Transcriber's Note:
This etext was produced from Astounding Stories May 1932. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.
_Nothing there could withstand him._]
The Bluff of the Hawk
By Anthony Gilmore
* * * * *
[Sidenote: "A trick? Carse was famed for them. A trap? But how?"]
Had not old John Sewell, the historian, recognized Hawk Carse for whathe was--a creator of new space-frontiers, pioneer of vast territoriesfor commerce, molder of history through his long feud with thepowerful Eurasian scientist, Ku Sui--the adventurer would doubtlesshave passed into oblivion like other long-forgotten spacemen. We haveSewell's industry to thank for our basic knowledge of Carse. His"Space-Frontiers of the Last Century" is a thorough work and theaccepted standard, but even it had of necessity to be compressed, andmany meaty episodes of the Hawk's life go almost unmentioned. Forinstance, Sewell gives a rough synopsis of "The Affair of the Brains,"but dismisses its aftermath entirely, in the following fashion (Vol.II, pp. 250-251):
"... there was only one way out: to smash the great dome covering one end of the asteroid and so release the life-sustaining air inside. Captain Carse achieved this by sending the space-ship _Scorpion_ crashing through the dome unmanned, and he, Friday and Eliot Leithgow were caught up in the out-rushing flood of air and catapulted into space, free of the dome and Dr. Ku Sui. Clad as they were in the latter's self-propulsive space-suits, they were quite capable of reaching Jupiter's Satellite III, only some thirty thousand miles away.
"Then speeding through space, Captain Carse discovered why he had never been able to find the asteroid-stronghold. He could not see it! Dr. Ku Sui had protected his lair by making it invisible! But Carse was at least confident that by breaking the dome he had destroyed all life within in, including the coordinated brains.
"So ended The Affair of the Brains.[1]
"The three comrades reached Satellite III safely, where, after a few minor adventures, Captain Carse...."
[Footnote 1: See the March, 1932, Issue of Astounding Stories.]
Sewell's ruthless surgery is most evident in that last paragraph. Ofcourse his telescoping of the events was due to limited space; buthe did wish to draw a full-length, character-revealing portrait ofHawk Carse, and with "... reached Satellite III safely, where, after afew minor adventures, Captain Carse ..." learned old John Sewell slidover one of his greatest opportunities.
The resourcefulness of Hawk Carse! In these "few minor adventures" hehad but one weapon with which to joust against overwhelming odds on anapparently hopeless quest. This weapon was a space-suit--nothingmore--yet so brilliantly and daringly did he wield its uniqueadvantages that he penetrated seemingly impregnable barriers andachieved alone what another man would have required the ray-batteriesof a space-fleet to do.
But here is the story, heard first from Friday's lips and told andre-told down through the years on the lonely ranches of the outlyingplanets, of that one dark, savage night on Satellite III and of theindomitable man who winged his lone way through it. Hawk Carse! Oldadventurer! Rise from your unknown star-girdled grave and live again!
* * * * *
Thirty thousand miles was the gap between Dr. Ku Sui's asteroid andSatellite III, the nearest haven. Thirty thousand miles in aspace-ship is about the time of a peaceful cigarro. Thirty thousandmiles in a cramped awkward space-suit grow into a nightmare journey,an eternity of suffering, and they will kill a good number of thosewho traverse them so.
For, take away the metal bulkheads and walls, soft lights and warmth ofa space-liner, get out in a small cramped space-suit, and space losesits mask of harmlessness and stands revealed as the bleak, unfeelingtorturer it is. There is the loneliness, the sense of timelessness, thesensation of falling, and above all there is the "weightless" feelingfrom pressure-changes in man's blood-stream--changes sickening in effectand soon resulting in delirium. Nothing definite; no gravity; no"bottom," no "top"; merely a vacuum, comprehended by the human mindthrough an all-enveloping nausea, and seen in confused spectrallabyrinths as the whole cold panorama of icy stars staggers and swirlsand the universe goes mad. Such a trip was enough to churn theresistance of the hardiest traveler, but for Hawk Carse, Friday andEliot Leithgow there was more. On Ku Sui's asteroid they had gonethrough hours of mental and physical tension without break orrelaxation, and they were sleep-starved and food-starved and theirbrains fagged and dull. What would have been a strong reaction on landhit them, in space, with tripled force.
So Friday--our ultimate authority--remembered little of the transit.He had bad short periods of wakefulness, when the recurring agony ofhis body woke and racked him afresh, and only during these did he seethe other two grotesque figures, sometimes widely separated, sometimesclose, dazzlingly half-lit by Jupiter's light. But he was consciousthat one of the three was keeping them more or less together, thoughonly later did he know that this one was Carse--Carse, who hardlyslept, who drove off unconsciousness and fought through nausea to keepat his task of shepherding, failing which they would have driftedmiles apart and become hopelessly separated. He was able to maintainthem in a fairly compact group by his discovery of a short metaldirection rod on the breast of the suit, which gave horizontalmovement in the direction it was pointed when its button was pressed.
* * * * *
But though it seemed endless, the journey was not; Satellite III grewand grew. Its pale circle spread outward; dark blurs took definition;a spot of blue winked forth--the Great Briney Lake. The globe at lastbecame concave, then, after they entered its atmosphere, convex. Thislast stretch was the most grueling.
Friday remembered it in vivid flashes. Time after time he dropped intoconfused sleep, each time to be awakened by Carse jarring into him,shouting at him through the suits' small radio sets, keeping him--andLeithgow--attentive to the job of decelerating. The man's efforts musthave been terrific, taxing all his enormous driving power, for he atthat time was without doubt more exhausted than they. But hesucceeded, and he was a haggard-faced, feverish shell of himself whenat last he had them in a dangling drunken halt in the air a hundredfeet from the surface.
Primal savagery lay stretched out below, and there seemed to be no safespot whereon to land. The foul, deep swamp that reached for miles onevery side, the towering trees that sprouted their spiny trunks andlimbs from it, the interlaced razor-edged vines and creeper-growths--allwas a stirring welter of tropic life, life varied and voracious anduntamed. From the tiny poisonous bansi insects layers deep on thenearest tree to the monster gantor that crouched in a clump of weeds,gently sawing his fangs back and forth, all the creatures of this worldwere against man.
Carse scanned the scene wearily. They had to land; had to sleep undernormal conditions, and eat and drink, before they could go further.But where? Where was haven? He snapped out the direction rod, movedaway a short distance, and then glimpsed, below and to the left, asmall peninsula of firm soil which seemed safe and uninhabited. Andthere was a pool of fairly clear water before it, containing nothingbut an old uprooted stump. He came back to the others, shook them, andled them down to the place he had discovered.
They landed with a thump which seemed to shake all life from two ofthem. Friday and Eliot Leithgow collapsed into inert heaps, asleepimmediately. Carse extracted a ray-gun from the belt of Leithgow'ssuit and prepared to stand watch. But that was too much. Heover-estimated his capacity. He had come through thirty hour
s ofhellish sleep-denied delirium, and he could not stave sleep off anylonger. He staggered and went down, and his eyelids were glued insleep when his body hit the ground.
But mechanically, with an instinct that sleep could not deny, his lefthand kept clasped around the butt of the ray-gun....
* * * * *
Satellite III's day has an average of seven hours' duration, her nightof six. It was perhaps the last hour of daylight when the three metaland fabric-clad figures lying outsprawled on the little thumb-shapedpiece of soil had landed. Now quickly the huge sweeping rim of Jupiterplunged down, and night fell over the land.
Fierce darkness. Jungle and swamp awoke with their scale of savagelife. Swift swooping shapes winged out from the trees, prey-hungryeyes gleaming green. And from the swamps came bellowings and stirringsfrom monster mud-encrusted bodies, awakening to their nocturnal questfor