Trapped in space

by Williamson, Jack, 1908-2006

  "We have to fly a training ship, because it's all there is," he told them. "It needs repairs, but we will take off as soon as the ship is ready."

  He nodded toward the passenger lanes.

  "Come on," he said. "I've got a moon car from the base. We can go right out there and stand by for the Topaz flight."

  Jeff started for the lanes, walking carefully. His weight here was only 30 pounds. Anyone who forgot, bounced off the -floor.

  "Don't lift your feet," Ty said.

  "Wait," Lupe called to him. "We've got baggage to pick up."

  ^'Better forget it," Ty told her. "Our old ship has scarcely enough power for X-space flight as it is. They're stripping every possible ounce off it now. We can't carry any extras."

  Buzz whined and pulled at her finger, blinking back toward the ferry.

  "He's worried about his cocoon," she said. "He's got to have it, to help him link up with all his brother-sisters. We can't go without it—"

  Jeff felt a shaking under his feet. Lupe's voice was drowned in a rumble of thunder that seemed to come from deep in the moon. The tall ferry swayed back and forth. Gongs clanged. Men shouted and ducked and ran. A truck without a driver crashed into the passenger lanes.

  All these sounds bellowed back again from the gloomy dome over their heads, until Jeff had to put his lingers in his ears. He looked for his friends and saw Buzz falling down between Lupe and Ty. The blue glow had faded from his eyes and his fur, leaving him black all over.

  "Moon quake!" A frightened man stumbled past them, staring high into that roaring dome. "Get out!"

  JefF looked up in time to see a machine break free from the swaying ferry. It dropped, moving slowly at first and then picking up speed, its heavy load of

  crates and trunks and metal drums raining down toward the passenger lanes from a hundred feet above.

  "Let's go!" Ty nodded at Jeff and caught Lupe's hand. "Scramble!"

  CHAPTER 4

  Take-off for Topaz

  Jeff stared up at the space cargo spilling off the broken machine. The motion of the tumbling crates and drums here on the moon was strange to him. Everything seemed to fall slowly at first, then to come down with a rush. It took him a moment to get the feel of the mass and force and motion. Then he knew exactly when each spinning crate would crash to the station floor. And he knew exactly where.

  "Jeff!" Ty Clark caught his arm. "Move!"

  Lupe- was bending over Buzz. The Httle space alien lay limp on the floor.

  "Come on, star man." Ty leaned down to scoop up Buzz. "I can carry him."

  He plunged toward the exit, Lupe close behind him. Jeff stood frozen for half a second. They were running right under the falling cargo!

  'Tiger!" he shouted. "Hold it!"

  "Huh?" Ty swung around. "We've no time—"

  "Crates." Jeff pointed ahead. "Safer here."

  Ty glanced up at the falling freight, a grin on his face, as if moon quakes were great fun.

  "You are on the passenger lane!" Jeff shouted at the frightened people beyond. "Get off."

  Ty ran up with Buzz in his arms and Lupe close behind.

  "Right here!" Jeff pointed. "Don't move—"

  Crash!

  Twenty feet from where they stood, a big crate of equipment hit the ground in a shower of flashing metal and glass. A string of heavy trunks exploded. A thick metal drum flattened on the floor beyond, spotting screaming people with bright yellow paint.

  And then the quake was over. Men ran to pick up three or four people who had been hurt. A passenger gathered up his wife and children and came panting to thank Jeff for warning them.

  The alarm stopped wailing. Work men came back to clean up the mess and to finish taking cargo off the

  ferry. Soon the high dome boomed again, with the sound of normal work.

  Buzz was humming weakly, and a pale gold gleam shone again from his eyes and the tips of his fur. Ty set him back on the floor.

  "Thanks, Jeff!" Ty grinned. "Just for a second, I thought you were crazy. Then I remembered watching you catch high fly balls."

  "We want to thank you, too," Lupe said. "I guess you saved our lives!"

  "Things fall slowly here." Jeff explained, trying not to show how the accident had shaken him. "They took six seconds to reach the floor from that machine. I had time enough to see where they would hit."

  They picked up Buzz's cocoon and walked down a parking tunnel to the moon car. It looked like a high-wheeled tank truck. They climbed through an air lock at the rear, and Ty drove them through a web of dim tunnels.

  The moon colonies had been built under the ground for protection against the long burning days and long bitter nights. Even the road out to the star ship base was sheltered most of the way in a deep, covered ditch, but at one point it ran across a long bridge, out beneath the strange dark sky.

  Sitting in front with Ty, Jeff looked around at the

  land, dead and gray under the blaze of the sun and the darkness of space. It was pitted with ugly holes. Rocks like broken teeth stood up everywhere. Jeff wondered if the unknown worlds of Topaz could be as cruel as the moon looked.

  Admiral Serov's assistant was waiting for them at the gate of the base. "You are to report to the take-off area right away/' he told them. "Your ship is loading fuel now. You'll take off soon."

  The take-off area was a cone-shaped cave cut out of the moon. The sloping walls were gray concrete. The catapult—the machine used to send the ship on its way-was a heavy black cannon, pointing through the roof. On it was the SP-y.

  "That's our ship?" Lupe stared at it.

  Jeff nodded. "That's it."

  "It looks so tiny."

  "The new ships are bigger," Jeff said. "But we don't have a new one. This old training ship is our one chance to rescue Ben and his crew."

  The ground crew was swarming over the star ship. Admiral Serov had been checking everything out himself, and he came stumping over to meet the star men, his empty sleeve tucked into his belt. His face wore a worried look, but he smiled at Lupe and hummed at

  Buzz, whose language he understood, and shook Jeff's hand when he tried to salute.

  ''You've been briefed for the mission/' he said to Ty. "You can go aboard now."

  "Yes, sir." Ty hesitated. "About the repairs I asked for-"

  "Our crew chief went over your trouble sheet," the admiral said. "We've checked everything out. I know this star ship is old, but she still flies."

  "But the flight teachers at school never let us push her past half the speed of light," Ty told him. "They said she hadn't been fully tested at high speeds. Doesn't that mean her X-space system hasn't been proved in actual flight?"

  "Our crew chief says her instruments all check out," the admiral said. "You'll just have to nurse her along. We don't have time for more tests now."

  "I see, sir." Ty nodded. "We will take her as she is."

  "Admiral Serov—" Jeff was nervous. "Can we carry any weapons?"

  The admiral frowned at him. "You know the policy. Our ships carry peace to the stars, not war."

  "But sir," Jeff said, "the creatures of Topaz attacked my brother. How can we defend ourselves?"

  "One small star ship can't carry weapons to conquer a system of planets," the admiral reminded him. "You

  could only malce the aliens hate you—and perhaps encourage them to attack our worlds."

  "I don't see much we can do for Topaz A without weapons," Jeff said. "Ben reported that those hoppers were firing on his X-space station. They probably destroyed it. Suppose they hit our ship or wreck our station? What can we do?"

  "You'll have to work that out," the admiral said. "Buzz and Lupe should be able to help you there."

  Buzz had turned bright blue again. He whistled at the admiral. The admiral whistled back, in his own language. The ground crew loaded his cocoon into the ship. Other workers scrambled on and off, finishing up the job of getting the star ship ready for take-off.

  Jeff walked with Lupe and B
uzz and Ty to the platform of an open elevator. The crew chief made a signal, and the platform swung them up toward the open air lock. The ground crew waved.

  A signal gong made a hollow boom against the concrete dome. Ty Clark followed Jeff and Lupe and Buzz into the ship.

  The closing lock clanged. There was a roar that sounded like a stiff wind. Great machines lifted the star ship into position. High over the moon's face, the ship left the field. With a hot gleam of sun on bright metal,

  it turned north and headed toward Sun Point—the X-space station that was Earth's gateway to the stars.

  Jeff sat beside Ty in the narrow cock pit, trying hard to be as happy as Ty looked. At last they were off to Topaz. With a little mass-reduction, they could reach Sun Point in two hours.

  Beyond Sun Point, ten hours of X-space flight would take them to Topaz. If they were lucky, they might be there before the moon ferry got back to Earth.

  Yet Jeff worried about their ship. If the star ships were the fastest things men had ever made, they were also just about the most dangerous to fly. He sat watching the instrument board for signs of trouble.

  "What do you think?" he asked Ty. "Will she make it?"

  "Sure she will!" Ty bent forward in the pilot's seat, and reached to push the mass-reduction lever farther fonvard.

  But Jeff was not so certain.

  "I'm worried about Ben," he said. "Even if we get safely to Topaz, I don't see how we wifl ever find him —not with maybe a whole swarm of unknown planets to search. I don't see how we can face those rock hoppers —whatever they are—without weapons."

  "No sweat." Ty grinned. "We will fight with what we've got."

  JeflF wished he could feel as certain as Ty. Their ship was small and old. And it carried the extra weight of the new station for Topaz that was loaded in the nose-cone. The load was heavy. What if it made the ship slow and clumsy, and caused trouble in the dangerous seconds of the cut out from X-space flight?

  Yet they had to carry the station. Without it, they couldn't come back from Topaz. Until it was set up and working, flashing its beacon and sweeping out a safe entrance zone, no larger ships could follow them to Topaz.

  He worried about Lupe and Buzz, down in the cabin. He liked Lupe. He thought Buzz was wonderful. But still he didn't see how they could take the place of weapons against the rock hoppers of Topaz.

  Thrum! . . . Thrum! . . . Thrum! . . .

  A hammering movement shook the cock pit. Jeff felt the little ship fall, as if the force that lifted them had failed. He snatched at the controls.

  "Easy, Jeff!"

  Quickly, Ty cut the thrust of the jets back to zero. The banging stopped. The ship drifted for a moment in free fall. Jeff's body had no weight, and he felt a dizzy sickness.

  ''Those were the boosters," Ty explained. "Remember, the admiral says to nurse them along."

  Jeff nodded weakly. He gripped the straps that held

  him in the seat and waited while Ty worked with the controls to measure mass and power back into the boosters. He felt a little better when the star ship came back to life.

  "Flight Topaz B to Sun Point." Ty was beaming a signal to the station north of the moon. "Tyler Clark in command. Have you any news of Flight Topaz A?"

  Sun Point was still very far ahead. Even at the speed of light, the deep voice of Captain Marc Bon took quite some time to come back to them.

  "No more news," the captain said. "We don*t expect any. We are certain that Stone's X-space station was destroyed. He can't send news and he can't come back."

  "We are going after him." Ty's cheerful voice turned sharp. "Sir, we request to be cleared through Sun Point, for X-space flight to Topaz."

  "Request approved," Bon answered. A moment later, Bon's deep voice gave them their directions. Ty tapped the keys of his flight machine and guided the star ship into the entrance zone. He pushed the mass-reduction lever to shift their ship into X-space drive.

  "Good luck, star men!" Bon was calling. "Come back-"

  His voice was cut oflF, because they were moving faster than the beam of light that carried it. The moon and the

  earth and the sun disappeared behind them, their rays of light unable to keep pace.

  Ty grinned at Jeff. They had studied the theory at school. The flight teachers had let them use the mass-reduction lever to push the old training ship to half the speed of hght. Buzz and Lupe, of course, had flown through X-space to Earth. But for Jeff and Ty, actual X-space flight was a new experience.

  "They said we couldn't see the stars." Ty looked at the cock pit windows. "Sure enough we can't. They say we can fly right through a star or even a planet."

  Ty leaned toward the glowing instrument board, looking willing to fly through anything. "They say nothing can hurt us, in X-space flight."

  "Bu t we can be smashed to pieces," Jeff reminded him, "when we cut out."

  "So we take our chances."

  Ty reached for the controls. The soft glow of the board shone on his fingers, but there was no light outside the cock pit windows. The ghost world was black.

  "This old neutrino scope—" His voice trailed off as he worked the knobs. "Our crew chief says it's okay. If he's wrong, we are blind."

  The neutrino scope was an eye for the star ship. As he watched Ty working over it, Jeff remembered his courses at school. Neutrinos, he'd learned, were queer tiny bits

  that had no mass. Most of them were slower than hght, but the X-space effect made some of them race faster than the fastest ship.

  The cores of stars shone with fast neutrinos. That was the secret of the scope. Though human eyes can't see neutrinos, the scope trapped them in silvered mirrors to show the stars in every direction from the probe.

  When it was working, Jeff thought. But it wasn't working now. All the mirrors were empty. Their star ship flew through dead darkness.

  "Could be, the crew chief is right." Ty shook his head. "Could be, he's wrong. All the lines are getting power. Could be, the scope just needs a little fixing—"

  His worried voice died again. Still the mirrors were dark.

  Jeff twisted in his seat to look at the little clock on the board. It was measuring distance now, as well as time, for they were flying fast. They had to fly fast to catch neutrinos in the scope. The seconds were hundreds of millions of miles. The minutes were light-years.

  Already, he knew, they were flashing past other stars. Their own sun, with its tiny planets moving around it, was already so far behind that it would be hard to pick out.

  He watched Ty and waited for the scope to show the stars again. He was breathing too hard. He tried not to

  look at the clock, but he couldn't keep his eyes oflF the racing second hand. He couldn't help wondering what would happen if they really hit a planet or a star.

  Ty's cheery whistle almost frightened him.

  "The chief was right/' Ty said. "All it needed was a little fixing."

  The mirrors flickered. A pale gray fog spread across them. Gray dots swam out of the fog in the forward mirror. They raced across the side mirrors, passing the ship. In the rear mirror, they faded back into the fog.

  That gray fog was all the far-ofiF stars, JeE knew. The racing dots were the cores of the nearer stars, shining with their fast neutrinos trapped in the mirrors.

  "So now we can see!" Jeff drew a deep breath. "I was afraid—"

  His voice trailed away.

  Ty frowned into the mirrors and shook his head. Finally he looked up at Jeff. His round eyes were serious.

  "Trouble, Jeff. Big trouble. I took too long to tune the scope. I don't know where we got to, while we were flying blind. I don't know which direction Topaz is. Or even where our own sun is. We are lost, Jeff. All these stars look strange to me."

  CHAPTER 5

  Ring Around a Star

  Jeff sat in the cock pit watching the stars that flew past their ship. All the windows were dark. No light could reach them. Only the fast neutrinos could paint the gray dots of stars in the mi
rrors. And the dots all looked alike.

  "Well?" Ty gripped his arm. "How do we find Topaz?" "Let's try Buzz/' Jeff said. "He's had X-space experience. He was put on the team because his master mind knows so much."

  "Try him," Ty said. "I can watch the scope." Jeff climbed down the ladder into the main cabin. It was a tall round room, filled with their life support

  equipment. Buzz's thick brown cocoon lay on a shock seat. Lupe stood by, whisthng at it.

  "We are lost/' Jeff told her. "We need Buzz to help us locate Topaz."

  She shook her head. "He's in his cocoon."

  "What's wrong with him?"

  "He's cut off," she said. "Something about X-space flight cuts his link to that other mind. He's all alone and he feels afraid. The same thing happened to him on our flight from his world to Earth." She tried to smile. "He will be all right when we get to Topaz."

  "We may never get there unless he can help us now," Jeff said. "Wifl you ask him to try?" It s no use.

  When Jeff insisted, she hummed over the cocoon. Nothing happened at first, but finally Buzz's head pushed slowly out. His dark eyes blinked blankly at Jeff.

  "It's no good," Lupe said. "He just can't reach his sister-brothers."

  "We've got to do something. Now." Jeff held on to the ladder with damp hands. "Lupe, you are a star man. You came to Earth with Buzz. Could—could you help pilot us to Topaz?"

  Slowly, she shook her head.

  "I learned how to travel in space from Buzz's sister-brothers," she said. "Their system is different from yours.

  Most of your instruments look strange to me. But you and Ty know this ship. With all those instruments and charts, can't the two of you locate Topaz?"

  "Flight instruments aren't much use in X-space," he told her. "I guess you know compasses don't work here, because we are cut off from everything. The clock does help us guess how far we've gone, but nothing tells which direction."

  "You do have star charts?"