The Mysterious Planet, page 4
But matching course and speed was routine, now that pirates didn’t have to be considered.
They snapped out of high drive almost beside the derelict ship, and with only a slight tendency to drift apart. Commander Griffith corrected this with a few quick blasts of the little steering rockets. Through the viewport Bob could just see some of the crew getting the rubbery tube ready to connect the two ships again.
He looked inquiringly at his father as Anderson got ready to go across, and the Commander nodded. This time Anderson was buckling a heavy automatic pistol outside his suit. He gave one to Bob. “We don’t take chances. If there’s anything funny, shoot first and then get back to the Lance; we have to figure it might be a trap.”
“I’ll cover you from here,” Griffith added. His eyes were worried as he looked at Bob, but he made no move to hold the boy back. In the Navy, voluntary risk was expected.
They went cautiously across and through the open port of the air lock. Inside, everything was just as they had left it. Anderson inspected the way carefully, but he seemed satisfied. They turned toward the radio room. If the person making the call had any sense, he’d wait right there until help came.
Going cautiously through the deserted, lifeless passages of the ship began to give Bob a feeling that he’d had before only when he was a kid and had been hearing too many ghost stories. But he repressed it savagely. Then they were in front of the door that was marked with the zigzag symbol of electronics.
Anderson opened it cautiously. There was no air to carry sound, and the sponge-rubber soles of the space suits made no thud that could be carried through the floor. The small figure sitting at the radio desk never looked up.
The light on the panel was blinking in response to Sparks’s call, but it apparently had meant nothing. The figure sat slumped forward hopelessly, his helmet buried on his arms, which were resting on the desk. It wasn’t until Bob touched him on the shoulder that he stirred.
Then he sprang up as if stung, and swung on them. His eyes dropped to the Navy insignia, and the alarm went out of his face, to be replaced by a sudden wash of relief. He would have fallen if Anderson hadn’t caught him.
Bob was shocked himself. He’d expected to find a man but this was only a boy of about his own age. Even through the suit he was short and slim, with a dark skin, black eyes and hair, and almost too handsome a face.
By touching helmets together they could talk, though not very distinctly. The boy obviously had no radio inside his suit, but Anderson bent down and Bob did the same.
The boy was babbling his thanks, but Anderson cut him off. “Are there any more here?”
“No.” The boy sounded as if something very unpleasant lay buried in the single word. “No, sir. Only me. Only Juan Roman, son of Bartolomeo Roman, who was captain of the Ionian, and now…”
He shuddered, and Anderson nodded sympathetically. It wasn’t hard to guess what had happened to his father. Anderson motioned for him to follow and, no longer suspecting a trap, they went back toward the air lock at a faster gait.
The boy looked genuine enough, aside from his obvious condition when they had found him.
Io had been settled exclusively by Spanish Americans, and Spanish was the official language there, though most of the people also spoke English. Juan’s English contained the faint trace of an accent, and his appearance fitted his obvious ancestry.
Griffith was waiting for them when they came back, standing at the door of the control room.
He had tea and wafers waiting for Juan. For a second he seemed surprised at the boy’s age, but he covered it quickly, while they introduced themselves.
Then the ship got under way again, heading on the automatic pilot for the rest of Wing Nine.
Juan gasped at the pressure of acceleration, but he apparently could stand it. They were not on high drive; probably Griffith had ordered Wing Nine to hold up for his arrival, cutting down acceleration.
“I’ll have to ask you several questions,” Commander Griffith began. “I know this is no time to bother you, Juan, but I have to get some information.”
“I shall gladly give all I can,” Juan assured him. “I, too, do not like black ships which come to kill my father.”
Although Griffith nodded and smiled, his next question whipped out sharply. “Where did you get your suit, Juan?”
Bob had forgotten that there had been sixty suits in the lockers and only sixty listed on the manifest.
But Juan shrugged. “It was made for me special, because I am too small for a regular suit. When my father let me come on this, my first trip, we ordered it in advance.”
Griffith sat back, apparently satisfied, and the rest of the questioning was done more quietly, though it didn’t bring as much information as the Commander obviously wanted.
The ship had been carrying drugs to Neptune, as they had guessed. Juan’s mother had just died, and his father took him along. He had the run of the ship and was generally enjoying it, before the attack came. Then, out of nowhere—because either their radar was defective or their operator was careless—the black ship had swung in ahead of them. Bartolomeo Roman had let out a cry about pirates and had begun, too late, to try to fight back. But at first the black ship had done nothing. It had just hung there in space, keeping half a mile ahead of them, and apparently waiting.
They had sent out a signal, but then something strange happened. The black ship had opened a tiny window, and something blue had floated back to the Ionian and straight through the walls into the radio room; after that, the radio was dead. They had waited, too, until his father could wait no more. He had fired his few torpedoes. Then the strange ship had melted their nose and the crew had come aboard.
“And my father, he had put me in my space suit and had made me hide in a closet just beside the control room,” Juan finished. “He went to meet them, and I heard him cry out. I wanted to go down, but I could not disobey him. Then there was no air, and I waited and waited. And at last I went to the radio room. The blue stuff was gone then. I called. You came. That is all.”
“You never saw the men from the black ship?” Griffith asked, frowning.
“No. Only what I have told you.”
Further questioning revealed that Juan had felt the men from the Lance moving about—carried as faint sounds through the floor and his suit—but had thought they were still the pirates. Commander Griffith finished at last and sent him down with Anderson to a spare bunk. From the sleepy way he acted, Bob guessed that the tea had held a mild sedative to quiet him down.
“Sound asleep,” Anderson reported ten minutes later. Then he glanced out. “Hey, we’re back with the Wing!”
Griffith nodded. “We caught up five minutes ago. I wish that boy had seen them!”
“What good would it have done?” Bob asked. “Pirates don’t look much different from anyone else, do they?”
“These might—since they’re no pirates!” The Commander nodded, sucking thoughtfully on his pipe, a dark cloud of gloom on his face. “No human being designed that ship. And no human science could do what it did. That leaves just one place for them—Planet X! It’s inhabited, all right, and by a race of some kind that’s centuries ahead of us. I’d like to know what they look like.”
He sucked on his pipe again, and frowned more deeply. “Well, we know one thing.
Whatever form of life is out there, it’s unfriendly and it’s dangerous! Maybe too dangerous!”
CHAPTER 5
Outpost of Neptune
A LITTLE LESS than two days later they turned over and began decelerating toward Neptune, needing the same time to cut their speed that had been required to build it up. But aside from that and the worry that hung over the ship, there was little for Bob to watch or do.
The tradition of keeping him running errands had been dropped, probably because the Commander was too busy trying to think things through and make his report on Outpost carry the weight he felt it should. At present he was refusing to radio problems of the situation ahead, on the grounds that information might be picked up by people outside the Fleet, which would lead to a panic that could only cause harm.
Bob spent most of the time with Juan Roman. The boy seemed to have buried his grief somewhere deep inside himself, and to be resigned to whatever happened. He was strangely serious and naive, with little of the gaiety for which his people were famed. This may have been partly due to his recent tragedy, but Bob had the feeling that much of Juan’s seriousness was basic to his character.
He obviously didn’t want to talk about his past, and Bob and the others respected his wishes. With a somewhat reluctant permission from Bob’s father, they wandered about the ship. There Juan showed an amazing ability to pick up details quickly. He admitted that he had wanted to be an engineer and that he had spent most of his time as a boy hanging around the shops where the big freighters were repaired.
But Navy ships were different, and he absorbed everything he saw.
Ten days after taking off from Mars they landed on the little moon of Neptune known as Outpost. Scarcely two hundred miles in diameter, it circled the big planet at a distance of five million miles. It was the farthest port of the Space Navy, more than two and one-half thousand million miles from the sun, and usually staffed with the minimum number of men and ships. But now, with the expedition to Planet X scheduled from there, and with the pirates active throughout the outer planets, it was filled.
The big dome of the landing field opened for Wing Nine, and they found hangar space reserved for them, as well as a celebration, which Griffith at first started to cancel, but changed his mind. Stopping it would cause more comment than anything else, while a few wild tales of a remarkable pirate from the crews would be put down to nothing more than their imaginations.
Housing for the officers was provided at the edge of the field, just beyond the dome that covered it. Here there was no air, of course, and any air would have frozen solid, in any event. Plastic domes covered everything, with passages connecting them together into a sprawling city of bubbles.
Commander Griffith installed Juan and Bob in their quarters in his apartment and then disappeared on the official report he had been sweating out during the trip. He was hardly gone before Simon Jakes knocked on their door. He looked tired and drawn, but about as close to being happy as Bob had ever seen him. To Bob, remembering the gruelling drive at top cruising acceleration, he looked like an illusion; he couldn’t possibly be on Outpost.
“Surprised to see me?” he asked needlessly. “I told you the Icarius had heels. Got here yesterday, and been waiting for you. Hey, who’s he?”
Bob introduced Juan, with a quick and careful account of how he happened to be along. Simon shook his head and Juan’s hand. For his part, Juan seemed to see nothing ridiculous in the appearance of Jakes. Simon must have sensed it, for he softened and relaxed a little in the general introductory conversation, while Bob’s curiosity continued to grow.
Finally, Jakes grinned again, and got back to the subject. “I came at a straight four gravities, except for a few rest hours. I brought a letter from your mother, too. Never thought I could take that kind of pressure, did you?”
“I still don’t,” Bob answered flatly. Then something flashed into his mind from their few talks while Jakes had been at the Academy. “Your liquid cushion!”
Simon swelled out more than ever, nodding vigorously. Pride made him look more foolish than ever, but at that moment he didn’t mind his appearance. “That’s it. I got it—a seat made of a new elastic and filled with salt water, just about the same density as my body. When the pressure builds up, I sink into it—except that I wear a mask that lets me see out. Liquid equalizes pressure in all directions. And I can really pile on the pressure. Your precious Navy’s already radioed Outpost—after I had Dad give them the dope and they checked my time—and they want my invention. And I’ll bet now they let me go along to Planet X!”
Bob didn’t have the heart to disillusion him about his present chances of reaching Planet X.
If Simon had finally done what no one had succeeded in doing—even with the help of a new plastic elastic—he deserved a little boasting. Bob couldn’t help wondering, though, how many experts had been hired by the Jakes family to do the real work on the problem.
Tired as he was, he went along to inspect the new seat, with Juan trailing them. It was simple enough in principle. By sinking down into the elastic-covered liquid, the pressure was equalized on all sides, instead of merely trying to force a man’s stomach flat against his backbone. But the metal framework and suspension that made the chair possible was a mechanical marvel, as was placing of the controls so that they could slide back with the hands.
“How about a demonstration?” Jakes wanted to know. He brushed aside the protests that Bob started, and switched on the radio to the field control. “Jakes in the Icarius,” he announced. “I’m going on a test run.”
The monitor’s voice was polite but firm. “Sorry, Mr. Jakes. Outpost Field is quarantined—full security blanket. You are not to leave the field without the permission of Commander Jergens and Commander Griffith! Repeat. Don’t leave the field! Violations will be punished as acts of treason!”
Jakes sputtered, but the radio went dead. He shook his head and finally gave up, trailing the other two as they moved off the field. Bob knew that it meant his father had convinced Outpost Commander Jergens of the origin and meaning of the black ship. By now the ether must be burning with a carefully coded account going back to Mars and to Earth. Naturally, though, it would be kept from the public as long as possible, and no one would be permitted to leave Outpost, where the secret might leak out.
“Come on, Si,” Bob volunteered. “Might as well go back to my place and I’ll treat you to dinner. Dad won’t be home until late, I suppose.”
In that he was wrong. His father was sitting in the little living room, with another man, whom Bob recognized as Commander Jergens. The man looked older, thinner, and more uncertain than ever. His sandy hair and mustache went with a drooping expression that made him look like something out of one of the old British comedies—the absent-minded, doddering Lord Somesuch-or-Other.
Commander Griffith spotted Bob and Juan first, and waved them in. “Here are the boys. We can go ahead, though—they know as much as I do, and they can keep their mouths shut.”
Then he saw Jakes, and frowned slightly.
But Jergens motioned Jakes in quickly. “Simon Jakes—son of my old friend Roger Jakes.
Brilliant mind. Made a big contribution, you know, the seat they’re installing on the Fleet at Mars. Went to the Academy, before he took up inventing. Very high recommendations from Earth.”
Commander Griffith stuck out his hand. “Hello, Simon. Quite a trip you made; it beats the record. We’ve met before, you see, Commander.”
“Oh!” Jergens seemed somewhat disappointed, but he rallied quickly. “Well, small universe, as I always say. But you know, you can’t very well exclude him now—not if your boy and this other know. Not after all Mr. Jakes has done for the Navy.”
Griffith’s mouth twitched faintly, but he nodded. “If I know boys, he already has enough information to find out the rest; as soon as a boy finds there’s a secret, he has to ferret it out.
Okay, Bob, fill in the details for Simon. You might do it over the dinner I had sent up— out in the dining room.”
He turned to Jakes then, estimating the other carefully. “I’ll be honest with you, son. You’re something of a fool, and you’ve got a hero bug you’d be better off without; I know your Academy record. But I think you’re also able to keep your word, and as honest as most of us. What Bob will tell you is the top military secret of the system. I want your word you won’t discuss it with anyone except those present, and then only in private. Not even to your best friends and business acquaintances. Do I have that word?”
“Yes, sir. You have it.” Simon had straightened to as good a parade-dress stand as the Academy had been able to drill into him. He met the older man’s eye, and then smiled.
“Thank you, sir. And—and thanks for putting it that way, sir.”
Bob tried to listen to what the two Commanders were saying while he filled the amazed Jakes with the facts. But he needn’t have tried. The conversation was still going strong when they went back to the living room.
“We’ve decided to make you and Juan ensigns for the duration of the emergency,” Bob’s father told Jakes. “That puts you under Navy officer regulations. You’ll both be quartered here with me.” Jergens frowned faintly at that, but let it go. “And you’re both on indefinite leave, at once. That is, if you’ll accept the oath?”
Jakes nodded quickly, and Juan gave his own quiet assent, with the touch of a smile around his lips. He seemed somewhat amused at the idea, though Bob couldn’t see why. Maybe those from a merchant planet like Io thought all the rules and regulations of the Navy ridiculous, as many other civilians did. Griffith administered the oath quickly, and made out two handwritten slips of paper.
“Bob,” he said then, “you’re automatically Navy, but we’re raising you to the rank of ensign at once, without leave. All right, boys, relax. It’s probably better having you listen in than trying to find any privacy in that madhouse Jergens calls headquarters; we tried that this afternoon. Now, where was I?”
“You said the piracy…” Jergens began.
Griffith nodded. “Thanks. No, I don’t think all that piracy we’ve had comes from Planet X. I think not more than three of the attacks show any signs of it. That one a month ago near here, that freighter the miners saw towed off just afterward, and this job with the Ionian. The rest are just a bunch of the usual crooks capitalizing on a sensational crime; we always get that. And the more reports there are, the more fools will try piracy instead of honest shipping.
