Then the girl made a discovery.
“Look, the positive side of the gravitation is almost intact. Not that it does us any good except that it might facilitate landing. It’s the negative side that’s broken.”
“Don’t work that side, then,” warned Click. “There’d be nothing to check us.”
She nodded. “I wonder where we are?”'
“There’s the moon. Looks different down here, doesn’t it? Look, look, that’s land!”
She followed his finger. Far to the east was a dark shadow lying upon the golden reflection of the waters.
“Looks like it, all right. It’s land unless it’s a fog bank. Get the telescope.”
They set up the telescope, gazed through one of the windows.
“Yes, yes, I can see lights. It’s a coast town!”
Click pressed his face against the window.
“And we’re drifting toward it.”
For minutes they watched. The lights came closer and closer, finally swung below them.
“S’pose it’s an island?”
She shook her head. “No. Look to the south and east. See the airport? See that whole ocean of lights looming up. I’ll bet that’s Los Angeles, and this must be Santa Barbara down below. Look, you can see a drive along the ocean front there, and there are palm trees along it. Here, use these night glasses.”
Click took the glasses, saw the city, the buildings, the mountains, quiet and serene, saw moving lights where automobiles crept along.
“We’ll be down soon,” he said.
She nodded.
“And we’ve got too much downward speed. My experimenting with the downward scale of plus gravitation increased our falling speed.”
They remained silent for another spell. Click noticed that the side speed of the car was increasing.
“Yes,” she said when he pointed it out to her, “it’s functioning somewhat, and it’s getting acceleration. It’s a good thing to have side speed. It’ll soften the bump.”
“Mountains?” asked Click.
“Below us,” she said. “We’re still five or six miles up in the air.”
Again they drifted on and down.
The lights faded away. Great pools of darkness showed ahead.
“The desert,” she said.
“We don’t want to come down there.”
“We’ll have to, I’m afraid. The car’s settling rapidly. I’m afraid we’ve got a lot of down speed.”
And then Click’s mind snapped with a sudden recollection. “Parachutes!” he yelled. “I saw a couple of packed ’chutes. Can we get out?”
And she rippled into a laugh.
“How foolish of me not to have remember
ed. Yes, we packed a couple of emergencies. Here, I’ll get them out. You put some of the diamonds into your pockets. You can’t tell. Badger may manage to clean us out of what we leave.” Click nodded.
The bright moonlight, flooding through the window, showed them what they wanted. They strapped on the ’chutes. “Know how to work them?”
He nodded.
“Served on an observation balloon once. How do we get that window open?”
“I’ll show you. Give me a boost. That’s it. There it comes. Doesn’t that fresh earth air feel good. How much better a place this is than that wet, miserable, soggy planet of hopelessness!”
CHAPTER 10
The Crater
Click walked softly to the inner door, eased off the bolt, tied the knob with a bit of heavy rope. Then he opened it a crack and called to Badger.
“Badger, we’re going to jump. You can come in when we leave. I’ve tied the door with rope. It’ll take you a minute or two to cut it. You can bring it down, but the control’s broken. You can’t come down any slower than it’s going now. We’ll jump when we see a settlement, and we’ll send a search party out after you.”
His answer was a curse.
“Boloney!” went on the cursing man. “The control’s no more broken than I am. Try getting out! I’ll send this shell dashing after you, crush the life out of you. Got some ’chutes, eh?”
“Yes, we have, and don’t experiment, either!” snapped Click.
“Oh, Click,” called the girl. “Here’s a cluster of lights out here. It looks like a desert town.”
“Coming,” he said. “You jump and I’ll follow. Don’t forget to have your hand on your rip cord as you leave.”
She waved her hand.
“See you later, dear.”
And then she tilted backward and plunged into the night.
Click opened his knife, slithered it out into the room.
“Cut the rope, Badger. We’re off.”
And he jumped to the table, caught the upper edge of the vertical window, slipped outside, and turned for a last look inside the shell.
He saw the flash of a knife blade. The lights switched on, brilliantly illuminating the interior. He saw the rope part, the door swing open, Badger come running in with a rifle in one hand.
A quick look and he saw Click, clinging to the edge of the window.
Cursing, Badger sprang for the controls, slammed the slide over, despite Click’s warning shout. Straight up he pushed the slide, then, as there was no response, pushed it clear over the other way.
Click’s hands felt the shell jerked from them as though he had been trying to hold a rifle bullet. He was left suspended in the air.
For a moment he thought he was shooting straight up at terrific speed, for the light of the shell slipped into the moonlit night below, became but a speck.
Then he realized what had happened. The shell was dashing toward earth, and there was no control that would check it.
Air that was grippingly cold rushed past him, whipped his garments. He remembered to jerk the rip cord. There was the crackle of cloth. Something white streaked up into the moonlight above him. Then the harness tugged at him. The ’chute opened with a crackling report.
He swung back and forth in a sickening arc. He looked below to see what had happened to the shell.
As he looked, it struck, struck the desert with such force that it seemed a volcano must have opened. There was a white spot of incandescent heat, a burst of flame as oxygen ignited, then nothing but a single glowing coal that melted away finally into nothing.
Far to one side, higher up, he could see the girl’s parachute, swinging in the white moonlight like a gigantic mushroom.
Down he drifted.
The surface was farther away than he had anticipated. It took them an appreciable length of time to come down. And a desert wind whipped them far to the east.
At length Click saw the ground, a white blur, coming to meet him. He braced himself, struck, tugged at the ’chute to spill the wind, and then wrestled with the harness.
The ’chute swung over, crackled in the wind, was whisked away. The silence of the desert gripped him.
“Oh, Click,” he heard a voice, and his ears had never heard a more welcome sound*.
“Here, dearest,” he answered.
They found each other, melted in a single affectionate embrace. Then they began their long walk.
Somewhere to the north a coyote howled.
The moon bathed them with mellow benediction. The lights of the town twinkled in the frosty desert air.
Then there was the sweep of a searchlight. An automobile blared its horn. Another came down from the north. They could see the path of the lights, see them come to a stop, see shadowy figures moving about.
“Let’s go there. We can get a lift,” said Click.
She nodded, increased her stride.
Yet it was an hour before they reached the place, and by that time a circle of machines had gathered.
“By George, I believe—yes, it’s where the shell struck!” said Click.
They joined the throng, unnoticed.
A deep crater was in the sand. About it the sand itself had been melted by the heat of that which had happened. A twisted lump of discolored, seared metal was out on one side of the rim.
“Meteor,” explained one of the spectators. “They seen it strike an’ been digging for it. Just found it. Funny it ain’t bigger. Looked like she weighed ten ton when she come down. You folks goin’ to town? Guess the show’s all over here.”
Click nodded.
“Thanks. We’ll ride,” he said.
The desert man piloted a rattling flivver, covered with white dust, over the desert roads.
“Lookin’ for mines?” he asked.
Click shook his head.
“Looking for a preacher,” he remarked.
The girl started, squeezed his arm.
“Aren’t you rather abrupt?” she asked.
Click nodded. “Bet your life I am. We’ve got to see a preacher, and then we’ve got to see a gem expert and cash in a few thousand dollars’ worth of gems. After that? After that we’ve got to learn to keep quiet about where we’ve been and what happened. Let the Wagner shell remain one of the unsolved mysteries.”
“Yes,” she said after a while. “It’s better so. We’re in a new country. We’ll just begin life here and forget the other.”
The desert man looked back at them curiously.
“Elopers, eh? Well, you’re gettin’ a good start. See that bright star over there in the east? That’s Venus, the star of lovers. It’s the mornin’ star these days. Be daylight in coupla hours.”
The two turned, joined the gaze of the desert man in looking at the bright planet. But he would have been surprised could he have fathomed their thoughts at that moment.
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The Human Zero- The Science Fiction Stories Of Erle Stanley Gardner Page 43