CHAPTER V
Cantrell's Comet
Far out in space, Jupiter, a tiny moon and its satellites merepin-points of light, Stevens turned to his companion with a grin.
"Well, Nadia, old golf-shootist, here's where we turn spacehounds again.Hope you like it better this time, because I'm afraid that we'll have tostay weightless for quite a while." He slowly throttled down the mightyflow of power, and watched the conflicting emotions play over Nadia'sface in her purely personal battle against the sickening sensationscaused by the decrease in their acceleration.
"I'm sorry as the dickens, sweetheart," he went on, tenderly, and thegrin disappeared. "Wish I could take it for you, but...."
"But there are times when we've got to fight our own battles and buryour own dead," she interrupted, gamely. "Cut off the rest of that power!I'm _not_ going to be sick--I _won't_ be a--what do you spacehounds callus poor earth-bound dubs who can't stand weightlessness--weight-fiends,isn't it?"
"Yes; but you aren't...."
"I know I'm not, and I'm not going to be one, either! I'm all x,Steve--it's not so bad now, really. I held myself together that time,anyway, and I feel lots better now. Have you found Cantrell's Comet yet?And why so sure all of a sudden that they can't find us? That power beamstill connects us to Ganymede, doesn't it? Maybe they can trace it."
"At-a-girl, ace!" he cheered. "I'll tell the world you're noweight-fiend--you're a spacehound right. Most first-trippers, at thisstage of the game, wouldn't be caring a whoop whether school kept ornot, and here you're taking an interest in all kinds of things already.You'll do, girl of my heart--no fooling!"
"Maybe, and maybe you're trying to kid somebody," she returned, eyeinghim intently. "Or maybe you just don't want to answer those questionsI asked you a minute ago."
_At the bottom of a shaft a section of the rocky wallswung aside, revealing the yawning black mouth of a horizontal tunnel.At intervals upon its roof there winked into being almost invisiblepoints of light. Along that line of lights the life-boats felt theirway, coming finally into a huge cavern...._]
"No, that's straight data, right on zero across the panel," he assuredher. "And as for your questions, they're easy. No, I haven't looked forthe comet yet, because we'll have to drift for a couple of days beforewe'll be anywhere near where I think it is. No, they can't trace us,because there is now nothing to trace, unless they can detect theslight power we are using in our lights and so on--which possibility isvanishingly small. Potentially, our beam still exists, but since we aredrawing no power, it has no actual present existence. See?"
"Uh-uh," she dissented. "I can't say that I can quite understand howa beam can exist potentially and yet not be there actually enough totrace. Why, a thing has to be actual or not exist at all--you can'tpossibly have something that is nothing. It doesn't make sense. Butlay off those integrations of yours, please," as now armed with aslate-pencil, Stevens began to draw a diagram upon a four-foot sheet ofsmooth slate. "You know that your brand of math is over my head like acircus tent, so we'll let it lie. I'll take your word for it. Steve--ifyou're satisfied, it's all x with me."
"I think I can straighten you out a little, by analogy. Here's a roughsketch of a cylinder, with shade and shadow. You've had descriptivegeometry, of course, and so know that a shadow, being simply aprojection of a material object upon a plane, is a two-dimensionalthing--or rather, a two-dimensional concept. Now take the shade, whichis, of course, this entire figure here, between the cylinder castingthe shadow and the plane of projection. You simply imagine that thereis a point source of light at your point of projection: it isn't reallythere. The shade, then, of which I am drawing a picture, has only apotential existence. You know exactly where it is, you can draw it, youcan define it, compute it, and work with it--but still it doesn't exist;there is absolutely nothing to differentiate it from any other volume ofair, and it cannot be detected by any physical or mechanical means. If,however, you place a light at the point of projection, the shade becomesactual and can be detected optically. By a sufficient stretch of theimagination, you might compare our beam to that shade. When we turn ourpower on, the beam is actual; it is a stream of tangible force, and assuch can be detected electrically. When our switches here are open,however, it exists only potentially. There is no motion in the ether,nothing whatever to indicate that a beam had ever actually existedthere. With me?"
"Floundering pretty badly, but I see it after a fashion. You physicistsare peculiar freaks--where we ordinary mortals see actual, solid,heavy objects, you see only empty space with a few electrons and thingsfloating around in it; and yet where we see only empty space, you cansee things 'potentially' that may never exist at all. You'll be thedeath of me yet, Steve! But I'm wasting a lot of time. What do we donow?"
"We get busy on the big tube. You might warm up the annealing oven andmelt me that pot of glass, while I get busy on the filament supports,plate brackets, and so on." Both fell to work with a will, and hourspassed rapidly and almost silently, so intent was each upon his owntasks.
"All x, Steve." Nadia broke the long silence. "The pyrometer's on thered, and the oven's hot," and the man left his bench. Taking up a longpaddle and an even longer blowpipe, he skimmed the melt to a dazzlinglybright surface and deftly formed a bubble.
"I just love to talk at you when you've got your mouth full of ablowpipe." Nadia eyed him impishly and tucked her feet beneath her,poised weightless as she was. "I've got you foul now--I can say anythingI want to, and you can't talk back, because your bubble will lose itsshape if you do. Oh, isn't that a beauty! I never saw you blow anythingthat big before," and she fell silent, watching intently.
Slowly there was being drawn from the pot a huge, tapering bulb of hot,glistening glass, its cross-section at the molten surface varying asStevens changed the rate of draw or the volume of air blown through thepipe. Soon that section narrowed sharply. The glass-blower waved hishand and Nadia severed the form neatly with a glowing wire, just abovethe fluid surface of the glass remaining in the pot. Pendant from theblowpipe, the bulb was placed over the hot-bench, where Stevens, nowbegoggled, begloved, and armed with a welding torch, proceeded to fuseinto the still, almost plastic, glass sundry necks, side-tubes, supportsand other attachments of peculiar pattern. Finally the partiallyassembled tube was placed in the annealing oven, where it would remainat a high and constant temperature until its filaments, grids, andplates had been installed. Eventually, in that same oven, it would beallowed to cool slowly and uniformly over a period of days.
* * * * *
Thus were performed many other tasks which are ordinarily done eitherby automatic machinery or by highly skilled specialists in labor--forthese two, thrown upon their own resources, had long since learned howmuch specialization may be represented by the most commonplace article.Whenever they needed a thing they did not have--which happened everyday--they had either to make it or else, failing in that, to go back andbuild something that would enable them to manufacture the required item.Such setbacks had become so numerous as to be expected as part of theday's work; they no longer caused exasperation or annoyance. For twodays the two jacks-of-all-trades worked at many lines and with manymaterials before Stevens called a halt.
"All x, Nadia. It's time for us to stop tinkering and turn intoastronomers. We've been out for fifty I-P hours, and we'd better beginlooking around for our heap of scrap metal," and, the girl at thecommunicator plate and Stevens at their one small telescope, they beganto search the black, star-jeweled heavens for Cantrell's Comet.
"According to my figures, it ought to be about four hours rightascension, and something like plus twenty degrees declination. Myfigures aren't accurate, though, since I'm working purely from memory,so we'd better cover everything from Aldebaran to the Pleiades."
"But the directions will change as we go along, won't they?"
"Not unless we pass it, because we're heading pretty nearly straight atit, I think."
"I don't see anything int
eresting thereabouts except stars. Will it havemuch tail?"
"Very little--it's close to aphelion, you know, and a comet doesn't havemuch of a tail so far away from the sun. Hope it's got some of its tailleft, though, or we may miss it entirely."
Hours passed, during which the two observers peered intently into theirinstruments, then Stevens left the telescope and went over to his slate.
"Looks bad, ace--we should have spotted it before this. Time to eat,too. You'd better...."
"Oh, look here, quick!" Nadia interrupted. "Here's something! Yes, it_is_ a comet, and quite close--it's got a little bit of a dim tail."
Stevens leaped to the communicator plate, and, blond head pressed closeto brown, the two wayfarers studied the faint image of the wanderer ofthe void.
"That's it, I just _know_ it is!" Nadia declared. "Steve, as a computer,you're a blinding flash and a deafening report!"
"Yeah--missed it only about half a million kilometers or so," hereplied, grinning, "and I'd fire a whole flock of I-P check stationsfor being four thousand off. However, I could have done worse--I couldeasily have forgotten all the data on it, instead of only half of it."He applied a normal negative acceleration, and Nadia heaved a profoundsigh of relief as her weight returned to her and her body again becamemanageable by the ordinary automatic and involuntary muscles.
"Guess I am a kind of a weight-fiend at that, Steve--this is muchbetter!" she exclaimed.
"Nobody denies that weight is more convenient at times; but you're aspacehound just the same--you'll like it after a while," he prophesied.
Stevens took careful observations upon the celestial body, altered hiscourse sharply, then, after a measured time interval, again made carefulreadings.
"That's it, all x," he announced, after completing his calculations, andhe reduced their negative acceleration by a third. "There--we'll be justabout traveling with it when we get there," he said. "Now, little K. P.of my bosom, our supper's been on minus time for hours. What say weshake it up?"
"I check you to nineteen decimals," and the two were soon attacking thesavory Ganymedean goulash which Nadia had put in the cooker many hoursbefore.
"Should we both go to sleep, Steve, or should one of us watch it?"
"Sleep, by all means. There's no meteoric stuff out here, and we won'tarrive before ten o'clock tomorrow, I-P time," and, tired out by theevents of the long day, man and maid sought their beds and plunged intodreamless slumber.
While they slept, the "Forlorn Hope" drove on through the void at aterrific but constantly decreasing velocity; and far off to one side,plunging along a line making a sharp angle with their own course, thereloomed larger and larger the masses which made up the nucleus ofCantrell's Comet.
Upon awakening, Stevens' first thought was for the comet, and heobserved it carefully before he aroused Nadia, who hurried into thecontrol room. Looming large in the shortened range of the plate, theirobjective hurtled onward in its eternal course, its enormous velocitybetrayed only by the rapidity with which it sped past the incrediblybrilliant background of infinitely distant stars. Apparently it wasa wild jumble of separate fragments; a conglomerate, heterogeneousaggregation of rough and jagged masses varying in size from grains ofsand up to enormous chunks, which upon Earth would have weighed millionsof tons. Pervading the whole nucleus, a slow, indefinite movement wasperceptible--a vague writhing and creeping of individual componentsworking and slipping past and around each other as they all rushedforward in obedience to the immutable cosmic law of gravitation.
"Oh, isn't that wonderful!" Nadia breathed. "Think of actually going tovisit a comet! It sort of scares me, Steve--it's so creepy and crawlylooking. We're awfully close, aren't we?"
"Not so very. We'd probably have lots of time to eat breakfast. But justto be on the safe side, maybe I'd better camp here at the board, and youbring me over something to eat."
"All x, Chief!" and Stevens ate, one eye upon the screen, watchingclosely the ever-increasing bulk of the comet.
* * * * *
For many minutes he swung the _Forlorn Hope_ in a wide curve approachingthe mountain of metal ever and ever more nearly, then turned to the girl.
"Hold everything, Nadia--power's going off in a minute!" He shut off thebeam; then, noting that they were traveling a trifle faster than thecomet, he applied a small voltage to one dirigible projector. Dartingthe beam here and there, he so corrected their flight that they wereprecisely stationary in relation to the comet. He then opened hisswitches, and the _Forlorn Hope_ hurtled on. Apparently motionless, itwas now a part of Cantrell's Comet, traveling in a stupendous, elongatedellipse about the Master of our Solar System, the Sun.
"There, ace, who said anything about weight-fiends? I was watching you,and you never turned a hair that time."
"Why, that's right--I never even thought about it--I was so busystudying that thing out there! I suppose I've got used to it already?"
"Sure--you're one of us now. I knew you would be. Well, let's go placesand do things! You'd better put on a suit, too, so you can stand in theair-lock and handle the line."
They donned the heavily insulated, heated suits, and Stevens snapped thelocking plugs of the drag line into their sockets upon the helmets.
"Hear me?" he asked. "Sound-disks all x?"
"All x."
"On the radio--all x?"
"All x."
"I tested your tanks and heaters--they're all x. But you'll have totest...."
"I know the ritual by heart, Steve. It's been in every show in thecountry for the last year, but I didn't know you had to go through itevery time you went out-of-doors! Halves, number one all x, two all x,three all x...."
"Quit it!" he snapped. "You aren't testing those valves! That check-upis no joke, guy. These suits are complicated affairs, and some partsare apt to get out of order. You see, a thing to give you fresh air atnormal pressure and to keep you warm in absolute space can't be eithersimple or fool-proof. They've worked on them for years, but they'repretty crude yet. They're tricky, and if one goes sour on you, out inspace, it's just too bad--you're lucky to get back alive. A lot of menare still out there somewhere because of the sloppy check-ups."
"'Scuse it, please--I'll be good," and the careful checking and testingof every vital part of the space-suits went on.
Satisfied at last that the armor was spaceworthy, Stevens picked up thecoils of drag-line, built of a non-metallic fiber which could retain itsflexibility and strength in the bitter cold of outer space, and led thegirl into the air-lock.
"Heavens, Steve! It's perfectly stupendous, and grinding around worsethan the wreckage of the _Arcturus_ was when I wouldn't let you climbup it--why, I thought comets were _little_, and hardly massive at all!"exclaimed the girl.
"This is little, compared to any regular planet or satellite or even tothe asteroids. There's only a few cubic kilometers of matter there, and,as I said before, it's a decidedly unusual comet. You know the game?"
"I've got it--and believe me, I'll yank you back here a lot faster thanyou can jump over there if any one of those lumps starts to fall on you!Is this drag line long enough?"
"Yes, I've got a hundred meters here, and it's only fifty meters overthere to where I'm going. So long," and with a light thrust of his feet,he dove head foremost across the intervening space, a heavy pike heldout ahead of him. Straight as a bullet he floated toward his objective,a jagged chunk many yards in diameter, taking the shock of his landingby sliding along the pike-handle as its head struck the mass.
Then, bracing his feet against one lump, he pushed against its neighbor,and under that steady pressure the enormous masses moved apart and kepton moving, grinding among their fellows. Over and around them Stevenssprang, always watching his line of retreat as well as that of hisadvance, until his exploring pike struck a lump of apparently solidmetal. Hooking the fragment toward him, he thrust savagely with hisweapon and was reassured--that object was not only metal, but it wasmetal so hard that his pike-head
of space-tempered alloy steel did notmake an impression upon its surface. Turning on his helmet light heswung his heavy hammer repeatedly but could not break off even a smallfragment.
"Found something, Steve?" Nadia's voice came clearly in his ears.
"I'll say I have! A hunk of solid, non-magnetic metal about the size ofan office desk. I can't break off any of it, so I guess we'll have tograb the whole chunk."
He hitched the end of his cable around the nugget, made sure that theloops would not slip, and then, as Nadia tightened the line, he shovedmightily.
"All x, Nadia, she's coming! Pull in my drag line as I said over there,and I'll help you land her."
Inside the _Forlorn Hope_ the mass of metal was urged into the shop,where Stevens clamped it immovably to the steel floor, before he tookoff his space-suit.
"Why, it's getting covered with snow, and the whole room is gettingpositively _cold_!" Nadia exclaimed.
"Sure. Anything that comes in from space is cold, even if it's been outonly a few minutes, and that hunk of stuff has been out for nobody knowshow many million years. It didn't get much heat from the sun exceptat perihelion, you know, so it's probably somewhere around minus twohundred and sixty degrees now. I'll have to throw a heater on it forhalf an hour before we can touch it. And since this is more or less newstuff to you, I'll caution you--don't try to touch anything that hasjust come in. That hammer or pike would freeze your hand instantly, eventhough they've been out only a little while. Before you touch anything,blow on it, like this, see? If your breath freezes solid on it, likethat, don't touch it--it's cold."
* * * * *
Under the infra-beams of the heater, the mass of the metal was broughtto room temperature and Stevens attacked it with his machine tools.Bit by bit the stubborn material was torn from the lump. Through heavygoggles he watched the incandescent mass in a refractory crucible, inthe heart of the induction furnace.
"What do you think you've got--what you want?"
"I don't know. It wasn't iron--it wouldn't hold a magnet. It's royalmetal of some kind, I think. Base metals mostly melt at around fifteenhundred, and that crucible is still dry as a bone at better thanseventeen."
"How are you going to separate out the tantalum and the others you wantfrom the ones that you don't want?"
"I'm afraid that I'm not going to, very well," replied Stevens, with awry grimace. "What I don't know about metallurgy would fill a library,and I'm probably the world's worst chemist. However, by a series ofsuccessive liquations, I hope to separate out fractions that I canuse. Platinum melts somewhere around seventeen-fifty, tantalum abouttwenty-nine hundred, and tungsten not until 'way up around thirty-three,or four hundred--and that, by the way, means lots of grief. Of course,each fraction will probably be an alloy of one kind or another, butI think maybe I'll be able to make them do."
"But mayn't that whole chunk be a pure metal?"
"It's conceivable, but not probable. There, she's beginning to separateat just below eighteen hundred! Platinum group coming out now, Ithink--platinum, rhodium, iridium, and that gang, you know. While I'mdoing this, you might be getting those five coils into exact resonance,if you want to."
"Sure I want to," and Nadia made her way across to the short-waveoscillator and set to work.
After an hour or so, bent over her delicate task, she began to twitchuneasily, then shrugged her shoulders impatiently.
"What's the idea of staring at me so?" she broke out suddenly. "How doyou expect me to tune these things up if you...." She stopped abruptly,mouth open in amazement, as she turned toward Stevens. He had not beenlooking at her, but he turned a surprised face from his own task at thesound of her voice. "Excuse me, please, Steve. I don't know what's thematter with me--must be getting jumpy, I guess."
"I wish that was all, but it isn't!" Face suddenly grim and hard,Stevens leaped to the communicator plate and shot the beam out intospace. "There's an answer, but that isn't it. You're a fine-tunedinstrument yourself, ace, and you've detected something.... I thoughtso! There's the answer--the guy that was looking at you!"
Plainly there was revealed upon the plate a small, spherical space-ship,very like the one that had attacked and destroyed the _Arcturus_. AfterNadia had taken one glance at it, Stevens shut off the power and leapedout into the shop. He closed all the bulkhead doors and air-breakopenings, then closed and secured the massive insulating door of thelifeboat in which they had made their headquarters. Then, after theyhad again put on the space-suits they had taken off such a short timebefore, he extinguished all the lights and hooded the communicatorscreen before he ventured again to glance out into the void.
"If I had a brain in my head, instead of the pint of bean soup I've gotup there, we'd have worn these when they cut up the _Arcturus_, andsaved us a lot of mental wear and tear," he remarked. "They were rightthere in the lockers all the time, and I knew it!"
"Well, we got away, anyway. You couldn't be expected to think ofeverything at once. We didn't have much time, you know."
"No, but I should have thought of anything as obvious as that, anyway.Wonder how they found us? Did they detect us, or did they come outto this comet after metal, same as we did, and find us accidentally?However, it all works out the same--they're apparently out to get us.I'm afraid this is going to be a whole lot like a rabbit fighting backat a man with a gun; but we'll sure try to nibble us off a lunch whilethey're getting a square meal ... here they come!"
The enemy sphere launched its flaming plane of force, and the _ForlornHope_ shuddered in every plate and member as its apex was severedcleanly under the impact. Instantly Stevens hurled his only weapons.Flaming ultra-violet and dully glowing infra-red, the twin beams lashedout; but their utmost force was of slight moment to the enormous powerdriving the enemy screens. Two circular spots of cherry red in spacewere the only results of Stevens' attack, and the next fierce cutsheared away the two projectors and, incidentally, a full half of thefifty-inch armor of the leading edge.
"Then we're checking out now?" Nadia asked quietly, as the man's handsdropped from his useless controls. "I'm sorrier than I can say, lover.But at least, I'm glad that I can go out with you," and her gloriouseyes were shining with unshed tears.
"Maybe, but snap out of it, girl--our hearts are still beating! We'renot dead yet, and maybe we won't be. Perhaps they want to capture usalive, as they did before; if so, we may be able to hide out on themsomewhere and pull off another escape. Things don't look very bright, Iknow, but we're not checking out until our numbers are actually run up!"
He hooked a hand under her belt as the shocks came closer, and stoodtense and ready. The lancing plane cut through one end of their controlroom, and Stevens leaped with his companion toward the new-made opening;while the air shrieked outward into space and their suits bulgedsuddenly with the abrupt increase in pressure differential. While theywere in midflight, the frightful blade of destruction cleaved its waythrough the control board and through the spot upon which they had beenstanding a moment before. As they passed the severed edge, en route intoopen spare, Stevens seized a metal brace and clung there, every nervetaut.
"Something funny here, Nadia," he said after a little, in a low tone."They should have made one more cut, to make us absolutely blind andhelpless. As it is, they've clipped off all our projectors, so we can'tmove, but I think we've got the whole control compartment of number twolifeboat untouched. If so, we can look around, anyway. Let's go!"
Floating without effort from fragment to fragment, they made their waytoward the section of their cruiser as yet undamaged. They found anairlock in working order, and were soon in the second lifeboat, whereStevens hastily turned on a communicator and peered out into space.
"There they are! There's another stranger out there, too. They'refighting with her, now--that's probably why they didn't polish us off."Steel-braced, clumsy helmets touching, the two Terrestrials staredspell-bound into the plate; watching while the insensately viciousintelligences within the sphere
brought its every force to bear uponanother and larger sphere which was now so close as to be plainlyvisible. Like a gigantic drop of quicksilver this second globeappeared--its smooth and highly-polished surface one enormous, perfect,spherical mirror. Watching tensely, they saw flash out that frightfulplane of seething energy, with the effects of which they were all toofamiliar, and saw it strike full upon the dazzling ball.
"This is awful, ace!" Stevens groaned. "They haven't got ray-screens,either, and without them they don't stand a chance. No possiblesubstance can stand up under that beam. When they get done and turn backto us, we'll have to dive back to where we were."
* * * * *
But that brilliant mirror was not as vulnerable as Stevens had supposed.The plane of force struck and clung, but could not penetrate it. Brokenup into myriads of scintillating crystals of light, intersecting,multi-colored rays, and cascading flares of sparkling energy, the beamwas reflected, thrown back, hurled away on all sides into space incoruscating, blinding torrents. And neither was the monster globeinoffensive. The straining watchers saw a port open suddenly, emit aflame-erupting something, and close as rapidly as it had opened. Thatsomething was a projectile, its propelling rockets fiercely aflame; assmoothly brilliant as its mother-ship and seemingly as impervious to thelethal beams of the common foe. Detected almost instantly as it was, itreceived the full power of the savage attack. The hitherto irresistibleplane of force beat upon it; ultra-violet, infra-red, and heat raysenveloped it; there were hurled against it all the forces known to thescientific minds within that fiendishly destructive sphere.
Finally, only a scant few hundreds of yards from its goal, theprotective mirror was punctured and the freight of high explosive letgo, with a silent, but nevertheless terrific, detonation. But nowanother torpedo was on its way, and another, and another; boring onruthlessly toward the smaller sphere. Fighting simultaneously threetorpedos and the giant globe, the enemy began dodging, darting hitherand thither with a stupendous acceleration; but the tiny pursuers couldnot be shaken off. At every dodge and turn, steering rockets burst intofurious activity and the projectiles rushed ever nearer. Knowing thatshe had at last encountered a superior force, the sphere turned inmad flight; but, prodigious as was her acceleration, the torpedoeswere faster and all three of them struck her at once. There ensuedan explosion veritably space-racking in its intensity; a flash ofincandescent brilliance that seemed to fill all space, subsiding intoa vast volume of tenuous gas which, feebly glowing, flowed about andattached itself to Cantrell's Comet. And in the space where had beenthe enemy sphere, there was nothing.
A slow-creeping pale blue rod of tangible force reached out from thegreat sphere, touched the wreckage of the _Forlorn Hope_, and pulled;gently, but with enormous power.
"Tractor beams again!" exclaimed Stevens, still at the plate."Everybody's got 'em but us, it seems."
"And we can't fight a bit any more, can we?"
"Not a chance--bows and arrows wouldn't do us much good. However, we maynot need 'em. Since they fought that other crew, and haven't blown usup, they aren't active enemies of ours, and may be friendly. I haven'tany idea who or what they are, since even our communicator ray can't getthrough that mirror, but it looks as though our best bet is to actpeaceable and see if we can't talk to them in some way. Right?"
"Right." They stepped out into the airlock, from which they saw thatthe great sphere had halted only a few yards from them, and that anindistinct figure stood in an open door, waving to them an unmistakableinvitation to enter the strange vessel.
"Shall we, Steve?"
"Might as well. They've got us foul, and can take us if they want us.Anyway, we'll need at least a week to fix us up any kind of drivingpower, so we can't run--and we probably couldn't get away from thosefolks if we had all our power. They haven't blown us up, and they couldhave done it easily enough. Besides, they act friendly, so we'd bettermeet them half way. Dive!"
Floating toward the open doorway, they were met by another rod of force,brought gently into the airlock, and supported upright beside the beingwho had invited them to visit him. Apparently an empty space-suit stoodthere; a peculiarly-fitted suit of some partially transparent, flexible,glass-like material; towering fully a foot over the head of the tallTerrestrial. Closer inspection, however, revealed that there wassomething inside that suit--a shadowy, weirdly-transparent being,staring at them with large, black eyes. The door clanged shut behindthem; they heard the faint hiss of inrushing air, and the inner dooropened; but their enveloping suits remained stretched almost as tightlyas ever. They felt the floor lurch beneath their feet, and a littleweight was granted them as the space-ship got under way. Stevens wavedhis arms vigorously at the stranger, pointing backward toward where hesupposed their own craft to be. The latter waved an arm reassuringly,pressed a contact, and a section of the wall suddenly becametransparent. Through it Stevens saw with satisfaction that the _ForlornHope_ was not being abandoned; in the grip of powerful tractor beams,every fragment of the wreckage was following close behind them in theirflight through space.
* * * * *
Stevens and Nadia followed their guide along a corridor, through severaldoors, and into a large room, which at first glance seemed empty, butin which several of the peculiarly transparent people of the craft werelying about upon cushions. They were undoubtedly human--but what humans!Tall and reedy they were, with enormous barrel chests, topped by headswhich, though really large, appeared insignificant because of theprodigious chests and because of the huge, sail-like, flapping ears.Their skins were a strikingly, livid, pale blue, absolutely devoid ofhair; and their lidless eyes, without a sign of iris, were chillinglyhorrible in their stark contrast of enormous, glaring black pupil andghastly, transparent blue eyeball.
As the two Terrestrials entered the room, the beings struggled to theirfeet and hurried laboriously away. Soon one of them returned, dressed inan insulating suit, and carrying three sets of head harnesses, connectedby multiplex cables to a large box which he placed upon the floor.He handed the headsets to the first officer, who in turn placed two ofthem at the feet of the Terrestrials, indicating to them that they wereto follow his example in placing them upon their heads, outside thehelmets. They did so, and even through the almost perfect insulation,and in spite of the powerful heaters of their suits, they felt a touchof frightful cold. The stranger turned a dial, and the two wanderersfrom Earth were instantly in full mental communication with Barkovis,the commander of a space-ship of Titan, the sixth satellite of Saturn!
"Well, I'll be ... say, what is this, anyway?" Steve exclaimedinvoluntarily, and Nadia smiled as Barkovis answered with a thought,clearer than any spoken words.
"It is a thought-exchanger. I do not know its fundamental mechanism,since we did not invent it and since I have had little time to studyit. The apparatus, practically as you see it here, was discovered but ashort time ago, in a small, rocket-propelled space-ship which we foundsome distance outside of the orbit of Jupiter. Its source of power hadbeen destroyed by the cold of outer space, but re-powering it was, ofcourse, a small matter. The crew of the vessel were all dead. Theywere, however, of human stock, and of a type adapted for life upona satellite. I deduce, from your compact structure, your enormousatmospheric pressure, and your, to us, unbelievably high bodytemperature, that you must be planet-dwellers. I suppose that youare natives of Jupiter?"
"Not quite." Stevens had in a measure recovered from his stunnedsurprise. "We are from Tellus, the third planet," and he revealedrapidly the events leading up to their present situation, concluding:"The people in the other sphere were, we believe, natives of Jupiter orof one of the satellites. We know nothing of them, since we could notlook through their screens. You rescued us from them; do you not knowthem?"
"No. Our visirays also were stopped by their screens of force--screensentirely foreign to our science. This is the first time that anyvessel from our Saturnian system has ever succeeded in reaching thene
ighborhood of Jupiter. We came in peace, but they attacked us at sightand we were obliged to destroy them. Now we must hurry back to Titan,for two reasons. First, because we are already at the extreme limitof our power range and Jupiter is getting further and further awayfrom Saturn. Second because our mirrors, which we had thought perfectreflectors of all frequencies possible of generation, are not perfect.Enough of those forces came through the mirrors to volatilize half ourcrew, and in a few minutes more none of us would have been left alive.Why, in some places our very atmosphere became almost hot enough to meltwater! If another of those vessels should attack us, in all probabilitywe should all be lost. Therefore we are leaving as rapidly as ispossible."
"You are taking the pieces of our ship along--we do not want to encumberyou."
"It is no encumbrance, since we have ample supplies of power. In fact,we are now employing the highest acceleration we Titanians can endurefor any length of time."
Stevens pondered long, forgetting that his thoughts were plain as printto the Titanian commander. Thank Heaven these strangers had sense enoughto be friendly--all intelligent races should be friends, for mutualadvancement. But it was a mighty long stretch to Saturn and thisacceleration wasn't so much. How long would it take to get there? Couldthey get back? Wouldn't they save time by casting themselves adrift,making the repairs most urgently needed, and going back to Ganymedeunder their own power? But would they have enough power left in thewreck to get even that far? And how about the big tube? He wasinterrupted by an insistent thought from Barkovis.
"You will save time, Stevens, by coming with us to Titan. There we shallaid you in repairing your vessel and in completing your transmittingtube, in which we shall be deeply interested. Our power plants shallsupply you with energy for your return journey until you are closeenough to Jupiter to recover your own beam. You are tired. I wouldsuggest that you rest--that you sleep long and peacefully."
"You seem to be handling the _Forlorn Hope_ without any trouble--thepieces aren't grinding at all. We'd better live there, hadn't we?"
"Yes that would be best, for all of us. You could not live a minute herewithout your suits; and, efficiently insulated as those suits are, yetyour incandescent body temperature makes our rooms unbearably hot--sohot that any of us must wear a space-suit while in the same room withyou, to avoid being burned to death."
"The incandescently hot" Terrestrials were wafted into the open airlockof their lifeboat upon a wand of force, and soon had prepared a longoverdue supper, over which Stevens cast his infectious, boyish grin atNadia.
"Sweetheart, you are undoubtedly a 'warm number,' and you have oftenremarked that I 'burn you up.' Nevertheless I think that we were bothconsiderably surprised to discover that we are both hot enough actuallyto consume persons unfortunate enough to be confined in the same roomwith us!"
"You're funny, Steve--like a crutch," she rebuked him, but smiled back,an elusive dimple playing in one lovely brown cheek. "Looking rightthrough anybody is too ghastly for words, but I think they're perfectlyall x, anyway, in spite of their being so hideous and so cold-blooded!"