The Best of Jack Williamson

by Jack Williamson

  ‘You know, it’s against regulations for you to be here at all,’ Kempton said. ‘You must prepare to leave, Clew, when the Bellatrix returns. I don’t understand how it happened.’

  ‘But, thir, the power—’

  ‘I must refuse your extraordinary request. Of coursel I want you to realize this is not a playhouse. And not an old man’s home. I don’t understand it!’

  The serious, bright eyes about the man’s little red cheeks were fixed intently upon Kempton’s face for a long time. Then they began to blink, and Hume saw huge, slow tears gathering in them.

  ‘Yeth, thir,’ Gideon whispered. And he stood there.

  Kempton and Hume were busy with the astrographic charts, checking their maps of the nebula’s flaming streamers, which flooded the bridge with greenish, ghostly radiance. Kempton seemed to forget Clew, and the little man stood there blinking. It must have been ten minutes later that he spoke again.

  ‘Captain Kempton, thir?’

  ‘Eh? Oh, you’re still here? What is it?’

  The bright eyes winked bravely.

  ‘Captain, you don’t understand, thir. I’ve been working on my gravity-screen nearly fifty yearth. Ever since I first came here, thir. It was the Dead Thtar, tho near. I got books on electronics. I studied hard, thir.

  ‘Other men have come and gone, thir. Even the mechanics stay only thix yearth, you know. Because it is tho lonely. Now, thir, it is done. An electronic field, a screen of ions, that flows over the surface of any conductor, and reflects, dissipates, the radiations of gravity.’

  Kempton laughed. He did not intend to be malicious; there was something irresistibly funny about Gideon Clew, lisping so seriously.

  ‘Why, gravitation isn’t even a radiation, man! It’s a strain in the ether, a curvature—’

  ‘I know, thir, that is one theory. But I have proved it is a radiation, on the order of the subelectronic particles—’

  Kempton was suddenly brusque. Angry with himself because he had laughed.

  ‘Anyhow, you’ll have to give it up. We’ve no fuel to waste on fool experiments.’

  He bent over the charts again. Gideon Clew turned dazedly toward the door, moisture glittering unheeded on his bright, wrinkled cheeks. It is not easy for a man to give up what he has worked for all his life—not when he has labored and planned and dreamed as had Gideon Clew.

  He turned and lisped again: ‘Captain, thir?’

  ‘What is it nowT Kempton showed his annoyance at the interruption.

  ‘Captain, there’s Tonia Andros. A little girl, that we took off a wreck. When my invention is successful, thir, I am going to adopt her—’

  ‘Sorry, Clew, I’m busy.’ Kempton nodded at the door.

  ‘Yeth, thir.’

  Gideon Clew blinked and turned slowly again. He fumbled for the door knob with twisted old fingers, and could not see it. ‘Wait!’ came Kempton’s brisk voice, and he turned, sober blue eyes shining with incredulous hope.

  ‘Thir?’

  ‘I suppose you’ve a clutter of apparatus in your cabin. See that it’s cleared out. Have it all in order when you leave.’

  ‘But captain, thir, I can’t dismantle my apparatus. I’m an old man. I’ll never have money, or a chance to try it again. Oh, don’t you theeV

  There was something in the appealing blue eyes that Kempton could not resist.

  ‘All right,’ he said suddenly. ‘I’ll have Mr. Colin supply you the power-output, for exactly five minutes. I shouldn’t do it; it’s against regulations.’

  Gideon’s face was wrinkled into a grin of radiant joy; his round blue eyes shone mistily.

  ‘Go on, now, and try it,’ Kempton said. ‘And afterward clear the rubbish out of your cabin.’

  Gideon vanished, and the station’s lights were dim for five minutes, and the electron-blast motors dead for that long, allowing us to drift to the unopposed drag of the Dead Star’s relentless gravity.

  During those minutes, Gideon Clew was furiously busy in his cabin, among complex apparatus that filled it so completely that there was scant room for his body. Transformers hummed, and the tall vacuum tube that the Bellatrix had brought filled with pallid, virescent fire. He closed a switch that grounded one of its electrodes to the station’s hull. A feeble green glow shimmered along the wire.

  Gideon Clew felt the ship pause beneath him as that slow drift toward the Dead Star was arrested! Crying out from sheer pain of joy at success after fifty years of toil, he watched in proud wonder.

  Plop!

  He heard the hollow, muffled sound. Heart sinking, he spun around. Green radiance was gone from tube and wire. The new tube had burned out!

  ‘Captain, thir,’ Gideon lisped with earnest eagerness, back on the bridge, ‘didn’t you feel our drift-acceleration stop, when my electronic screen cut off the attraction of the Dead Thtar?’

  ‘No, I’m afraid not. And remember our bargain, now. You’ve had the power. Now you must dismantle your machine, and get it ready to take on board the Bellatrix.”

  ‘But captain, I know—’

  Clive Kempton turned, reached for an ellipsograph. He was a young man, full of his new responsibility. And he did not realize how much Gideon’s experiment had meant to the old fellow.

  The bright, sober eyes were blinking very fast. Trembling hands fumbled blindly at the door. Gideon Clew let himself out, and stood a long time leaning against the wall. An old man, sick with failure. He was glad that none came near him.

  The Bellatrix, flashing onward along the flaming corridor of the passage, was still in photophone communication with us. A private call came for Gideon Clew, and Vance, our operator, sent the steward to find the old man.

  ‘A call for me, thir?’ he lisped in excited astonishment as he shuffled into the photophone room. It must have been the first in fifty years.

  Vance made him sit down in front of the projection screen, and tuned his set and synchronized the scanning tube. The bright-hued geometric figures of the registration pattern vanished suddenly, and on the screen was Tonia Andros.

  ‘Oh, Granddad,’ she cried, in a voice atremble with eager joy and relief. And she ran forward until she went out of focus, and blurred.

  Smiling reassuringly, Gideon lisped: ‘What ith it, Tonia?’

  Vance and the other operator were inevitable eavesdroppers, for without’ their continual adjustments, the narrow etheric nerve between the ships would have snapped in half a minute. The two seemed to forget them.

  The little girl’s image sharpened again, and she stood there, bewildered, dark eyes round and huge and solemn.

  ‘Oh, Granddad!’ she pleaded—she always called him that. ‘I’m so lonesome! I made them let me talk to you. I want you to come and stay with me. Please, won’t you? You said you would come when your invention is done. Please hurry!’

  Gideon clenched his gnarled old hands, and his blue eyes glistened.

  ‘No, Tonia,’ he whispered. ‘No, I’m afraid—’ He choked and stopped. Tears rolled out on his cheeks and he did not heed them. ‘No, Tonia,’ he cried again. ‘My invention—will never be—finished. And, Tonia, I—have to go away—’

  ‘But, Granddad!’ Her grave voice was distressed. ‘You promised me! You must?’

  ‘Tonia!’ he cried convulsively. ‘Tonia, I will! In spite of everything! I’ll come after you!’

  She laughed happily. Then the other operator must have spoken to her, for she looked away from the screen, and back again.

  ‘Good-by, Granddad!’ she called. ‘I’ll wait!’

  ‘Good-by, Tonia,’ whispered Gideon Clew. But the connection had already been cut, and he spoke to a blank and empty screen.

  Not an hour later, Vance’s call-bell rang again, urgently.

  When the set was tuned, he saw the Bellatrix’s operator on the screen. And swift realization of tragedy overcame him. The man’s cap was gone, his face haggard, his eyes wild with desperation. His white uniform, Vance saw, was torn at the shoulder, one sleeve
crimson with blood that dripped and spattered on the floor.

  The man’s lips were working nervously; he was gasping. Apparently he was too frightened to speak.

  ‘Cool off!’ Vance shot at him. ‘What is it?’

  ‘Come—’ he cried incoherently. ‘For life’s sake! They murdered the captain! Come!’

  Vance heard blows upon the Bellatrix’s door, and shouts beyond it. The wounded operator turned and stared mutely, as three men burst it open and came in, all of them carrying glowing ionic needles. The operator stood facing them, trembling, helpless, blood dripping from his sleeve.

  Vance knew the leader of the three at once by one feature of his face, described in many warnings and offers of reward. He had no nose. Only a blue ray-scar where it should have been, with two black slits for nostrils.

  Skal Doon! The space pirate! The ‘terror of the nebula’!

  ‘Calling the eagles, eh?’ he demanded of the operator. His voice was thin and shrill. Vance had a vague feeling that he had heard it before, though he knew he had never seen Skal Doon. ‘Setting the service on Skal Doon, eh?’

  His hand tightened on the ionic needle, and it spat blue sparks. The operator threw up his arms and spun around, screaming. The ray had burned away his face, but sickening minutes passed before he collapsed and was dead.

  Skal Doon watched him until he was a shuddering heap on the floor. Then he looked into the screen, at Vance. And Vance never forgot his amazing eyes. Large, they were, limpidly brown, soft and gentle as a woman’s.

  ‘So our friend did call you, eh?’ his thin voice shrilled. And he kicked the trembling thing at his feet. ‘And maybe you have seen enough so you can guess what happens to eagles that swoop at Skal Doon!’

  Vance’s sickness at the horror he had seen must have been evident enough. The mild brown eyes smiled at him; the high voice made a ribald jest at his condition. Then the ionic needle came up again, spitting blue fire, and the screen went blank.

  Only then did Vance recognize that shrill voice. It was the voice of the man with the bandaged head and the invalid’s chair, with whom he had talked on the Bellatrix. Of the man who had talked, ironically, of Skal Doon.

  The Bellatrix, of course, was not a fighting ship. Her only weapon was a long rocket-torpedo tube that had been mounted, ironically enough, for protection against the very buccaneer who had seized the vessel.

  Though the station’s fighting equipment was obsolete, consisting only of four rocket-torpedo tubes and the Sealby Arc—which hurled a blasting shaft of electricity from the generators—we might easily enough have destroyed the liner. But destruction was not our aim; we had to consider the hundreds of passengers aboard.

  ‘We’ll have to run them down, capture the ship,’ Kempton told Hume, on the bridge. ‘And that torpedo-tube will make them hard to take.’

  ‘Doon knows how to play his cards,’ Hume agreed.

  Even with the station’s powerful electron-blast motors, installed for her ceaseless battle with the gravitation of the Dead Star, we did not come up quickly with the fleeing liner. It was ten hours before the battle began. After the long tension of suspense, it was a swift and confusing thing.

  Gideon Clew came running up hopefully to Kempton, soon after the Bellatrix was sighted—a silvery speck, fleeing between the white curtains of the Great Nebula, the violet, fluorescent trail of her electronic motors streaming out behind her.

  ‘Captain, thir! In the battle—what do you want me to do?’

  His round blue eyes were bright with eager determination. But Kempton turned on him impatiently.

  ‘Just keep to your cabin, Clew. The crew is complete without you.’

  ‘But, thir,’ he lisped protestingly. ‘Tonia! I must help save her! She—’

  ‘Go below, Clew.’

  Red, wrinkled face suddenly downcast, sober eyes glittering, the old man stumbled out of the room.

  As the station came up with him, Doon began to fire. The first rocket we were able to avoid, by an abrupt change of course. The second and the third were detonated at a distance by the searing flame of the Sealby Arc.

  But the fourth slipped past the searching finger of the arc, a hurtling mote, a miniature ship, death-laden. It struck amidships. The station lurched sickeningly to its explosion. Fragments of the beryllo-steel hull were driven inward with terrific force. And an instant later our precious air was creaming out through the sudden, ragged opening, chilled by expansion until snow glittered in it.

  Colin, the chief engineer, was killed outright by a splinter of the hull. Hale, the second, darted at once with his two helpers to repair the hole, snatching down the metal patches and the thermite welding units that always hung ready on the wall.

  The task was not easy. One of the helpers was carried bodily through the opening by the outrushing air to hideous death. Then patches were flung over the ragged orifice, and the major leak soon stopped. But the shock had strained all the seams of the old hull. Though Hale and the remaining assistant found and mended many breaks, the vital air continued to hiss out alarmingly.

  Thus, for a time, the generators were deserted by their regular crew, and just at the moment when power was most necessary. The station was swiftly overhauling the Bellatrix. On the bridge, Kempton was screaming a fervid appeal into the speaking tube.

  ‘For life’s sake, Colin, give me power! For the Sealby Arc! Before they can reload that tube!’

  But the engineer was dead, and the surviving members of his staff were completely engaged in a desperate battle to preserve the station’s essential atmosphere.

  Yet the generators came again to sudden animation, and the blue arm of the electric arc reached out once more. It touched the rocket-torpedo tube in its armored housing above the hull of the Bellatrix. And the tube became fused and crumpled metal.

  Skal Doon, though thus robbed of his only offensive weapon, was still not defeated. He displayed again that resource which so often had saved him, an original daring worthy of a greater man. The liner deliberately changed her course, swung about in a long curve, and plunged downward toward the Dead Star.

  ‘Diving for the star!’ cried Hume in dismay. ‘Going to smash, rather than surrender!’

  With silent attention, Kempton was studying the motion of the argent ellipsoid through his instruments. He laid them aside at last, and turned suddenly to the mate.

  ‘No. Skal is cleverer than that. He is planning to fall around the Dead Star, and back away from it.’

  ‘Around it? How—’

  ‘The Bellatrix is on a parabolic orbit, like a comet’s. It will flash down to the star, curve close around it, and fly off again. Or would—if we weren’t here to stop it.’

  ‘You’re going to follow?’

  ‘Of course. We’ll run them down, fasten the station alongside with the magnetic anchors. TheBellatrix has no weapon. If Skal won’t surrender, we’ll storm a valve, or cut through the hull.’

  He looked at the barometers, and his face fell with alarm—

  ‘That last shot finished us, anyhow. We’re gone unless we can get aboard the Bellatrix. The pressure is down two pounds already. Our air won’t last three hours, at this rate.’

  The silvery hull of the liner was plunging toward the Dead Star with motors full on. Kempton shouted again and again into the speaking tube for more power. No voice answered, but the generators always responded.

  The Bellatrix was now but a few miles ahead. Abruptly she began a confusing series of maneuvers to evade the station, twisting, swerving. But, lighter and more powerful, the station kept close behind her.

  The liner turned back at last, plunging directly at the other ship with manifest intent to ram it, to the destruction of both vessels. Kempton shouted a wild command, the generators replied instantly, and the station slipped out of the way.

  Another order, and a heavy magnet anchor leaped from its catapult toward the passing ship, dragging its cable. It struck the liner’s hull, clung fast.

  Like a
silver fish, the Bellatrix plunged and darted for a time upon the line. But the smaller station held her adroitly, giving her opportunity neither to ram nor to break the cable. And steadily the ships were drawn together as the cable was wound upon its drum!

  The purple, fluorescent blast from the liner’s motors was at last shut off. The two ships drifted side by side, at the cable’s ends—hurtling down toward the black, red-flecked disk of the Dead Star.

  The station’s air, leaking steadily through opened seams, was swiftly growing unbreathable. Men panted at ordinary tasks; a deadly chill stole through the ship.

  Kempton called us all to the upper deck, ordered us to don space suits. He served out ionic needles and other weapons, ordered torches got ready for cutting through the liner’s hull, if that proved necessary.

  ‘Colin,’ he called into the speaking tube, ‘bring your men on deck. We’re going to abandon ship.’

  ‘This ith not Colin,’ lisped a voice from the tube.

  ‘Who? Clew? What the—’

  ‘Colin ith dead, thir. I have been running the generators. I was a generator-man forty yearth, you know.”

  Kempton’s voice was queer. ‘All right, Clew. Good work. Come on and get into your space suit.’

  Five minutes later, the eleven of us were dragging ourselves across between the ships in clumsy, inflated suits, laden with weapons. As weird a journey as can be imagined, it was. Eleven swollen giants, climbing by their hands along a cable between two vessels in the void. For background, the flaming streamers of the Great Nebula, and the malign black disk of the Dead Star.

  Then happened an unexpected thing—a dreadful thing.

  The main valve of the Bellatrix flung suddenly wide, and a score of human figures spewed out. We thought at first that the pirates were foolishly leaving the ship to beat off our attack. But these men had no space suits.

  In the blast of air they were thrown clear of the ship, to become, in the vacuum of space, queer, swollen monsters. But, horribly, they did not immediately die. Sprawling in the airless void, they tore at their throats, faces contorted with agony unutterable.