by Harl Vincent
He hoped against hope that he was not faking so much as to be noticeable. Actually he wasn’t at all sure himself.
And rightly so. They struck once and bounced high, then again with a grinding sound, slewed to one side and then the other, bumping solidly then with a screech of tearing metal as hull plates let go in a rough slide over the terrain they could no longer see. Donley pressed so deeply into the cushions of his seat that he felt momentarily suffocated. He heard one of the recoil seats rip loose from its pedestal and go slamming against another. A man screamed horribly and the Meteoric turned slowly and majestically on its starboard side, stopping with the deck at an angle of at least thirty degrees.
Partially stunned, Donley could only sit there and marvel. He did not unstrap until the cries and babbling of the passengers grew to such proportions as to hammer at his eardrums painfully. Then, slowly as if in a dream, he unbuckled his restraining belts.
Randall was calling out over the audios: “Everybody listen now. We’re not in too bad shape. The lower deck plates are holding, so far as air tightness of the upper hull is concerned. But you must all get to the space suit storage and airlock as soon as you can. The mate and I’ll be there to help; so will Jal Tarjen. Jack Donley, will you take over again back there? Get them organized?”
“Sure will, Randall.” Fully himself again, Donley heaved up mightily, holding to the seat backs to keep his balance on the sloping deck plates.
In a moment Fred Underwood and Phil were with him, offering help. And, of all those aboard he would have least expected, Lantag—sober as a judge. All three goggled as the Lunarian pulled a bottle of Martian chulco from his pocket and sent it crashing against the bulkhead.
The faint pulse told with its lub-dub, lub-dub refrain that still another cure had been effected. At least this was the way it seemed to Jack Donley. A mysterious thing, this rhythm.
Randall had originally called it a stellar or nebular throb. Could it possibly come from such vast distances as this implied? And what was its nature? Was there a purpose? Donley had to give it up.
While these thoughts raced through his brain, he was straining from seat to seat up the sloping deck, followed closely by Fred and Phil. Perhaps even Lantag was trailing them. They found the man who had let out the scream when they crashed—he was wedged between two of the recoil seats, his own evidently having been tom loose by the shock and catapulted against the other. He was unconscious, still breathing but with what looked like a serious head injury that bled copiously. His limbs were sprawled in impossible positions and it was obvious to Donley that this betokened broken bones. In addition it looked as if the man had a crushed chest. The others were eager to try and extricate him from the smashed seat members but Donley decided he simply must not be moved. He managed to climb up the slope to one of the optophone audio pickup stations and got word to Randall, describing the victim’s apparent condition.
The mate came in on the conversation and promised to take care of the situation and make the injured man his personal responsibility.
By now, most of the passengers had unstrapped and were trying to get away from where they had been, anywhere to be on the move. They slid and scrambled over the tilting deck, bumping heads, shoulders, and knees against the seat pedestals and mouthing their disgust or expressing pain. It was a bedlam of pointless confusion, getting them nowhere.
The magnetic balancing controls of the ship began then to take hold and the ship gradually righted itself to the extent that there was less than possibly three degrees of list. The confusion diminished enough so Donley could make himself heard. Randall and the mate had joined him by now.
“Take it easy, folks,” he called out. “Let’s get set to go places. There’s no air outside so well have to get into space suits and through the airlock. Randall and I’ll get the move organized.”
As usual, his calm voice brought results. There was enthusiastic approval from the listeners. Anything was better than just milling around. And there was intense if fearful curiosity about the strange world on which they found themselves.
“What do we do?” a woman’s voice asked.
“First we’ll have to check the lists, passengers and crew. So let’s all of you stay put till we’re ready to go out. Okay?”
There was a chorus of good-natured agreement. Donley saw Mr. Standish at an audio pickup station and almost at once two crewmen entered with a stretcher. With extreme care, the injured man was moved to this. The mate gave him a hypodermic shot.
“Should keep him out until we can fix him up,” he told Donley. His voice lowered and he moved close. “I sure hope there’s a place in that dome to take care of him,” he added.
“Can’t do it here—in the ship’s hospital?”
“We’re losing air,”—a whisper. “Sprung a leak, levelling. Compressors and oxygen going full blast and still we’re losing pressure.”
Better keep quiet about this, Donley decided. But they’d have to get moving. “How long do we have?” he asked the mate.
“Little over an hour.” Randall nodded confirmation of the’ mate’s words.
Standish was already checking off the passengers on his list. “Ill round up the crew now,” he said. “Want to come along, Donley?”
“Sure thing.” Turning to Randall, he asked him, “Keep your eye on things here?” Donley rubbed his chin, a habit he had when distressed.
Randall nodded and Donley slipped out with the mate. Naturally, Stark and two members of the crew were missing—those who blasted off in the emergency escape ship. Or so they thought. But the steward was likewise among the missing. So they started breaking down locked cabin doors, the big Martian having come along just in time to be of great help. They hit the jackpot in four tries, finding two dead crewmen in one room and the steward himself, alive and burning with rage, in another.
“Knocked me out, the captain did,” he raved, “with two phony crew men grinning beside him. Where is he? Where are they?”
They got the story then. The two with Stark were not crewmen at all but were stowaways who had made up to look like the two real crewmen who had been strangled. The steward had awakened in a cabin not his own and remembered that the captain had acted like a maniac when attacking him, more like a zombie—as if drugged or hypnotized.
The injured man, still on the stretcher, had been laid by his two bearers on a table in the dispensary. Three more of the crew were now located and this completed the list.
“That does it,” the mate said. “And now I’ll have to give this man some first aid so he can stand being crammed into a space suit.”
He went to work at once with the two stretcher bearers and the big Martian standing by. Donley returned to the main saloon, with the steward.
“We’ll be ready for the getaway in a few minutes,” he told the passengers, then apprised Randall of what had transpired.
“So-o!” exclaimed Randall. “A light begins to dawn. You know, Donley, the WSA had a tip before we left that something funny was being pulled on the Meteoric, something illegal but of unknown nature.
I’m supposed to find out what it is; how do you like that?”
Donley stared. “Of course I’ll help,” he offered.
Randall laughed softly. “You would,” he said. “And maybe you can if and when the time comes.”
Things moved fast after that. The mate, followed by his two stretcher bearers and the other three of the crew came in and stopped by Donley and Randall.
“You’ve gotten him into a space suit,” Donley exclaimed.
“Right. And bandaged as well as possible. We’re all set now.”
Donley moved to the corridor door, Randall alongside. “Follow us in small groups,” he instructed the waiting passengers and crew; “Not more than four at a time, but as fast as you can make it. The first group will include the mate and his patient. The man is badly hurt.”
Randall whispered, “I’ll stay with you till you get things moving at the airlock. It’s a l
ittle tricky donning the suits and operating the lock, you know. But then I want to be back at the instruments for a few minutes.”
Donley assigned the steward and Jal Tarjen to make up the first group with the mate and his patient and they moved off into the corridor.
He then called to Doris, who stood a short way off. “Better follow them, Doris,” he said, “in say five minutes. Get Miss Barrett and the two girls to make up your group. Fred and Phil will help me.”
He ducked into the corridor with the two men trailing him. Adding up the lists, he found, in addition to the passengers, there were the steward, the mate and five crewmen included, making twenty-eight in all to be taken care of. With luck, they’d save them all—including Randall and himself of course.
Randall was explaining the mechanism and use of the airlock, while the mate demonstrated the complexities of space suits. The injured man had been deposited on the floor by the lock entrance.
“Better crowd two groups through the lock each time,” Randall advised Donley. “That way we’ll conserve some air.”
By the time the mate, the steward, and the Martian had been suited and their faceplates bolted home, their oxygen and communicators turned on, Doris and the other three of her group were there—all four a little pale. Silent, even the two girls. Donley told Fred and Phil to get them suited and then returned to the main saloon to set up the rest in groups. By now, exertion was making him a bit short of breath and if he moved too fast there was a sense of suffocation. Air getting short—and maybe bad.
Back to the airlock after assigning group members, Donley did all he could to speed up the rescue operation. Two groups at a time, as Randall had suggested, went through the lock, accoutered for the vacuum and cold outside. A few had complained they were breathing with difficulty and Donley saw that cyanosis was setting in with Fred and Phil, their lips showing bluish. He sent them through with the next charge of air that was lost when the outer manhole of the lock opened. Only one group remained when Randall arrived from topside and he helped in their sendoff.
“Air getting contaminated,” he told Donley, “and pressure down to about four pounds.”
“Okay, okay.” Donley saw the heaving of Randalls chest and the blue around his lips. “Here, get into this suit quick.”
By the time they were suited, it was with vaguely groping fingers and with his mind going blank that Donley was able to shut his own faceplate and turn on his oxygen. Another second, he was sure, and he’d have passed out. He breathed deeply and gratefully inside his helmet as they went into the lock, Randall clamping the entrance manhole shut behind them. Donley recovered swiftly now. Good old oxygen!
“Good thing I’m along,” Randall’s voice granted in the helmet communicator. “I clean forgot to tell you how to operate this from inside.” He pressed a wall switch that was high up out of the way, the outer door swung open and they went through to join the others.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Coming out from the light into the night of the alien planet, Donley could make out nothing of his immediate surroundings at first. There was a subdued rumble of conversation in his helmet communicator, so he knew that many of the survivors—he hoped most of them—were close by. Off in the distance and at a higher elevation was the glowing dome, outlined against a background of velvety sky with a myraid of stars, brighter than on earth and shining without a twinkle. Hardly recognizable because of their steady brilliance and far greater visible number. Then two double streams of rocket flame arched up toward the dome, about halfway there. Another and another alongside, flashing intermittently.
“That,” came Randall’s voice, “must be the mate’s group. He’s towing his patient and the other two are right beside him. Good!”
With eyes becoming accustomed to the starlight, Donley could now see the huddled groups of weird figures nearby. Figures similar to men only in that they had two legs and two arms. Bodies bloated to incredible size were of course the vacutex fabric suits expanded in the pressureless environment. The oversized round heads with the thick tentacles protruding above were the helmets and their communicator antennae.
“Why has nobody started but the first group?” Donley inquired.
Several voices answered in his communicator. “The mate was in a hurry.”
“We were waiting for you, Donley.”
Donley could now make out each and every figure but, naturally, could not identify individuals. The trails of the first group’s peroxide-powered rockets had now reached the dome and he estimated it was about two miles away. And up a rugged slope that would have been a hazard on foot, would take hours to negotiate.
“Come on folks, let’s go!” he said into his helmet. “A few at a time and the sooner the better.”
A pair of the weird figures clinging together some fifty feet away, rose up on twin flares from their rockets, heading for the dome. Must be Phil and Amanda, thought Donley. Or for the matter it could be Fred and Doris, Brand and Eula, or Davidson and Byrl. He chuckled inwardly as he enumerated the couples, then sobered suddenly as he thought of Mera. She had to be alive, just had to be here in this incredible world. He activated his own rocket pack and soared upward in an arc toward the dome, with another figure beside him.
“That you, Randall?” he asked softly.
“Yes. Thought I’d keep near you.”
“Thanks.” The starlight now seemed considerably brighter than the light of the full moon on earth and they could see clearly the nature of the surface over which they were passing. It was a shambles of ancient rubble, obviously the ruins of a hillside city which had been destroyed by nuclear means. Fire storm.
“See that, Randall?” Donley asked. “How long since the bombs caused that?”
“Many generations ago, I’d say. And my guess is the dome up there tops the subsurface refuge of the survivors’ descendants.”
Awed by the enormity of it, Donley realized that a last great war had been the death of the planet. “Hope we’re welcome there, Randall.”
At this moment, the area around the dome was brilliantly floodlighted and they could see that a space-suited figure had emerged and was formally greeting the first groups of arrivals. This figure looked not too different from the others, disguised as they all were in the bulky space outfits. The man, for man it must be, moved closely to the one that held another bulk in his arms—the mate with the injured man he had towed along with him. Immediately, the stranger helped with the burden and led the way into an opening that gaped in the side of the dome. An airlock. The opening was closed then, leaving two figures outside. Two other figures were just about to drop, rocket-braked, at the base of the dome—the two who clung together.
Donley and Randall were coming in with short retarding blasts from their rocket packs. “You down there, Tarjen?”
“Yes, and our steward. These others—”
“—are Fred and Doris Underwood,” a laughing feminine voice supplied.
Others were arriving not far behind as Donley and Randall dropped beside those already here. One came over to them; it was the Martian.
“Man who take mate inside show us how to work airlock. Come.”
This was a large airlock and held all who had so far arrived from the Meteoric; it could have included Jal Tarjen easily but he remained outside to operate the mechanisms. So there were only Randall and the steward, Donley, and Fred and Doris going through this trip. There would be a second load in a very few minutes, then others as the rest arrived from the scene of the wreck. Half of their entire number could well have been accommodated in this lock, had they been ready to enter.
As the inner door opened and air rushed in, Doris was first to get her helmet off and her perky countenance was a joy to behold as she shook out her golden curls.
“Where’s our monotonous drumming?” she asked. “I don’t hear it.”
Donley had his faceplate open and was sniffing the air experimentally. It was fresh and breathable, apparently not much different from what t
hey had been adapted to. “I had wondered about that too, Miss Doris,” he said, “but I suspect lots of things will be different here.”
The others were passing through the inner door of the lock into a sort of rotunda that was softly but amply lighted. Donley was last to enter a new environment and he sealed the inner door so the lock could be opened from outside. Meanwhile, Doris had stripped off her vacutex suit and kicked off her shoes with the foam rubber soles.
“No lub-dub,” she declared, standing with stockinged feet wide.
Fred was not far behind in getting back to normal attire and he soon confirmed her finding. But Donley was not so sure. Watching the steward struggle with the sealing seams of his vacutex, he cocked his head to one side. No, he couldn’t hear the pulse and he couldn’t feel it in this floor. But somehow it was there, beating at his brain with its infernal rhythm.
Lub-dub, lub-dub, lub-dub. No sound, no mechanical vibration, a hammering at the consciousness only. And it was all around him.
Many doors were set in the wall of the rotunda and all were closed. The newcomers had no means of knowing through which one the stranger had taken Standish and his patient. No other strangers appeared. But another group of seven or eight from the Meteoric was coming in through the airlock.
A door swung wide just across from them and the mate came out. He was in surgical white and a mask covered the lower portion of his face. He motioned to Donley and Randall.
“Come in, both of you,” he said. “Want to show you something.”
It was an operating room they entered, but equipped like no operating room they had ever seen before. Same sort of table and similar lights above it, but no anaesthetizing equipment, and the glass-doored cabinets held instruments of entirely unfamiliar design. The patient was nude, on his back, unconsicous but breathing regularly as if only sleeping. Over him bent a man in white, with a crop of bushy red hair topping his head, and he was just straightening a twisted right arm that was gory with compound fractures. Randall and Donley watched intently as he worked the bones into place, then seemed to just spray the union with a pistol-shaped contrivance that gave out a high-pitched sound but showed no visible emission. The bones just fused together as if by magic, leaving no trace of where the jagged breaks had been. There was no blood, the artery and large blood vessels having been sealed off, not with hemostats but by some method which invisibly closed the ends as if they had been pinched shut and welded. The amazing surgeon worked with great speed, his fingers literally flying as they tied the main artery and several of the large veins, then closed the gaping tear of a wound. He did not speak, even to ask the mate for assistance, but discarding his pistol-like device, he picked up another glittering instrument from the tray, this one somewhat resembling an ordinary stapler. Rapidly pinching together the edges of the wound with the instrument, which was obviously a super-modem suturing device, he finished with a completely closed wound that showed no scar nor any other evidence of where it had been.
