CHAPTER III
_Out of Control_
Walter Harkness had built this ship with Chet's help. They had designedit for space-travel. It was the first ship to leave the Earth under itsown power, reach another heavenly body, and come back for a safelanding. But they had not installed any luxuries for the passengers.
In the room where the three were confined, there were noself-compensating chairs such as the high-liners used. But theacceleration of the speeding ship was constant, and the rear wall becametheir floor where they sat or paced back and forth. Their bonds had beenremoved, and one of Harkness' hands was gripping Diane's where they satside by side. Chet was briskly limbering his cramped muscles.
He glanced at the two who sat silent nearby, and he knew what was intheir minds--knew that each was thinking of the other, forgetting theirown danger; and it was these two who had saved his life on their firstadventure out in space.
Walt--one man who was never spoiled by his millions; and Diane--straightand true as they make 'em! Some way, somehow, they must be saved--thusran his thoughts--but it looked bad for them all. Schwartzmann?--no usekidding themselves about that lad; he was one bad hombre. The best theycould hope for was to be marooned on the Dark Moon--left there to liveor to die amid those savage surroundings; and the worst that mighthappen--! But Chet refused to think of what alternatives might occur tothe ugly, distorted mind of the man who had them at his mercy.
There was no echo of these thoughts when he spoke; the smile thatflashed across his lean face brought a brief response from thedespondent countenances of his companions.
"Well," Chet observed, and ran his hand through a tangle of blond hair,"I have heard that the Schwartzmann lines give service, and I reckonI heard right. Here we were wanting to go back to the Dark Moon,and,"--he paused to point toward a black portlight where occasionallights flashed past--"I'll say we're going; going somewhere at least.All I hope is that that Maxie boy doesn't find the Dark Moon at aboutten thousand per. He may be a great little skipper on a nice, slow,five-hundred-maximum freighter, but not on this boat. I don't like hislandings."
* * * * *
Diane Delacouer raised her eyes to smile approvingly upon him. "You'regood, Chet," she said; "you are a darn good sport. They knock you downout of control, and you nose right back up for a forty-thousand footzoom. And you try to carry us with you. Well, I guess it's time we gotover our gloom. Now what is going to happen?"
"I'll tell you," said Walter Harkness, looking at his watch: "if thatfool pilot of Schwartzmann's doesn't cut his stern thrust and build up abow resistance, we'll overshoot our mark and go tearing on a few hundredthousand miles in space."
Diane was playing up to Chet's lead.
"_Bien!_" she exclaimed. "A few million, perhaps! Then we may see someof those Martians we've been speculating about. I hear they arehandsome, my Walter--much better looking than you. Maybe this is all forthe best after all!"
"Say," Harkness protested, "if you two idiots don't know enough to worryas you ought, I don't see any reason why I should do all the heavyworrying for the whole crowd. I guess you've got the right idea at that:take what comes when it gets here--or when we get there."
Small wonder, thought Chet, that Herr Schwartzmann stared at them inpuzzled bewilderment when he flung open the door, and took one longstride into the room. Stocky, heavy-muscled, he stood regarding them, afrown of suspicion drawing his face into ugly lines. Plainly he wasdisturbed by this laughing good-humor where he had expected misery andhopelessness and tears. He moved the muzzle of a detonite pistol backand forth.
* * * * *
"You haff been drinking!" he stated at last. "You are intoxicated--allof you!" His eyes darted searching glances about the little room thatwas too bare to hide any cause for inebriation.
It was Mam'selle Diane who answered him with an emphatic shake of herdark head; an engaging smile tugged at the corners of her lips. "_Maisnon!_ my dear Herr Schwartzmann," she assured him; "it is joy--justhappiness at again approaching our Moon--and in such good company, too."
"Fortunes of war, Schwartzmann," declared Harkness; "we know how toaccept them, and we don't hold it against you. We are down now, but yourturn will come."
The man's reply was a sputtering of rage in words that neither Chet norHarkness could understand. The latter turned to the girl with aquestion.
"Did you get it, Diane? What did he say?"
"I think I would not care to translate it literally," said DianeDelacouer, twisting her soft mouth into an expression of distaste; "but,speaking generally, he disagrees with you."
Herr Schwartzmann was facing Harkness belligerently. "You think you knowsomething! What is it?" he demanded. "You are under my feet; I kick youas I would _meinen Hund_ and you can do nothing." He aimed a savage kickinto the air to illustrate his meaning, and Harkness' face flushedsuddenly scarlet.
* * * * *
Whatever retort was on Harkness' tongue was left unspoken; a sharp lookfrom Chet, who brought his fingers swiftly to his lips in a gesture ofsilence, checked the reply. The action was almost unconscious on Chet'spart; it was as unpremeditated as the sudden thought that flashedabruptly into his mind--
They were helpless; they were in this brute's power beyond the slightestdoubt. Schwartzmann's words, "You know something. What is it?" had fireda swift train of thought.
The idea was nebulous as yet ... but if they could throw a scare intothis man--make him think there was danger ahead.... Yes, that was it:make Schwartzmann think they knew of dangers that he could not avoid.They had been there before: make this man afraid to kill them. Thedreadful alternative that Chet had feared to think of might beaverted....
All this came in an instantaneous, flashing correlation of his consciousthoughts.
"I'll tell you what we mean," he told Schwartzmann. He even leanedforward to shake an impressive finger before the other's startled face."I'll tell you first of all that it doesn't make a damn bit ofdifference who is on top--or it won't in a few hours more. We'll all bewashed out together.
"I've landed once on the Dark Moon; I know what will happen. And do youknow how fast we are going? Do you know the Moon's speed as itapproaches? Had you thought what you will look like when that fool pilotrams into it head on?
"And that isn't all!" He grinned derisively into Schwartzmann's flushedface, disregarding the half-raised pistol; it was as if some secretthought had filled him with overpowering amusement. His broad grin grewinto a laugh. "That isn't all, big boy. What will you do if you do land?What will you do when you open the ports and the--" He cut his wordsshort, and the smile, with all other expression, was carefully erasedfrom his young face.
"No, I reckon I won't spoil the surprise. We got through it all right;maybe you will, too--maybe!"
* * * * *
And again it was Diane who played up to Chet's lead without a moment'shesitation.
"Chet," she demanded, "aren't you going to warn him? You would not allowhim and his men to be--"
She stopped in apparent horror of the unsaid words; Chet gave her anapproving glance.
"We'll see about that when we get there, Diane."
He turned abruptly back to Schwartzmann, "I'll forget what a rottenwinner you have been; I'll help you out: I'll take the controls if youlike. Of course, your man, Max, may set us down without damage; thenagain--"
"Take them!" Schwartzmann ungraciously made an order of his acceptance."Take the controls, Herr Bullard! But if you make a single false move!"The menacing pistol completed the threat.
But "Herr Bullard" merely turned to his companion with a level,understanding look. "Come on," he said; "you can both help in workingout our location."
He stepped before the burly man that Diane might precede them throughthe door. And he felt the hand of Walt Harkness on his arm in a pressurethat told what could not be said aloud.
* *
* * *
There were pallid-faced men in the cabin through which they passed; menwho stared and stared from the window-ports into the black immensity ofspace. Chet, too, stopped to look; there had been no port-holes in thatinner room where they had been confined.
He knew what to expect; he knew how awe-inspiring would be the sight ofstrange, luminous bodies--great islands of light--masses ofanimalculae--that glowed suddenly, then melted again into velvet black.A whirl of violet grew almost golden in sudden motion; Chet knew it foran invisible monster of space. Glowingly luminous as it threw itselfupon a subtle mass of shimmering light, it faded like a flickering flameand went dark as its motion ceased.
Life!--life, everywhere in this ocean of space! And on every hand wasdeath. "Not surprising," Chet realized, "that these other Earthmen areawed and trembling!"
The sun was above them; its light struck squarely down through the upperports. This was polarized light--there was nothing outside to reflect orrefract it--and, coming as a straight beam from above, it made abrilliant circle upon the floor from which it was diffused throughoutthe room. It was as if the floor itself was the illuminating agent.
No eye could bear to look into the glare from above; nor was there need,for the other ports drew the eyes with their black depths of unplumbedspace.
Black!--so velvet as to seem almost tangible! Could one have reached outa hand, that blackness, it seemed, must be a curtain that the hand coulddraw aside, where unflickering points of light pricked through the darkto give promise of some radiant glory beyond.
* * * * *
They had seen it before, these three, yet Chet caught the eyes ofHarkness and Diane and knew that his own eyes must share something ofthe look he saw in theirs--something of reverent wonder and a strangehumility before this evidence of transcendent greatness.
Their own immediate problem seemed gone. The tyranny of this gloweringhuman and his men--the efforts of the whole world and its strugglingmillions--how absurdly unimportant it all was! How it faded toinsignificance! And yet....
Chet came from the reverie that held him. There was one man by whom thisbeauty was unseen. Herr Schwartzmann was angrily ordering them on, and,surprisingly, Chet laughed aloud.
This problem, he realized, was _his_ problem--his to solve with the helpof the other two. And it was not insignificant; he knew with some suddenwordless knowledge that there was nothing in all the great scheme butthat it had its importance. This vastness that was beyond the power ofhuman mind to grasp ceased to be formidable--he was part of it. He feltbuoyed up; and he led the way confidently toward the control-room doorwhere Schwartzmann stood.
The scientist, whom Schwartzmann had called Herr Doktor Kreiss, wasbeside the pilot. He was leaning forward to search the stars in theblackness ahead, but the pilot turned often to stare through the rearlookouts as if drawn in fearful fascination by what was there. Chet tookthe controls at Schwartzmann's order; the pilot saluted with a tremblinghand and vanished into the cabin at the rear.
"Ready for flying orders, Doctor," the new pilot told Herr Kreiss. "I'llput her where you say--within reason."
Behind him he heard the choked voice of Mademoiselle Diane: "_Regardez!Ah, mon Dieu_, the beauty of it! This loveliness--it hurts!"
* * * * *
One hand was pressed to her throat; her face was turned as the pilot'shad been that she might stare and stare at a quite impossible moon--agreat half-disk of light in the velvet dark.
"This loveliness--it hurts!" Chet looked, too, and knew what Diane wasfeeling. There was a catch of emotion in his own throat--a feeling thatwas almost fear.
A giant half-moon!--and he knew it was the Earth. Golden Earth-lightcame to them in a flooding glory; the blazing sun struck on it fromabove to bring out half the globe in brilliant gold that melted tosoftest, iridescent, rainbow tints about its edge. Below, hungmotionless in the night, was another sphere. Like a reflection of Earthin the depths of some Stygian lake, the old moon shone, too, in ahalf-circle of light.
Small wonder that these celestial glories brought a gasp of delight fromDiane, or drew into lines of fear the face of that other pilot who sawonly his own world slipping away. But Chet Bullard, Master Pilot of theWorld, swung back to scan a star-chart that the scientist was holding,then to search out a similar grouping in the black depths into whichthey were plunging, and to bring the cross-hairs of a rigidly mountedtelescope upon that distant target.
"How far?" he asked himself in a half-spoken thought, "--how far have wecome?"
* * * * *
There was an instrument that ticked off the seconds in this seeminglytimeless void. He pressed a small lever beside it, and, beneath a glassthat magnified the readings, there passed the time-tape. Each hour andminute was there; each movement of the controls was indicated; eachtrifling variation in the power of the generator's blast. Chet made somecareful computations and passed the paper to Harkness, who tilted thetime-tape recorder that he might see the record.
"Check this, will you, Walt?" Chet was asking. "It is based on the timeof our other trip, acceleration assumed as one thousand miles per hourper hour out of air--"
The scientist interrupted; he spoke in English that was carefullyprecise.
"It should lie directly ahead--the Dark Moon. I have calculated withexactness."
Walter Harkness had snatched up a pair of binoculars. He swung sharplyfrom lookout to lookout while he searched the heavens.
"It's damned lucky for us that you made a slight error," Chet wastelling the other.
"Error?" Kreiss challenged. "Impossible!"
"Then you and I are dead right this minute," Chet told him. "We arecrossing the orbit of the Dark Moon--crossing at twenty thousand milesper hour relative to Earth, slightly in excess of that figure relativeto the Dark Moon. If it had been here--!" He had been watching Harknessanxiously; he bit off his words as the binoculars were thrust into hishand.
"There she comes," Harkness told him quietly; "it's up to you!"
But Chet did not need the glasses. With his unaided eyes he could see afaint circle of violet light. It lay ahead and slightly above, and itgrew visibly larger as he watched. A ring of nothingness, whose outlinewas the faintest shimmering halo; more of the distant stars winked outswiftly behind that ghostly circle; it was the Dark Moon!--and it wasrushing upon them!
* * * * *
Chet swung an instrument upon it. He picked out a jet of violet lightthat could be distinguished, and he followed it with the cross-hairswhile he twirled a micrometer screw; then he swiftly copied the readingthat the instrument had inscribed. The invisible disk with its ghostlyedges of violet was perceptibly larger as he slammed over thecontrol-ball to up-end them in air.
Under the control-room's nitron illuminator the cheeks of Herr DoktorKreiss were pale and bloodless as if his heart had ceased to function.Harkness had moved quietly back to the side of Diane Delacouer and washolding her two hands firmly in his.
The very air seemed charged with the quick tenseness of emotions.Schwartzmann must have sensed it even before he saw the onrushing death.Then he leaped to a lookout, and, an instant later, sprang at Chetcalmly fingering the control.
"Fool!" he screamed, "you would kill us all? Turn away from it! Awayfrom it!"
He threw himself in a frenzy upon the pilot. The detonite pistol wasstill in his hand. "Quick!" he shouted. "Turn us!"
Harkness moved swiftly, but the scientist, Kreiss, was nearer; it was hewho smashed the gun-hand down with a quick blow and snatched at theweapon.
Schwartzmann was beside himself with rage. "You, too?" he demanded."Giff it me--traitor!"
* * * * *
But the tall man stood uncompromisingly erect. "Never," he said, "have Iseen a ship large enough to hold two commanding pilots. I take yourorders in all things, Herr Schwartzmann--all but this. If we die--wedie."
Schwartzmann sputtered: "We should haff turned away. Even yet we might.It will--it will--"
"Perhaps," agreed Kreiss, still in that precise, class-room voice,"perhaps it will. But this I know: with an acceleration of one thousandm.p.h. per hour as this young man with the badge of a Master Pilot says,we cannot hope, in the time remaining, to overcome our present velocity;we can never check our speed and build up a relatively opposite motionbefore that globe would overwhelm us. If he has figured correctly, thisyoung man--if he has found the true resultant of our two motions ofapproach--and if he has swung us that we may drive out on a lineperpendicular to the resultant--"
"I think I have," said Chet quietly. "If I haven't, in just a fewminutes it won't matter to any of us; it won't matter at all." He metthe gaze of Herr Doktor Kreiss who regarded him curiously.
"If we escape," the scientist told him, "you will understand that I amunder Herr Schwartzmann's command; I will be compelled to shoot you ifhe so orders. But, Herr Bullard, at this moment I would be very proud toshake your hand."
And Chet, as he extended his hand, managed a grin that was meant alsofor the tense, white-faced Harkness and Diane. "I like to see 'em dealtthat way," he said, "--right off the top of the deck."
But the smile was erased as he turned back to the lookout. He had tolean close to see all of the disk, so swiftly was the approaching globebearing down.
* * * * *
It came now from the side; it swelled larger and larger before his eyes.Their own ship seemed unmoving; only the unending thunder of thegenerator told of the frantic efforts to escape. They seemed hung inspace; their own terrific speed seemed gone--added to and fused with theorbital motion of the Dark Moon to bring swiftly closer that messengerof death. The circle expanded silently; became menacingly huge.
Chet was whispering softly to himself: "If I'd got hold of her an hoursooner--thirty minutes--or even ten.... We're doing over twenty thousandan hour combined speed, and we'll never really hit it.... We'll neverreach the ground."
He turned this over in his mind, and he nodded gravely in confirmationof his own conclusions. It seemed somehow of tremendous importance thathe get this clearly thought out--this experience that was close ahead.
"Skin friction!" he added. "It will burn us up!"
He has a sudden vision of a flaming star blazing a hot trail through theatmosphere of this globe; there would be only savage eyes to followit--to see the line of fire curving swiftly across the heavens.... He,himself, was seeing that blazing meteor so plainly....
His eyes found the lookout; the globe was gone. They were close--close!Only for the enveloping gas that made of this a dark moon, they would beseeing the surface, the outlines of continents.
Chet strained his eyes--to see nothing! It was horrible. It had beenfearful enough to watch that expanding globe.... He was abruptly awarethat the outer rim of the lookout was red!
For Chet Bullard, time ceased to have meaning; what were seconds--orcenturies--as he stared at that glowing rim? He could not have told. Theouter shell of their ship--it was radiant--shining red-hot in the night.And above the roar of the generator came a nerve-ripping shriek. A windlike a blast from hell was battering and tearing at their ship.
"Good-by!" He has tried to call; the demoniac shrieking from withoutsmothered his voice. One arm was across his eyes in an unconsciousmotion. The air of the little room was stifling. He forced his arm down;he would meet death face to face.
* * * * *
The lookout was ringed with fire; it was white with the terrible whiteof burning steel!--it was golden!--then cherry red! It was dying, as thefire dies from glowing metal plunged in its tempering bath--or throwninto the cold reaches of space!
In Chet's ears was the roar of a detonite motor. He tried to realizethat the lookouts were rimmed with black--cold, fireless black! Anincredible black! There were stars there like pinpoints of flame! Butconviction came only when he saw from a lookout in another wall a circleof violet that shrank and dwindled as he watched....
A hand was gripping his shoulder; he heard the voice of Walter Harknessspeaking, while Walt's hand crept to raise the triple star that waspinned to his blouse.
"Master Pilot of the World!" Harkness was saying. "That doesn't coverenough territory, old man. It's another rating that you're entitled to,but I'm damned if I know what it is."
And, for once, Chet's ready smile refused to form. He stared dumbly athis friend; his eyes passed to the white face of Mademoiselle Diane;then back to the controls, where his hand, without conscious volition,was reaching to move a metal ball.
"Missed it!" he assured himself. "Hit the fringe of the air--just thevery outside. If we'd been twenty thousand feet nearer!... He was movingthe ball: their bow was swinging. He steadied it and set the ship on anapproximate course.
"A stern chase!" he said aloud. "All our momentum to be overcome--butit's easy sailing now!"
He pushed the ball forward to the limit, and the explosion-motor gavethunderous response.