Each armor sample bore the marks of the experiments. Avery had recovered them by means of a cable that the projectile mounting had shot out behind it, after repeated collisions had stopped their flight.
Each sample was riddled, being effective in a minor way. The slanted surfaces, offering an opportunity for a missile to glance rather than to penetrate, was of some slight good, but not enough. With those ever-pressing weight limitations of space ships, those super-tough alloys could not be made thick enough. And so a good, simple idea had failed.
And somewhere, during their years of solitary toil here, Frank Avery and his daughter Edna had stopped their heroic work. Why? The silence around us was too grim for us to be optimistic. I saw Spud’s body seem to sag. All his spirit seemed to have evaporated.
Then Nicolas Lorson had to add his thoughts. He was leering sadistically, and his voice rustled mockingly in my communicators.
“The end of the trail, you two imbeciles!” he chuckled. “Nothing left to do but give yourselves up to the police. Edna and Frank Avery are dead!”
I saw Spud’s eyes, then, as he turned toward Lorson. For an instant I thought my brother would commit murder. But he controlled himself.
I wasn’t that good. My own blood was boiling hot, and I was ready to commit mayhem. But I didn’t because I thought of something else. All of a sudden I got crafty, as I figured I should have been long ago.
I just grinned at Lorson, who was still tied to my wrist.
“Never mind, fella,” I said. “Never mind talking about what the police will do to us.” And then I fibbed openly: “The space jitters gave you a bad habit, Lorson. They made you talk in your sleep. And sometimes, even when you were awake, you talked too much. Your history’s blacker than I thought, Lorson. And I kept the microphone of our ship radio open at all times during the trip. Your voice is pretty well known, fella, and our transmitter was going all the time, too. That means that on the police boat they probably heard you and everything you said.”
Lorson’s eyelids flickered, and his face went white. Through the cord connecting our wrists, I could feel him trembling. He wasn’t just mixed up in the riddle of the so-called Silver Pall plague. There were a lot of other shady dealings, of course. And now Lorson was scared the police might know.
However, there wasn’t any time for me to enjoy Lorson’s discomfort. I grabbed my brother’s shoulder.
“Come on, Spud,” I said. “Brace up. We haven’t found anything really bad yet. Let’s get into the living quarters.”
We did that, working the bolts of the double-doored airlock, which led down into the substance of the great meteor-mass. The little cavern-like room below was deathly still. It was a living room and kitchen, which contained an electric stove, table, cupboards and a few books. Everything was in perfect order. The two bedrooms were the same.
In Edna’s room, beside the picture of Spud, a piece of paper was propped up, bearing a kind of crude cartoon, scrawled in pencil.
IT depicted a space craft trying to come to rest on an Earth that was—well, humanized. It had a frowning face, big ugly eyes, and a long, satanic nose. Above the picture was the caption:
Space Ships Don’t Land!
It all looked screwy to me, but Spud suddenly brightened.
“Edna drew this,” he said. “It’s her hand, all right. But what’s the idea? What was she trying to get across? Some kind of a message that wouldn’t be clear to an outsider?”
Then Spud turned and faced me, his eyes shining.
“I don't get this picture business yet, Buck,” he said. “But I bet I can tell you part of what happened. They ran completely out of food supplies, and low on air-purifying chemicals. So they resorted to suspended animation! Edward Clay’s new dormaline will induce it, though it’s pretty dangerous to use. And Frank had some of the stuff here for a last resort.
“They were hoping to culture the basic food substances here, chemically, and produce oxygen as a by-product of the process, too, in case I didn’t bring back supplies in time. The idea’s from worrying too much. But somehow they didn’t use it. So my guess is that they’re asleep, in a state of suspended animation. They’re probably in the storeroom across the corridor, since the door is sealed, welded, I think, from the inside.”
Spud and I didn’t waste any time. I had almost forgotten that Lorson was with us, even though he was tied to me. We attacked that storeroom door with our blast pistols, the heat rays and X-rays focused down to thin, concentrated cutting points of energy. The steel was tough, though, and we used up a lot of power. The job of opening that door wasn’t quite finished before our pistols began to sputter, the energy cones just about burnt out.
Then Nicolas Lorson sprang his trick. My attention had been almost completely diverted from him, when suddenly he swung his arm, and my arm with it. The short cord holding our wrists together came for just a fraction of an instant under the rays of Spud’s pistol. The cellulose fiber glowed red, and parted easily from a swift jerk of Lorson’s arm. He was free of me now, and wheeling like a cat, he dashed around the angle of the corridor.
Before Spud and I could get to him, he was inside the airlock. He passed its outer valve, and contrived to prop a bar of steel firmly against it, before we could stop him.
It took us ten minutes to loosen that propped bar enough, so that we could escape. And by then Nicolas Lorson was well out of sight. Angry, we scrambled our way over the rough meteoric terrain, toward the Martia, feeling that whatever diabolic scheme he had conceived would include the ship.
When we arrived beside the little craft, we saw Lorson’s tracks in the dust, beneath one of the portholes. He had gotten into the Martia by means of the porthole, the airlock having been fastened by a key in my possession. Evidently sometime during our voyage, he had managed secretly to loosen the inner fastenings of the port, so that when the external ones were easily removed it would open readily.
It was useless to try to unfasten the airlock bolts with the key, for I knew that the door would be barred from the inside. Spud and I were locked out of the Martia. Our blast pistols were depleted to the point of being all but useless. We had no food or water, and our small air purifiers would not hold out long. Around us was a bleakness unimaginable, and the thin, cold, oxygen-less gas of a comet’s core.
We managed to keep our heads, even though I felt more like screaming. Spud had begun to fuss with the tuning dial of the communicator at his belt, and I did the same with mine. In this manner we picked up waves coming from the radio transmitter of the Martia. Lorson was talking to the police craft, which was hidden somewhere beyond the screen of dust extending far above. We listened.
“I’ve escaped from the notorious MacCauley brothers, Commander,’’ he was saying in clipped, artificial tones. “I’ve locked myself in their ship, and they can’t reach me here. They are almost disarmed and harmless. Descend through the rift in the meteors, and capture them!”
CHAPTER IV
The Secret of the Averys
NEXT, Spud and I heard the commander of the police craft responding, though there was a certain reserve in his voice.
“Very well, Mr. Lorson,” he said. “We shall be there within an hour.” That looked like the end of Spud and me, all right. Lorson was safe in the Martia’s steel hull, where we could never get at him now. He was going to win out, after all our efforts. And, ironically he’d be a sort of hero, too!
We started back for the Avery encampment, since there was still a mystery to solve there, and no good to be gained by hanging around the Martia. But before we reached the camp, we picked up Lorson’s voice again in our phones. He was talking to us this time, using a small communicator radio like our own—one that wasn’t strong enough to get its waves through the static interference of that swarm of dust overhead. He didn’t want the police to listen in.
“Don’t worry, boys,” he crooned, and I could almost see his sadistic leer. “I won’t let the police get you. I’ve got other plans in mind. I�
��m going to allow you to suffocate out there. It’s a nice, slow death. You’ll have plenty of time to contemplate your past, and perhaps go insane. And then your bodies will freeze solid in the cold silence....”
Lorson’s descriptive powers seemed very good indeed. I had a suspicion of what he meant to do, but I could do nothing—yet.
We continued back to the Avery camp, entered the living quarters again, and pounded at the storeroom door that we had been trying to cut open with our blast pistols. After incessant pounding with some heavy steel bars, the door finally opened ponderously.
In the storeroom there was a big, complicated retort apparatus, and two long metal boxes, side by side. We had no trouble opening the latter. Each contained a body!
Frank and Edna Avery were sleeping or dead, depending on how the suspended animation trick had worked. The kind old face of Doctor Avery was composed and peaceful beneath his shock of white hair. And the girl was beautiful. The lids were gently down over her blue eyes, and there seemed to be a little, enigmatic smile on her lips.
I didn’t blame Spud for the anguished, half-tender grimness of his face then, as he looked at the girl. I knew that he loved brave Edna Avery. Certainly no one could have blamed him for that.
We had cut the power of our communicators so low that even Lorson couldn’t listen in on us now, but we could still communicate with each other.
“There’s still a rosy color in her cheeks,’’ I heard Spud say. “That means we could revive her, if we had heart stimulants, and heat packs. We could get the stuff on the Martia, only there’s Lorson. And we’re outside.”
Spud’s lips curved bitterly. All the devil-fighting energy seemed to have drained out of him.
IN Edna’s shapely hand I suddenly saw a folded piece of paper. Gently Spud disengaged it from her fingers, and spread it wide. We read what was written there together, for it was addressed to me, too.
Dear Spud and Buck:
There has been no news from Earth, and we do not know what has happened to you, Spud. But we hope that it will be either one of you, if not both, that first reads this letter. For we have solved the meteor problem! Our solution must be given to the world, because it will save many lives, and improve the entire science of space travel greatly.
Dad became ill, and I had to take care of him. That was why we could not construct an apparatus to produce synthetic food, and to replenish our oxygen supply. There was no time. Long before, we had given up the armor idea, and our new work was far advanced. We’ve managed to complete the latter. We could go back to Earth, if there was air and food to last through the trip, as I’ll explain soon. But there is no food and very little air. So we have resorted to suspended animation.
Space ships don’t land, is a true statement. I meant that for somebody who knows enough about it to guess that there is something interesting behind that claim. Space ships—the real ones that cover great distances between planets—don’t land, or shouldn’t, anyway.
It’s very simple. When a space ship takes off from a planet as big as Earth, tremendous energy is required to overcome the strong gravity. That’s why our present day ships have to be made so light and fragile, so they can take off from planets and carry enough fuel, and a pay-load besides.
If they stayed in space permanently, there would be no such problem! Weight would no longer be a problem, and really adequate armor could be carried against those deadly meteors!
It’s true, Spud and Buck. I don’t think you know it yet, and it will seem silly to you at first, I suppose, but the big hunk of stone and iron and nickel you’re standing on now is a crude, working model of the space ship of the future!
Think it over, if you don’t believe me right away. It is terrifically thick, almost solid. No meteor, except one comparable in size to itself, could ever harm it! And we’ve given it motive power, Dad and I. We blasted a long tunnel deep into one end of it, and we filled the tunnel with dust and iron chips mixed with a small quantity of uranium tetramekalate. Our retort apparatus for making the explosive is here in this room.
The first Avery ship is ready to fly. It’s tremendously heavy, of course, but here in the Silver Pall there is so little gravity for it to overcome that this doesn’t matter. It’s too crudely made to be easy to navigate, but we’ve arranged small side tunnels, which work like lateral guide rockets. And if it’s timed properly in the first place, for proper direction, it will fly toward Earth. But it will not try to land on Earth, certainly.
Instead it will establish itself in an orbit around Earth, like a little moon, and far enough distant to be out of range of most of the terrestrial gravity. Then your small space ship will act as a tender.
I suppose you’re way ahead of me by now. The tender would land passengers and freight, and would bring back more freight and passengers. For the short hop, its fuel load would not have to be so heavy, and it would fly in the local space area, kept clear of meteors by the patrol boats.
I guess this is about the complete picture. Dad says to get your timing and calculations by the space charts, as usual. Then start the big tunnel—the main rocket tube—going. A concentrated burst from a blast pistol, directed into the dust and iron chips at the tunnel mouth, will excite the uranium tetramekalate, and there’ll be time enough to get out of the way.
There is not much else to tell. Dad and I are about to inject dormaline into our arms now. I love you terribly, Spud, and somehow, I think I’ll see you again. This is all so very much bigger than ourselves.
May all our hopes come true, Spud and Buck MacCauley.
Edna Avery.
This is Edna Avery’s letter, word for word. It’s famous now. As we read it that first time, I don’t think Spud and I moved. But pretty soon I was seeing gigantic vessels of the void, built in space itself, probably of refined meteor-metals. Huge argosies with palatial passenger quarters, and enormous freight carrying capacities. And they wouldn’t be just crude lumps of cosmic flotsam, like this father of them all. Their propelling and steering mechanisms would be refined and perfect. But they would be secure from the menace of meteors.
“Dammit!” I burst out suddenly, thrilled with the dream, in spite of everything. “Dammit, Spud. It’s simple as hell, but it’ll work—really work! Big ships, with tremendously thick walls, always staying in space. And little tenders, to form the contact with planets.”
“Sure it’ll work,” Spud returned in a low tone. “Only don’t forget Lorson, and that we’re locked out of the Martia. Also that legally we’re in a jam, and that the police boat is coming. Not to mention that Lorson said he was going to see that we suffocated. Furthermore we haven’t got a blast pistol with enough power in it to excite the iron and dust and uranium tetramekalate mixture in that tunnel.”
Spud had picked up a pistol which lay on a work-bench nearby. It was the one which Frank and Edna had used to weld the door of their tomb. But the weapon was empty.
“We might be able to scrape a residue of uranium tetramekalate out of the retort apparatus there,” Spud continued. “Only it wouldn’t do us any good. We couldn’t attack the Martia with it and try to blow Lorson up, because we haven’t any detonator caps, or anything to take their place. Unless we can find something here.”
Spud and I searched feverishly throughout the living quarters, but it proved to be a futile quest.
Close to panic, we started back for our ship. Lorson, peering through the ports, evidently spotted us from some distance off. He started to talk to us again now, his tone a low, half-scared hiss in our phones.
“That’s it, you two fools,” he rasped. “Come in close! You’re going to see a show! You’re going to see how I dispose of people who might not be trustworthy. Maybe you lied when you said that that microphone, and the large radio transmitter here on the Martia, were in action throughout the trip, and that the police may have heard me—betray myself. I don’t know. But I’m not going to take any chances.
“During the next few minutes, you’ll see. And if
you’ve found anything interesting there at the Avery camp, I’ll take care of it after you both are dead. Think I can’t fly the Martia, eh? Well, I’ll get it up into space somehow, and I’ll get it headed back toward Earth. Then I’ll call for someone to come pick me up in space. Just you watch!”
Spud and I caught on at once. Somehow Lorson was going to try to destroy the police boat that was still somewhere up there above the dust and meteor screen. There was no use arguing against his insanity, no use telling him that I had lied, for he would think that it was just another bluff. And there was a chance that he would be able to fly the Martia, just as he had said.
THEN Lorson hurled another taunt into our faces—a taunt and a revelation.
“Oh, I almost forgot!” he chuckled evilly. “The Silver Pall plague. I might as well tell you now where it came from, because you’ll never be able to repeat the story. It was a mutation of ordinary cold virus, created on Earth itself, close to my Columbia Space Port. But it was an accident.
“As you know, the radio-active radiations from exploding rocket fuel can have strange effects on life, warping the chromosomes of heredity. That’s what happened, even to the invisible life of the cold virus. It changed a little, and produced the plague. My fault, and my responsibility. The interference wave-screen around the space port was defective. But you took the rap for me, Spud MacCauley!”
Lorson’s tone was loaded with sugary mockery as he spoke to us through his small belt-transmitter that could reach only us, not the police boat above that he said was doomed. That might bring quick vengeance, were its occupants to find out.
Spud didn’t seem to get angry. I think he was a little confused by all that had happened, as I was. He drew me into the protection of an upjutting mass of rusty meteoric iron, within sight of the Martia. We waited there to see what would happen.
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