For the first time, I turned to see what Commander Doyle had been doing during the crisis. To my astonishment he was still sitting quietly at his desk. What was more, there was a smile on his face—and a stop-watch in his hand. A dreadful suspicion began to creep, into my mind—a suspicion that became a certainty in the next few moments. The others were also staring at him, and there was a long, icy silence. Then Norman coughed, and very ostentatiously rubbed his elbow where he had bruised it against the wall. If he could have managed a limp under zero gravity, I'm sure he'd have done so as he went back to his desk. When he had got there, he relieved his feelings by grabbing the elastic band that held his writing pad in place, pulling it away, and letting it go with a 'Thwack!' The Commander only kept on grinning.
'Sorry if you've hurt yourself, Norman,' he remarked. 'I really must congratulate you on the speed with which you acted. It only took you five seconds to get to the wall, which was very good when one allows for the fact that everybody else was getting in the way.'
'Thank you, sir,' replied Norman, with quite unnecessary emphasis on the 'sir'. I could see he still didn't like the idea of having a practical joke played on him, for a change. 'But wasn't it rather a dangerous—er—trick to play?'
'Not at all. If you want the technical details, there's a three-inch pipe around that hole, with a stop-cock at the end of it. Tim is sitting out there in a space-suit, and if we hadn't sealed the leak inside ten seconds, he'd have closed the tap and cut off the flow.'
'How was the hole made?' someone asked.
'Just a small explosive charge—a very small one,' replied the Commander. His grin had vanished and he had become quite serious again.
'I didn't do this just for fun. One day you may run into a real leak, and this test may make all the difference—you'll know what to do. As you've seen, a puncture this size can make quite a draught and could empty a room in half a minute. But it's easy enough to deal with if you act quickly and don't panic.'
He turned to Karl Hasse, who, like the good student he was, always sat in the front row.
'Karl, I noticed you were the only one who never moved. May we know why?'
Karl answered without any hesitation in his dry precise voice.
'It was simple deduction. The chance of being hit by a large meteor at all is, as you had explained, inconceivably rare. The chance of being hit by one just when you'd finished talking about them was—well, so rare that it's nearly impossible. So I knew there was no danger, and that it must be some sort of test. That's why I just sat and waited to see what would happen.'
We all looked at Karl, feeling a little sheepish. I suppose he was right: he always was. It didn't help to make him any more popular.
One of the biggest excitements of life in a space-station is the arrival of the mail rocket from Earth. The great interplanetary liners can come and go, but they're nothing like so important as the tiny, bright yellow ships that keep the crews of the stations in touch with home. Radio messages are all very well, but they can't compare with letters and—above all—parcels from Earth.
The Station mail department was a cubby-hole near one of the air-locks, and a small crowd usually gathered here even before the rocket had coupled up. As soon as the mail bags came aboard, they would be ripped open and some high-speed sorting would take place. Then the crowd would disperse, everyone hugging his correspondence—or else saying, 'Oh, well, I wasn't expecting anything this time…'
The lucky man who got a parcel couldn't keep it to himself for long. Space mail is expensive, and a parcel usually meant one of those little luxuries you couldn't normally obtain on the Station.
I was very surprised to find that I had quite a pile of letters, most of them from perfect strangers, waiting for me after the first rocket arrived. The great majority were from boys of my own age who'd heard about me—or maybe had seen my TV appearances—and wanted to know all about life on the Station. If I'd answered every one, there'd have been no time for anything else at all. What was worse, I couldn't possibly afford to acknowledge them, even if I had the time. The postage would have taken all my spare cash.
I asked Tim what I'd better do about it. He looked at some of the letters and replied:
'Maybe I'm being cynical, but I think most of them are after space-mail stamps. If you feel you ought to acknowledge them, wait until you get back to Earth. It'll be much cheaper…'
And that was what I did, though I'm afraid a lot of people were very disappointed.
There was also a parcel from home, containing a good assortment of candy and a letter from Mom telling me to be quite sure and wrap up tight against the cold. I didn't say anything about the letter, but the rest of the parcel made me very popular for a couple of days.
There cannot be many people on Earth who have never seen the TV serial 'Dan Drummond, Space Detective'. Most of you, at some time or another, must have watched Dan tracking down interplanetary smugglers and assorted crooks, or have followed his never-ending battle with Black Jervis, most diabolical of space pirates.
When I came to the Station, one of my minor surprises was discovering how popular Dan Drummond was among the staff. If they were off duty—and often when they weren't—they never missed an instalment of his adventures. Of course they all pretended that they tuned in for the laughs, but that wasn't quite true. For one thing, 'Dan Drummond' isn't half as ridiculous as many of the other TV serials: in fact, on the technical side it's pretty well done and the producers obviously get expert advice, even if they don't always use it. There's more than a suspicion that someone aboard the Station helps with the script, but nobody has ever been able to prove this. Even Commander Doyle has come under suspicion, though it's most unlikely that anyone will ever accuse him outright…
We were all particularly interested in the current episode, as it concerned a space-station supposed to be orbiting Venus. Blackie's marauding cruiser, The Queen of Night, was running short of fuel, so the pirates were planning to raid the station and replenish their tanks. If they could make off with some loot and hostages at the same time, so much the better. When the last instalment of the serial had ended, the pirate cruiser, painted jet black, was creeping up on the unsuspecting station, and we were all wondering what was going to happen next.
Now of course there's never been such a thing as piracy in space, and as no one except a multi-million combine can afford to build ships and supply them with fuel it's difficult to see how Black Jervis could hope to make a living. This didn't spoil our enjoyment of the serial, but it sometimes caused fierce arguments about the prospects for spatial crime. Peter van Holberg, who spent a lot of his time reading lurid magazines and watching the serials, was sure that something could be done if one were really determined. He amused himself by inventing all sorts of ingenious crimes and asking us what was to stop one getting away with them. We rather felt that he had missed his true vocation.
Black Jarvis' latest exploit made Peter unusually thoughtful, and for a day or so he went around working out just how valuable the contents of the Station would be to an interplanetary desperado. It made an impressive figure, especially when one included the freight charges. If Peter's mind hadn't already been working along these lines, he would never have noticed the peculiar behaviour of the Cygnus.
Besides the spaceships on the regular, scheduled runs, about two or three times a month ships on special missions touched at the Station. Usually they were engaged on scientific research, occasionally something really exciting like an expedition to the outer planets. Whatever it was they were doing, everyone aboard the Station always knew all about it.
But no one knew much about the Cygnus, except that she was down in Lloyd's Register as a medium freighter, and was about due to be withdrawn from service since she had been in operation for almost five years without a major overhaul. It attracted little surprise when she came up to the Station and anchored (yes, that's the expression still used) about ten miles away. This distance was larger than usual, but that might onl
y mean that she had an ultra-cautious pilot. And there she stayed. All attempts to discover what she was doing failed completely. She had a crew of two—we knew that because they jetted over in their suits and reported on Control. They gave no clearance date and refused to state their business, which was unheard of but not illegal.
Naturally this started many theories circulating. One was that the ship had been chartered secretly by Prince Edward, who as everybody knew had been trying to get out into space for years. It seems the British Parliament wouldn't let him go, the heir to the throne being considered too valuable to risk on such dangerous amusements as space-flight. However, the Prince is such a determined young man that no one will be surprised if he turns up on Mars one day, having disguised himself and signed on with the crew. If he ever tries anything like this, he'll find plenty of people ready to help him.
But Peter, of course, had a much more sinister theory. The arrival of a mysterious and untalkative spaceship fitted in perfectly with his ideas on inter-planetary crime. If you wanted to rob a space-station, he argued, how else would you set about it?
We laughed at him, pointing out that the Cygnus had done her best to arouse suspicion rather than allay it. Besides, she was a small ship and couldn't carry a very large crew. The two men who'd come across to the Station were probably all she had aboard.
By this time, however, Peter was so wrapped up in his theories that he wouldn't listen to reason, and because it amused us we let him carry on, and even encouraged him. But, of course, we didn't take him seriously.
The two men from the Cygnus would come aboard the Station at least once a day to collect any mail from Earth and to read the papers and magazines in the rest room. That was natural enough, if they had nothing else to do, but Peter thought it highly suspicious. It proved, according to him, that they were reconnoitring the Station and getting to know their way around. 'To lead the way, I suppose,' said someone sarcastically, 'for a boarding-party with cutlasses.'
Then, unexpectedly, Peter turned up fresh evidence that made us take him a little more seriously. He discovered from the Signal Section that our mysterious guests were continually receiving messages from Earth, using their own radio on a waveband not allocated for official or commercial services. There was nothing illegal about that—they were operating in one of the 'free ether' bands—but once again it was distinctly unusual. And they were using code. That, of course, was very unusual, to say the least. Peter was naturally very excited at all this. 'It proves that there's something funny going on,' he said belligerently. 'No one engaged on honest business would behave like this. I won't say that they're going in for something as—well, old-fashioned—as piracy. But what about drug smuggling?'
'I should hardly think,' put in Tim Benton mildly, 'that the number of drug addicts in the Martian and Venusian colonies would make this very profitable.'
'I wasn't thinking of smuggling in that direction,' retorted Peter scornfully. 'Suppose someone's discovered a drug on one of the planets and is smuggling it back to Earth?'
'You got that idea from the last Dan Drummond adventure but two,' said somebody. 'You know, the one they had on last year—all about the Venus lowlands.'
'There's only one way of finding out,' continued Peter stubbornly. 'I'm going over to have a look. Who'll come with me?'
There were no volunteers. I'd have offered to go, but I knew he wouldn't accept me.
'What, all afraid?' Peter taunted.
'Just not interested,' replied Norman. 'I've got better ways of wasting my time.'
Then, to our surprise, Karl Hasse came forward.
'I'll go,' he said. Tm getting fed up with the whole affair, and it's the only way we can stop Peter harping on it.'
It Was against safety regulations for Peter to make a trip of this distance by himself, so unless Karl had volunteered he would have had to have dropped the idea.
'When are you going?' asked Tim.
'They come over for their mail every afternoon, and when they're both aboard the Station we'll wait for the next eclipse period and slip out.'
That was the fifty minutes when the Station was passing through Earth's shadow: it was very difficult to see small objects at any distance then, so they had little chance of detection. They would also have some difficulty in finding the Cygnus, since she would reflect very little starlight and would probably be invisible from more than a mile away. Tim Benton pointed this out.
'I'll borrow a Beeper from Stores,' replied Peter. 'Joe Evans will let me sign for one.'
A Beeper, I should explain, is a tiny radar set, not much bigger than a hand-torch, which is used to locate objects that have drifted away from the Station. It's got a range of a few miles on anything as large as a space-suit, and could pick up a ship a lot farther away. You wave it around in space and when its beam hits anything you hear a series of 'Beeps'. The closer you get to the reflecting object, the faster the beeps come, and with a little practice you can judge distances pretty accurately.
Tim Benton finally gave his grudging consent for this adventure, on condition that Peter kept in radio touch all the time and told him exactly what was happening. So I heard the whole thing over the loudspeaker in one of the workshops. It was easy to imagine that I was out there with Peter and Karl, in that star-studded darkness, with the great shadowy Earth below me, and the Station slowly receding behind.
They had taken a careful sight of the Cygnus while she was still visible by reflected sunlight, and had waited for five minutes after we'd gone into eclipse before launching themselves in the right direction. Their course was so accurate that they had no need to use the Beeper: the Cygnus came looming up at them at just about the calculated moment, and they slowed to a halt.
'All clear,' reported Peter, and I could sense the excitement in his voice. 'There's no sign of life.'
'Can you see through the ports?' asked Tim. There was silence for a while, apart from heavy breathing and an occasional metallic click from the space-suit's controls. Then we heard a 'bump' and an exclamation from Peter.
That was pretty careless,' came Karl's voice. 'If there's anyone else inside, they'll think they've run into an asteroid.'
'I couldn't help it,' protested Peter. 'My foot slipped on the jet control.' Then we heard some scrabbling noises as he made his way over the hull.
'I can't see into the cabin,' he reported. 'It's too dark. But there's certainly no one around. I'll go aboard. Is everything O.K.?'
'Yes: our two suspects are playing chess in the recreation room. Norman's looked at the board and says they'll be a long time yet.' Tim chuckled: I could see he was enjoying himself and taking the whole affair as a great joke. I was beginning to find it quite exciting.
'Beware of booby-traps,' Tim continued. Tm sure no experienced pirates would walk out of their ship and leave it unguarded. Maybe there's a robot waiting in the air-lock with a ray-gun!'
Even Peter thought this unlikely, and said so in no uncertain tones. We heard more subdued bumpings as he moved round the hull to the air-lock, and then there was a long pause while he examined the controls. They're standard on every ship, and there's no way of locking them from outside, so he did not expect much difficulty here.
'It's opening,' he announced tersely. 'I'm going aboard.'
There was another anxious interval. When Peter spoke again, he was much fainter owing to the shielding effect of the ship's hull, but we could still hear him when we turned the volume up.
The control room looks perfectly normal,' he reported, more than a trace of disappointment in his voice. 'We're going to have a look at the cargo.'
'It's a little late to mention this,' said Tim, 'but do you realize that you're committing piracy, or something very much like it? I suppose the lawyers would call it "unauthorized entry of a spaceship without the knowledge and consent of the owners". Anyone know what the penalty is?'
Nobody did, though there were several alarming suggestions. Then Peter called to us again.
This
is a nuisance. The hatch to the stores is locked. I'm afraid we'll have to give up—they'll have taken the keys with them.'
'Not necessarily,' we heard Karl reply. 'You know how often people leave a spare set in case they lose the one they're carrying. They always hide it in what they imagine is a safe place, but you can usually deduce where it is.'
Then go ahead, Sherlock. Is it still all clear at your end?'
'Yes: the game's nowhere near finished. They seem to have settled down for the afternoon.'
To everyone's extreme surprise, Karl found the keys in less than ten minutes. They had been tucked into a little recess under the instrument panel.
'Here we go!' shouted Peter gleefully.
'For goodness' sake don't interfere with anything,' cautioned Tim, now wishing he'd never allowed the exploit. 'Just have a look round and come straight home.'
There was no reply: Peter was too busy with the door. We heard the muffled 'clank' as he finally got it open and there were scrapings as he slid through the entrance. He was still wearing his space-suit, so that he could keep in touch with us over the radio. A moment later we heard him shriek: 'Karl! Look at this!'
'What's the fuss?' replied Karl, still as calm as ever. 'You nearly blew in my ear drums.'
We didn't help matters by shouting our own queries, and it was some time before Tim restored order.
The Space Trilogy Page 6
