Bob Anderson went rapidly up the ladder whilst Grant pulled off his jacket and shirt. Then hauling across the repair kit, he set himself to work. The men watched him in between moments of routine activity. The damage Brogan had done looked far worse than it really was. In twenty minutes Grant was finished with the repairs and turned to the men again.
“If you get precious little rest from now on it’s your own fault,” he said curtly. “You say Brogan went mad. I say it was more likely a fight. Anyhow, you are two men short and the deficiency has got to be made up by the rest of you. You take over the switchboard, Baxter. If you get in a jam call me in the control room.”
Grant mopped his saturated body and then returned to the control room. Bob Anderson was poring over the instruments.
“Fix it?” he questioned, looking up.
“Yes; for the time being. I was—” Grant stopped in the act of buttoning his shirt to stare through the port. “What the hell’s wrong here?” he demanded. “We’ve lost heaven knows how much speed! We’re not even through the asteroid belt yet!”
“I know,” Bob Anderson admitted quietly. “We must have lost it whilst that rumpus was going on down below.”
“But even then…” Grant studied the instruments. “Even then,” he continued, “there seems to be no increase in speed for the time in which I slept! Six hours short! Why the hell didn’t you keep up the speed I ordered?”
“Because I was afraid to.” Bob Anderson’s voice was concerned. “I think we’ve taken on too much, Grant, and it’s high time you realised it! You’ve seen how those men down there are behaving. If we keep on increasing and increasing they’ll finally mutiny in real earnest. Then we’ll—”
Grant swung to the intercom, and switched it on.
“Hey, Baxter. We’re nearly six hours behind schedule. Build up to twenty-seven atmospheres as fast as you can! The limit! Our lives depend on it.”
He stood waiting for a moment with a set face, then nodded as there came a sudden surge of acceleration.
“Okay, if you can keep ’em at it,” Bob said grimly. “If you ask me, I think they’re out to deliberately sabotage your efforts to reach Pluto.”
“They’ll seal their own dooms as well as ours if they do that. We reach Pluto or get blown to Kingdom Come…” Grant gave a frown. “What would be their object in trying to sabotage things, anyway?”
“I don’t know, unless it is in the interests of one of them to be sure that canthite never gets to Pluto. Those who started the revolt at the Plutonian outpost doubtless have agents scattered everywhere throughout the System. One of hem might be at work.”
“Fantastic!”
“Perhaps. But you can’t deny that those two deaths were more than peculiar.”
Grant turned away to the port, stood for a long while looking out. Space, black beyond imagination, crowded m from every vantage—space that was drenched in the implacable, frozen glitter of stars and suns. And, far away in the backdrop, green Neptune. Pluto was not even in sight yet.
Grant turned suddenly and looked at the velocimeter. It registered 80,000 miles per sec.… The pressure of speed began to increase even more. Despite every device for counteracting acceleration there was a labouring drag making itself felt in the hearts of both men, a straining at the lungs.
The control room door opened suddenly and Baxter came in, nervously fingering the sweat-rag about his throat.
“What do you want here?” Grant snapped, eyeing him.
“I’m acting as spokesman for the boys, skip. You sort of seem to be forgettin’ that your orders involve suffering for us down there. The faster we go the higher the heat rises and it’s gettin’ more than flesh and blood can stand. What are you trying to do?” Baxter demanded angrily. “Kill us?”
“Any more of that. Baxter, and I’ll clap you in irons!”
Baxter gave a crooked smile. “You won’t do that, skip. You need all of us working. But we’re men, same as you and Mr. Anderson ’ere. We’re entitled to know what this is all about. Have you reckoned that twenty-seven atmospheres is going to bring us close to the speed of light? Nothing human can stand that!”
“By what right do you dare question my orders?” Grant demanded in fury. “You’ll stand the speed the same as I will. The same as Mr. Anderson will. Spaceships have flown near the deadline speed before now, and their crews have survived! So shall we! Either we reach the ultimate of speed, or die,” Grant added, quietening. “We’re carrying canthite, Baxter, and if we don’t get it to Pluto within scheduled time it’s going to explode. Tell that to your mutinous friends below!”
Baxter’s expression changed. “Canthite! My God, none of us knew about that— That’s different, skip.” He drew himself up and saluted suddenly. “No disrespect intended, sir. Twenty-seven atmospheres it is.”
He went out hurriedly and Grant gave Bob Anderson a significant glance.
“So much for your theory of sabotage, Bob. They didn’t even know we have canthite aboard. Now they do know they’ll give the ship all she’s got.”
“Brogan or Dawson might have known there was canthite aboard,” Bob mused. “And I still think there’s a sabotaging effect somewhere.” He shrugged, dismissing the matter. “One hundred thousand miles per sec.,” he announced.
“Right! Prepare for—” Grant started speaking then suddenly staggered as a violent explosion rocked the ship from end to end. Bob sprang to his feet in alarm, looking grimly about him—then together he and Grant raced down to the rockethold to find acrid volumes of smoke belching upwards.
Coughing and spluttering, Grant stumbled through the smoke wreaths. Baxter and Blake were on their knees, trying to help up the fallen figures of their two remaining colleagues. Flame and choking exhaust were belching from a broken section of rocket exhaust chamber. Grant swung round and slammed on the safety valve, putting that particular tube out of commission.
“Baxter!” He dragged the man to his feet. “Baxter, what this time?”
“Dunno. A blow-out, I think. Escape feed choked, perhaps. These two boys got the full blast and the concussion killed them.” Baxter’s eyes were frightened. “Skip, I still think there’s a jinx!”
“Jinx be damned!” Grant looked at the fallen men. He felt a little sickened by the sight of the ghastly injuries they had sustained. He motioned for them to be moved into a corner.… The smoke began to thin somewhat.
“There are four of us left in this ship,” he said deliberately. “And we still have to get to Pluto on time. We can’t throw canthite overboard because it would follow in the wake of our gravity and blow up just the same. It means we’ve all got to work like demons. You two keep control over the electrical equipment. You, Bob, give me a hand to patch up this tube: it can be done in about an hour. So far we have lost no speed since we’re travelling at a constant velocity—but we are not increasing it as we’d planned. And we must—we must! Use all your available emergency tubes whilst I fix this one.”
“Right, skip!” Baxter responded, and bundled Bates to his post.
Grant went to work immediately on the tube, Bob handing him the tools he needed. The further Grant proceeded with the repair the more puzzled he became by certain peculiarities concerning it. Once he pulled out a piece of broken coiled spring and part of a mechanism.
“That never got inside this tube by accident,” he muttered, his eyes narrowed. “This, was not a natural blow-out—”
“It looks to me like part of a time-bomb,” Bob said, studying the ‘souvenir’. Then his scarred face became grim. “I tell you, Grant, this thing is deliberate! Either the person who tried to fix this trip is dead, else he is back on Earth—” or else it’s one of those two men,” he murmured, glancing towards them.
“Plenty of alternatives, anyway,” Grant growled. “Hand me that welder.”
He began to work with desperate speed, and at the end of two hours he was able to relax. The tube was patched up, and it held as firing resumed in the ignition chamber. Gr
ant nodded in satisfaction and turned to look at the gauges over the pressure controls.
“Twenty-seven atmospheres exactly,” Baxter said, mopping his face.
Grant studied the subsidiary velocimeter. “Even at this pressure we shan’t move fast enough to make up our leeway. Make it thirty. We’ve got to risk it.”
“Dammit, man, that’s asking for it!” Bob cried, clutching Grant’s arm. “Thirty is the limit of pressure. You’ll blow every tube to bits if—”
“Thirty!” Grant commanded inexorably. “Get on with it, Baxter.”
Baxter was grim faced and obviously doubtful, but he obeyed. Grant wheeled, motioned Bob, and they returned to the control room.
Through the port the hosts of heaven were apparently unchanged, so vast was their distance. Beyond that sense of inner pressure and constriction in the skull there was nothing to suggest that the machine was travelling now at 130,000 miles per sec.—and the speed still increasing.
“Keep this up and we’ll just make it,” Grant muttered, getting into his shirt again.
“Yes—and if we overshoot we’re sunk!” Bob Anderson gave a meaning look. “It’s as easy as anything can be to overshoot the deadline when you’re near the speed of light. God knows what would happen then!”
Grant did not appear to be listening. “If only I knew who planted that bomb…”
He shrugged and turned his attention to Pluto, now visible in the distant void; then he moved his gaze to the velocimeter needle. By imperceptible degrees it had crept up to the 145,000 mark, and was still advancing.
“Without mishaps we’ll just make it,” he said, regarding the chronometer; then he staggered a little at the appallmg load on his body. Bob Anderson, too, could hardly move in his chair.
150,000.… Eternity seemed to weigh between. 170,000…
Grant sat down suddenly, all the counteractive mechanisms failing to maintain a decisive balance against the excessive rate of progress. Bob gave a heavy-jawed smile and eased himself in his spring seat. Then his eyes began to shade with alarm as he watched the speed needle.
180,000! Pluto was visibly nearer.
“Grant!” Bob Anderson’s voice was more of a gasp. “Grant, we’ve got to ease up! Six miles a second faster than this and we’ve reached the limit—!”
“Mebbe you’re right.” Grant crawled out of his seat and switched on the intercom. “Cut all rearward tubes to zero and use counteractive blast…”
Grant dropped the ’phone from his leaden hand and stared through the port. A frown gathered on his forehead as the rearward rockets still flared and no counteractive blast came into being. It was utterly contrary to orders—
“Grant!” Bob Anderson shouted suddenly, alarm dragging him to his feet. “Your orders aren’t being obeyed! Look at the velocimeter!”
Grant gazed at it in fascination—184,000 miles per sec.
“Man alive, get moving!” Bob shouted, dragging him to his feet. “We’re going to overshoot the deadline! We’ve got to use the counterblast or we’ll—”
He floundered to the control room door and Grant followed him like a man intoxicated. Confused and dizzy, they blundered down the ladder and into the rockethold. Heat like an inferno clamped about them. Baxter and Bates lay sprawled helplessly on the metal floor, their eyes staring fixedly above.
“Agam?” Bob Anderson whispered.
“Dead all right, from natural causes,” Grant replied. “Heat and the terrific acceleration. Too much for their hearts— Cut out those switches!”
Bob swung to obey. Grant watched the slave-gauge, then he gave a startled cry. The needle was pressed right on the deadline maximum—186,000 miles per sec.
“We’re going to overshoot—!” he started to cry; then it seemed as though something struck him on the head with stunning violence. He went crashing down into abysmal nothing.
Nothing seemed different to Grant when he staggered to his feet again. He helped up the fallen Bob and revived him quickly. Together they floundered up the ladder and back into the control room.
“What happened?” Bob asked weakly; then he stared with dazed eyes through the rear port. “My God—look!”
Grant swung round, adjusting his mind to the incredible.
Always in space there is an eternal surrounding backdrop of stars and galaxies—but to rearward of the ship there was now nothing but dark. A darkness inconceivable, incapable of description. The total absence of all light. Blinder than the blind. It appeared to encompass the entire universe to the rearward of the vessel.
Grant stumbled to the front port and met the same scene again. Dark! Incredible, absolute dark… He met Bob’s wondering eyes.
“We’re—lost.” Grant sank down stupidly in his seat. “We did the very thing which you feared—exceeded the speed of light, the binding factor of the Universe. At the last moment we cut out the rearward tubes and thus achieved a constant acceleration, which apparently we still have—”
“But the stars!” Bob cried. “Where are they?”
“Gone—perhaps forever as far as we are concerned.” Grant’s voice was sombre. “Don’t you understand, man! Those stars behind us give no light because we must be moving faster than the light they send forth. Those that are in front send forth their light towards us, but faster than we can absorb it. There is therefore an invisible collision of light waves going on constantly in front of us, a warping space itself, making it impossible for us to see anything.”
There was silence’ for a moment. The solitary spotlight shone.
“I don’t get it,” Bob muttered finally. “According to the Fitzgerald Contraction a movig body at the speed of light becomes negative, a minus quantity. How is it we’re still traveling?”
“Travelling, yes—but to where?” Grant looked outside again. “We’re in no part of the Universe which we can understand—” He got up and beat his fist vexedly against the port frame. “The Fitzgerald Contraction makes it that our ship, ourselves, everything, had to become minus-zero. Yet we still move—or at least we assume we are doing. With nothing relative outside by which to judge it’s hard to be certain of anything.”
He looked at the velocimeter. It was not at the end of the scale but at the beginning. In fact it was even below the beginning-—two degrees under zero.
“Two thousand a second under zero,” Grant muttered. “If we were to read that in the normal forward way it would indicate 188,000 mites a second, two thousand faster than—Bob!” He swung round to him. “We’re going backwards!”
“What!”
“Look at that meter if you want proof! Fitzgerald’s Contraction is the ultimate of speed,” Grant went on tensely. “The faster one goes over that ultimate point the greater becomes the negative extension. Therefore it means, if one grasp the paradox for a moment, a backward progress dating from the precise instant when the velocity of light was achieved. We can’t go forward any longer because we’ve crossed the deadline.”
Bob Anderson stared out on to the total void, wrestling with the problem.
“Yes, I begin to see,” he said slowly. Then he looked up.
“Then how do we begin to get back?”
“We don’t,” Grant answered deliberately. “We can never get back! If everything inside this ship is retrogressing instead of progressing it means that the tubes would have to give out exhaust before they could start to fire! It means that to start them up we would have to stop them first from a point when they are in action, not dead still as they are now. The negative action of starting them up by first stopping them is impossible to conceive. Like trying to imagine a candle being lighted when it is dead out!”
“Like—like a movie film running backwards?”
“Like that, yes.”
“Then look, Grant, we must be getting younger!”
“We are.” Grant’s jaw tightened. “With every second we are flying further into this negative universe, undoing the work of the progress which ends at the deadline of light-velocity—an
d that reminds me! The canthite! I was trying to figure out why it had not exploded ere this. Obviously it cannot explode now. It is devolving, not evolving.”
He sank down in his seat again, brooding. Already he could feel queer mental changes, and with them strange physical alterations. Presently he looked at the switchboard.
It was becoming something no longer understandable…
Memory was slipping into the gulf.
“We’re breathing in carbon dioxide and breathing out oxygen,” Bob Anderson proclaimed at length, moving from the testing bench.
“We must be,” Grant acknowledged. He got up again and went restlessly to the port. Still the maddening, endless darkness met his eyes. With every second memories were slipping from his mind: there was a slow but definite return of suppleness to his limbs as years fled incomprehensibly.
Suddenly he turned, a remark dying on his lips. Bob Anderson was seated in his control chair, gripping its arms and staring into space. The years were also stripping from him, even as his—and Grant’s—uniform was becoming newer. Grant stood watching, stunned by the marvel, as implacable law slowly straightened out the scars of injury from Bob Anderson’s face and gave it the contours of a young man. Gradually his hair became blond.
One year—two years—three years….younger.
Grant passed a hand quickly over his eyes and looked again. The identity of Bob Anderson had slipped away and left—
“Slade Jackson!” Grant shouted suddenly. “You are Slade Jackson!”
He lunged forward suddenly, but with an adroit twist of youth, Bob Anderson twisted out of his seat and stood defensively by the wall.
“Wait a minute, Grant! Take it easy!” The voice, too, was quite different from that of Bob Anderson.
“Take it easy!” Grant shouted. “I’ve looked for you everywhere—always hoping and waiting! And we had to be flying beyond the deadline to get the truth!”
Almost without thinking he whipped his safety-knife from his belt and drove it straight for Anderson’s—Jackson’s—heart. Jackson only staggered a little, then he straightened. Grant withdrew the knife and looked stupidly at the spotless blade.
The Space Opera Megapack: 20 Modern and Classic Science Fiction Tales Page 49
