Collected Fiction, page 447
“Wait’ll he finds out,” I said sadly. “That’s why I need you, Jerry. The Raider was a wreck after the patrol boats left it on Ceres. We had it towed to Earth, and rebuilt.
“Well, that job was accurate, down to the last detail. Right now the Raider is exactly as it was when Percy Ketch commanded it.”
“Oh, Lord!” I groaned. “You didn’t load the ray-guns?”
“That’s the only trouble. I couldn’t get ray-charges. Government control, you know. We’re due to take the Raider to Ceres. Shooting starts when we arrive, in two days. Only we need a big publicity stunt—a cosmic one, Jerry.”
“Steal some ray-charges and blast down a patrol ship,” I suggested.
“Lay off the funny stuff. Here’s my idea. Suppose Percy Ketch didn’t die on Ceres?”
“He did.”
“Sure, but suppose he’s still alive. He finds out we’ve rebuilt the Raider, smuggles himself aboard, and takes over.”
“He takes over alone?”
“Some of his old crew are with him. Then we signal for help, a patrol boat comes along and the fake Ketch makes a getaway, with his gang, in a lifeboat. Details can be worked out later.”
“Uh-huh. Like the question of how a patrol ship can locate the Raider. It’s black, remember.”
“The star—Kerrigan—barricades himself in the radio room and sends out a tight beam to guide the patrol in. A child could do it.”
“Why not?” I thought. “A child planned it.” But I didn’t say a word. After all, Barnaby’s my boss.
“So,” he said, “you con the extra files and find somebody who looks like Percy Ketch. Take over, Jerry. I trust you implicitly.”
I sat there, looking after him as he bounced out.
THEN I went through the files. Finally I found somebody who resembled the dead pirate, and gave him a call, as well as a half dozen other boys I knew I could handle. After that I made a date with Mona Irish for dinner.
Mona was Kerrigan’s leading lady in Black Rover. Her pug nose and red curls showed on the visiplate a half hour later.
“Jerry,” she said, “I’ve got to break our date. I’m sorry.”
“So am I,” I said. “What makes?”
“Barnaby says I’ve got to dine with Rupert.”
“Rupe the droop?” I remarked, rather nastily. “Give him the brush-off.”
“I can’t. You know Barnaby.”
“Yeah,” I said, and broke the beam. The door was buzzing.
It was the chap who looked like Percy Ketch. The resemblance wasn’t too striking. He wasn’t bearded, which made a lot of difference. His name was Underwood.
“You get the angle,” I said finally. “You take over when we’re a day out. Give Kerrigan a chance to lock himself in the radio room. When I tip you off, take to the lifeboats and head for Planetoid X-One Hundred Eighty-seven-V. I’ll have a ship there to pick you up and bring you back here.”
“I get it.”
The others were outside now, so I had them in and repeated the story. I warned them not to talk. They knew better than to spill a yarn like this.
After that I arranged for the pick-up ship, went out for dinner at the Jupiter Dome and glared across the room at Kerrigan with Mona. I returned to the office, got bored, went down to the labs and played with litmus and isotopes till I was called.
The blast-off was at dawn. Barnaby inquired in a furtive voice if I’d attended to everything. When I said I had, he remarked that, after all, he’d done all the brain work. I gave him a long, sizzling glare and went off to bed.
At sun-up I reached the spaceport. The Raider lay on the seared tarmac, looking remarkably unlike other spaceships. The pirate’s ship was oval rather than a slim ellipse, built and braced for strength and invulnerability.
In her halcyon days, she could take blasts and return them, and, with her dead-black, perfectly smooth hull, could slip away and vanish at a moment’s notice.
At present she looked like a fat old dowager. She was in perfect condition. There were no ports. Tiny “eyes” were connected to vision screens within the ship.
Cameras were grinding all over the place. Rex Barnaby, his billiard-ball head gleaming, was bouncing madly about, shouting orders. I looked at my watch, yelled at him and headed for the entrance-port.
In the control cabin Mona was kissing Kerrigan. There weren’t any cameras around.
“You’re doing all right, Rupert,” I said, “in spite of the beard.”
They jerked apart, and Mona started to say something, but I’d had enough. I went to my own cabin, dug out a bottle of high-powered Scotch, and started in. Pretty soon I wasn’t minding so much.
A few centuries later Barnaby stuck his nose in, glared at me, and asked what I was doing.
“Three guesses,” I said. “Have a drink?”
“Look, Jerry. Mona told me—”
“I know. She loves me. It was madness, sheer madness of the moment. So what?”
“Now, Jerry. We can’t have this. We’ve got work to do.”
“It’s all done,” I said. “You don’t need me.”
“I hate to see a man lose his head over a woman.”
“I just like to get drunk,” I said. “Mona hasn’t anything to do with it.”
“You’re crazy about her, Jerry—”
“You’re crazy,” I said, which seemed to hurt his feelings. He went out. I found another bottle and wondered what chance a publicity man has against a big-shot star? Some time later I went to sleep.
FINALLY I awoke hungry and rang for food. The coffee had a curious taste. I didn’t recognize it until too late. Drugged to the eyes with nembutyl, I passed out.
I woke up with a mild headache and a sense of something wrong. Briefly I lay motionless. I kept hearing distant shouts, and the clap-clapping of ray-guns.
The wall-calender showed I’d been under the drug for two days and a night. We should be nearing our destination, close to the Asteroid Belt.
Clap-clap went a ray-gun, in the corridor outside. I got up, found the door locked. But the lock was flimsy.
Outside, a man with a gun was shooting at the feet of another, but driving him back. “Hey!” I said.
“You, too,” the gunman told me. “Get along with him, fast.”
He blasted toward my feet, and I hit him on the point of the jaw. He went back and over, knocked cold. I snatched up his gun, still feeling dazed.
“Hell’s busted loose,” the other guy remarked. “That was one of his men. Ketch—he’s aboard!”
“Come on,” I said, starting toward the control rooms, where most of the noise was coming from. The spaceman followed. At a turn in the passage I was in time to see Rupert Kerrigan bolt into the radio chamber and slam the door, according to plan.
Just then four huskies came racing after Kerrigan, hit the door together and knocked it off its hinges. I thought that was going a little too far. After all, Kerrigan was supposed to stay barricaded.
My right hand flamed with agony. I dropped my gun, whirling to see a hard-faced man lowering his weapon.
“Kick it over here.”
I obeyed. The four thugs came out of the radio room, carrying Kerrigan.
“He got out an SOS,” one of them said.
“Listen,” I said, “what is this? Where’s Underwood.”
They looked at each other and grinned.
“Underwood, eh? You must be Jerry Morse.”
“Yeah. I don’t know you.”
“You will. Control room, buddy.”
A gun aimed at my kidneys, I was escorted to my destination, the half-unconscious Kerrigan being lugged along behind me. I was beginning to guess the answer, fantastic as it was.
In the control room, Rex Barnaby and Mona Irish were sitting against the wall, white as paper. A man I didn’t know was in the pilot’s seat. Standing straddle-legged before the telechart was a broad-shouldered guy with his back toward me.
“Underwood!” I snarled.
“You’re Morse?”
“Yeah.”
“Underwood couldn’t keep the date. You wanted Percy Ketch, didn’t you? Well, take a good look, sonny.”
There was no beard, but I tried to imagine one on that hard, tanned, gray-eyed face.
“What is this, Jerry?” Barnaby howled. “What have you got me into?”
“Shut up,” Ketch said. “What have you got there, Jennings?”
Jennings thrust out a slip of radiotape. “This fellow managed to send out our position. If a patrol ship caught it—”
“Right,” Ketch nodded. “Well, Jennings, you know radio. Stand by for messages. Let me know what you hear. We may have to move fast.”
IGNORING the rest of us, he turned to the telechart and examined it.
“Asteroid not far away, Horton.”
“Got it, chief,” the man in the pilot’s seat said.
“Find a place to hide if we have to.”
“Too much reflection,” Horton said. “We’d show up in this black ship like a comet.”
“Any water?”
“Seems to be.”
“We’ve hidden under water before,” Ketch remarked. “What’s up, Jennings?”
The pirate’s radio man had returned, carrying a wad of tape.
“Patrol ships—close—five hundred miles—coming fast.”
Ketch’s face didn’t change.
“The asteroid, Horton. Any ray charges?”
“Just sidearms,” Jennings scowled.
“Well, we’ll have to hide, till the patrol ships scatter. Then we can slip away. There are places where we can get cannon charges.”
“You can’t do this!” Barnaby yelped suddenly. “I’m Rex Barnaby!”
“I’m Percy Ketch,” the big pirate smiled. “It was flattering to find out you were making a picture about me. But you’d have made a bad mistake in the ending. I didn’t die on Ceres.”
“What I want to know is what your plans are?” I put in.
“I’ll hold you for ransom—most of you. The rest I’ll drop off in a lifeboat. I only kill in action, Morse.”
“You won’t get much ransom out of my hide.”
“All right, you go in the lifeboat. Mona Irish, Rod Kerrigan, the Great Barnaby—I’ll pick up a pretty penny with their ransom.”
I looked quickly at Mona. She was trying to keep her chin from trembling.
“Here we go,” the pilot said. “Hold on!” We swooped down. The visiplate showed a small asteroid beneath us, its surface shining with a brassy, coppery glare except where occasional lakes were visible. Toward one of the latter we plunged, a small tarn amid rocky crags.
We hit with a splash, though the pilot had braked our landing with nose-rockets. I hoped the turmoil would be visible to the patrol ships, but I knew it was a futile hope.
The Raider lurched, rolled and came to rest on the little lake. That surprised me, for spaceships are hefty. But I realized that the newer steel alloys were lighter even than aluminum, and the specific gravity of the ship in toto was less than it seemed. And the black hull, on this shining surface, was plenty visible!
“Ballast tanks!” Ketch snapped. “We’ve got to submerge.”
Horton’s fingers flickered over the control. On the visiscreen the murky waters crept up. In a minute or so Ketch nodded.
“Okay. We’re thirty feet under—that’s plenty. What is this stuff? It isn’t water.” Jennings made a test.
“It’s CuSo4, chief. No good.”
“No.” Ketch nodded at me “I found gold twice on asteroids, and I keep hoping. Sit down, Morse. We’ll have some beer and talk things over. This is the first chance I’ve had to relax since I lost the Raider. Thanks for the repair job, by the way, Barnaby.” Barnaby groaned.
Kerrigan was recovering consciousness. He saw me and glared accusingly.
“They hit me!” he said.
“Well,” I told him, “you got a message out, anyway. Maybe the patrol ships will locate us.”
Ketch shook his head.
“Not a chance. We’re thirty feet under a bright reflecting surface. Have some beer.” One of his crew had brought bottles, and the pirate passed them around.
“Good,” he remarked. “Jennings, where are the rest?”
“Locked in the brig.”
KETCH chuckled. “Even the brig’s in good repair. You threw this right in my lap, Barnaby.”
“How in space did you do it?” I asked, drinking.
“Remember when we were gunned down on Ceres? I had extra lifeboats hidden there. Not all my crew were killed. We made a getaway—and hid out. I shaved my beard, naturally.”
“How did you find out about—”
“Publicity, Morse. That’s your job, isn’t it? I read in the newstapes that Barnaby was having the Raider repaired. Naturally, I didn’t know the repair job would be perfect, but I figured I might have a chance to hijack the ship. You threw it right in my lap when you framed that publicity gag.”
“Underwood told you?”
“No. You’d hired six men to help him. One of them was in touch with me. I got my boys together and put your hired crew out of the way, along with Underwood.
“We took their places on the Raider and nobody knew the difference. You were the only guy who knew exactly which extras you’d hired, so I kept you drugged till we were ready.”
“I’m going crazy,” Barnaby moaned. “Think of the publicity,” Ketch smiled. “The ransom will be pretty high, I’ll admit, but your picture ought to make a lot of money. But why talk shop? Feel that you are my guests, gentlemen—and Miss Irish.” Mona stood up.
“Then I’m going to my cabin,” she announced. “And if anybody comes near me, HI scream.”
Ketch stood up too.
“You’ll find the key still in your door. If you need anything, ring.”
Mona left. I was realizing that I had to get her out of this scrape. In a way, it was my fault. But, regardless of that, I wasn’t going to be shoved off in a lifeboat and leave Mona as Ketch’s captive.
If I could get a signal to the patrol boats—
I drank more beer and looked thoughtfully at Ketch.
“I can go anywhere I want?” I asked him.
“Sure,” he said. “Make yourself at home.”
I didn’t take advantage of his invitation till later, when I left him immersed in a poker game with Barnaby. Barnaby wanted Ketch to star in Black Rover. The picture would be shot secretly, and Ketch’s safety would be guaranteed—by Barnaby.
He was trying to talk the pirate into a screwball proposition like that! Ketch managed not to laugh.
Kerrigan looked ready to pass out again, so I took him to his cabin. After that, I prowled around the ship. I knocked on Mona’s door.
“Are you all right? This is Jerry.”
“Y-yes. Oh, Jerry—”
“Keep your chin up,” I advised her, and went on my merry way. The radio room was guarded. The pirate at the door apologized for not letting me in. I wandered off in search of insulated wire.
The auxiliary power room, with its generator, was unguarded. I turned up the juice, not much, and didn’t think anyone would notice.
Finally I found a spacesuit. The oxygen tank was gone. Ketch had taken precautions.
I couldn’t get far without oxygen. But I could get a short distance away from the ship. Whether or not I could make it back I didn’t know. I took a chance, connected my wire, and led it out one of the tiny rocket-tubes. Then I put on the spacesuit and left by the regular port valve.
I think Jennings saw me go, but he knew I wasn’t going far.
THE flexible valve ladder came in handy. I located the wire from the rocket-tube and connected it carefully. By that time I was nearly dead for lack of oxygen.
But I went back up the ladder, somehow, though at the last I was barely conscious. I hammered at the fastenings with my fists, blindly, till air gushed into my lungs.
I clambered out of the suit and returned to the control room. Ketch winked at me over his beer.
“Been for a walk?” he asked.
“Go to Pluto,” I said.
“Now look,” Barnaby was saying persuasively, “Why don’t you forget this ransom business and play along with me? Black Rover, starring Percy Ketch! The patrol wouldn’t know a thing about it till the flicker was canned.”
“If you’ll guarantee a personal appearance tour, it’s a deal,” Ketch said, winking at me. “This lad is crazy, Morse. Doesn’t he know he’d be sent up for life?”
“I hope he is,” I growled.
“Shut up, Jerry,” Barnaby commanded imperiously. “Ketch knows I’m talking sense.”
“The patrol ships are spreading out, chief,” Jennings said at the door:
“They haven’t located us yet, and they’ve circled this asteroid.”
“Fine. We’ll all get some sleep. Set up the regular guard, Jennings.” Ketch yawned. “If you’ll excuse me, gentlemen—”
He went out. I gave Barnaby a parting glare and followed.
It was ten hours later when we took off, in a geyser of spray. The patrol ships were so scattered that the pirate craft, built for invisibility, could slip through their cordon easily. There wasn’t the slightest danger.
We were all breakfasting together in the control room when Jennings burst in wildeyed.
“Chief!” he yelped. “They’ve spotted us!”
“You’re crazy,” the pirate said calmly, drinking coffee. “They’re not that close.”
“They weren’t—but they are now. They see us!”
“They can’t see a black ship.”
“All right,” Jennings sighed. “But they do. They’re signalling us to heave to.” Ketch turned to the pilot.
“Dodge ’em. Throw off pursuit. That’ll do the trick.”
For answer a gauge on the instrument panel flamed red. The pilot gulped.
“A heat-ray on our bow, chief.”
“Dodge! They can’t see a black ship!”
“The Raider isn’t a black ship any more,” I said.
“What?”
“The hull’s not black alloy now. It’s copper-colored. It reflects light. We’re a beautiful target, and those patrol ships can follow us from here to Pluto.”
Ketch put down his cup carefully.
“What kind of double-talk is this? The patrol—”
