Trapped in space

by Williamson, Jack, 1908-2006

  He nodded. "But we can't make them fit any stars that we can see. The stars in the scope have no color. They're just gray dots. When you see them from a new direction, they're hard to recognize. Ty says they look like snow flakes in the wind."

  "But you can see where they are," she said. "Even in the scope. You can figure distance and direction, from one star to the next. With those figures, you can pick them out on the charts."

  "We tried," Jeff said. "But our charts cover just the main space lanes. We do have a lot of distance and position figures stored in our machine, but we are moving too fast to use them. The stars are gone before we get anything printed out."

  "Maybe—" She hesitated, looking down at the brown cocoon. "Do you mind if I just take a look?"

  "Please do," he said.

  *'0f course I don't have any charts. But Buzz's sister-brothers did help me learn a lot of distance and position figures."

  "You don't mean you've remembered whole books of figures?"

  "That multiple mind was my teacher," she said. "It taught me new ways to learn."

  "Okay," he said. "Go to it."

  Without a word, she followed him up the ladder. Ty gave her his seat in front of the scope.

  Lupe sat watching the neutrino scope. Her dark eyes were very wide. A tiny furrow creased her forehead.

  The mirrors showed three faint stars, gathered together. They dived out of nowhere, darted close to the ship, and vanished in the white mist behind. Three long minutes passed. Those three minutes, Jeff figured, had carried them another three light-years from where they ought to be.

  "I know that star!" Relief smoothed the tiny wrinkle from Lupe's forehead. "I've figured its location with respect to the stars around it and checked the results against .the tables I learned. That's the star you call Aldebaran."

  For a moment nobody said anything. Lupe was pointing to one gray point near the edge of the forward mir-

  ror. JefF leaned over to look at it, and suddenly caught his breath.

  "Ty, she's right!" he whispered. "See that faint star by it? Aldebaran has a dim companion. It does look different by neutrinos, but now I recognize it."

  He grinned gratefully at Lupe. Maybe the machine that picked her for the flight had no screws loose, after all.

  Lupe began pointing out other objects on the mirrors. Aldebaran was drifting slowly across the bright lines on the side mirrors now, but she pointed at a little cloud of gray dots still on the forward mirror.

  "See that group?" she said. "That's the swarm of stars you call the Hyades."

  "If you say so, Lupe." Ty nodded, grinning weakly. "They still look like drifting flakes of snow to me. I will have to take your word."

  Jeff had begun to feel at home in X-space. After all, he thought, this was really the same world as he had always known. It just looked different because now he saw it in a different way, with fast neutrinos and not with light. He had learned the charts, back at school, and now he began to recognize the stars faster than Lupe could name them.

  He got back his sense of mass and force and motion. The stars and their ship were masses to him now. The

  motions tlie forces caused were suddenly as clear to him as the motion of his own fingers when he closed his hand.

  The stars were no longer dull gray points flying out of that far gray mist. They were old friends.

  When Jeff began pointing out the stars, Lupe slipped out of the seat in front of the scope.

  "May I go back to Buzz?" she asked Ty. "He needs me.

  "Go ahead." Ty gave her a grateful smile. "Now I see why you were picked to come with us."

  He nodded for Jeff to take her place.

  "You are the pilot, Jeff," he said. "Next stop, Topaz!"

  Jeff slid happily into the seat. Topaz was still hidden in that cloud of far-off stars ahead, and the sun had faded long ago into the white glow behind. But he knew Aldebaran. He knew the Hyades. He knew where to look for the Pleiades beyond them. The way to Topaz had become plain.

  _ Jeff reached for the controls to point the ship toward Topaz. The little ship felt as steady as the earth.

  Ty stayed for a while to study the scope and the charts. Then he went down the ladder to the cabin. Jeff was alone in the cock pit until Lupe came back with food for him.

  "Buzz feels better now," she said. "And Ty's sleeping."

  She sat with him in the cock pit while he ate and

  sipped hot coffee. He asked about what Buzz's sister-brothers had taught her, and he tried to imagine those far worlds of Opal where she had grown up.

  She pointed out the Pleiades, when they crept into the forward mirror, and he told her how he had learned to know them as the Seven Sisters, when he was still a child. He showed her the direction of Topaz, which was still too far to see.

  He didn't want to think about what they would have to do when they came to Topaz. He didn't say anything about it, but he must have grown too quiet.

  "What's wrong, Jeff?" she said suddenly. "Aren't we safe now?"

  "I guess we are safe enough here." He tried to look cheerful. "With you to help us find the way."

  "But you've got something on your mind."

  "The real danger begins when we come to Topaz." He spoke slowly. "In the first place, we've no station there. No beacon to show us a safe place to cut out of X-space flight."

  "We do have the scope." She nodded at the mirrors.

  "But it shows us only the cores of stars. The neutrinos don't shine from anything else. The mirrors can't show planets or falling stars or rock hoppers—whatever they look like. When we cut out, we cut out blind."

  For a long time Lupe didn't move or speak. She sat

  watching a near bright star crawling out of the forward mirror. Then, with her hght fingers, she touched his hand.

  "We will make it, Jeff," she said softly.

  He was not convinced, but he kept thinking of her after she was gone. He remembered the cool touch of her fingers, and was glad they had talked. All the dangers of Topaz were still ahead, just as real as ever, but somehow she had made him feel better about them. . Ty came to take the controls, and Jeff went to the cabin for a rest. When he came back, the Pleiades were a dim gray spot on the rear mirror. He slipped into the pilot's seat and watched the gray dots creeping out of the pale neutrino glow on the forward mirror.

  "There!" He caught Ty's arm and pointed to a faint gray speck. "That's Topaz."

  Jeff turned the ship, and Topaz floated out of the mist of farther stars. It grew as he slowed the ship to meet it, until its bright gray glare washed everything else out of the forward mirror. But the cock pit windows remained dark, for they were still in X-space flight.

  "I've been thinking about where to cut out," Ty said. "Every star has a lot of junk around it. I mean planets, dust, gas. The junk gets thicker, closer to the star. To be quite sure we don't hit anything, we ought to cut out a long way this side of Topaz."

  Jeff shoolc his head. "But that's just half the picture."

  *'I know," Ty said. "If we cut out too soon, we will have too far to fly in common space to reach the planets. We will have to waste too much time in low-speed flight. Though we will be safe from dust at low speeds, we will run too much chance of hitting something bigger—junk too small for us to see in time to dodge it, but heavy enough to do some damage."

  "A tough choice," Jeff said.

  "We've got to balance the risks of stopping too soon against the risks of stopping too late." Ty frowned at that gray blaze in the forward mirror, making up his mind. He straightened suddenly. "We will cut out at a billion miles."

  Looking more at ease now that his mind was made up, he turned to Jeff.

  "Your brother came to Topaz from this same direction," he said. "He had the same set of facts to work from. Perhaps he made the same decision. With any luck, we ought to cut out within a reasonable distance of where he did."

  "It's nearly time to cut out," he said a moment later. "Better warn Lupe."

  Ty
took his place, and Jeff scrambled down the ladder into the cabin. He found Buzz out of his cocoon, sitting in Lupe's lap, and sucking a tube of Ty's shaving cream.

  Lupe smiled at Jeflf's puzzled expression. "Buzz eats oils. But he doesn't like the wax that somebody packed for him. He says the shaving cream tastes much better."

  "We are cutting out now/' Jeff told them. "Better get set."

  Buzz whined and held on to Lupe until they put him back in the brown cocoon. Lupe wanted to stand over him, but Jeff made her take her own shock seat. He buckled her in and climbed back to the cock pit.

  "Okay!" Ty grinned at Jeff. Firmly, with no fuss, he pulled back the mass-reduction lever. The stars in the scope flickered and went out, as the ship became too slow to catch their neutrinos. For a few seconds, all Jeff could see was the dim glow of the instrument board. Then the light of Topaz exploded through the cock pit windows. Losing speed, the ship seemed to spin and drop.

  "Look!" Excitement had turned Ty's voice to a deep whisper. "Look at Topaz!"

  The sudden glare of the new star ahead hurt Jeff's eyes. He shaded them, and blinked, and then he forgot everything else. Staring at the star, he forgot to be afraid.

  "Look at that ring!" Ty said. "A ring around the star!"

  Topaz was a giant blue star. It looked about a fifth the size of the sun to Jeff, but he knew that it was still ten times as far away as he was used to seeing the sun.

  He thought it must be twice its size. It had no planets that he could see.

  Instead, it had a ring—a wide doughnut of bright white light, blazing in this strange black sky that only Ben and his crew had ever seen before. Topaz hung in the dark hole in the doughnut.

  "It's like Saturn," Jeff whispered. "Like the rings of our Saturn."

  But Ty wasn't listening. He sat leaning over the controls. Watching them, watching the blue blaze of Topaz, he was fighting for the life of their star ship. He pulled the mass-reduction lever back, farther, farther, all the way.

  These were the moments of greatest danger. There was no beacon to guide them, no entrance zone swept out. They were flying into unknown space, too fast to avoid anything in the way,

  Jeff remembered the energy laws he had learned at Space School. The energy—and the damage—in hitting another object changed with the square of the speed. Whether it was a bat hitting a ball, a car hitting a truck, or the ship hitting a rock, the laws still held.

  Twice the speed meant four times the energy, four times the damage. A hundred times the speed meant ten thousand times the damage. One rock could smash their star ship.

  JeflF heard the sound of their ship*s jet pumps, building up a screen of magnetic fields that would push away small objects at any normal speed.

  Now the ship was down to half the speed of light, but that was still far too fast. Jeff watched a red needle on the board, crawling slowly back toward a point marked NORMAL MASS. When the needle reached that point, their speed would be normal, too. The magnetic screen would be useful then.

  Numbers flashed in Jeff's mind, like danger signs. Half the speed of light was 93 thousand miles a second. They could cut that ten thousand times, to nine miles a second. Ten thousand times ten thousand was a hundred million. By braking the ship to nine miles a second, they could cut the damage a hundred million times.

  "Ten seconds. . . ." Jeff started counting under his breath, measuring the time that red needle would take to reach NORMAL MASS. "Eight. . . ."

  "Jeff?" He jumped when Lupe spoke. "So that's Topaz!"

  She had left her shock seat and climbed to the cock pit. She was staring through the windows at the star with the-bright ring around it.

  "Better get down," he whispered. "We aren't safe yet."

  "Oh! I thought-"

  She dropped down the ladder.

  "Three. . . ." Jeff looked back at the crawhng needle.

  Iwo. . . .

  Slam!

  At first he thought the motors had fired wrong again. But the old motors could not have made the hot red flash that surprised him, or the sharp blast that left a ringing in his ears. Air was roaring, when he could hear again. He blinked and found a hole torn in the hull just over Ty's head.

  Their air was howling out into empty space.

  "We've been hit!" The thought struck him like a blow.

  But he knew what to do. He grabbed the orange-painted seahng gun off the wall beside his seat, aimed at the black hole, and fired. A fat black balloon of sealing foam popped out and flew into the hole.

  "Oh-oh!" His lips moved stiffly. "Hole's too big—"

  But the foam ball caught on the torn metal edges. Air pressure squeezed it wider. In a second the roaring stopped. The hole was sealed.

  Glad of air to breathe, Jeff looked again at the red needle. It had come to NORMAL MASS. The screen would shield them now.

  "You did it!" Leaning back in his seat, he turned to Ty. "We are safe—"

  His voice stuck when he saw Ty's face. The grin was frozen on it, under a red smear. Half of Ty's face was covered with blood.

  "I guess we've finished the X-space flight." Ty's voice was very soft. "But you are the pilot now, Jeff. I can't see.

  CHAPTER 6

  ''Ben Stone Calling../'

  Jeff set the star ship on auto pilot and reached under his seat for a medical aid kit

  "Let's get a bandage on you/' he said to Ty. "Then we can help you down to the cabin—"

  "That can wait," Ty broke in softly, "until we know what the score is."

  "We are back to normal mass," Jeff said. "We can trust the screen while we take care of you."

  He opened the medical kit.

  "What hit us?" Lupe's dark head came up through the ladder well. "Buzz is all right again," she said. "He's back in touch with his sister-brother at the base on the moon, and the admiral wants to know what's—"

  When she saw Ty's head, her eyes went blank.

  "Oh! I didn't know." Her hands turned white, gripping the ladder. "Does it hurt much, Ty?"

  "It hurts." Ty tried to grin.

  "Buzz can help you." Her anxious eyes came to Jeff. "Let's get him down to the cabin, where Buzz will have room to work."

  Jeff looked hard at her. "Is Buzz a doctor?"

  "He's part of that multiple being," she said. "Its mind can see through his eyes and move his hands. It knows everything that all of his sister-brothers have learned. That makes Buzz better than most doctors."

  Jeff shook his head. "We can't take a chance. Not with Ty's eyes."

  "It's the best chance we have," Ty broke in. "Help me down the ladder."

  Jeff guided his hands to the ladder. Down in the cabin, they helped him into a shock seat and buckled the straps. His face was gray under the dried blood.

  Buzz was out of the brown cocoon. His saucer eyes and his fine fur shone softly gold again. His quick little hands with their three fingers took the medical kit from Jeff.

  He bent over Ty. Suddenly he leaned closer, his golden eyes shining on the wound like two flash lights. His shrill whine startled Jeff.

  "Ty is badly hurt/' Lupe said. "Buzz says what hit him was a laser bolt."

  ''A signal, you mean?"

  Buzz whistled again, not quite so sharply.

  "Lasers are bundles of light waves, all alike and all in step," Lupe said. "This bolt had millions of times too much power for just a signal. It exploded that hole in the hull. A bit of flying metal hit Ty in the face, but it was the bolt of light that burned his eyes."

  "I saw a red flash." Jeff stared at Buzz. "And Ben's last message said that he was under laser attack. What I don't understand is how they could hit us so soon."

  "When we cut out—" Ty's whisper was faint and broken with pain. "Coming back through the light—the ship caused a light burst. Something like a—sound boom. Rock hoppers—must have—seen the burst."

  "So they were waiting for us," Jeff said. "Somewhere close. They hit us in the first minute. Long before our light burst had time to reach the ring or t
he star."

  "Something out there—doesn't like us." Ty drew a sharp breath, and Jeff heard his teeth set against the pain. "Guess they'll hit us again—when they see us move."

  "We will get to that," Jeff told him. "Just now we are taking care of you."

  "Get Buzz to call the admiral," Ty whispered hoarsely. "Tell him—tell him how the hoppers shot at us. They

  didn't warn. There was no excuse. Ask him what he thinks—about his peace poHcy—now!"

  "We are already reporting to the admiral," Lupe said. "He isn't giving any special orders. He says he's leaving it up to us. But his policy still stands. He wants us to find the hoppers and make peace with them."

  "Trouble is—" Ty's whisper died, then came weakly back. "Trouble is—they found us first." He lay still.

  Buzz bent over him, whistling at Lupe.

  "Buzz isn't sure what he can do," she said. "But it's going to hurt, when he explores the wound. Buzz says we ought to give him something to put him to sleep, but there's nothing in the aid kit."

  "I can stand some pain," Ty whispered.

  "Wait!" Jeff broke in. "Can't we use a deep sleep shot?"

  Buzz whistled at Lupe.

  "Buzz has heard about deep sleep," she said. "He wants to know more about it."

  "It was invented to help men live through accidents in space," Jeff said. "It slows life to the very point of death. In deep sleep, you need no food or warmth or even air. You can wake up from it, if you get care in time."

  Buzz whistled quickly, and Lupe said, "He wants to see the drug."

  JefF showed Buzz a sealed green package in the medical kit, then broke the seal to pull out a small needle and a timer.

  "The needle is marked in hours/' JefF told him. "You set the slide for the weight of the patient. The smallest shot gives about three hours of deep sleep. The whole needle gives a thousand hours. That's the limit. The timer tells when care has to be started."

  Buzz chirped.

  "He thinks it ought to work/' Lupe said. "If Ty's willing to try it."