by Ryder Stacy
Rock asked, “What do you want? Remaroo is dead. Did you come to get him?”
“THAT’S NOT WHY I’M HERE, ROCKSON. I’VE COME TO HELP YOU. THERE IS A WAY TO GET TO THE SPACE STATION, IF YOU, ROCKSON, HAVE OBEYED ME. IF YOU . . . OBEYED ME . . .”
“What do you mean?” Rockson waved his hands to quiet some of his men. Apparently, very few of them could see the ghost.
A slow rising of the ghost’s ectoplasmic-blue arm followed, then the faint voice from beyond said, “DO YOU HAVE MY GIFT WITH YOU?”
“What gift? Oh, the aluminum foil and the wire coat hangers? Yes, I do.”
“THEN,” the ghost smiled, “SAIL. USE THE GIFTS TO SAIL TO THE SPACE STATION. SAIL ON THE COSMIC WINDS. SAIL ON SUNLIGHT.”
The ghostly image faded away.
“What’s he mean?” Chen asked.
“I think I know! He said sail. Listen, Chen, there’s no friction out here in space, is there?”
“Right.”
“Then all of you, help me suit up—I’m going out on the saucer’s hull and make a sail . . . a sail to catch the solar wind. I’ll make it out of the aluminum foil and the wire coat hangers I’ve carried, for no apparent good reason, since Turquoise gave them to me. They’re in my backpack. Even that kind of sail might give enough of an extra boost to move the saucer out to the Frenchie space station.”
There were several spacesuits in the storage area, but they had been, of course, made for Glowers to wear. Rockson got inside one easily, for it was nearly twice as big as what he needed. Then Chen screwed the helmet globe in place and increased the air flow inside with the valve until it was up to the capacity needed for a human.
Rockson couldn’t figure out how to use the suit’s intercom, so he just gestured for the men to help him into the narrow airlock and to operate the hatchway into outer space. Valves turned; air hissed; a door slowly opened. Rock gasped as he saw the star fields outside. They looked so close. He walked gingerly out into space on his magnetic boots, along the saucer’s hull, and erected a makeshift sail from the wire coat hangers and the foil. Before he went back inside, he saw the foil stiffen in the solar light-wind.
An hour later, the Freefighter team sat around inside the saucer and watched the speed indicators creep up—a few more kilometers an hour at best, but they’d be able to get to the space station. “Three more hours and we’ll be there,” a jubilant Doomsday Warrior exclaimed, after careful calculation.
“But—what will we find there?” Cohen worried. “It looks—deserted.”
“It’s our only chance, thanks to my . . . ghost friend and, of course, Archer, who had the idea in the first place.”
As they got closer to the space station, things didn’t look at all promising: the closer Rock maneuvered the creeping saucer, the more dead the place seemed: lifeless, a ruin. The whole space Eiffel Tower seemed blackened and pitted. There was a trace of radioactivity on the metal surfaces, according to the readouts. No signs of life.
“Must have been some hell of a solar flare a while back,” Chen speculated. “Probably that’s what did this damage and cremated them all. Poor bastards.”
“What now, Rock?” one of the technicians asked.
“Well, we can at least go aboard, check it out. Maybe we can procure some of their oxygen tanks. They won’t need them anymore. Search for some fuel cells or rocket engines.”
“Look at all those parts of conventional-fueled rocket engines floating off to the side,” Detroit pointed out. “There’s some really big debris around here—and look! Further over there.”
Detroit moved the viewer lens so all could see. “It’s a goddamned space cruiser, with Nazi insignia on it. Pitted and blackened. Ancient twentieth-century style. Junk.”
“What a junkyard,” Rock admitted. “But junkyards can be useful. We can maybe weld together some sort of engine, something to transport us up to the asteroid. It’s possible, I think. Karrak has an atmosphere. We can parachute down, with the bomb on another parachute or two. We just have to get to Karrak. Somehow.”
Everyone looked rather skeptical.
“Look, I know it’s a long shot, but what the hell do we have to lose? Let’s go see.”
So they all put on the oversized spacesuits of the missing Glower crew and went to the air lock. One by one, they took the “big jump into nothingness.”
This time, Rockson got the suit-intercom functioning and told a hesitating Scheransky, “There’s no gravity up here. You can’t fall, so don’t worry. Use the little gas jet unit on your suit to maneuver. It’s only fifty yards over to that open hatch door on the Frenchie space station.”
Scheransky made it, then several others. No sweat.
Archer actually liked space-walking. “Me light as feather,” the big, simple giant stated as he jetted off for the short trip. They all floated over to the opened section of the hulking gridwork of the Eiffel-style space station. Rockson’s metal-grabbing boots clanked across the metal deck. There was no response when Rock hit his fist on a steel door, so he hit it with his boot. It opened.
“Come on, space rangers,” he laughed. “We’re on a roll.”
Their boots clanked and echoed as they walked down the cold, dark space corridor. Once they were all inside the rusted metal corridor, Rock smashed his fist on the “ferme” button behind the entrance door. The door slid closed with a clank, and air hissed to fill the interior. He said, “No one take your suits off yet. Not until we find out what’s up.”
Rockson walked onward until his flashbeam hit a horrible sight that made him gasp: wide-eyed, half-skeletal corpses, lying amid battle debris. “God, look at the burn holes in ’em,” he muttered. “Must have been quite a fight here.”
Detroit bent slowly in his ungainly spacesuit to examine a body. “This one died by violence for sure. Bullet holes.”
“Swell,” Rock sighed. “But the readings indicate the air is okay, at least. So take off your helmets, and save the air in our suits for the return trip to the saucer.”
Reluctantly, everyone took off their helmets and tried the atmosphere. It smelled dank but otherwise seemed okay.
“What happened here?” Chen asked.
Rockson shrugged, “Must’ve been a boarding of the space station—by someone who wanted trouble.”
“Who? Who would do this?” Cohen asked, nudging a female body with his boot. “She can’t be twenty years old.”
Rock looked around a bit. “There,” he said, “look at that guy. He’s got a Nazi uniform on. My guess is that it was an attack by a band of the space Nazis. I ran into them before. But the Frenchies must have put up quite a fight. Probably they all wiped each other out. It’s a shame.”
“Me liked those Frenchies,” Archer lamented, shedding a tear.
“Yeah,” Rock said. “Me too. Maybe we should say a prayer for them and give them a decent burial in space. Look around, see if you can find any oxygen tanks as you gather the bodies.”
“The reports of ze death of Le Frenchies, monsieur, are, how-you-say, greatly exaggerated!”
The Freefighters spun around to see a man standing behind them, holding a ray gun. He’d stepped from behind cover of a pillar of steel.
The man had penetrating blue eyes and a bearded face. “How you men arrivez ici? Eh? How you get here? Comprenez?”
“Yes, I understand,” Rockson replied. “We came in that saucer out there. We—come as friends. Amis. Comprenez? Please step into the light, let us see your face.”
The man with the gun stayed in the shadows. He said, “Tsk-tsk, you miss a grand bataille. You see, we have had les difficultés—tu comprends—? But it is all over now. Come, allez-ici, and enjoy.” The man came and put his arms over Rock’s shoulders and hugged and kissed him profusely.
Rock exclaimed, “Louis! It is you, mon ami.”
They walked along with the others trailing behind. Louis XIV tweeked his greasy moustache and said, “So, what eez it that breengs les Americans back into le orbit? No—arrestez. Let me suggest
: Is eet the doom asteroid? Is eet that she come to destroy us all? You come to have a last grand sourie, a party weeth us, before we all die. That, mon ami, c’est bon.”
“No,” Rock objected, “we come to stop the asteroid.”
“Tut-tut, zat eez not possible. The magnetic fields around eet would deflect any missile, c’est vrai, mon cher ami. You come here in false hope. But do not be sad. We die having a big party, heh? Lots of women and les champagnes. A nice way to leave the universe, you think not, Rockson? Celebrate avec les Astro-Frenchies!”
“Listen, Louis; you see what we were flying. It’s a great ship. It’s damaged, but that saucer has a special kind of mechanism to counter the magnetic force of Karrak—that’s the name of the doom asteroid. If you and your men can help us fix our saucer, we can deliver a bomb to Karrak and—”
Rockson continued to explain as they all entered a larger chamber in the space station. This huge, dimly lit room was filled with floating men and women. The women were in hoopskirts, the men in frock jackets and silk tights. The smell of roast pork and pâté de fois gras, plus haricot verts (stringbeans), was powerful and appealing.
“Oh, Rockson, I am glad to hear you wish to try to save le Earth. This is bon. I will make announcement of your plan. But first we will eat our feast, and then we go fix up your strange ship.” Louis seemed unimpressed. He was a fatalist.
“Maybe we should skip the banquet,” Rock mumbled, as a French woman floated by him and stuck a cherry in his mouth.
“No, no, mon ami. Never, never skeep the repast! C’est vrai, mon cher ami. A man does not work well on ze empty stomach. There will be much reconstruction work, I theenk, on your saucer. So we must eat well to do eet well.”
Rock agreed, reluctantly, to have some food. His stomach was growling like a bear. So was Archer.
The soirée began. The Frenchies cheered the Americans and the news that there was a chance to save Earth. The party got going on an up note. Louis introduced Rockson and his men to several bigwigs of the space station, namely Claude-the-Mad, Jacques, and Alexis. Then the Americans were all served slices of well-fatted roast pork and haricots verts. Rockson preferred his meat lean, but lit into the pork: Schecter had warned Rock that he could develop arteriosclerosis later in life if he did not eat right. Current medical opinion favored eating lots and lots of cholesterol to coat your blood vessel’s interiors, in order to prevent attack by the many viruses that cause constriction of the blood flow. Those viruses, and not cholesterol, science had determined, caused heart disease. Detroit consumed three plates to Rock’s one.
Archer needed no encouragement to down five or six portions of food and ask for more. He guzzled down hundred-year-old Beaujolais with abandon. None of Rockson’s men were slouchers when it came to eating and drinking, but they all abjured the advances of many pretty young women whose eyes were attracted by the “sexy” outsiders. Perhaps, Rock thought, his men had had enough sex for a long while with the demanding Millie tribeswomen.
Louis began explaining how it was that he had survived a catastrophe that Rock had actually witnessed several years earlier. But Rockson quickly got so tipsy on wine—and lack of sleep—that he couldn’t quite follow Louis’s explanations.
A gray-eyed French beauty just out of her teens sat down in Rock’s lap and showered him with kisses. She guided his hand between her legs. He felt flimsy Chantilly lace. She could sit because there was a bit of gravity, because the auditorium rotated ever so slowly. “You weesh to make love to Babette? Love, ah is good! Making it in no gravity, it is wonderful,” she said coquettishly. “Ah, to float avec moi, très très fascinant! Je promets.”
Rockson felt his manhood harden. It had been a long time getting to the space station. Babette was so soft and cuddly, compared to the hard-bodied Millie Queen . . .
“Maybe,” Rock admitted, “we can slip away, for a moment.”
She agreed eagerly.
Babette’s bedchamber was right next door, and the party got going so fast hardly anyone saw Rock float away with her.
Babette didn’t have a room, more like a closet of metal, Rock found. But she had a nice four-poster bed. They tore at each other’s clothes and then floated an inch or two off the sheets and made passionate, gravity-free love.
Fourteen
Rockson soon heard a pounding on the bulkhead of Babette’s bedroom, just as he began dozing off with her, after a half hour of blissful, recreational screwing.
“No rest for ze weary,” he muttered, and crawled from under the warm, red silk sheets. She embraced him with her long, soft arms, protesting loudly that he should not leave. Rock had a hard time leaving, for Babette tried to stop him from putting his pants back on. They hung half on, half off as he dived to the door and opened it. A pair of Frenchie space guards pried Babette loose from Rockson with gentle remonstrances and pushes against her firm, naked opulence. They promised her l’American super-homme would return shortly. Then they hurried Rockson back down the corridor as he zipped up his fly, making “Oh ho ho” remarks and punching the Doomsday Warrior’s shoulder in a comradely way. One guard spoke English: “So sorry to interrupt, but you weesh to be going to l’asteroid, c’est vrai?”
“C’est vrai,” Rock said glumly. They opened a bulkhead door for him. They entered not the ballroom where the soirée had been, but a smaller conference chamber. There was a little gravity here. Rock saw Louis sitting at a table with several other medal-bedecked officials. There was one empty chair—for Rockson, no doubt.
“What’s this about, Louis?” Rockson asked as he seated himself.
“This place, don’t you know, is the main trading chambre. We must talk.” The Frenchie got down to business quickly: the business of filling Rockson’s saucer with the equipment necessary to reach Karrak and save the earth. Rockson was amazed that the Frenchie leader was demanding payment for the rocket boosters they would provide him.
Rockson immediately proposed that perhaps Louis didn’t really understand the gravity of the situation. He suggested boldly that the Frenchies just give the Americans all they needed. “To negotiate is ridiculous,” Rock said. “This isn’t business, the earth is in danger. If the earth is destroyed, nothing of this space station will survive.”
“Yes, but zat eez just ze point,” Louis smirked. “We Frenchies have every confidence that you will save ze earth . . . and since everything weel be normal, it weel again be important that we, how you say, get a bon marché, a good trade, weeth the Americans.”
Rockson cursed under his breath but quickly made a very bad deal for his side, just so that the damned trip to Karrak could get under way once more.
The Frenchie chieftain was a hard bargainer. He agreed to exchange most of Rock’s food supply, the food Rock had intended for eating on Karrak, for a quick and expert repair job on the saucer. They were not going to try to repair the impossible to comprehend LaBarre drive but decided instead to refit the saucer with conventional rocket boosters.
Later, Rock showed the agreement he signed to Detroit. The black man exclaimed, “They sure got everything but our nightshirts in the deal, Rock. How could you sign this?”
“Listen, Detroit,” Rock said, “I had to agree to the deal. We’re late for our date with the Goddess of Fear, Karrak.”
Two hours and twenty minutes later, Rock was floating in his spacesuit outside the space station. He used his jets, floated up alongside Chen, and tapped his helmet. “The repairs look good,” he stated. “I’m glad it’s the Frenchies, not us, floating around and welding all that stuff on the saucer. It’s hard enough to hold my cookies not knowing which way is up. Work would be too much.”
“Archer sure looks happy, though,” Chen said. “He’s manhandling huge parts for them. Soon the saucer will have all the power it needs. It’s what Scot calls “a bloomin’ miracle.”
“And,” Rock said proudly, “we can do what we came up here to do.”
Rockson sure was glad that the Frenchies had traded all the Fre
efighters’ ungainly Glower spacesuits for some of the space station’s regular, old-model suits. They probably got some advanced features on the Glower equipment, but Rock preferred his man-sized outfit. The arms and legs of the Frenchies’ spacesuits were more flexible, also. He looked around at the stars; at the earth.
“To be up here, floating in space, watching a bunch of French exiles weld boosters onto our flying saucer . . .” Chen just shook his head. “I never dreamed this could happen.”
Rockson agreed. He and the other Freefighters, as unaccustomed as they were to space repair work, could help but little. Sometimes they ferried over a part or two for the Frenchies; that was about all. It was a nerve-wracking experience just to float out in limitless space. Except for Archer. He went to help move an engine up to the saucer with a gang of Frenchies, leaving Rock floating alone 50 yards from the craft, watching in amazement, and with some tension.
Rockson sighed in relief when Archer moved alongside him to tap his helmet and say, “Muuuch fun. Me like space. Work easy! Feel liiike fly.”
Rockson said, “Glad you’re enjoying it.”
The work took another hour.
Just as the Frenchies were finishing the installation of the last rocket engine attachment, making it look kind of like a weird giant ceiling fixture, Rock heard rapid French words on his helmet radio. “Sacré Bleu, Rock! Allez ici.” It was Louis XIV.
“Huh?” Rock asked. “Can you speak English, s’il vous plaît? What’s the matter? Qui fait?”
Rockson saw Louis’s distinctive tiger-striped spacesuit jetting toward him. The Frenchie leader arrived almost too fast to kill his speed, and he bumped into Rockson, who absorbed the hit, but had to fire a burst of his suit jets to steady himself. “Now, what’s the matter?”
“Rockson! There is another rocket craft taking off from Earth. You come look through le grand telescope, mon ami.”
Rockson jetted back to the big broken Eiffel Tower space station with Louis. Without taking off their spacesuits—this part of the half-wrecked station had no air pressure yet—they went directly to the observatory room. There Rock was directed to a long refractor telescope constructed of a design and ornamentation that would make Jules Verne cream in his pants. Rock pressed his eye as close to the eyepiece as possible and saw a view not of the stars but of an area of South America. The mountain range he perceived was partly veiled by clouds.
