There was no standing out against this chance. They gave him their “ayes” right gladly and began to quiver with hope as they stabbed outward for Mars and Rangerhaven.
Going up in a puff of pure energy was better any day than going down before the grinning pleasure of a Polar firing squad.
It was black polar night when they again touched Mars. A blizzard was yelling, ninety-below cold and fifty-five miles an hour strong. And the port lay shattered and deserted, roasted into lava by the passing vengeance of the Earth Navy.
At the head of a landing force of twenty militia and against the protests of his officers, who urged him not to risk his life, Captain Guide made his perilous way toward the operations building, buffeted by the wind and blinded by whirling granules of snow.
They reached their objective and Guide and a sergeant, smashing back the door with blasters, leaped inside. They were almost shot by the startled group around the stove. They almost fired into that group. But then they recognized one another and they laid away their weapons and held a glad reunion.
There was Cadette, captain of the Asteroid V, Miller, skipper of the Swift Voyage, and Gederle, master of the Queen Charlotte, merchantmen all. To see one another alive was surprise enough for the moment and Guide, gloating now at this reinforcement, let them exuberate for a while.
“By whillerkers,” said Cadette, “last I seen of you, Guide, was your flyin’ lights vanishin’ out toward the fleet. And now, by golly, you pop up like bad money. Say, how’d you land out there in the middle of three ships? Might have ruined one of us.”
“I was too late for action,” said Guide. “It’s all over now with the fleet.”
They held a long silence after this, a bitter silence.
Guide broke it at last. “But how did you manage to escape, the three of you?”
“Fleet train,” said Miller. “The Asteroid and the Swift were carrying food and ammunition and Gederle had about five hundred marines on his Queen Charlotte. Then Cadette had a battalion of engineers in case we had to patch up Earth when we took it—devil with it,” he added suddenly. “We’re alive right now but it’s a matter of a few days until the Earth patrols locate us. You can’t hide anything as big as our stuff. We’re done for.”
“Yes,” said Guide, “I suppose so.”
There was something in the way he said it which distracted them from their depression. They knew Guide as a vicious poker player and a stealer of cargos and they respected him.
He sat down beside the glowing potbelly stove, warming his lean hands. He let them work up their own curiosities before he said, “I have a slightly different angle. An unknown adventure is better than a certain defeat. I might be able to use you gentlemen—and your engineers and troops.”
That anything in the universe still had a use for them was almost argument enough. They had come here, intending to make one last battle of it against the hopeless numbers of Earthmen and ships which must, this minute, be combing Mars for the last of the rebels. Polar night would hide them at best for a few days. And then powerful detectors would rake across the place and they would be called upon to surrender and die or fight and die. They had seen as they passed all that was left of Cap City, all that remained of Gold Strike, the ruin of Fort Desolation and the death-strewn ramparts of Base One, once the most powerful single fortress in the Solar System. Out there across the continents they had wives, children, parents, and they knew nothing of their fate. But spacemen have a certain fortitude. And they could look now at Guide.
“I cached,” said Guide, “some fifty pounds of extra-velocity fuel in a vault near here when I was mobilized.”
“Fifty pounds!” said Miller.
“Are you sure it wasn’t blown up?” said Cadette. “You haven’t seen this place in daylight. It’s a ruin.”
“When I was a kid around here, we used to get blown up pretty regularly,” said Guide, “rangers being no better than what they were. And we had an old vault in which we cached loot. The EV is down there by the river in that vault. I took most of the packing off it, so it will be easy handling. We have four ships. That’s twelve and a half pounds a ship or enough for six months’ burning. From what you say, I gather we have about fifteen hundred men amongst us including your troops, and perhaps two or three months’ provisions?”
They were breathless, expectant. They had lost one hope already and they were afraid to lose this one.
But Gederle was a conservative. “If we try to burn EV we’ll be unable to keep our speed down to finite levels. We’d be out of the Solar System in a matter of hou—” He halted. Suddenly they understood.
“But it’s never been cracked!” said Gederle.
“Well, blasting through the wall of light is preferable as a chance,” said Guide. “I never heard of a man surging through a row of Polar burners yet.”
“The wall of light,” whispered Cadette. “And then . . . then the stars?”
“Yes,” said Guide with an elaborate yawn, crossing his fine boots and pouring a drink. “The good old wall of light. A lot have gone out for a try, but none have come back. Maybe they exploded into pure energy. Maybe they are derelicts. And maybe it’s just so confounded fascinatin’ in the stars that they don’t want to come back. Well?”
“But do we just leave everything? The war . . . well, that’s lost. But how about our people?”
“The only reason I’d risk it,” said Guide with sudden viciousness, “is to get a chance to come back and wipe out these ice-brains! We pledged our lives to kill them. Earth is ours. We aren’t done yet! I feel,” he added, leaning back and grasping his drink, “that they can still be whipped. You see, I’ve one of their engineers aboard who knows the secret of their barrier.”
This catalyzed them into instant enthusiasm. Their bitter hatred had carried them far. Now it was going to carry them further. Words of savage hope rushed from them and they fell into an involved discussion of ways and means.
After a while Guide interrupted them. “I think it unwise to put all our chips on one stack of cards, gentlemen. I would like to form a colony in the stars, build the necessary equipment and then come back with a small portion of our people and wreck the ice-brain towns. If we fail to take Earth, we will at least have made it possible for our own people to revolt. But we may have to retreat again. We need a base in the stars. I think the Queen Charlotte, being a fast liner, could give us her troops and then join us after we are gone to a certain rendezvous.”
“But why should she stay behind?” said Cadette.
“I’ll do whatever you say, Guide,” said Gederle.
“We’ve fifteen atmosphere planes,” said Guide. “While the enemy is still trying to consolidate his gains here, I suggest we spend what time we can getting our families, those we can find, and women down to the Queen Charlotte. If she gets caught, she gets caught. At least the rest of us will be free to attempt the project and avenge her.”
They looked at him, the glare of determination on their faces. They knew nothing of the stars or the navigation to them. They had no way of computing their future speed. They were grasping a thin hope. And they drank greedily to it.
Just outside the giddily whirling Mercury, the three space vessels waited. They had improved their time by patching up battle damage and distributing stores. And they waited now tensely for the Queen Charlotte.
Hers was the most daring role in this part of the mission. But there was danger to the others as well, for the Queen Charlotte might be allowed to get free only to lead the victorious navy down upon the rendezvous. They were tense, then, trying to hide their anxiety, trying not to appear overwrought with worry over the fates of their own people.
A hasty canvass of the entire small fleet had netted a large number of addresses. Only a fool could suppose that a third of those to whom rescue was directed for the Queen Charlotte would be reached. Many might be perfectly wel
l and alive and still miss the call of the atmosphere planes. In the act of escaping the garrisons, several planes, or all of them, might be blasted down. And a stray cruiser might have come upon the old freebooter holdout at Rangerhaven and blown the Queen Charlotte and all her rescued people to questionable glory.
But they worked on the Asteroid V, the Swift Voyage and the Bellerophon. They intended to go four ships as one, banded together with something more than signals. As they intended to reach at least fifty times the speed of light, they knew that they would become invisible and lost to one another in the first few hours. And so, with torches and metal bars, they were uniting themselves as a cluster of ships, all using their drives, all forging ahead but only the Bellerophon steering. They had argued on the safety factor for some time and had decided that it was better to perish as a unit than to get lost as a fleet.
But the workmen were laggard, scrambling over the hulls, clumsy in their space kits. Their eyes were continually raking the dark skies about Mercury which lay a thousand miles from them. The Sun’s corona lashed and blazed, a gorgeous sight. They had eyes only for the possible coming of the Queen Charlotte.
High purpose and higher resolve stirred them. But their hope lagged as long as the fourth ship remained unreported.
And then, at the end of the fifth day of their wait, yells of joy sang out through the ships and crackled over the workmen’s intercoms. Down from the Sun came the Queen Charlotte, intact, braking and jockeying to drift to a halt beside them.
Within the hour, Guide was reading over the intercoms of men and ships the list of those saved.
It had been hot and nervous work. One atmosphere ship had been sighted and shot down, another had been badly damaged but had come through. And one hundred and eighty-five members of the families of those in this fleet had been contacted, still alive, and rescued. At first thought, the personnel looked at this as a bad show; but then the tales of the adventure began to circulate through the ships and the rescue took on the complexion of the miraculous. Hardly a building was left standing in the major cities. All communications were out. Ice-brains were everywhere, raping, burning, looting. One hundred and eighty-five names out of two thousand was a phenomenal high.
The fates of many of the missing were known, a fact which dispelled much uncertainty, for the families were close as spacemen are close. And then, a victorious factor—there were two thousand women on the Queen Charlotte, rescued at random from the floods of terrorized civilians pouring from the towns of Mars.
They had a staff meeting on the Bellerophon while workmen put graps on the Queen Charlotte and brought her into the cluster.
The tales Gederle’s people had brought had inflamed them to a desperate pitch.
“I hope, gentlemen,” said Guide, as they took their chairs, “that we have done and will do all that we can. It is obvious that upon us depends any future freedom in the Solar System and upon us devolves the whole responsibility of rescuing our late comrades and our people. We have the nucleus of a new base. But we must remember that our primary mission is the rescue of Earth. It will take months to build up the necessary technology to crack the barrier. We must invent and perfect a most complicated device. And we must have a base from which to strike again should we, this first time, fail—for if we even remain near the Sun, we will be discovered and destroyed.
“If we reach the stars, Earth can be saved!”
They made their adjustments, discussed their courses, rearranged their personnel for cluster travel and then stood up.
Ceremoniously they shook hands.
“In a very few days,” Guide said, “we will be certain in the knowledge of victory, or a mist of pure energy between Earth and the stars. Your posts, gentlemen.”
In ten minutes their drives thundered and they were outward bound.
It ran through the ships like an electric impulse, the miracle they had experienced. It dazed them.
Nine days had passed, and here they gazed down upon a shimmering, lovely world, wrapped in cloud mists, plated with seas, colorful with continents.
Nine days!
This was Alpha Centauri. It was many light-years of travel from Earth and here they were in nine days! Light, traveling at 186,000 miles per second, required years to get there from Sol. They had made it in nine days!
The wonder of this was second only to their wonder about the planet below. An atmosphere plane had skipped off two hours since and had radioed back technical data which elated them all. Three-quarter gravity, good air, good water, wildlife, a multitude of plants.
And Guide gave the orders to strike away their bonds and land in units.
He stood, watching the rest ease to a landing on a grassy plain where a river ran, and fooled perplexedly with his pencil. He could not calculate exactly how many, many times the speed of light they had had to come to do this. For Guide was no astronomer, nor were the rest of the officers. But he had made the daring gesture and he had come through. They had not exploded, they had not encountered meteor belts. They were here and that should be enough. But it puzzled him and through the months which came would rise again and again to confuse him. Nine days to go several light-years . . .
But the others were jubilant. Those who had had to leave their women behind them, those who knew their families to be alive still, confidently expected an early reunion. Those who had but lately watched the white fleet burst into flame and vanish before the gunnery of the Earth Navy swaggered over their chance at revenging their friends.
The selected site quickly sprouted shacks. The season and climate had been chosen for food raising and soon gay groups of women could be seen bringing gardens into being from the seeds they found there and from the various grains in their supplies.
A doctor got busy on the captive Eskimo engineer and shortly hypnotics and persuasion garnered a harvest of technical information.
Men laid out a factory site and built the necessary huts from logs and equipped them from the vessels.
It was a season of high hopes and violent effort and few there were who spent less than eighteen hours of twenty-six—the planet’s day—at their tasks.
“The enemy did not wait for us,” said Guide. “We will not wait for him to recover from the disorders he has brought on himself. The faster we are finished here, the sooner we will again own Earth. We’ll deliver her and present her with a colony and a new commerce. We’ll wipe out the ice-brains, rebuild our cities and then, of course, develop all the stars. We’ve won already. The rest is mere technical detail.”
During the next ten months of ceaseless effort the only complaint came from the women. They were not certain. The trip had once been made, true, but should they be left here with only a small fighting force to protect them, they would have little chance of building any kind of a strong colony. They wanted to know why the thoughts of vengeance which obsessed these men of theirs could not find outlet in the creation of a new world. Was not New Earth a promising land? With their technology and skill, could they not build here everything they had left behind on Mars? Why risk a trip?
Guide heard them out complacently. In his buoyant good spirits he would not hear of any failures. But at length, seeing that this new colony would indeed be helpless without manpower and good technicians, he agreed that they could have one ship, the Asteroid V. With a skeleton crew, the Asteroid would stay behind, providing at once the necessary guard for the colony and the means of going off for aid if the main mission failed. It would not carry half the people who would be left behind, being the smallest vessel, but it could go for relief. That would give the colony a safety factor. And beyond that Guide would not go.
At the end of ten months, with all the effort devoted to the barrier uncoupler, with the colony barely able to support itself, Guide announced the time of takeoff. There was a loud girding and harsh rattle as soldiers and spacemen and marines prepared for the coming action.
In the midst of departure an atmosphere pilot who had been testing his ship returned to base with news. But little attention was paid to him.
“Over that range of mountains,” he said, “there’s a lot of mounds. I landed for a look-see and, by golly, it’s a colony. Been gone for hundreds of years, I guess, but there’s a cemetery and the names cut in the stones are Earth names—Jones, Smike, Dodgers—”
“Hmm,” said Guide, his mind on getting a transformer aboard the Bellerophon. “Must be an early expedition. Old-time ship. No women. Broke down here or ran out of fuel and there they are. Well, well. Steady on that tackle, there.”
“I don’t think so,” said the atmosphere pilot. “I mean I said hundreds of years, but that place is really old. It’s a long time before space travel, looks to me. Stones all weathered away, graves sunken, big buildings all crumpled like the Parthenon. Really old. An expedition wouldn’t have gone to that trouble if they hadn’t had women.”
“Been no tries for the stars before fifty years ago,” said Guide. “Guess you must be wrong. Easy, easy now. You want to knock the side of the ship out?” He smiled at the youngster. “Been no fuel before EV that would have made the grade. You hop over and give them a hand loading your plane. Won’t be more than an hour before we leave dirt.”
Some of the women hovered on the outskirts of the commotion. One of them at last plucked up nerve to talk to Guide. “Sir, I’m worried.”
“Nonsense,” said Guide. “We’ll be back in a matter of weeks.”
“But without help we can’t construct our irrigation dam or do any of the hundred other things we’ll have to do to make this a good colony. You’re taking all the technicians.”