Men Against the Stars - [Adventures in Science Fiction 01]

by Edited By Martin Grrenburg

  In spite of frequent slips of the knife point, he finally succeeded in ripping out astonishing quantities of fine wire without gaining any knowledge of what might be the trouble. There did not seem to be much to lose, so he did not hesitate to tinker. The lever remained impassive to all manipulation.

  “Well, it’s a cinch I’m not getting anywhere this way,” decided Keith at last.

  He sheathed his knife and stood up stiffly. There was nothing he could think of that would help here. He walked toward the nose of the ship, thinking hard.

  It was beginning to dawn on him that the situation might be more than annoying. It might become—dangerous. Fantastic, he thought, that such a trivial slip as closing a port wrong or pulling a lever a little too roughly could result seriously; and yet—here he was, the sardine on the outside of the can. And without a can opener!

  “To tell the truth,” Keith told himself, “I don’t quite see how the hell I’m going to get inside. And I certainly can’t stay out here for the rest of the trip!”

  He stood on the unbreakable glass of the control room portholes and gazed longingly down at the lighted room. There was the control desk, its levers and push buttons and dials shining leeringly up at him; there was his padded chair, equipped with straps for take-offs so that he would not break his silly neck with the shock of his rockets; there were the instruments he had laid aside— Only a few feet away, yet more surely out of his reach than the very stars.

  “NO!” shouted Keith, and the sound thundering in the confines of his helmet. “There must be some way out—I mean in. I just haven’t thought of it yet. This is too damn silly for words. Lock myself out! Hell! It just isn’t done!”

  He strode aft for want of something to do. He stood disconsolately on the rocket tubes, awaiting inspiration. Off to the starboard a star moved. He stared. Another ship!

  Keith scurried around the rocket tubes until the tapering tail was between him and the moving dot of light. It must be Larry Jensen’s Firefly. She was the only ship that could have overhauled him so quickly. Larry carried a crew of four, which meant there would be that many more idle eyes on the look-out for another ship. He hoped none of them had happened to have a glass on his ship. They might become curious and investigate, in which case he would become a laughingstock. The man who locked himself out!

  He skulked for some time on the far side of the ship, walking moodily up and down. Inspiration was courteous; it did not interrupt his thoughts. It looked as if he would have to sit out here until the rocket arrived at the asteroid belt. Even longer, because there would be nothing to stop it then.

  “Wow!” he remarked to himself. “That’s the answer. What do I use to stop when I land in a planet? The parachute. And where is the parachute carried? On the topside, with a sliding hatch in the hull to let it out. Tom, my boy, you’ve got it at last. There’s a manhole at the bottom of that ‘chute compartment, I know.”

  He bounded forward, peeped cautiously around the hull to make sure the Firefly was going about its business, then made straight for the parachute hatch.

  ~ * ~

  Keith had some difficulty in locating it at first, since the metal fitted very precisely and he did not wish to attract possible attention by the use of his flashlight. Toward the bow was a triangular flap that was raised by the lever that thrust the small pilot ‘chute out during a landing. Reaching aft from this was a hatch that slid back as the main parachute was pulled from its compartment.

  He drew his knife and tried to probe into the fine crack where the triangular flap came to a point over the sliding hatch. The blade was not thin enough to go in very far. He estimated that it reached no more than half an inch, and the metal was thicker than that.

  Nevertheless, he slid the point along the crack from one end to the other. There was apparently no catch that could be opened, no way of prying up the flap. He went all around the hatch, with no success. He could insert the knife hardly at all into the horizontal slits where the sliding part of the hatch fitted smoothly under the streamlined outer metal.

  Enraged at his helplessness, Keith seized his bar and swung viciously at the flap where the base of the triangle formed the end of the rectangular hatch. Except that he nearly lost his grip on the bar when it bounced off, nothing happened. He could detect only a small scratch.

  “Not even a dent,” he muttered disgustedly, and sat down on the hatch. “Well, wrong again. What now, I wonder?”

  He lifted the mirror and read the dial of his oxygen tank. He had about an hour before he had to change to his emergency tank. Meanwhile, he must think of something.

  “Let’s see,” he conferred with himself, “I’ve got to analyze this sytematically. Parachute hatch—out of the question. Port lock—smeared by meteor, nothing doing. Starboard lock— jammed. Well, maybe I could jar it open.”

  He took the bar and went over to the air lock. After trying once more in vain to pry it open, he knelt on the hull. He took a good hold with his left hand on the wires dangling from the cavity left by the control lever, and gripped the bar by one end. Then he put a good-sized grunt into the swing and brought the bar down on the jammed port.

  The port stayed just as it was, except that the rim showed one more dent in its battered surface.

  He swung again with everything he had, and this time he made an obvious mark. The port still did not budge.

  “It can’t be!” cried Keith. “If I can make a dent in that, it ought to move!”

  The air-lock door thought not. Keith subjected it to a really insane battering, crumpling the thin rim and leaving marks of his rage all over the port; but he was not reaching the source of the trouble. The jam-up was somewhere inside the air lock, in the mechanism rather than in the door, which served merely to protect the jam.

  The bar bent beneath the weight of his blows. Finally, brittle because it had had time to radiate away the greater part of the heat it had possessed when he had brought it out, it snapped in half.

  He staggered to his feet, staring at the half left in his hand with an expression of hurt surprise. The other piece had already disappeared into the dark of space.

  Keith never knew how long he stood there staring at the broken bar, the symbol, it seemed, of his helplessness—of man’s humble power compared to the cruel, cold strength of the void. At last he roused and hurled the piece of iron after the other. He knew vaguely that he ought to have kept it. He did not have so many assets just now that he could afford to fling them away.

  ~ * ~

  Keith took to walking around and around the ship. It was better, he found, than standing still. It was in the course of this pacing that he was brought to a halt by the thought of what lay opposite the parachute hatch. On the bottom of the ship were the compartments from which the three rectangle landing wheels were let down.

  He turned back and found the spot. It seemed strange to be looking down at them instead of lying on his back in the dirt of a spaceport field to examine them. Nevertheless, he located the places where they were concealed. The sight cooled his ardor.

  There was even less chance than at the ‘chute hatch.

  “And even if I did open one somehow,” he reflected, “there’s no chance of passing anything as big as a man through that little hole, assuming that I could get the wheel out of the way in the first place.”

  He turned away and began to walk up and down. The sky watched him with a million bright, tiny eyes, waiting—waiting.

  “Come on, Tom,” he muttered. “You can’t leave it at this. Aren’t there any other openings in this can?”

  He pivoted at the end of his beat and started back toward the rocket tubes. The rocket tubes!

  The rocket tubes! He tried to run in his excitement, and took off again, floating his leisurely way sternward and swearing colorfully. Gradually he settled to the hull. By the time he had, and had reached the rockets, the first enthusiasm had worn off.

  “Humph!” he grunted. “They’re not any too big. Especially the six in
the circle. Guess I’d better try the main one in the center. I can swing myself down by this little steering rocket —there!”

  He maneuvered himself past the gaping muzzles that had blasted him away from Mars and thrust his helmet into the main tube.

  He switched on his flashlight; for, though the distant Sun and Mars lit the ship from aft, little light slipped past his bulky, spacesuited figure. He noticed that the lining of the tube was already somewhat pitted and worn from the explosions of the liquid hydrogen and oxygen.

  “And Horner swore he did a firstclass relining job! Wait till I get hold of him!”

  Then it occurred to him that he might never again “get hold of” anyone. He crawled ahead. The light finally showed the end of the tube. There were three holes there, a smaller one between two others. The two larger holes supplied the liquid hydrogen and oxygen, while the small one injected kulite, the synthetic catalyst that lowered the temperature of the furious explosives without lessening the drive.

  Keith looked curiously at the slightly projecting jets of the firing mechanism, which studded the circumference of the tube about a foot from the end. He had never been inside a rocket tube before—that was usually left to those repair men who made a specialty of it—but he could see how they spat out sparks to ignite the fuel sprayed through the grills over the fuel vents.

  He sought for some way of getting through. Perhaps something was removable. Perhaps the base of the tube could be unscrewed. No, the rocket tube was a solid unit, backed up by several feet of tough alloy to withstand the shock of the explosions and connected to the rest of the ship only through the three feeding vents. He unscrewed the grills over the vents after much grunting and poking with his sheath knife—they had been partially fused tight. His light showed some obstruction a short distance up each pipe, which he guessed to be the lower valves, beyond which the next charge of fuel awaited his touch on the controls.

  Keith crawled out.

  “No use butting my head against that solid mass of metal,” he growled, “but this is going too far! I suppose everyone has to die sometime—but this is so damn foolish!”

  He swung up to the hull and grouchily wandered forward. Presently he found himself at the port air lock. He kicked experimentally at the fused groove where the meteor had passed. No, that was not the answer.

  A light moved out in the void. Another ship! Farther away this time, but Keith was glad to see it. He had had about enough. He was beginning to get scared. Let them laugh if they wanted to; he would be satisfied if someone would pull him out of this hole. He no longer cared what followed.

  He ran forward and waved wildly in case anyone should have sighted his ship and continued to watch it. The other rocket drew abreast of him, some ten or fifteen miles distant.

  Keith ceased his violent exertions. He switched on his flashlight and tried to signal. With pounding heart he watched for some sign that he was “hitting” the stranger. In space, with no air to diffuse the light, no beam was visible. His only chance was to make the torch point directly at the observer so as to throw a disk of light on him, and at ten miles—

  “Come on, you can do it!” he encouraged himself as he strove to steady his shaking hands. “Steady, now. Steady, there 1 No, that’s not it—”

  The ship passed onward.

  ~ * ~

  Keith sat upon the hull. After a time he read the dial of his oxygen tank again. Half an hour left. In the small mirror he caught a glimpse of his face. There was light enough, since he happened to be facing the distant, shrunken Sun, to see that he was likely to have a bad burn. He did not feel the warmth that Sol was capable of causing even at this range, because his suit was insulated against the passage of heat either way. The rays of the Sun had, however, played through the face plate to his skin, which was showing the effects.

  He sat there with his back to the Sun for the best part of the half-hour. Occasionally he would turn to scan the void for another moving point of light that might mean a rocket ship. No more came. Space was limitless, and the others who had left for the asteroids at the same time, or immediately after he had, could have chosen hundreds of courses that would not bring them even within sight of him. Keith wondered if he were the same man who two hours ago had hoped so fervently that no one would discover his predicament. He could hardly believe he had been so blind.

  For the twentieth time he rose and peered all around. Nothing. Even the two ships that had passed him had long ago vanished into the depths of the void. Any help he needed he must supply himself.

  Pacing distractedly around the ship, he paused now and then to kick at the battered port of one or the other of the air locks, but neither showed the slightest sign of loosening.

  In a frenzy of desperation he flung himself down over the control room port and hammered madly upon it with his gauntleted fists. Below, the banked levers and buttons gleamed mockingly up at him. He scrambled, exhausted, to his feet and wandered dazedly about the hull. Why could not just one of the ships that had been at the spaceport pass near him? Just one. It was not fair that he should have not a single chance—

  He remembered that he had had two chances, and had thrown them away through fear of ridicule. Or had he thrown them both away? He had tried to signal the second ship. Maybe they had seen him, and had gone on anyway. Maybe they did not think it worth while to stop for just one man. The dirty— Was it too much trouble—

  He was calmed by the necessity of changing his oxygen tanks. He accomplished this without mishap, having to close the valves to his helmet and on the hoses of the tanks only a moment. The discarded tank spat out a faint halo that represented the last of the gas, vaguely visible here in space. Keith had an idea as he gazed blankly at the tank. As things stood he had only an hour.

  “Only an hour,” he thought. “Only an hour to find a way, or only an hour, to wait for something. I have only an hour to live. To—be. And after that I—just won’t exist. As if I never was—”

  He shook himself impatiently. Well, maybe he could manage to stretch it a few minutes longer. Maybe he could “cheat” a little. He picked up the empty tank and started toward the stern. A further thought made him return and remove one of the outside thermometers from beside the control-room porthole.

  ~ * ~

  Once more Keith swung himself across to the main rocket from the steering tube. He crawled in and inched his way along, keeping his flashlight shining ahead of him. In the vacuum, its beam did not light up any part of the tube save that directly before him. It served his purpose, however, which was to keep from cracking his helmet at the end of the tube.

  He reached the end and examined the vents. The grills he had already removed, on his other expedition into the rocket. Experimentally he thrust the blade of his knife into one of them.

  “Now, with a little luck,” he told himself, “I ought to be able to fill a tank with oxygen—if all goes well.”

  He pushed the knife farther, and just then when he thought it would be too short, he succeeded in forcing the valve. He snatched back the knife as a blob of liquid plopped out. It spattered against the metal of the rocket tube, where it began to shrink gradually. The rockets were considerably warmer than the liquefied gas, since they had been receiving the rays of the distant Sun. The liquid was sucking up the metal’s warmth and expanding under the lack of pressure into a gas.

  Keith poked the thermometer into the diminishing puddle. The space thermometer showed —252.5 C. This, then, must be the hydrogen vent. Oxygen boiled at over —183. The other vent was the one he wanted—

  Or did he?

  Keith stopped with the knife poised below the oxygen vent. He looked at the empty tank before him—at the knife—at the flashlight—

  “I wonder,” he muttered uncertainly. Still, these were all he had with which to gain an entrance to the ship. He might as well try as to sit out there and suffocate by degrees.

  Coming to a decision, he turned to the hydrogen pipe. Having unscrewed from the tank the c
ap from which dangled the metal hose that fastened to his helmet, he placed the container under the vent and probed with his knife blade. He managed to get most of the drop into the tank, although some spilled. He poked again, with better results. As he became more practiced, he spilled less. He did not care to hold the knife continuously in the valve and let the hydrogen run down the blade into the tank. It would probably trickle over his glove, and although his suit was insulated so as not to conduct heat very well—still, —252!

  Having obtained what he considered a sufficient quantity, he squirmed out of the rocket tube and pulled himself back to the side of the hull. There he set the tank in the sunlight to warm. When the contents had expanded to a gaseous state, they would be under pressure. He made sure the cap was tight.

  While he waited, he took a look at his emergency tank’s dial. It might be close, but he thought he had enough. He walked along the top of the hull, pausing to stare long at the top of the parachute hatch. After a while he went back for the tank.