He turned at random toward the outer arch of the cave. Figures in space suits were passing in and out through the electro- static seal, and he noticed that the outgoing men were laden with cases, boxes, cans, and bundles. He stood at the very edge of the seal and stared out into the dim, nightlike morning of the black planet. Beside him a row of metal-clad figures clanked outward, their footsteps dropping to sudden silence the instant they trod into the airless outdoors. He watched them carry their burdens to the Red Peri, where an air lock swung open to admit them. They were loading the ship.
Keene stared disinterestedly, without comprehension. Then, abruptly, the meaning dawned on him. He stiffened, peered closely through narrowed eyes, and spun to accost a metal-sheathed figure that approached, Marco Grandi, for he could see the dark, aquiline features behind the visor.
"What's this?" Keene snapped. "You're cargoing the Peri. For what?"
Grandi made no answer, and Keene planted himself squarely in the other's way. "For what?" he blazed.
The metallic voice of the diaphragm clicked. "Stand aside. We're busy."
"I'll keep you busy!" he roared. "I'll—I’ll—"
"You'll what?" queried the cool tones of the Peri.
Keene whirled. The girl stood at his side, clad in an all-enveloping, clinging robe of bright green that echoed the infinitely more brilliant emerald of her eyes.
"They're stocking the Red Peri!" he shouted.
"I know it."
"Why? For what purpose?"
"For purposes of business."
"Business! You mean for purposes of piracy!"
"Piracy," she said coldly, "is my business."
"It was your business, you mean!" With a great effort he controlled himself and faced the mocking, green eyes. "Peri," he said more calmly, "I want to talk to you.”
"It isn't mutual."
"I want to talk to you," he repeated stubbornly, "alone." He glanced at the hostile eyes of Marco Grandi.
The Peri shrugged. "Go on out, Marco," she ordered, and then to Keene, "Well? What is it?"
"Listen," he said. "I want you to quit this business. I want you to be fair to yourself. You're capable of infinitely greater things than piracy."
"I know it. When I'm ready, I'll achieve those greater things."
"Oh, revenge!" he snapped. "Suppose you succeed. Do you think you'll be any happier?"
"And if I'm not," she countered, "what is it to you?"
He drew a deep breath. "It's a lot to me," he said soberly, "because you see, Peri, I happen to love you."
Her green eyes did not change. "What you call love," she said contemptuously, "isn't my conception. If you loved me you'd take me exactly as I am."
"I was brought up to believe in honesty, Peri"
"And I," she retorted, "was brought up to believe in honor. Red Perry Maclane's honor needs avenging, and there's none but his daughter to see to it."
Keene pounded his fist impatiently against the wall. "Peri," he said at last, "do you love me?"
She made no immediate reply. From somewhere in her heavy silken gown she produced a cigarette, lighted it, and blew a gray plume of smoke toward the seal. "No," she said.
"Why did you risk your life for me back there at the pit? What if you had touched the carbon feeders?"
She glanced out into the cold, black valley. "I may have thought I loved you then," she murmured, eyes still averted. "That was before I knew how little you could understand my feelings. We're just—not the same sort."
"I think we are," said Keene. "We've simply learned different moral codes, but—Peri—my code's the right one. Even you can see that."
"It's not for me. What my father wanted is the thing I want and the thing I'm going to do."
He groaned and abandoned that line of attack. "What do you expect to do with Solomon Nestor and me?"
She made a helpless little gesture. "What can I do? I have to leave you here." She turned her green eyes back to him. "Frank, if you'd promise to keep this place and my identity a secret, I think I'd be willing to release you."
"I can't promise that."
Her voice hardened. "Then here you stay."
"So you've given up the idea of killing us?"
"Oh," she said indifferently, "I'm always indulgent to those who claim to be in love with me."
Her attitude angered him. "You're pretty confident, aren't you? If you leave us here while you're off pirating, you know damn well we'll be doing our best to overcome you."
"And I know damn well that you'll never outwit me," she retorted.
Keene's hand suddenly encountered the Limbo's key in his pocket. "I won't, eh?" he muttered. "See here, Peri. Are you determined once and for all to stick to this scheme of yours?"
"Once and for all, I am."
"And it makes no difference that I tell you I love you?"
She turned abruptly and faced the grim outdoors, staring over the dead, cold, black Plutonian landscape. "It makes no difference, Frank."
"And nothing I can say will make a difference?"
She gestured impatiently, still staring far away. "Oh, what's the use of arguing? No, Frank."
He looked silently at her, seeing her, seeing her glorious hair flaming against the cold background of black mountains. He peered thoughtfully down the deserted corridor, and then at the Red Peri. The valley was lifeless; the men were within the vessel and the air lock was closed. Dim across the plain was the dull bulk of the Limbo, whose key was clutched in his hand.
"Well," he muttered sadly, "you've asked for it, Peri."
She did not turn. "For what, Frank?"
"For this!" he cried, and with a sudden lunge he sent her and himself staggering, unarmored, into the airless Plutonian plain, and into a temperature of ten degrees above absolute zero!
VI
Instantly he was in hell. The breath rushed out of his lungs in a faint expansion mist that dissipated at once, the blood pounded in his aching ear drums, his eyes seemed to bulge, and a thin stream of blood squirted darkly from his nose. His whole body felt terribly, painfully bloated as he passed from a pressure of twelve pounds per square inch to one of nearly zero. He fought his agony grimly; he had to hold consciousness as long as he could. But old Nestor had been right; he was living.
He had a momentary impression of the Peri's green gown billowing up from her glorious body like a balloon, to settle hack instantly as the bound air escaped. Then she whirled, eyes wide, mouth open and straining for air that simply was not there, hands clutching frantically at her gasping throat. She was in full command of her own agile mind, and she sprang convulsively for the archway and the seal. Grimly he thrust her back.
She was trying to scream. Her breast rose and fell in futile, soundless, panting gasps; moisture formed on her forehead and vanished instantly. Swift as a deer she darted again for the archway; and again he controlled his agony to smash her back.
For once in her life the Peri knew sheer panic. No longer had she the coordination of mind and muscle that might yet have encompassed escape. Fierce pain and utter fright had robbed her of it; and for a few seconds she could only thrust aimlessly against Keene's braced body, her hands fluttering frantically, her legs pushing convulsively, her lovely, pain-racked, wild, green eyes but inches from his own.
He had a double task now; he had to hold her back from the entrance and at the same time keep any part of her twisting body save her shod feet from contact with the searing cold of the rocky ground. He clutched her violently against him. Suddenly her struggles grew weaker, her hands went vainly to her tortured throat, her hands closed, and she collapsed.
They were almost at the air lock of the Red Peri. He saw it fly open, he glimpsed Marco Grandi's appalled face behind his visor, but he had no fraction of a second to lose. He swung the Peri across his shoulder and set off on a staggering run for the Limbo, more than nine hundred feet away across a vacuum and a cold only less than those of space itself. Grandi could never catch him; no one could run in a
space suit.
The Peri was not light; on Earth she might have weighed a hundred and fifteen pounds, but here it was more like a hundred and forty. His own weight was greater too, but he felt none of that; the excruciating torment that racked his body erased all lesser tortures.
He crashed unseeing through a parade of aluminum feeders, and blood spurted wildly from a tiny scratch on his ankle, and then—then he was fumbling at the Limbo's lock.
The door flew open from its inner pressure; he bundled himself and the Peri within, pulled it to, and collapsed as the hissing of the automatic valve sent a heavenly stream of air against his face. He had crossed a thousand feet of vacuum and still lived!
The air pressure reached normal. He fought to his knees, opened the inner door, and dragged the girl through it. She lay with her magnificent hair streaming on the steel floor; blood trickled from her nose—but she breathed.
Keene had work to do. He thrust wide the feed to the under-jets, and the ship roared, rising shakily as he peered through the floor port at Marco Grandi plodding desperately across the plain. He let the Limbo rise aimlessly; later he could set a course.
He dragged the limp Peri to a chair. About her slim waist he twisted the iron chain from the aft ventilator, and locked it with the padlock of Nestor's empty bolometer case. The other end he locked carefully to a hand hold on the wall, and only then, laboring and gasping, did he turn his attention to the medicine kit.
He poured a half tumbler of whiskey and forced a good portion of it between the Peri's lips. Still pain-tortured, it was yet agony to him to see the lines of anguish on her unconscious face, and to hear the choking of her breath. She coughed weakly from the liquor, and moved convulsively as he sprang back to the controls and set the Limbo nosing sunward. That was close enough for the present; later he could lay a course for Titan.
The Peri stirred. Her uncomprehending green eyes looked vaguely toward him, and then about the chamber. She spoke, "Frank! Frank! Where am I?"
"On the Limbo."
"On the—" She glanced down; her hand had encountered the chain about her waist. "Oh!" she murmured, and stared at it a full half minute. When she looked up again her eyes were quite clear and conscious. "You—you've got me, Frank, haven't you?"
"Right where I want you," he said grimly. Strangely, there was no satisfaction in it. He had wanted to see her humbled, but now it was pure pain.
"Why—aren't we dead, Frank?" she asked slowly. "We were—in the airless valley, weren't we? How is it that we still live?"
"I'll tell you, Peri. It was old Solomon's idea. Everybody's been believing a lot of superstitions about space, but he figured out the truth. It isn't the vacuum that's dangerous, and it isn't the cold; it's the lack of air. We couldn't freeze, because a vacuum is the best insulator there is; we aren't like that aluminum spade of yours, because our bodies actually produced heat faster than we radiate it away. In fact, it really felt warm to me—as far as I could be conscious of any feeling in that hell.
"And as for all the gruesome stories of lungs collapsing and all that, every high school physics student sees the experiment of the mouse under the bell jar. An air pump exhausts the jar to the highest vacuum it can attain, the mouse loses consciousness—just as you did, Peri—but when the air returns, it recovers.
"Its lungs don't collapse because there's no outer pressure to crush them, and its body doesn't burst because the tissues are strong enough to maintain that much internal pressure. And if a mouse can stand it, why not a human being? And I knew I could stand lack of air longer than you."
"It seems you could," she admitted ruefully. "But still, Frank, that terrible drop in pressure! I see that we didn't explode from it, though it felt as though we should; but I still don't see why."
"I tell you because our tissues are too tough. Look here, Peri. The pressure at sea level on Earth is 14.7 pounds per square inch. The pressure on top of Mount Everest is four pounds per square inch. That’s about six miles above sea level.
"A hundred and fifty years ago, way back in 1930, open airplanes flew over Mount Everest. The pilots didn't suffer much from lack of pressure; just as long as they had oxygen to breathe, they could live. Yet from sea level to 29,000 feet altitude is a drop of eleven pounds per square inch—almost exactly the drop from the pressure in your cave to the pressure outside.
"The human body can stand that much of a drop; all it really does is cause altitude sickness. As a matter of fact, a pearl diver going down in four of five fathoms of water meets a greater variation than that. Plenty of South Sea skin divers work in that depth, utterly unprotected. What might have happened to us is the bends, but your own air system thoughtfully prevented that danger."
"M-my own air system?"
"Yes, Peri. The bends are the result of decreasing pressure, which ordinarily causes the blood to give up its dissolved nitrogen as bubbles. It's the bubbles that cause the disease. But your air doesn't contain nitrogen; it's made of oxygen and neon, and neon doesn't dissolve! So—no dissolved gases, no bubbles, and no bends."
"But—it's fantastic! It's impossible!"
"We did it. What do you think of that?"
"Why"—her voice was meek—"I think you're very courageous, Frank. You're the only man ever to see the Red Peri frightened, and you've seen that—twice."
"Twice? When was the other time?"
"When—when I saw the carbon feeders on your foot."
"Peri!" he groaned. "This whole thing has hurt me enough, but now if you mean—"
"Of course I mean it," she said, looking steadily at him. "I love you, Frank."
"If I dared believe you, Peri—you know I love you, don't you?"
A faint trace of her old mockery glistened green in her eyes. "Oh, of course," she said. "I could tell it because you've been so kind to me."
Her sarcasm tortured him. "I had to do it. I have to bring you over to my side of the fence, Peri—the honest side."
"And you think you can?"
"I can try."
"Really?" she taunted. "Frank, don't you know my ship will be alongside in a matter of minutes? You can't outrun the Red Peri in this tub. You have me helpless now, but I won't be so for long."
"Indeed? Well, tub or not, the Limbo's solid. They don't dare blast the ship with you aboard, and if they try to tie up and cut their way in”—he turned narrowed eyes on her—"I'll ram the Peri! As I said, this ship is solid, far more solid than your triangular speedster. I'll smash it!"
The faint color that had returned to the Peri's face drained out of it. After a moment she said in very low tones, "What are you going to do with me, Frank?"
"Peri, I’m going to take you back to trial. After you've expiated your crimes—and with your beauty in an American court the sentence will be light—I'm going to marry you."
"Marry? Yes, I'd marry you, Frank, but don't you realize piracy is tried under maritime law? The penalty is—death!"
"Not for such a woman as you. Three years—no more."
"But I'm wanted in every country on Earth, Frank. They'll extradite me. What if I'm tried for murder in an English court?"
"Murder?" he echoed blankly. "I—I hadn't thought of that. My Lord, Peri! What can we do?"
"What we do is in your hands," she said dully. He saw tears in her green eyes.
"I—don't know. I swore a solemn oath to uphold the law, I—can't break an oath. Peri," he cried fiercely, "I have money. I'll fight through every court in the country to prevent your extradition. You'll return all you've taken. They'll be lenient; they have to be!"
"Perhaps," she said tonelessly, "Well, I don't care. You've won, Frank. I love you for it."
Impulsively he dropped the controls, strode over to the chained girl, and kissed her. He had to make it brief, for his own eyes were suddenly misty. At the controls again, he swore bitterly to himself, for he realized now that he could never risk bringing the Red Peri to trial. He thought somberly of his broken oath; that meant nothing if keeping it endan
gered the girl he loved.
He formed a plan. At Nivia on Titan there'd be an inspection of the ship. He'd hide the Peri—in a cool jet, perhaps—and tell his story without mention of her capture. He'd disclose the location of the pirate base and let the government rockets rescue old Solomon and destroy the colony. And then he—
Then? Well, he'd land the Limbo in Iraq. He had friends there who'd keep the Peri safe. He'd fly home and resign his damned official position, and so be free to marry pirate or murderess or any one he chose—and no one would ever know that the lovely Mrs. Keene had once been the dreaded Red Peri.
For the present he'd let the girl believe he was taking her back to punishment; at least that might frighten her into a respectable life. He smiled, and looked up to find the luminous green eyes fixed steadily and unhappily on his face.
Before he could speak the buzzer of the static field sounded the signal that warned of meteors. But meteors were rare indeed out here beyond the orbit of Jupiter. He stared back at the vast black disc of Pluto, and true enough, there was a little flare of light against the blackness that could mean only a rocket blast. Second by second the flame approached, and the Red Peri rushed toward him as if his own blast were silent.
The pirate ship paralleled his course. Suddenly the annunciator above him spoke; they had trained an inductive beam on it. "Cut your jets!" came the words in a cold metallic voice that was still recognizable as Marco Grandi's.
He had no means of reply, so he bored grimly on. The Red Peri flipped close beside him. "Cut your jets," came the order, "or we'll blast you!"
The Lost Master - The Collected Works Page 139
