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Transcriber's Note
This etext was produced from Astounding Stories September 1931. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.
She was floating along the wreck-pack's edge.]
The Sargasso of Space
_By Edmond Hamilton_
Helpless, doomed, into the graveyard of space floats the wrecked freighter _Pallas_.
Captain Crain faced his crew calmly. "We may as well face the facts,men," he said. "The ship's fuel-tanks are empty and we are driftingthrough space toward the dead-area."
The twenty-odd officers and men gathered on the middle-deck of thefreighter _Pallas_ made no answer, and Crain continued:
"We left Jupiter with full tanks, more than enough fuel to take us toNeptune. But the leaks in the starboard tanks lost us half our supply,and we had used the other half before discovering that. Since the ship'srocket-tubes cannot operate without fuel, we are simply drifting. Wewould drift on to Neptune if the attraction of Uranus were not pullingus to the right. That attraction alters our course so that in threeship-days we shall drift into the dead-area."
Rance Kent, first-officer of the _Pallas_, asked a question: "Couldn'twe, raise Neptune with the radio, sir, and have them send out afuel-ship in time to reach us?"
"It's impossible, Mr. Kent," Crain answered. "Our main radio is deadwithout fuel to run its dynamotors, and our auxiliary set hasn't thepower to reach Neptune."
"Why not abandon ship in the space-suits," asked Liggett, thesecond-officer, "and trust to the chance of some ship picking us up?"
The captain shook his head. "It would be quite useless, for we'd simplydrift on through space with the ship into the dead-area."
The score of members of the crew, bronzed space-sailors out of everyport in the solar system, had listened mutely. Now, one of them, a talltube-man, stepped forward a little.
"Just what is this dead-area, sir?" he asked. "I've heard of it, but asthis is my first outer-planet voyage, I know nothing about it."
"I'll admit I know little more," said Liggett, "save that a good manydisabled ships have drifted into it and have never come out."
* * * * *
"The dead area," Crain told them, "is a region of space ninety thousandmiles across within Neptune's orbit, in which the ordinary gravitationalattractions of the solar system are dead. This is because in that regionthe pulls of the sun and the outer planets exactly balance each other.Because of that, anything in the dead-area, will stay in there untiltime ends, unless it has power of its own. Many wrecked space-ships havedrifted into it at one time or another, none ever emerging; and it'sbelieved that there is a great mass of wrecks somewhere in the area,drawn and held together by mutual attraction."
"And we're drifting in to join them," Kent said. "Some prospect!"
"Then there's really no chance for us?" asked Liggett keenly.
Captain Crain thought. "As I see it, very little," he admitted. "If ourauxiliary radio can reach some nearby ship before the _Pallas_ entersthe dead-area, we'll have a chance. But it seems a remote one."
He addressed himself to the men: "I have laid the situation franklybefore you because I consider you entitled to the truth. You mustremember, however, that while there is life there is hope.
"There will be no change in ship routine, and the customary watches willbe kept. Half-rations of food and water will be the rule from now on,though. That is all."
As the men moved silently off, the captain looked after them withsomething of pride.
"They're taking it like men," he told Kent and Liggett. "It's a pitythere's no way out for them and us."
"If the _Pallas_ does enter the dead-area and join the wreck-pack,"Liggett said, "how long will we be able to live?"
"Probably for some months on our present condensed air and foodsupplies," Crain answered. "I would prefer, myself, a quicker end."
"So would I," said Kent. "Well, there's nothing left but to pray forsome kind of ship to cross our path in the next day or two."
* * * * *
Kent's prayers were not answered in the next ship-day, nor in the next.For, though one of the _Pallas'_ radio-operators was constantly at theinstruments under Captain Crain's orders, the weak calls of theauxiliary set raised no response.
Had they been on the Venus or Mars run, Kent told himself, there wouldbe some chance, but out here in the vast spaces, between the outerplanets, ships were fewer and farther between. The big, cigar-shapedfreighter drifted helplessly on in a broad curve toward the dreadedarea, the green light-speck of Neptune swinging to their left.
On the third ship-day Kent and Captain Crain stood in the pilot-housebehind Liggett, who sat at the now useless rocket-tube controls. Theireyes were on the big glass screen of the gravograph. The black dot on itthat represented their ship was crawling steadily toward the bright redcircle that stood for the dead-area....
They watched silently until the dot had crawled over the circle's redline, heading toward its center.
"Well, we're in at last," Kent commented. "There seems to be no changein anything, either."
Crain pointed to the instrument-panel. "Look at the gravitometers."
Kent did. "All dead! No gravitational pull from any direction--no, thatone shows a slight attraction from ahead!"
"Then gravitational attraction of some sort does exist in the dead-areaafter all!" Liggett exclaimed.
"You don't understand," said Crain. "That attraction from ahead is thepull of the wreck-pack at the dead-area's center."
"And it's pulling the _Pallas_ toward it?" Kent exclaimed.
Crain nodded. "We'll probably reach the wreck-pack in two moreship-days."
* * * * *
The next two ship-days seemed to Kent drawn out endlessly. A moodysilence had grown upon the officers and men of the ship. All seemedoppressed by the strange forces of fate that had seized the ship andwere carrying it, smoothly and soundlessly, into this region ofirrevocable doom.
The radio-operators' vain calls had ceased. The _Pallas_ drifted on intothe dreaded area like some dumb ship laden with damned souls. It driftedon, Kent told himself, as many a wrecked and disabled ship had donebefore it, with the ordinary activities and life of the solar systemforever behind it, and mystery and death ahead.
It was toward the end of the second of those two ship-days thatLiggett's voice came down from the pilot-house:
"Wreck-pack in sight ahead!"
"We've arrived, anyway!" Kent cried, as he and Crain hastened up intothe pilot house. The crew was running to the deck-windows.
"Right ahead there, about fifteen degrees left," Liggett told Kent andCrain, pointing. "Do you see it?"
Kent stared; nodded. The wreck-pack was a distant, disk-like massagainst the star-flecked heavens, a mass that glinted here and there inthe feeble sunlight of space. It did not seem large, but, as theydrifted steadily closer in the next hours, they saw that in reality thewreck-pack was tremendous, measuring at least fifty miles across.
Its huge mass was a heterogeneous heap, composed mostly of countlesscigar-like space-ships in all stages of wreckage. Some appeared smashedalmost out of all recognizable shape, while others were, to allappearances unharmed. They floated together in this dense mass in space,crowded against one another by their mutual attraction.
There seemed to be among them every type of ship known in the solarsystem, from small, swift mail-boats to big freighters. And, as theydrifted nearer, the three in the pilot-house could see that around andbetween the ships of the wreck-pac
k floated much other matter--fragmentsof wreckage, meteors, small and large, and space-debris of every sort.
The _Pallas_ was drifting, not straight toward the wreck-pack, but in acourse that promised to take the ship past it.
"We're not heading into the wreck-pack!" Liggett exclaimed. "Maybe we'lldrift past it, and on out the dead-area's other side!"
* * * * *
Captain Crain smiled mirthlessly. "You're forgetting yourspace-mechanics, Liggett. We will drift along the wreck-pack's edge, andthen will curve in and go round it in a closing spiral until we reachits edge."
"Lord, who'd have thought