Fiction Complete, page 33
“That’s funny,” Spinner said significantly. “He struck me as being a good worrier.”
It was the pilot’s turn to stare. He had the air of a man who senses danger without being quite convinced of the reality. “Then let’s go see where he is,” he said slowly, “if you think we should.”
Despite this attitude of letting himself be persuaded De Rosa made good time along the corridor. Spinner, with his shorter legs, had to hustle to keep abreast.
The pilot knocked on Malcom’s door. The cabin was unoccupied. They checked the dining saloon again. After that De Rosa led the way toward the tail.
He stuck his head briefly into the rocket-room. Over his shoulder Spinner caught a glimpse of Swensen directing two dungaree-clad mechanics in checking and cleaning some piece of apparatus.
“Not there,” reported the pilot. “Let’s buttonhole Jones and see if he knows anything.”
They waited a moment in the passage between the dining salon and the galley until the saturnine steward passed with a tray. De Rosa stopped him, and Jones tried to be helpful.
“Last time I saw him,” he recalled, “was half an hour ago. He was headed for either the portside cabins or the passage to the escape rockets, I think.”
They left him carrying his tray thoughtfully toward the galley and hurried in the direction indicated.
“Knock on some of these doors,” said De Rosa, turning into the last longitudinal corridor.
“You’d better do it,” advised Spinner, thinking of the need for haste. “They seem to like to gab with me.”
DE ROSA flung him an exasperated glance but bore the brunt of the encounters. Most of the cabins were occupied but no one admitted to any knowledge of Captain Malcom’s whereabouts. Not even Dr. Gibbs could help when De Rosa paused in his doorway.
Listening to this last conversation Spinner was conscious of someone behind him. He turned with a motion akin to a jump. Anne was watching from her door across the passage.
“Anne, have you seen the captain?” he asked, trying to keep the urgency from his voice.
“What are you playing now?” she demanded icily. “Follow-the-leader?”
He took a step forward but De Rosa touched his arm.
“We’d better try the other side,” said the pilot, who was beginning to look worried.
Spinner thought he caught a puzzled expression in Anne’s eyes but De Rosa urged him away.
They crossed the main corridor and searched along the other side of the ship without result. The first shift of diners began to straggle back from the saloon, which meant that the others would soon be taking their places.
“All right,” sighed De Rosa, “we’ll look around the store-rooms and the escape rockets, just to be thorough.”
“Sssshh!” hissed Spinner, raising a hand.
They listened. The second time he was sure he heard a scream from the other side of the ship. De Rosa heard it too, for he sprinted off down the crosspassage with Spinner at his heels.
The cabins there had by now been evacuated by the second shift of diners. The hurrying pair skidded to a stop and looked uncertainly about.
“James!”
It was Anne’s voice, breathless but not far distant.
James—that’s me! Spinner realized.
“That way!” exclaimed De Rosa suddenly.
They whirled to face aft as the girl staggered from the empty end of the corridor. She stopped at the sight of them and put one hand weakly out to the bulkhead.
Running up Spinner saw that her hair was disheveled and her eyes dazed. Gently he pulled her right hand away from her face. There was a reddening welt on her cheekbone.
“In there!” she said.
Spinner saw then the red-painted door through which she had come. It bore in white letters the sign Escape Rockets and in smaller characters, Airtight.
“I saw him go in before, so when you left I decided to tell him you were looking for him,” said Anne.
Running footsteps sounded from the direction of the main passage. The burly Swensen skidded to a halt at the intersection exactly as they had done before him. Seeing them he approached, swinging his wrench lightly in one huge fist.
“He was there all right,” continued the girl. “I don’t know what he was doing at that little door but when I spoke to him—he leaped at me!”
She fingered her jaw gingerly as if it were numb.
“Who, lady?” demanded Swensen, eyeing Spinner.
“Captain Malcom. He knocked me down, then ran back to what he was doing. I pulled myself up and slipped out.”
Spinner felt his temper boiling up. Then he caught sight of De Rosa’s stricken expression.
“The rockets!” gasped the pilot. “Suppose he’s taking one out!”
VII
THE three men were immediately galvanized into action. De Rosa tore the red door open and they piled through on his heels, leaving Anne leaning against the bulkhead as the door closed automatically behind them.
The chamber be id it was a short wide compartment to which other entrances opened. There was a short balcony opposite them with a ladder at either end. Midway along the balcony was a small hatch in the outer bulkhead, matched by another down on their level. Spinner realized that the two port escape rockets were berthed snugly one above the other.
The lower hatch was shut as they entered, the other ajar. Swensen ran to the lower one, turned the enormous lever, tried to swing the airtight hatch open.
“No use,” said De Rosa, looking closely. “It’s spot-welded at the edges. He must be in the other one.”
He started up the ladder with Swensen close behind. Spinner stared at the dark opening with vague apprehension.
There was no explosion, no flare of jets—just a ringing thud as the bulkheads shook with the recoil of the mechanical device that cast the escape craft free.
“The door!” De Rosa yelled down to Spinner.
His cry was almost deadened by the sudden moan of escaping air. Spinner turned back to the entrance, finding it suddenly difficult to move or breathe. With his hand on the handle he glanced up.
De Rosa was slowly collapsing, one hand still pushing against the open hatch. Beneath the added impact of Swensen’s big body, the portal was swinging slowly shut.
Spinner yanked on the handle and slid the door back.
A colossal balloon burst in his face with a whumph. Face stinging he staggered back. Simultaneously he felt—more than heard—the blow of the hatch crashing shut as the blast of new air caught the half-closed surface.
“Are you all right?”
He waved to Anne’s scared face in the doorway. Swensen helped De Rosa down the ladder and they staggered into the corridor ahead of Spinner.
“Crazy fool!” gasped De Rosa, beginning to regain his breath.
“When they attempt self-destruction they are quite likely to include others in their plans,” said Spinner.
“What?”
“I was just misquoting a sentence in a psych text. What would happen if, say, he turns back and aims himself at us?”
There was a moment of dead silence. Spinner realized that he was actually seeing human faces turning white before his eyes. For an instant he wondered about his own.
“The other rockets!” exclaimed De Rosa.
Without another word the others followed him in a mad dash across the ship to the opposite berths. They caught up to find him swinging open the hatch to the lower rocket.
“I was scared he’d welded this one too,” he told them.
“What are you going to do?” demanded Spinner.
“Take another jet out and block him off if he tries it!
“You’re crazy!” said Spinner but he wondered. It just might be possible.
“Not so crazy,” retorted De Rosa. “I used to play a good game of air-polo. Besides, we could never duck with the Scarlet Arrow.”
Spinner gripped his shoulder and drew him back from the entrance to the rocket.
“I’m crazier than you,” he said. “Also, I’m ten years younger and I played with the Hornets two days before we left Mars.”
De Rosa straightened up, staring. Realization swept across his face as Spinner heard Swensen and Anne exclaim behind him.
“Perkins—Spinner Perkins! I knew there was something about you.” He whirled to Swensen. “He’s right! I’ll help him get launched. You get Miss Gibbs inside and ring in a general alarm!”
A FEW brief action-crammed minutes later Spinner found himself strapped before the simple controls of the escape rocket.
De Rosa had pointed out the release lever and promised to contact Spinner on the radio as soon as he could get forward. Now it was a matter of getting into action.
He took a deep breath and flipped the release. Within seconds sections of the outer skin slipped back. He could see the stars through the narrow observation band running back on both sides of his position. Strapped down as he was he hardly felt the shove when the rocket was flipped out of its berth.
Slowly he drifted away from the ship. He could see stars on all sides now except where the hull of the Scarlet Arrow cut off the view. He traveled along at the same speed as when the rocket had been a part of the parent vessel, in the direction of the small but piercingly bright Sun.
“Now where did he go?” Spinner muttered.
He scanned the instruments before him. The control panel and the pilot seat were mounted together and moved short distances in any direction to help absorb accelerations. At the moment the simplified detectors showed no matter within range except the bulk of the liner.
Spinner raised the nose with a blip of the small steering rockets rather than taking the time to spin the gyro. He fed a short blast into the drivers and pushed “above” the level of the Scarlet Arrow.
Lights flickered and shifted on his detector dials. As he slowly drifted ahead of the liner, having gained slightly in his relative speed toward the Sun, the directional indicators picked up something new.
“Coming in from port,” he muttered. “High—and probably at the rocket tubes.”
He swung his craft about, using fuel prodigally to head tailward, and boosted himself over to the port side. Guessing by his indicators he blasted toward the invisible Malcom. When he was moving briskly in that direction he slowly flipped his craft nose for tail to point at the receding liner.
“If he didn’t see those bursts, he’s blind,” he murmured.
The Scarlet Arrow shrank to almost nothing in the dimness ahead of him. It gave him a lonely feeling. The detectors indicated an object approaching from his right rear, so close that an alarm bell began to ring.
Spinner fed power to his main drive. The distant liner began to swell in his vision like a balloon. He used a touch of his steering rockets to head slightly past the tail.
Then he caught sight of Malcom’s escape rocket from the extreme rear of his observation band. For a moment it was no more than a faint gleam in the void—but it closed the distance with a rush. Seeing the sleek exterior it was hard to imagine it guided by a distorted mind. Yet Malcom was obviously heading directly and aggressively at the big ship.
“Gonna make a big blaze for himself,” Spinner muttered. “Well, I hope he sees this one!”
He let go an extravagant blast to force his craft over into the path of Malcom’s and to kill somewhat his present velocity toward the liner. The chair-control assembly creaked and moved in its mountings.
The alarm bell gave way to a beeping whistle. The other rocket rushed upon him menacingly.
THEN the light of explosions flickered about its steering jets and the nose began to swing away. Just as Spinner was unconsciously shrinking into his padded seat and raising his hands before his face, in a slow futile gesture the tail of-the other rocket was lit by heavy blasts.
Malcom, balked of his main target, shot off to the rear of the Scarlet Arrow.
The last Spinner could see visually, the captain was beginning to spin his craft as if preparing to decelerate.
“I’d better take a minute to see if De Rosa’s available,” he told himself.
He flipped the switch of his radio.
“Hello. De Rosa?” he called. “Can you hear me?”
“Like a rocket blast, I hear you,” answered a voice he recognized as Reilly’s. “Just talk natural.”
“Spinner?” De Rosa broke in. “According to our instruments he went off to tailward but he’s slowing down. Did you see him?”
“Did I see him?” Spinner snorted. “I feinted him half a mile off his curve!”
“Nice work!” said De Rosa hurriedly. “Now listen! We can get better readings here than you can with that little detector in your panel. He wants the ship—he won’t like wasting himself on you. We’ll try to estimate his next curve for you—okay?”
“Okay,” agreed Spinner. “Handiest thing for me would be to know his range and what he’s aiming at.”
“All right—stand by!”
Spinner leaned forward to peer out the transparent band. He could see nothing but stars and the black shadow that was the Scarlet Arrow. He himself had by now drifted across her tail on a closer curve than that taken by Malcom.
“Perkins?” Reilly’s voice spoke again, seemingly beside his ear.
“Here!”
“He damped that curve and now he’s starting back. De Rosa’s going to read me his approach.”
“All set,” promised Spinner.
He swung the rocket end for end again. Once more he was looking back on the liner, this time drifting away to starboard and behind. The big ship dwindled almost to a point before Reilly began to relay figures.
“He’s two hundred miles . . . picking up speed . . . you getting this?”
“Getting it,” Spinner confirmed.
“Hundred-seventy . . . can’t tell the angle exactly yet. . . something like one-sixty lateral and two-ten vertical . . . hundred-fifty-five miles . . .”
“Hey, he’s closing up fast!” said Spinner, worried.
“That he is . . . hundred-forty . . . hundred-thirty-five . . . De Rosa says you’d better get a little more distance in order to pick him up.”
“Have I time?”
“If you’re snappy about it,” replied Reilly.
Spinner blasted around and kicked the rocket along in the general direction of Malcom’s approach. He disliked thinking about how much fuel he was squandering. When he respun to head toward the ship the latter was detectable only by a wavering at the limits of his instruments.
“Can you still hear me, Reilly?” he called in sudden panic.
“Hear you fine,” came the answer. “Don’t worry, Doc! You’re the one watching this from the reserved seat. Hang on!”
There was a brief pause, then Reilly resumed. “De Rosa says you’d better start picking up speed . . . that’s it . . . correct about half a degree port . . . fine . . . fine . . . now you’re bearing right on us. So is Malcom. You might be picking him up on your left tail any time now.”
“Yeah,” interrupted Spinner. “The needles are just beginning to jump a little. Still can’t pin him down though.”
“Feed them a little. He’s got some speed on you. We’ve got you almost parallel to his curve now but he might pass you up.”
Spinner grunted as his acceleration pushed him back in his chair despite the built-in “give.”
“De Rosa says,” Reilly reported, almost gaily, “that we have about one chance in ten of ducking. Don’t think I haven’t got my sweating little thumb on the master key of the whole tail battery!”
VIII
SPINNER tightened his lips at the thought of being in the other’s position. Then his detector began to feed real information to his instruments.
“He’s coming up on me,” he reported.
“That’s what Joe says. Light a fire there—if you can’t match him at least let him see you!”
But Spinner had already driven himself deep into the cushions with steady acceleration. He watched his dials.
They really steered us into each other, he thought.
Malcom was creeping up on his beam, almost on a plane with Spinner’s deck. Presently, by craning his neck, he actually caught sight of the other craft through the rear end of his observation band.
Malcom’s rockets were working—small puff’s that looked like steering blasts. Then these ceased and brighter flashes burst and disappeared, left miles astern in a pulse-beat.
“He’s going to try to pass me!” Spinner gasped.
“It’ll be close,” answered Reilly, sounding tense. “You’re practically together. We can’t tell you anything more.”
Spinner watched the other rocket gain slowly but steadily. When he flicked an eye to his instruments he saw that the Scarlet Arrow was detectable dead ahead though still invisible.
He looked back just as Malcom’s rocket bursts thinned out and died completely.
Gave up, he thought.
There was no further sign of life from the other ship. Even its steering jets were dead although it began to look as if Malcom would collide with him.
Why isn’t he trying to get round me? Spinner wondered. Does he want to knock me out of the way first?
He cut his tail tubes as another thought struck him.
“Reilly!” he exclaimed. “Ask De Rosa how much fuel that nut probably has left.”
He heard a startled grunt. After a long pause, during which Malcom pulled up almost abeam and so close Spinner felt he could spit across the interval, De Rosa spoke over the radio.
“He could easily be dry by now. Spinner, considering the way he’s been tossing it around. Is he still burning?”
“Not at all for the last couple of minutes.”
“I think he’s finished!” De Rosa’s words came rapidly. “Do what you can but I don’t think there’s much chance of feinting him off this time. We’ll scan for you later if we can juggle this can fast enough.”
There was a tone of finality in the last words that told Spinner De Rosa was already beginning to move. Sure enough, far ahead in the star-studded void, a flame flickered® and swelled. Reilly had his thumb down.
