The Collected Stories

by Earl

  Rough, hurried approximations they were, but Shelton knew he must race against time. Data went down rapidly under Myra’s flying fingers.

  CHAPTER XIII

  At Dawn!

  AS soon as Traft’s voice thundered down from the pilot room, announcing the return Earth call, Shelton hastily grabbed up the single record sheet and raced up.

  “Mark,” he demanded, rapidly adding a few words at the top of the paper, “you know the secret code of your Planetary Survey Service?”

  “Like I know my own name!” assured Traft readily, pushing aside his dry chemical developing kit, with which he had been making prints.

  “Code this!”

  Shelton turned to the radio. Director Beatty’s forceful face, half twisted out of shape with amazement, was in the screen. Only three hours had elapsed since Shelton’s call. It was probably a record for a return call across the stupendous nine-hundred-million-mile stretch between Earth and Saturn.

  “Director Beatty calling Dr. Rodney Shelton on Iapetus,” said the image’s lips. “Your message was received in full. I need hardly say it’s the most startling news I or the world ever received. An intelligent, unsuspected alien race in the Solar System—an underground city at the doorstep of the Empire—miraculous science! If it were anybody else but you reporting that, Shelton, I’d refuse to believe it!”

  A hand reached up to mop a sweating brow. “An armed Earth fleet is already being organized. They will arrive at Iapetus in four days, at multiple acceleration. We can’t tolerate any subversive program, defying our jurisdiction on the planets. Saturn and all its moons are an official part of our Empire. The aliens must leave, or be driven away!”

  The Director’s eyes stared out commendingly at Shelton. “Everything you’ve done is right, Shelton. But don’t go any further. You’ve exposed the aliens. When the first armed ships arrive, from Rhea, simply have them on guard. Officials will arrive with the fleet from Earth, to take up negotiations.” The eyes twinkled slightly. “I should command you to leave for Earth immediately. However, I won’t, to save you the embarrassment of a court martial later. I’m trusting you not to be reckless.”

  His voice became serious. “But this is a grave situation facing the Empire. How grave, I suppose none of us knows yet. Report to me the instant anything new comes up. Signing off.”

  The bearded face faded from the screen, but Shelton hurriedly called the Titan relay station for another line to Earth radio-central.

  “Director Beatty!” he called when the connection was completed. “After I sent my message to you, Lorg, the Alien Superior called me! He had listened in. He is probably listening now! So I’m sending the rest in secret code, Planetary Survey.”

  He went on in the code that Traft was rapidly transposing from the record sheet, calling out letter by letter swiftly and clearly. The decoded message ran:

  Important to leave nothing to chance. Have thousand men bio-conditioned for Iapetus, in case needed to storm underground city. Data follows.

  Shelton’s voice droned on for another half hour, with the laboring Traft barely able to keep ahead with his coding. Finally it was done, and Shelton heaved a sigh of relief.

  “There!” he said. “We’re another jump ahead of the aliens!”

  DOWN in the main cabin, a tantalizing odor met them. With the limited facilities of the ship, Myra Benning had managed to prepare an appetizing meal. Shelton was hungry, despite the cheerless situation. And for awhile they were able to keep up a dinner conversation free of the thoughts uppermost in their minds, relaxing somewhat from their tenseness.

  “We have four hours till dawn,” said Shelton, consulting the chart of Iapetus’ day-and-night periods. He yawned. “The ships from Rhea will be here two hours later. Let’s get some sleep till then. Weill have one man on guard, burn about.”

  This arranged, they went to their separate bunks. Shelton threw himself down, fully clothed. His head hummed with the breath-taking events that had burst like a bombshell into the course of things. Many things had been answered since the day on. Earth when the ship Tycho had landed with two alive out of a crew of ten. But many things remained to be answered. In what bizarre way would they be revealed?

  Shelton’s nerves quieted as he became drowsy. He felt satisfaction in how it had all turned out so far. In a few hours armed Earth ships would arrive, to hold the aliens at bay. Yet in the back of his mind, like a haunting refrain, thrummed Lorg’s strange words: “Watch at dawn!” What could it mean?

  He turned over. He had the watch at that period. He would watch at dawn. He slept. . . .

  A hand shook Shelton’s shoulders. He awoke from a troubled sleep, nerves throbbing.

  “Your watch, sir,” said the engineer whose vigil was over.

  Shelton arose and made his way through the dimmed cabin to the pilot’s cupola, where a sweeping vision all around the ship was possible. He stared around at the desolate, barren landscape, glinting somberly in starlight. Saturn had set in the sky of Iapetus. Soon the Sun would rise.

  Shelton pressed a hand to his forehead, wondering why his nerves should be jangling so much. Suddenly he started. Was it his nerves, or was it his whole body, the whole ship, and the very ground it stood on? Abruptly Shelton realized that was so. A subtle vibration trembled through the entire ship! He was aware now, too, that he had felt that steady tremor in his sleep, for at least an hour!

  He pressed his feet firmly to the floor. The strongest vibration came from below, from the ground. Was it some sort of Iapetus quake? It felt as though the whole satellite were quivering and trembling. The aliens—underground! Did it have any connection with them?

  The Sun rose. Small and feeble though its reflection was, it made an appreciable contrast to dark night. Shafts of light speared down, dispelling shadows, gleaming from crystalline peaks. It was strangely, hauntingly beautiful, this sunrise on another world, but Shelton’s mind kept humming those relentless, maddening phrases: “Watch at dawn! Watch at dawn!”

  Shelton glanced at the chronometer above the pilot’s keyboard. And a startled cry burst from his lips.

  The dawn had been ten minutes late!

  The electrically-operated clock could not be wrong. The chart of Iapetus’ rotation could not be wrong. Yet the sun had peeped above the horizon fully ten minutes behind time!

  SHELTON’S face was white, drained of blood. His hands were trembling fitfully. His heart skipped a beat, then began to pound furiously. For of all the things that man depends on with a blind faith, it is the clockwork of the heavens. The certainty of sunset and sunrise on split second schedule, for ages on end without fail, whether on Earth or any other world. “What is it, Rod?”

  Traft spoke from the door. The others were behind him, awakened by his involuntary cry, which had resounded through the still ship.

  “Ten minutes late!” Shelton whispered hoarsely. “The sun—”

  “What!” roared Traft, blinking dumfoundedly. “You must be wrong, Rod! That would mean the rotation of this whole satellite has changed!” Hugh Benning ran forward, grabbed up the space sextant and trained it, then compared its readings to the chart of Iapetus’ rotation and revolution. The others waited breathlessly. Finally he set the instrument down carefully, and turned a drawn face.

  “It’s true!” he breathed. “Impossible, but true. The rotation of Iapetus has been slowed and—”

  He let out a sharp cry and flung a hand up, pointing. Saturn had risen above the horizon, opposite the sun.

  “Saturn just set!” groaned Shelton, bewildered. “How can it rise again, and go the opposite way? Even the slowing of rotation couldn’t account for that!”

  “No,” Benning croaked. “It means that Iapetus’ rotation and revolution both have changed! Iapetus has left its orbit!”

  Traft lunged forward, picking up the sextant. He angled Saturn and the sun, put the figures down, and ran his finger down the trigonometric scale fastened above the pilot board.

  “We have a v
elocity of a hundred miles a second, relative to Saturn, with the sun as a fixed point,” he announced. “The orbital velocity is supposed to be only two miles a second. So Iapetus is streaking out of the orbit, at a tangent, in the general direction of—Pluto!”

  The appalling fact was like a living force.

  “We’re on a runaway satellite!” Shelton summed it up as calmly as he could. “But worlds don’t just suddenly slip out of their orbits, after ages of cutting the same groove, obeying the laws of gravitation. Iapetus has been forced out—by the aliens! This vibration going through the whole satellite—”

  “The Great Machine!” Hugh Benning cried wildly. “I knew it meant something unbelievable. That great machine, buried deep, motivates the satellite as though it were a space ship! Now you’ll believe me, Shelton, that they have a miraculous science—incredible science! Greater than ours!”

  Shelton jerked erect. “I wouldn’t say that,” he fiercely defended. “More developed in one direction, perhaps, but not necessarily superior. And they’re not going to get far with this, whatever crazy scheme it leads to. When the ships from Rhea arrive—”

  HE stopped, his jaw suddenly dropping.

  “If they arrive!” croaked Benning. “Two hours from now they’ll arrive at the point in Iapetus’ orbit where Iapetus used to be! They’ll look around, dazed, and recheck their course chart. They won’t find an error in that. They’ll look for Iapetus, but it will only be a pinpoint star by then, no different from the other stars.”

  “Stop it!” shouted Shelton, but he knew Benning was right, of course, Shelton knew Benning had spoken with inexorable scientific exactness. At their present velocity of 100 miles a second, they Would be three-quarters of a million miles from where the ships would arrive. At that distance, small Iapetus, much smaller than Earth’s moon and three times further away, would be just a bright, starlike object. The ship’s men would have no reason to single it out as the lost satellite, from all the other bright stars of open space.

  Shelton dived for the radio. “What’s the matter with me?” he muttered. “Can’t we tell them what has happened and where we are?”

  But as soon as he snapped the switch, a sinking feeling came over him. The speaker blared forth with a confused crackle, as though all the static in the universe had poured into its coils. Some powerful interference was jamming the ether lines.

  Shelton tried desperately, twisting the rheostat to full power.

  “Iapetus calling the Rhea ships! Please answer!”

  But no answer came. No answer could, it seemed, worm through that barrage of interference.

  He gave a glad cry suddenly, that as quickly changed to startled disappointment. The face of Lorg, Alien Superior, blinked into the opti-screen. His voice came through clearly as the discordant noises became a rustling background. His powerful wave, from so near, was able to work through.

  “You can’t signal those ships. Dr. Rodney Shelton!” the alien said with aggravating conviction. “Nor any ship, unless it should happen to pass within a few dozen miles. But no ships are going to blunder that close. Iapetus is lost to the Solar System. We are motivating it away, by means of our Great Machine, underground. Our scale shows an inch of displacement each second, or a rate of a hundred miles a second away from Saturn. I was not—what is that Earth word?—bluffing, was I, when I said your planned attack would come too late?”

  Shelton glared at him, unable to speak because of rage, frustration and choking hatred. He had never felt such a burning hate before. His fists clenched till his knuckles were white.

  “I see you cannot speak,” the alien mocked. “You are too stupefied by what has occurred. And you hate me! It is the hatred of inferior beings for one superior!”

  Shelton reached to snap the screen off.

  “Wait!” The Alien Superior went on. “Do not try to leave this moving satellite in your ships, which would be your next move. Disaster will follow if you try. There is a stricture of space, a warp, surrounding the globe. Your ships cannot pass it. It would take far more power than your engines produce. You are prisoners—or guests. You will not be harmed. I have need of you later, Dr. Shelton!”

  The repulsive alien visage glided out of the screen.

  CHAPTER XIV

  Trapped on the Runaway World

  THERE was silence within the ETBI-14 for a moment. Then Traft’s voice boomed out.

  “It’s a bluff!” he scoffed. “About not being able to leave.”

  “It may or it may not be,” Shelton said slowly. “But I think it has to be tried. It’s our only chance to get word to the System. And we don’t know what that devil has up his sleeve. The Ranger ship must be used. It’s lighter—more take-off power. Power is the thing needed. To judge from Lorg’s warning, more power than any ship has.”

  “There’s one way to power up a ship specially at take-off,” said Traft. “By resetting the timing of the rockets, and hand-pumping fuel at all the lines. I’d need”—he counted around—“every man here except two!”

  Shelton faced the company haggardly. “Every man except two—to defy death!” he said wearily. “The first attempt will probably be the only chance to try it. Yet it has to be tried, doesn’t it?”

  They all nodded. Shelton went on: “As for the two men—”

  Traft interrupted. “Benning’s one; he’s sick. You’re the other, Rod!” The big pilot spoke frankly, facing his friend. “If the ship cracks up, you’ll at least be left here. And you’re the one most qualified to outwit the aliens, in some other way.” He grinned wryly. “It’s a sort of devil-and-the-deep choice. It’s even-Steven either way, Rod!”

  Shelton saw the logic of that, though at first it seemed he was being asked to shirk taking his chances.

  “All right,” he said gruffly.

  It was no time for heroics, though Solomon himself would not have been able to say which was the most heroic choice.

  Traft, as pilot, took charge, ordering the men into vac-suits. After solemn farewells, they trudged to the Ranger ship.

  Shelton, Myra Benning and her brother, alone in the ETBI-14, watched from the pilot’s cupola. After half an hour, while the Ranger ship’s engine had been idling, and the men instructed, Traft’s big, cheery face appeared in the opti-screen, behind the visor of his vac-suit.

  “All set!” he said.

  Shelton had thought of a hundred things he wanted to say to his friend at this final, chilling moment which might be their last together. But something choked him.

  “Good luck, old man!” was all he could bring out, in a dry, hoarse voice.

  “Watch me ram through that damned warp of his!” promised the big pilot, waving nonchalantly as though departing on a pleasure cruise. But they could see the set grimness behind his wide grin.

  He stared at Shelton oddly for a moment, then.

  “You know where my camera is, Rod,” he said softly. “It’s yours—in case.”

  Shelton nodded blankly. It was the big pilot’s way of acknowledging the moment.

  His image flickered out.

  Shelton watched tensely. It was their last chance now to get word to the Rhea ships, so that the runaway satellite could be traced. If this failed, Lorg and his aliens would have escaped entirely, free to carry on their plans, whatever they were. The Ranger ship must get through that threatened, invisible barrier. Simply must.

  THE long, sleek ship out there trembled. Long tongues of searing flame shot from its underside. It catapulted up suddenly, into the sunshine. like a roaring monster. Rockets blasted away at the rear, to give it a forward momentum and thus tear away from Iapetus’ gravity at a tangent. Gathering speed swiftly, it launched itself into the sky.

  Shelton held his breath. Where would the mysterious “warp” manifest itself? What was it? What would it do?

  Dr. Shelton tried to quiet his growing horror. Traft was at the controls; big, powerful, indomitable Traft with the strength of a bull and the cunning skill of piloting in the spaceways.
He would win through!

  The sleek Ranger ship hurtled upward, driven by powerful blasts seldom used in take-offs. Against an unknown force, Traft was pitting every ounce of ramming power the ship had. Split seconds passed with the drawn-out beat of hours.

  A gasp of horror was wrung from the lips of the three watchers in the ETBI-14. The Ranger ship, drilling into the sky nose foremost, stopped almost abruptly, a thousand yards above. As though it had struck a wall of steel, the nose flattened and bent. Shiveringly, the rest of the long torpedo hull telescoped upon itself with a terrific grinding noise that even the thin air of Iapetus carried as a grating thunder.

  Shelton stared with fixed eyes that refused to turn away. The wreck dropped like a stone, a broken, twisted thing without semblance to the ship it had been a second before. It crashed on jagged rocks, and fell apart as though it were a rotten apple. Nausea twisted Shelton’s stomach.

  One soul-torn shriek escaped Myra Benning’s lips. “Those men!” she cried, looking down at the destroyed ship.

  “No use hoping for them,” muttered Shelton, with an infinite ache in his whole body.

  His very soul shook at thought of bodies ground to quivering, bloody shreds, their lives snuffed out like snapping strings.

  “Dead, every one of them,” he said tonelessly.

  “I think you’re wrong!” said Hugh Benning. “Something is moving near the wreck—by that red rock. Thrown clear.”

  Shelton let out a startled yelp. “It’s Traft!”

  It was. Unmistakably a giant figure in a vac-suit was crawling to its feet, a dozen yards from the shapeless mess of the wreckage. It rose staggeringly, helmet twisting as though to locate the ETBI-14, then reeled toward them.

  Shelton was in his own vac-suit, and was out in less time than he had ever taken before. He sped across the intervening distances, helped the stumbling pilot back.

  Inside again, Traft’s suit was stripped off and he was laid on a bunk. For a minute he lay with closed eyes, breathing heavily. Finally he opened his eyes—and grinned.