Upon the entry of the two uniformed men, there was a hopeful stir. Grant stood for a moment and looked over the assembly, then he turned to the nearest Interview Room, entered it with Anderson beside him, and closed the door.
“That motley crowd out there should give us what we want.” Grant tugged off his uniform-cap and tossed it down. “But first of all, Bob, let’s get something straight.”
“Surely! What, for instance?”
Grant hesitated, then said slowly, “I’m making this signing-up business another inspection parade. You take down the particulars of each applicant and, if the need arises, I’ll give you the nudge.”
Bob Anderson gave a serious little smile. “So you’re still searching for the needle in the haystack?”
“Yes. And I’ll go on searching until the crack of doom if need be! Someday, Bob, I’ll find him!”
Three years ago, Slade Jackson murdered Grant’s wife because she would not hand over certain private papers which contained technical information—enough to enable an ambitious man to get into the Space Service without going through proper channels. The ultraviolet photos the police took of his wife’s eyes showed that Jackson was the last person she looked upon before her death…Slade Jackson, whom nobody had seen since!
Grant’s eyes smouldered as he remembered—then he made a weary gesture.
“It was Slade Jackson all right! Beyond a doubt he escaped into space, Bob, and one day, like the dirty skunk he is, he’ll turn up amongst the mob looking for a job.”
Bob said slowly, “But will you recognize him?”
“I’ll know him again when I see him, no matter how much he’s changed.… Huh! Once my best friend. A blond-haired, square-faced chap. Yes, he’ll turn up because he’s got to!”
“Why has he?” Bob asked quietly. “After all, if he stole those papers it is probable that he knows enough by now to be something high up, not just a down-at-heel rocketeer.”
Grant shook his head. “Not with the kind of nature he’s got. A crafty devil like him would be bound to bring about his own downfall. Perhaps he rose pretty high somewhere unknown to most of us, but I’ll wager he’s dropped to plain space roving by now.”
“Maybe.” Bob Anderson was looking thoughtful.
Then suddenly Grant turned to the intercom and switched on to the Clerk in Charge.
“Have a dozen men sent in,” he ordered. “Category, Rocketeer; Destination, Pluto; Room Six.”
“Right, sir.”
So the men began to enter, and whilst Bob Anderson sat and noted down the details, Grant searched each face in turn as the men came to him to receive their final orders… The men were of all kinds, most of them strong and beefy giants, accustomed to the rigours of the void and the sheer hell of acceleration. Above all, they were used to the killing temperature of a rockethold.
Actually, Grant only required six men, and from the dozen who had been sent in he selected his crew—but not one of them had the face he was looking for. At length, he dismissed the unwanted ones and appraised the remainder.
“Your salaries for the return journey to Pluto will be double the normal rate,” he stated. “That is because the trip entails a certain amount of danger and a great deal of endurance on your part. The machine you will man will be the ZM/10, which you can see on the spaceground outside. I shall be your captain and Mr. Anderson here will be first mate. Any questions you wish to ask?”
“Only one, sir.” One of the men touched his greasy cap. “When do we start?”
“Now I have my crew, I can make my own time. We depart at dawn tomorrow.” That’s when the space lanes would be reasonably clear. “You have the rest of today—and tonight—free. Anything else you wish to know?”
Apparently there was not, so Grant jerked his head and the six men departed slowly, talking amongst themselves. They had hardly gone before a messenger from administrative headquarters entered, carrying a medium-sized parcel wrapped in vivid yellow paper.
“The Commanding Officer’s compliments, sir.” The messenger saluted and put the parcel carefully on the desk. “He directed that I should deliver this to you—one consignment of canthite for which you are to take the full responsibility. He requests that you notify him as promised when you have a crew.”
“Tell him my crew is chosen,” Grant replied, eyeing the parcel. “We leave at dawn tomorrow.”
“The message will be conveyed, sir!” Again the salute and a quick departure.
Bob Anderson got up from his desk and came to look at the parcel.
“Canthite, eh? Can’t say I’m very familiar with the stuff.”
Grant glanced at him. “Pretty rare atomic by-product, but mighty useful as a paralysis-producer. We’d better put this in the ZM/10’s storage hold for safety. And let us pray to the gods that we make the journey to Pluto before the damned stuff explodes!”
Anderson nodded sombrely. From the C.O. himself he had heard of the mysterious product’s tendency to rapidly evolve to explosive point unless it were sealed down in the heavy lead matrix of a specially-designed projector—such as existed on the Plutonian Outpost—where its mysterious energy could be dissipated in the form of paralysing radiation. Canthite was dangerous enough to make nitro-glycerine seem like plain water by comparison…
At dawn the following day, Grant arrived at the space grounds to find Bob Anderson and the crew awaiting him. This was purely a matter of routine observed by all spaceship crews, it being a tradition that the commander must enter the vessel first.
Accordingly Grant did so, then when the crew had filed past him through the airlock and descended to their own quarters he hurried along the narrow corridor to the storage hold and unlocked the heavy door. Switching on the light he looked at the yellow parcel, then he switched the light off again and seemed to be studying the storage hold’s gloomy depths.
“Nothing wrong, is there?” Bob Anderson came and looked over Grant’s shoulder.
“No. Everything seems to be okay. I was just looking at that parcel in the dark—even if that does sound Irish—to see if it is going off a mutational glow. Apparently it isn’t so we should be okay, at least for a while. That insulated paper should provide plenty of protection. However…”
Grant fumbled in his uniform pocket and pulled out a small phial filled with primrose-coloured fluid. Switching on the light again he stood the bottle upright beside the parcel, secured it with string so it could not fall, then returned to the doorway again.
“What’s the idea?” Anderson was looking puzzled.
“Oh, just some stuff of my own. It might counteract the mutational effect a little. Anything that helps to slow down canthite’s evolution is worth having…”
Grant shut the door and turned the key, putting it in his pocket; then he gave Anderson a glance.
“You have your duplicate for this hold in case of emergency?”
“Sure thing!”
“Right! Our time’s about up. Let’s get on the job.”
They returned along the corridor and took up their positions in the control room—Bob Anderson to the switchboard and Grant to the outlook port with the navigation display below it. He gave directions that Anderson immediately relayed to the rockethold.
There was a pause, then came the familiar whine of the rocket motors starting up. Abruptly they blasted forth with all their force and the huge vessel began to rise swiftly, whistling through the morning mist and then rising with ever mounting velocity through the successive layers of atmosphere, and finally out into the star-blazoned emptiness of the void.
“How did the men react yesterday when you told them the kind of speed we’ll have to get up?” Anderson asked presently. “I was too far away to hear you speaking to them.”
“They took it fairly well.” Grant paused, his harsh mouth compressed. “Just the same, Bob, they’re a tough bunch! When I made an examination of their papers last evening I found that every one of them have criminal records. Of course, a criminal record doesn�
��t stop a man from being released from jail in order to become a rocketeer. It’s the worst job there is and tougher than any prison discipline. Right from the start I’ll have to show them that I’ll not tolerate any monkey business. That canthite has got to reach Pluto in time even if we burn out every rocket tube!”
Grant turned aside again, watching the receding globe of Earth for a moment or two, then he looked up towards the stars.
“Increase to four atmospheres,” he ordered briefly.
“Four atmospheres it is…” Bob Anderson relayed the signal to below.
Little by little the velocity of the ship began to build up, the increasing strain being balanced as much as possible by the floor gravitators and equalisers. Even so, Grant was not fool enough to think that the maximum speed would be any picnic. Excessive speeds meant madness—space madness. Delusions. He had been that way himself once.
“What’s our velocity?” he asked presently, his eyes still on the stars.
“Five hundred per sec.”
“Increase to six atmospheres.”
Routine instructions. Nothing more. A silence dropped for a while, except for the vibration from the rocketholds below, but this was felt more than heard. Outside, stars, sun and moon blazed in brazen majesty.
“About those new scientific inventions of yours,” Bob Anderson said presently, sitting back in his powerfully sprung chair. “Did you get any further with them?”
“’Fraid not. Been busy on too many jobs. Wouldn’t be any use anyhow, I’m afraid. The C.O. has got it firmly fixed in his head that I’m a good pilot for a dangerous assignment and therefore his interest in my inventions is precisely zero.”
“But that’s fantastic! You’ve got scientific ideas that could revolutionise the world. You know a lot of new tricks, too, about space travel and space radio. That secret fuel you were working on, for instance, to supplant atomic power— You’re a fool to let such things slide. There’s only one mind like yours to every generation. The world needs inventions like those!”
“Mebbe…”
Grant turned from the port to look at the gauge; then gave a start and glanced about him as there came a sudden violent spluttering from one of the rear tubes. It exploded sharply once or twice and then recovered itself.
“Queer!” he said, frowning. “Sounded as though the firing circuit was broken for a moment, else we got a trace of water vapour gumming up the works—” He snatched up the intercom ’phone. “What’s going on down there?”
Bob Anderson saw Grant’s expression change as he received the answer. “I’ll come right away,” he promised, and hitched the instrument back in position.
“Something serious?” Bob asked quickly.
“From the sound of it, yes. Faulty electrical contact and Dawson got the full blast. Put in the automatic and come with me.
Bob obeyed and then got to his feet. Together, he and Grant reversed the length of the ship and then descended into the hot rockethold to find the men gathered m a little group about a fallen body on the floor. They stood back as Grant elbowed his way through. Dawson lay full length, his body in the fixed, contracted attitude which bespoke death from elecrocution.
Grant’s lips tightened as he looked about him. Set, sweating faces loomed in a half circle.
“Well,” he asked. “What happened? You, Brogan—you’re second-in-charge down here.”
Brogan, stripped to the waist, looked uneasy. “I don’t rightly know what did happen, skip. Dawson was at the switchboard, doing his usual job of controlling the firing apparatus; then all of a sudden, when he closed one of the main switches, he shot back here as though he’d been kicked in the belly. The tube misfired for a moment whilst the emergency circuit took up.”
“So that was it!” Grant moved to the switchboard and eyed it closely, taking care to avoid touching anything. Finally he pulled an instrument from his jacket pocket and studied it carefully.
“This fourth main switch is alive,” he announced. “Naturally Dawson got the current when he closed it.” He debated, brows down. “Odd how it got like that. Only thing to do is keep that switch cut out and use the emergency circuit. Can’t waste time now on repairs. Brogan, your papers classed you as an electrician. Know enough to take over Dawson’s job?”
“I’ll do my best, skip.”
“Carry on then; I’ll see your pay’s adjusted when we get back home. Blake—Bostock, put Dawson’s body in the storage-hold, section four. He’ll have to be examined by the authorities when we reach Pluto. Switch on the refrigeration unit to keep the corpse from decomposing— Now, the rest of you, give it all you’ve got! On this journey every second counts.”
Grant turned back to the ladder and with Bob Anderson finally came into the control room again. Bob Anderson’s brown, scarred face was serious.
“You can call that an accident if you like, Grant, but— Well, a ship as good as this one, checked to the last detail, shouldn’t develop an electrical fault like that! Maybe somebody fixed it so Dawson would get killed?”
“Could be. The vessel was open on the spacegrounds during the night for anybody to enter. Normally the spaceport guards would stop anything like that, but somebody intent on villainy might get by.” Grant gave a sigh. “I knew I’d signed up a bunch of cut-throats and now I’m convinced of it. It’s a true saying that there’s many a grudge settled in the rockethold.”
He returned to the desk, made out a report on the mishap, and then pushed it on one side.
“Any one of those men might have had a reason for wanting to kill Dawson,” he mused. “So one of them fixed it—legitimately. Dawson’s record showed him to be as big a crook as any of them, but he was a damned good rocketman, just the same—”
He turned and looked at the hairline bisecting the stars. “We lost two degrees on that misfire. Check back on the angle of ascent.”
“Okay.”
“Charge to eight atmospheres.”
“Eight atmospheres it is.”
Again the pressure of mounting speed made itself felt. There was a slight but noticeable increase in the movement of the Moon as the ever-speeding vessel neared its field. Out ahead of the sky was a powdered endlessness of stars, nebulae, and far-flung galaxies.
“Needle in a haystack was right,” Grant mused aloud, presently.
“Huh?”
“Nothing. Just thmking of Slade Jackson. I always do when I survey the infinity of space. He could have taken a spaceship and gone anywhere way out there—to the asteroid mines, the colonies on the nearer worlds, the further worlds—anywhere!” Grant pulled from his jacket pocket the photograph the police had given him, studied it long and earnestly, then put it back in his pocket.
“I’ll find him yet, Bob— Twelve atmospheres!”
“Twelve atmospheres it is.” Anderson relayed the order and then looked questioning. “Twelve atmospheres so soon? You’re building up pressure in those tubes at the devil of a rate—”
“I know it, but we’ve leeway to make up. We lost a fraction of speed in that short circuit and in the aggregate it tots up. Better to have time in hand. Give the ship a chance.”
Bob shrugged and looked at the velocity-needle as it began creep along its graded scale. Gradually the machine attained the 1,500 miles per sec. mark.… And still the velocity increased.
For six hours Grant built up the speed of the machine steadily and began to draw away from the recognised space-lanes for the inner planets towards the vast open spaces existing between the orbits of little Mars and mighty Jupiter.
Satisfied with his final check up he joined Bob in a meal and then retired to take the first spell of rest. He had no idea how long he had slumbered before he was awakened by a violent shaking. Bob’s scarred, anxious face was bending over him.
“Wake up, Grant! More trouble below. Mutiny or something! Brogan’s been killed!”
“What!”
“You’d better come. It’s more than I can handle.”
Grant floun
dered out of his bunk, dressed hastily, then fled down the narrow corridor, buttoning his jacket as he went. Once he reached the rockethold behind Bob Anderson he found a state of sullen passivity reigning. Though three of the men should have been in their bunks off duty they were standing with the remaining one looking down at floor.
There lay Brogan, face up, a ghastly jagged wound across his forehead. Grant’s eyes darted to the switchboard. Part of it lay smashed from sledgehammer blows.
“What this time?” Grant’s voice was cold with fury.
“Brogan went mad, skip.”
“That’s right! Baxter had to sock him with a wrench before he went for us. He’s one damned powerful man and—”
“One at a time!” Grant interrupted; then, “You, Baxter—you hit him with a wrench?”
Baxter nodded sullenly and indicated the weapon on the floor.
“I had to!” he burst out defensively. “The boys here will tell you! Brogan had got into his bunk, then after a while he jumped out of it and went berserk. Started smashing the switchboard with a stoke-iron—and then he went for us. I had to poleaxe him to save the rest of us.”
The other men nodded grimly as Grant looked at them. Then Baxter added: “If you ask me, skip, this blasted ship’s haunted. First Dawson, now Brogan— There’s a jinx!”
“Stop drooling!” Grant ordered. “It’s more than likely that one of you men had reasons for wanting both Dawson and Brogan out of the way.” He turned and surveyed each man steadily. “I’m wise to your criminal records, remember. The only ghosts aboard this vessel are the ones your guilty souls think up! Get this, the rest of you: if there’s any more trouble down here I’ll have what’s left of you brought before the Enquiry Board on a charge of suspected murder the moment we reach Pluto. Understand?”
The four nodded slowly, glancing bitterly at each other.
“All right then: now get back to work. Put Brogan’s body with Dawson’s and carry on.”
Grant turned to the damaged switchboard and studied it.
“I think I can fix this myself. Bob, get back to the control room and stay on duty.”
The Space Opera Megapack: 20 Modern and Classic Science Fiction Tales Page 48
