The COMPLEAT Collected SFF Works, page 130
The floor erupted beside him and a smashing, agonising shock struck upwards through his feet. Caulfield's acceleration chair jerked up and over as its rear support was torn away, and toppled across him. Gregory instinctively threw up his arms to protect his visor. There was another soundless crash and the lights went out.
An eerie, greenish glow from the reducer screen—the only piece of radar equipment still working—made the control-room resemble a badly lit nightmare. There were soft, rounded shadows of figures in spacesuits, hard, jagged shadows of ruptured plating, and the shadowy, angular lines of trailing plumbing. He couldn't see anything, really, and yet he saw too much. Gregory felt suddenly, blindly terrified. He wanted to switch on the standby lighting, but the weight of Caulfield on his chest made it almost impossible for him to move. Then all at once he didn't want the lights on for fear of what he would find.
"Check the reactor," he said harshly, automatically.
Right then he didn't give a damn about the reactor, but he desperately wanted to know that he was not all alone.
"W-we're losing thrust, sir," Nolan's voice replied. He, too, sounded overwhelmingly glad that there was someone there. He added, "I don't know why—most of my control and information circuits have gone. Will I shut down?"
"No," said Gregory, taking a good, firm grip on himself. "Not until we match velocities with this stuff. Watch through the port—this stuff is so blasted dense you can see it go past! And when it stops moving, cut everything." He paused, then; "Hartman, are you all right?"
"I can't see," said Hartman.
"Neither can I. Caulfield?"
"Yes."
Never, thought Gregory in awe, have four people been so lucky. Then aloud he said, "Caulfield, get off my chest."
WHILE THE prisoner was disentangling himself from the wreckage of his acceleration chair the ship took another hit. But the shock was not nearly so severe this time, and from the feel of it Gregory knew that that one had not penetrated the hull. Then, a few minutes after he had the emergency lights on, all weight disappeared. They had stopped moving with respect to the swarm. Decelleration had ceased, for the moment they were safe.
"Nolan, go below and check the pile," Gregory said quickly. "Wear a radiation card and take a geiger. Hartman, start listing the damage. Start with ... Nolan!"
The Lieutenant hadn't moved. He started slightly when Gregory raised his voice, then pointed towards the viewport.
"There's a spacesuit out there," he said shakily. "About fifty yards away. It ... it must be Captain Warren ...!"
"Forget him," said Hartman bitterly. "He can't do us any more harm now, he's done all that he could do already."
"No!" Gregory contradicted suddenly, then went on, "Nolan, check the reactor. Hartman, shoot a magnet at that suit out there and reel him in. Move!"
With the ship in its present chaotic condition using time to fish for an eleven years dead body seemed pointless, and the two officers showed their surprise. But they had not been watching Caulfield when the body had been spotted. The look in the ex-Engineer's eyes had been something Gregory had never seen before and hoped never to see again. Somehow he knew that when that body out there was brought in, all things would become plain.
Chapter Six
NOLAN reported twice during the next few minutes, saying that he was finding it heavy going—the central well which led to the reactor room was partly blocked with wreckage which he was having to clear away. He added that one of the chemical fuel tanks had been holed. All around him were steaming, iridescent globules of fuel which looked rather pretty. The radiation level was rising, also ...
"Get down to that reactor, quick!" Gregory snapped. "And don't stop to admire the scenery!"
He was being unfair to the lieutenant, Gregory knew. But there was a very real possibility that the power pile might decide at any minute to become a slow atomic bomb. He could make amends later, if there was a later.
"I did cook the figures," Caulfield burst out suddenly. The words rushed from his mouth faster and more high pitched., like a gramophone record speeding up. "But only slightly. I wanted you to go through the swarm without stopping, without finding him. But I didn't expect this to happen. Honest, I don't know what caused—"
"Shut up!" said Gregory viciously. He was thinking of his lovely ship and the effect those slightly cooked figures had had on it. But before he could say anything else Hartman came swimming into the control-room with the spacesuited body in tow. He also had a shapeless grey something in his hand which he pushed gently towards Gregory.
"I found that below," he growled. "It must have been one of the later ones which punctured the hull but hadn't enough momentum left to go right through. It explains a lot of things, doesn't it, sir?"
It was a small, dense, roughly cubical block of lead of the type used as shielding on spaceship reactors.
Suddenly Gregory remembered the prisoner telling him that Sunflower had made Ganymede with fuel to spare, that they must have lightened ship too much. Looking at the body Hartman had brought in, Gregory thought, You fool! You brave, noble, criminally stupid fool!
This had been the man who had taken a lethal dose of radiation while repairing Sunflower's reactor, then had further lightened ship by removing his dying body from it. But even that had not been enough for him. After fixing the pile—reducing its operating volume and rebuilding the shielding around it—there must have been upwards of a hundred lead bricks lying around loose, and these he had tossed out as well. Some repair shop, thought Gregory angrily, had been paid plenty to keep quiet about the condition of Sunflower's pile ...
"I didn't know he threw away shielding bricks ...!" Caulfield began, then stopped as he saw Gregory start unscrewing the helmet and shoulder piece of the body's suit.
GREGORY'S actions were nearly automatic. The dry, brittle, sun-blackened face which he uncovered did not bother him too much, he had seen many others just like it. And while there was very little doubt as to who the man was, checking his ID disc was also automatic. As he drew it out Hartman spoke, but not to him.
"What's the matter with you, Caulfield," the Lieutenant said derisively, "seen a ghost?"
With the identity disc cupped in his gauntleted hand, Gregory thought, Yes, Hartman, he has. He has seen a ghost. Because the body, according to the ID disc, was one James Andrew Caulfield!
"Captain!" Nolan's voice broke in on them urgently. "We're in a mess. The pile's overheating—large sections of shielding knocked loose and the geiger's gone mad! Total meltdown in about half an hour, I'd say, then blooie—"
"Be specific!" said Gregory sharply. "What is the position down there exactly?"
The last piece of the Caulfield puzzle had just fallen neatly into place, but there was no time to think about it. As Nolan began putting in the fine details of the picture in the reactor room, Gregory found himself thinking that it would have been a good thing if one of Sunflower's shielding bricks had hit him as well as the pile. He would have been where good space captains go, with no necessity of pretending to be fast thinking and resourceful and the type who fights to the last gasp.
The position looked hopeless.
"I'll send Hartman down to give you a hand," Gregory said, to give himself time to think. But Nolan didn't give him any time at all, he said, "No ...!"
Apparently there was wreckage blocking the approach to the power pile so that only one person at a time could get close enough to work it. This was further complicated by the high level of radiation there and the fact that most of the long tongs and other handling equipment had also been damaged. What there was left, if it was to be of use at all, would mean going dangerously close to the pile.
"Use it," said Gregory, "we've no other choice. See what you can do in the next ten minutes, then I'll spell you. The radiation is too high for continuous working, but with three of us taking it in shifts—"
"Four," said the prisoner suddenly.
"Right, four then." He looked hard at the ex-Engineer, then added, "But I want no stupid heroics. You will all wear radiation cards, and if they start turning blue you pull out of there immediately. Understood?"
Hartman nodded. The prisoner said, "Can I go to my cabin? I've got a good luck charm there."
"Go ahead," said Gregory impatiently. Somehow he had not thought of the other as the superstitious type, but he had too much on his mind to wonder about it for long.
THE APPROACH to the reactor was by a long, narrow well about two feet in diameter. A metal ladder projected a few inches from its inner wall so as to give a secure grip for hands and feet. Gregory could see that a meteorite had passed diagonally through the lower end, ploughing through the rungs, wall-plating and supports and practically sealing it off with wreckage. But the well was passable, because at the other side of the tangle he could see Nolan's legs. He ordered the Lieutenant to back out, then wriggled forward to take his place.
Nolan had set up mirrors and clamped the long tongs onto their bracket, which had been loosened badly by the meteor. Gregory could see clearly what the trouble was, but with the equipment at their disposal it would be a miracle if they fixed it.
The pile had been struck twice. One had been a glancing blow which had peeled off a large section of the outer shielding—there were about fifty of the small, interlocking lead bricks drifting about the room—and the other had been a solid puncture. There was only one opening, so the body which had done the damage must still be inside the pile. The immediate, most urgent danger was caused by several of the loose shielding bricks having become jammed against the damper rod stops. All the pile damper rods were fully out in the maximum thrust position, they were stuck there, and the reactor was steadily turning itself into a slow atomic bomb.
Descartes' acceleration had been cut by interrupting the flow of working fluid to the pile, and Gregory thought desperately of checking the meltdown by giving it something to work on again. But that would only have delayed the blow-up slightly, if the sudden renewal of thrust at three-quarters-G didn't shake the reactor apart and bring about the explosion there and then.
With careful haste Gregory checked the four tong controls, two for rotating the jointed head and two for closing and locking the clamps. They were so loose that he knew that they would slip more often than hold. Using the mirrors to guide him he brought the head of the tongs against the score or so of lead bricks which were jammed between the damper rod stops and the wall of the pile. With frantic patience he began to worry at them. But the metal teeth of the clamps could not get a grip, they slipped again and again. The sweat ran into Gregory's eyes and his suit was like an oven.
The suddenly a brick moved.
GREGORY forced himself to do nothing for all of ten seconds, relaxing both hands and nerves for the effort to come. Carefully he eased the clamps around the loose brick and tightened them, trying to take up the slack in the joints and loose supporting bracket. Then he took hold of the controls, muttered a prayer that was almost blasphemous in its fervency, and pulled.
The brick came away. Two others adjoining it drifted free and he was able to poke a third one loose. The others were jammed as tightly as ever. But he had accomplished something.
"Try Number Six," he told Nolan.
Cleared of obstructions Number Six damper rod slid into the pile. With one rod in the time to meltdown would be delayed ten or fifteen minutes, which wasn't much considering there were nine others still to be freed and this had been the easiest one.
"Your time's up, sir," Nolan said warningly, and added, "Caulfield's waiting to relieve you."
Gregory took a last, brief look through the mirrors. He thought that if he could just go in there for half an hour and use his hands instead of a sloppy pair of tongs he could free the damper rods, gather up those loose, floating bricks and rebuild the shielding. But there were two holes in the shielding big enough to jump through and the radiation level within the room was such that he could not risk even two minutes inside.
And if he should take such a risk his officers would feel obliged to take similar risks, and everybody in space knew where that course led. It had not been the first time that officers had saved their ships only to die on the way home with radiation poisoning—blind, raving, with their hair falling out and bleeding through the pores. Gregory would prefer a nice, quick atomic explosion every time.
"You might be feeling responsible for all this," Gregory said harshly as he passed the prisoner in the well, "and you are responsible. But if you get any stupid ideas during the next ten minutes, forget them. Hear me?"
"I understand," said the prisoner bitterly. "You've suddenly realised my true value and don't want to lose me."
Gregory wanted to tell him that it wasn't that at all, and that he had other, unselfish reasons for wanting the other to stay alive. But there wasn't time to start that sort of argument, and if Gregory had done so he would have badly confused Nolan and Hartman and probably distracted them from their work. The two officers did not know yet that the ID he had found on the eleven years dead body identified it as James Andrew Caulfield, so that the man they had come to know as Caulfield must be someone else. Gregory thought he knew who, but he also knew that this was no time to be going into a long-winded Sherlock Holmes act, so for the time being the prisoner's name remained Caulfield and he could think about Captain Gregory what he liked!
Chapter Seven
ANGRILY, Gregory kicked himself in the direction of the control-room, passing Hartman who was splicing a severed bundle of wiring which bore the reactor colour code. Hartman had been working to good effect because he found Nolan bent over a panel which was again comfortably full of indicator lights. He was about to compliment the junior lieutenant when Caulfield's voice forestalled him.
"Try Number Eight and Nine."
Nolan's gauntleted fingers stabbed at the control panel and two red indicators flickered and became green. "Good man!" he burst out, then to the Captain, "This gives us another twenty minutes to work in. We might be able to do it."
"Caulfield!" snapped Gregory, "I told you not to enter the pile room ...!"
"I didn't," the prisoner broke in. "I was lucky, that's all. You and Nolan must have loosened a lot of stuff for me. My card is still a nice bright red."
"I don't believe you," said Gregory. "Hartman, go down and check. Caulfield, meet him at the end of the well."
He heard the prisoner muttering to himself and Hartman's heavy breathing as he pulled himself sternwards. Less than a minute later the Lieutenant reported, "Red like he says, sir. He's clean."
"Carry on," said Gregory, feeling foolish.
His eyes were caught by the reducer screen and the dense, sparkling cloud centering it. There was a large blurred smudge of light on the fringe of the swarm which could only be Keatly's ship, or the wreck of Keatly's ship. Until that moment he had been too busy to think of Vixen. He asked Nolan if he had tried to contact her and received the reply that Descartes' transmitter was a mass of scrap. Gregory asked about their standby receiver. Nolan admitted shamefacedly that he hadn't thought of that.
"Try it," said Gregory, "maybe he's trying to call us." A few seconds later Keatly's voice came through his 'phones.
"... If there is anyone left alive, answer please. If you are receiving me but are not able to reply, light a flare—I have a telescope on you. Vixen to Descartes ..."
Gregory laughed suddenly. "Do what the man says, Nolan," he said.
"... Hearing me but can't reply," Keatly was droning out, "light a flare ... Oh, my eyes!
"I'm glad somebody's alive," he went on in a relieved voice. "My ship is slightly damaged. A few control circuits cut—it will take about four hours to fix and get across to you. I'll have to go easy with this heavy stuff floating about ..."
"Nolan!" said Gregory urgently. "Start digging into that receiver—I want it revamped to transmit. It will be weak but should reach him at this range. Tell him our pile could blow anytime. Tell him to stay clear ...!"
"Try Number Three," said the prisoner.
Nolan pushed a button and another light changed from red to green. The Lieutenant said, "But sir, we're freeing the pile. Why not let Vixen come over—"
"We've pushed the blow-up back an hour," said Gregory sharply. "Up to now that's all that we're sure of. Do as you're told."
AS THE exchange inside the ship ceased the voice of Keatly gained prominence again. The Commander was saying, "... And I've identified those heavy meteors as shielding bricks from Sunflower. You realise what this means? With the second component of the swarm so thoroughly seeded with this heavy stuff, the gravitic attraction of the pieces has overcome the original scatter effect. This part of the swarm is condensing! Therefore its danger to shipping is a reducing one, and in another couple of decades it will have shrunk so much that we could load it on a ship and take it away.
"But we can talk about this later," Keatly ended. "I have full data recorded on the drift, which lacks only TR corroboration, so don't worry if your equipment suffered. Be seeing you."
The last syllable had scarcely faded when Caulfield's voice returned. "Try Five," he said.
Nolan touched the control which would send Number Five damper rod back into the pile. The light beside it flickered, but continued to burn red. Nolan looked up quickly at the Captain, and Gregory barked, "Caulfield, what's happening!"
The prisoner reported that Number Five had been cleared where it projected outside the pile, but when it had gone one quarter of the way in it had stuck. The trouble was inside the reactor. Caulfield had an idea how to fix it but his time was nearly up. Could have another five minutes?
"No," said Gregory.
"But I'm getting into the swing of this thing," Caulfield protested. "I've done better than the rest of you put together. Let me have five minutes, my card's still red ..."
"Very well," said Gregory.
He wondered briefly what had happened to the supreme authority of the Captain on this ship, which led him straight into thinking about the present state of the vessel itself. Even if the pile was made safe, and that looked extremely doubtful since Caulfield's last report, the ship had taken an awful beating. It would take a week at least to repair and check the wiring, go over the fuel plumbing and render the ship air-tight again. But he had the horrible feeling that time was running out, that there were only minutes left instead of hours or days. Gregory felt tense and cold and there was a highly unpleasant feeling in the pit of his stomach, and he realised suddenly that these symptoms were due to the plain, old-fashioned fear of dying.
An eerie, greenish glow from the reducer screen—the only piece of radar equipment still working—made the control-room resemble a badly lit nightmare. There were soft, rounded shadows of figures in spacesuits, hard, jagged shadows of ruptured plating, and the shadowy, angular lines of trailing plumbing. He couldn't see anything, really, and yet he saw too much. Gregory felt suddenly, blindly terrified. He wanted to switch on the standby lighting, but the weight of Caulfield on his chest made it almost impossible for him to move. Then all at once he didn't want the lights on for fear of what he would find.
"Check the reactor," he said harshly, automatically.
Right then he didn't give a damn about the reactor, but he desperately wanted to know that he was not all alone.
"W-we're losing thrust, sir," Nolan's voice replied. He, too, sounded overwhelmingly glad that there was someone there. He added, "I don't know why—most of my control and information circuits have gone. Will I shut down?"
"No," said Gregory, taking a good, firm grip on himself. "Not until we match velocities with this stuff. Watch through the port—this stuff is so blasted dense you can see it go past! And when it stops moving, cut everything." He paused, then; "Hartman, are you all right?"
"I can't see," said Hartman.
"Neither can I. Caulfield?"
"Yes."
Never, thought Gregory in awe, have four people been so lucky. Then aloud he said, "Caulfield, get off my chest."
WHILE THE prisoner was disentangling himself from the wreckage of his acceleration chair the ship took another hit. But the shock was not nearly so severe this time, and from the feel of it Gregory knew that that one had not penetrated the hull. Then, a few minutes after he had the emergency lights on, all weight disappeared. They had stopped moving with respect to the swarm. Decelleration had ceased, for the moment they were safe.
"Nolan, go below and check the pile," Gregory said quickly. "Wear a radiation card and take a geiger. Hartman, start listing the damage. Start with ... Nolan!"
The Lieutenant hadn't moved. He started slightly when Gregory raised his voice, then pointed towards the viewport.
"There's a spacesuit out there," he said shakily. "About fifty yards away. It ... it must be Captain Warren ...!"
"Forget him," said Hartman bitterly. "He can't do us any more harm now, he's done all that he could do already."
"No!" Gregory contradicted suddenly, then went on, "Nolan, check the reactor. Hartman, shoot a magnet at that suit out there and reel him in. Move!"
With the ship in its present chaotic condition using time to fish for an eleven years dead body seemed pointless, and the two officers showed their surprise. But they had not been watching Caulfield when the body had been spotted. The look in the ex-Engineer's eyes had been something Gregory had never seen before and hoped never to see again. Somehow he knew that when that body out there was brought in, all things would become plain.
Chapter Six
NOLAN reported twice during the next few minutes, saying that he was finding it heavy going—the central well which led to the reactor room was partly blocked with wreckage which he was having to clear away. He added that one of the chemical fuel tanks had been holed. All around him were steaming, iridescent globules of fuel which looked rather pretty. The radiation level was rising, also ...
"Get down to that reactor, quick!" Gregory snapped. "And don't stop to admire the scenery!"
He was being unfair to the lieutenant, Gregory knew. But there was a very real possibility that the power pile might decide at any minute to become a slow atomic bomb. He could make amends later, if there was a later.
"I did cook the figures," Caulfield burst out suddenly. The words rushed from his mouth faster and more high pitched., like a gramophone record speeding up. "But only slightly. I wanted you to go through the swarm without stopping, without finding him. But I didn't expect this to happen. Honest, I don't know what caused—"
"Shut up!" said Gregory viciously. He was thinking of his lovely ship and the effect those slightly cooked figures had had on it. But before he could say anything else Hartman came swimming into the control-room with the spacesuited body in tow. He also had a shapeless grey something in his hand which he pushed gently towards Gregory.
"I found that below," he growled. "It must have been one of the later ones which punctured the hull but hadn't enough momentum left to go right through. It explains a lot of things, doesn't it, sir?"
It was a small, dense, roughly cubical block of lead of the type used as shielding on spaceship reactors.
Suddenly Gregory remembered the prisoner telling him that Sunflower had made Ganymede with fuel to spare, that they must have lightened ship too much. Looking at the body Hartman had brought in, Gregory thought, You fool! You brave, noble, criminally stupid fool!
This had been the man who had taken a lethal dose of radiation while repairing Sunflower's reactor, then had further lightened ship by removing his dying body from it. But even that had not been enough for him. After fixing the pile—reducing its operating volume and rebuilding the shielding around it—there must have been upwards of a hundred lead bricks lying around loose, and these he had tossed out as well. Some repair shop, thought Gregory angrily, had been paid plenty to keep quiet about the condition of Sunflower's pile ...
"I didn't know he threw away shielding bricks ...!" Caulfield began, then stopped as he saw Gregory start unscrewing the helmet and shoulder piece of the body's suit.
GREGORY'S actions were nearly automatic. The dry, brittle, sun-blackened face which he uncovered did not bother him too much, he had seen many others just like it. And while there was very little doubt as to who the man was, checking his ID disc was also automatic. As he drew it out Hartman spoke, but not to him.
"What's the matter with you, Caulfield," the Lieutenant said derisively, "seen a ghost?"
With the identity disc cupped in his gauntleted hand, Gregory thought, Yes, Hartman, he has. He has seen a ghost. Because the body, according to the ID disc, was one James Andrew Caulfield!
"Captain!" Nolan's voice broke in on them urgently. "We're in a mess. The pile's overheating—large sections of shielding knocked loose and the geiger's gone mad! Total meltdown in about half an hour, I'd say, then blooie—"
"Be specific!" said Gregory sharply. "What is the position down there exactly?"
The last piece of the Caulfield puzzle had just fallen neatly into place, but there was no time to think about it. As Nolan began putting in the fine details of the picture in the reactor room, Gregory found himself thinking that it would have been a good thing if one of Sunflower's shielding bricks had hit him as well as the pile. He would have been where good space captains go, with no necessity of pretending to be fast thinking and resourceful and the type who fights to the last gasp.
The position looked hopeless.
"I'll send Hartman down to give you a hand," Gregory said, to give himself time to think. But Nolan didn't give him any time at all, he said, "No ...!"
Apparently there was wreckage blocking the approach to the power pile so that only one person at a time could get close enough to work it. This was further complicated by the high level of radiation there and the fact that most of the long tongs and other handling equipment had also been damaged. What there was left, if it was to be of use at all, would mean going dangerously close to the pile.
"Use it," said Gregory, "we've no other choice. See what you can do in the next ten minutes, then I'll spell you. The radiation is too high for continuous working, but with three of us taking it in shifts—"
"Four," said the prisoner suddenly.
"Right, four then." He looked hard at the ex-Engineer, then added, "But I want no stupid heroics. You will all wear radiation cards, and if they start turning blue you pull out of there immediately. Understood?"
Hartman nodded. The prisoner said, "Can I go to my cabin? I've got a good luck charm there."
"Go ahead," said Gregory impatiently. Somehow he had not thought of the other as the superstitious type, but he had too much on his mind to wonder about it for long.
THE APPROACH to the reactor was by a long, narrow well about two feet in diameter. A metal ladder projected a few inches from its inner wall so as to give a secure grip for hands and feet. Gregory could see that a meteorite had passed diagonally through the lower end, ploughing through the rungs, wall-plating and supports and practically sealing it off with wreckage. But the well was passable, because at the other side of the tangle he could see Nolan's legs. He ordered the Lieutenant to back out, then wriggled forward to take his place.
Nolan had set up mirrors and clamped the long tongs onto their bracket, which had been loosened badly by the meteor. Gregory could see clearly what the trouble was, but with the equipment at their disposal it would be a miracle if they fixed it.
The pile had been struck twice. One had been a glancing blow which had peeled off a large section of the outer shielding—there were about fifty of the small, interlocking lead bricks drifting about the room—and the other had been a solid puncture. There was only one opening, so the body which had done the damage must still be inside the pile. The immediate, most urgent danger was caused by several of the loose shielding bricks having become jammed against the damper rod stops. All the pile damper rods were fully out in the maximum thrust position, they were stuck there, and the reactor was steadily turning itself into a slow atomic bomb.
Descartes' acceleration had been cut by interrupting the flow of working fluid to the pile, and Gregory thought desperately of checking the meltdown by giving it something to work on again. But that would only have delayed the blow-up slightly, if the sudden renewal of thrust at three-quarters-G didn't shake the reactor apart and bring about the explosion there and then.
With careful haste Gregory checked the four tong controls, two for rotating the jointed head and two for closing and locking the clamps. They were so loose that he knew that they would slip more often than hold. Using the mirrors to guide him he brought the head of the tongs against the score or so of lead bricks which were jammed between the damper rod stops and the wall of the pile. With frantic patience he began to worry at them. But the metal teeth of the clamps could not get a grip, they slipped again and again. The sweat ran into Gregory's eyes and his suit was like an oven.
The suddenly a brick moved.
GREGORY forced himself to do nothing for all of ten seconds, relaxing both hands and nerves for the effort to come. Carefully he eased the clamps around the loose brick and tightened them, trying to take up the slack in the joints and loose supporting bracket. Then he took hold of the controls, muttered a prayer that was almost blasphemous in its fervency, and pulled.
The brick came away. Two others adjoining it drifted free and he was able to poke a third one loose. The others were jammed as tightly as ever. But he had accomplished something.
"Try Number Six," he told Nolan.
Cleared of obstructions Number Six damper rod slid into the pile. With one rod in the time to meltdown would be delayed ten or fifteen minutes, which wasn't much considering there were nine others still to be freed and this had been the easiest one.
"Your time's up, sir," Nolan said warningly, and added, "Caulfield's waiting to relieve you."
Gregory took a last, brief look through the mirrors. He thought that if he could just go in there for half an hour and use his hands instead of a sloppy pair of tongs he could free the damper rods, gather up those loose, floating bricks and rebuild the shielding. But there were two holes in the shielding big enough to jump through and the radiation level within the room was such that he could not risk even two minutes inside.
And if he should take such a risk his officers would feel obliged to take similar risks, and everybody in space knew where that course led. It had not been the first time that officers had saved their ships only to die on the way home with radiation poisoning—blind, raving, with their hair falling out and bleeding through the pores. Gregory would prefer a nice, quick atomic explosion every time.
"You might be feeling responsible for all this," Gregory said harshly as he passed the prisoner in the well, "and you are responsible. But if you get any stupid ideas during the next ten minutes, forget them. Hear me?"
"I understand," said the prisoner bitterly. "You've suddenly realised my true value and don't want to lose me."
Gregory wanted to tell him that it wasn't that at all, and that he had other, unselfish reasons for wanting the other to stay alive. But there wasn't time to start that sort of argument, and if Gregory had done so he would have badly confused Nolan and Hartman and probably distracted them from their work. The two officers did not know yet that the ID he had found on the eleven years dead body identified it as James Andrew Caulfield, so that the man they had come to know as Caulfield must be someone else. Gregory thought he knew who, but he also knew that this was no time to be going into a long-winded Sherlock Holmes act, so for the time being the prisoner's name remained Caulfield and he could think about Captain Gregory what he liked!
Chapter Seven
ANGRILY, Gregory kicked himself in the direction of the control-room, passing Hartman who was splicing a severed bundle of wiring which bore the reactor colour code. Hartman had been working to good effect because he found Nolan bent over a panel which was again comfortably full of indicator lights. He was about to compliment the junior lieutenant when Caulfield's voice forestalled him.
"Try Number Eight and Nine."
Nolan's gauntleted fingers stabbed at the control panel and two red indicators flickered and became green. "Good man!" he burst out, then to the Captain, "This gives us another twenty minutes to work in. We might be able to do it."
"Caulfield!" snapped Gregory, "I told you not to enter the pile room ...!"
"I didn't," the prisoner broke in. "I was lucky, that's all. You and Nolan must have loosened a lot of stuff for me. My card is still a nice bright red."
"I don't believe you," said Gregory. "Hartman, go down and check. Caulfield, meet him at the end of the well."
He heard the prisoner muttering to himself and Hartman's heavy breathing as he pulled himself sternwards. Less than a minute later the Lieutenant reported, "Red like he says, sir. He's clean."
"Carry on," said Gregory, feeling foolish.
His eyes were caught by the reducer screen and the dense, sparkling cloud centering it. There was a large blurred smudge of light on the fringe of the swarm which could only be Keatly's ship, or the wreck of Keatly's ship. Until that moment he had been too busy to think of Vixen. He asked Nolan if he had tried to contact her and received the reply that Descartes' transmitter was a mass of scrap. Gregory asked about their standby receiver. Nolan admitted shamefacedly that he hadn't thought of that.
"Try it," said Gregory, "maybe he's trying to call us." A few seconds later Keatly's voice came through his 'phones.
"... If there is anyone left alive, answer please. If you are receiving me but are not able to reply, light a flare—I have a telescope on you. Vixen to Descartes ..."
Gregory laughed suddenly. "Do what the man says, Nolan," he said.
"... Hearing me but can't reply," Keatly was droning out, "light a flare ... Oh, my eyes!
"I'm glad somebody's alive," he went on in a relieved voice. "My ship is slightly damaged. A few control circuits cut—it will take about four hours to fix and get across to you. I'll have to go easy with this heavy stuff floating about ..."
"Nolan!" said Gregory urgently. "Start digging into that receiver—I want it revamped to transmit. It will be weak but should reach him at this range. Tell him our pile could blow anytime. Tell him to stay clear ...!"
"Try Number Three," said the prisoner.
Nolan pushed a button and another light changed from red to green. The Lieutenant said, "But sir, we're freeing the pile. Why not let Vixen come over—"
"We've pushed the blow-up back an hour," said Gregory sharply. "Up to now that's all that we're sure of. Do as you're told."
AS THE exchange inside the ship ceased the voice of Keatly gained prominence again. The Commander was saying, "... And I've identified those heavy meteors as shielding bricks from Sunflower. You realise what this means? With the second component of the swarm so thoroughly seeded with this heavy stuff, the gravitic attraction of the pieces has overcome the original scatter effect. This part of the swarm is condensing! Therefore its danger to shipping is a reducing one, and in another couple of decades it will have shrunk so much that we could load it on a ship and take it away.
"But we can talk about this later," Keatly ended. "I have full data recorded on the drift, which lacks only TR corroboration, so don't worry if your equipment suffered. Be seeing you."
The last syllable had scarcely faded when Caulfield's voice returned. "Try Five," he said.
Nolan touched the control which would send Number Five damper rod back into the pile. The light beside it flickered, but continued to burn red. Nolan looked up quickly at the Captain, and Gregory barked, "Caulfield, what's happening!"
The prisoner reported that Number Five had been cleared where it projected outside the pile, but when it had gone one quarter of the way in it had stuck. The trouble was inside the reactor. Caulfield had an idea how to fix it but his time was nearly up. Could have another five minutes?
"No," said Gregory.
"But I'm getting into the swing of this thing," Caulfield protested. "I've done better than the rest of you put together. Let me have five minutes, my card's still red ..."
"Very well," said Gregory.
He wondered briefly what had happened to the supreme authority of the Captain on this ship, which led him straight into thinking about the present state of the vessel itself. Even if the pile was made safe, and that looked extremely doubtful since Caulfield's last report, the ship had taken an awful beating. It would take a week at least to repair and check the wiring, go over the fuel plumbing and render the ship air-tight again. But he had the horrible feeling that time was running out, that there were only minutes left instead of hours or days. Gregory felt tense and cold and there was a highly unpleasant feeling in the pit of his stomach, and he realised suddenly that these symptoms were due to the plain, old-fashioned fear of dying.
