The Mysterious Planet, page 9
“All right, Ensign, report.”
Bob had begun that as soon as he was acknowledged, since it took several seconds for the signal to travel to Outpost. He summed it up as quickly as possible.
Wallingford’s voice came back quickly. “Right. I’m recalling all ships that were headed for your mock-up ship. Consider yourselves under arrest, but get back here as quickly as you can. And good luck!”
Bob cut off, and suddenly noticed that Jakes wasn’t there. He turned to see Jakes getting into a suit, fumbling in his effort for haste.
“Darned towrope,” Simon said as he fought with the zipper. “Forgot to unhitch it. Without weight at the other end, it’d swing right into the rocks. Might wreck us.” He got the zipper closed, and reached for the helmet. “All ships recalled, we’re under arrest, and he wishes us good luck! Phooey!”
He was going through the lock a second later. They moved to the viewport to watch him come out and dash for the hitch that held the towline to the ship. Again, his fingers were clumsy with an attempt at speed. He stamped one foot, then had to catch himself quickly as he started to drift upward. Then he stopped, looked up at them, and grinned. Bob knew he was simply trying to force himself to relax. It seemed to work. This time, he unsnapped the line, and sprang back to the lock.
Bob moved forward to help him off with the suit, and they were ready to take off again. But a lot of time had been wasted since they’d discovered the trap. They were a fine bunch of heroes, Bob thought bitterly. They practically needed a nursemaid.
The radar screen snapped on, and Jakes reached for the throttle. Then he gasped and jerked his hand back. On the screen, three large pips showed up. Straining their eyes, the boys could just make out the black ships that were low on the horizon as the little moon revolved. They hung poised and waiting.
Juan shook his head. “They weren’t there before.”
“Then maybe they’ve just arrived,” Bob guessed, and hoped he was right. “In that case, if we can just wait without being seen until we’re on the other side of the moon, we might get away without being spotted. Besides, we can’t take off now. We’re pointing away from Outpost.
Those ships must be using this moon as a shield to keep them out of the spotting screens at Communications.”
The black shapes seemed to rise slowly, higher as the moon rotated, and then to begin sinking. Each second took longer than any second Bob had experienced, and his stomach was sick with the strain of waiting. But he forced himself to seem as cool as he could.
“Nice picture,” Simon broke the silence. “We probably get wiped out. If we don’t, we go back under arrest.”
“What will they do to us, in this being under arrest?” Juan asked.
Bob shook his head. “Nothing much. Don’t listen to Simon. When Wallingford told us to consider ourselves under arrest, but to get back as soon as we could, he was trying to pass on the word that we didn’t have to worry. We broke the rules, but we did keep Navy ships from spotting this and walking into a trap. So we’ll probably get a bawling out and be confined to quarters for a while.”
Bob hoped he was right, at least. But still he wasn’t entirely sure. The warning they’d radioed back would count in their favor, of course. But the Navy during wartime was different from the Navy he knew.
He glanced nervously at the screen, where the ships were almost gone from sight.
Apparently they hadn’t
moved. If the Icarius hadn’t been spotted, all might yet go off as it should. And it seemed the ships hadn’t seen them. The logical tune to strike would have been while they were turned away from Outpost.
Now the radar screen began to register the marker pip broadcast from the base. They were swinging around to face Outpost. Jakes fingered the controls nervously, but he knew it was still too soon. He licked his lips, and kept his eyes glued on the screen as the beacon pip crossed it slowly toward the center.
Juan seemed more nervous than Bob or Jakes, but he managed to smile and shrug in a pretense of courage. It was Simon who finally admitted the truth. “I’m scared silly.”
“Me too,” Bob admitted, glad for the chance to stop pretending. His throat was dry, and his breath ached from holding it in. Then, amazingly, the admission of his fright seemed to make him feel better.
“Dead center,” Jakes said suddenly. His fingers bit down on the throttle, and the Icarius seemed to jump into the air as if thrown from a catapult.
It was hard to see the screen, but Bob somehow kept his eyes focused on it. It showed nothing but the mark from the beacon. “Better overshoot than reverse too soon,” he suggested thickly.
Simon’s muffled grunt was mixed with blood roaring in Bob’s ears. “Yeah… yeah, I figured on that. If we get that far. Maybe we will.”
They were half a minute off the moon when the first of the pips hit the screen, just at the edge. Juan cried out at the same tune Bob saw them increase from one to three. The black ships were coming out from behind the moonlet, probably deciding to search it thoroughly.
Their course didn’t look as if they had spotted the little Icarius, though that seemed hard to believe.
“Maybe there’s time to drop back,” he gasped.
Jakes hit the switches, and snapped the Icarius over sharply, then cut on the throttle again.
But they’d built
up enough speed to keep drifting outward for some time before the Icarius began moving back toward the moon. There wouldn’t be time for them to land where they had been, even if the ships didn’t see the small blue flame of their exhaust, or spot them in some electronic device.
Only one thing was left to do, and that was to try to dart around to the side, and somehow get the moon between them again. Jakes was working the controls, his face covered with sweat. This close to a body even the size of the little moon was no place for comfortable navigation, and the three ships on the screen made it a lot harder. He was trying to keep his jets from blasting toward them as much as possible, to increase the chance of not being seen.
Even over the fear that gripped him, Bob felt a sudden thrill of admiration at the way Jakes handled the ship. He’d seen the crack pilots of the Fleet on fancy maneuvers, but he hadn’t seen stunting to equal what Jakes was going through. It would be a shame if it was all useless in the end. Shame? It’d be a lot more than that. Bob could remember the way the blue balls of lightning had exploded inside the ships of Wing Nine.
They seemed about to make it, though. The three pips were going down on the screen again, and the Icarius was reaching some sort of balance that didn’t take constant juggling with the steering jets. If the ships didn’t spot them for a few seconds more they might have a chance.
“Find me some kind of rough valley down there,” Simon gasped. “Just big enough to bury us in. I’ll set her down in anything, if you can spot a good cover.”
The little telescreen showed a wild jumble under them, but nothing in which they could hide.
Bob seemed to remember one big crevasse visible before they first landed and which would do, but he couldn’t spot it.
Then another grunt from Jakes snapped his eyes back to the radar screen. It was too late.
The black ships must have spotted them, since they were now heading straight toward the Icarius, though without the impossible speeds of which they were capable.
They didn’t need to rush. The three inside the little ship were sitting ducks for them.
CHAPTER 11
Bound for Planet X
“ONLY ONE CHANCE,” Simon gasped. The strain of trying to maneuver under such an acceleration pressure was telling on him. But his hands were still in complete mastery of the controls.
He flipped the ship further over, using the full strength of the steering jets, and went skimming over the little moon, forcing the Icarius into a power curve that shot her out of the sight of the three ships. There would, however, be no time for a careful landing before they caught up. Bob couldn’t see any chance.
Simon’s eyes were glued to the screen, though, and he was cutting almost entirely around the moon. It required a constant turning with the steering rockets to swing the main jet off course enough to keep the circle going.
Ahead of them, the mock-up ship suddenly appeared. Simon headed straight for it. As it came near, he forced the Icarius down until she was almost skimming the ground, and began braking furiously. The mock-up swelled in the screen—and behind it lay a mass of ugly boulders. Bob ducked instinctively—or tried to; the pressure in the cushion kept him from doing more than nodding his head.
Something flipped across the observation port. There was a simultaneous blast from the braking rockets, and the Icarius gave a screech as her bottom scraped rock. Then she was still.
They were inside the mock-up, placed there almost as if Simon had been a hand and the ship a ball to be dropped into a pocket. Bob sighed, and almost relaxed. It was logical—and the last thing in the world he would have thought of doing. But it was the only really good cover on the whole moon—and perhaps the last place where the aliens would look for them.
Now some of Simon’s cockiness came back. “How was that for a landing, boy? Did the Academy make or not make a mistake?”
“Maybe they did,” Bob had to admit. “I don’t care. What I want to know is how we’re going to get out.”
“No trouble, I think. That stuff stuck to metal, but it didn’t seem to bother anything else. And the Icarius has a porcelain glaze all over her. Anyhow, I don’t think the stuff is tough enough to worry a set of hydrogen rockets.”
Bob shook his head. “I didn’t mean that. I mean that we may not be found here, but we still are no nearer getting back to Outpost than before. We can’t stay here forever.”
“We can stay for a month at least,” Simon told him. “I keep her pretty well stocked. Juan, you’re pretty good at heating things. Want to fix up a lunch?”
Juan got out of his seat, still looking worried, and began opening lockers and taking out whatever struck his fancy. Most of the cans were of the type which heated the food automatically when a button on top was pressed, and then popped open when it was ready.
He selected three of these, and three bulbs of cold tea. Eating here would be easier than in no gravity, but not too much.
The chief trouble with their hide-out, Bob decided, was that they couldn’t look out. The blast of the braking rockets had apparently blown the tough fabric up as the ship went through, and it had settled back again. The best plastic fabrics known to men would have been completely consumed, but this stuff seemed to have almost unlimited tolerance to heat, cold, pressure and almost everything else. They were walled in thoroughly.
Reaction set in as he realized they might actually be safe for a while. His hands shook as he took the warm can from Juan, and he noticed that Simon could hardly hold his. But that could be partly sheer physical strain. Operating those controls as he had done against top acceleration pressure must have strained bis muscles to the limit.
“They’ll hardly hang around a month so near Outpost,” Bob decided finally. “If we can stick it out without being found for a few hours, they’ll probably go away.”
“Yeah.” Simon had given up trying to control his muscles. He had found a lever that wasn’t present on regulation acceleration chairs and pressed it, to let his seat slope back. Now he half lay on it, sipping at the tea and trying to relax.
“Yeah,” he repeated. “If we last a few hours, we’ll be all right, I guess. I wish I knew where those aliens are right now.”
“You could try the radar,” Juan suggested. “It should go through this cloth, should it not?”
“It might. But I don’t know whether they can detect it or not. Better leave it off.” Simon rolled over and bent his face down, trying to line up the port and his eye in such a way that he could see through the faint slit near the bottom of the mock-up they were in. He gave up.
The inability to see what was going on began to get on their nerves sooner than Bob would have expected. They knew that the black ships were probably somewhere around, and they suspected that the aliens might have ways of detecting them of which they knew nothing. But they couldn’t be sure.
Finally, Jakes got up and began straightening up the slight mess their eating had made.
Juan started to help, but Simon shook his head. “We’d better stay in our seats. If we have to take off, it’ll be pretty sudden.”
“You can’t take off,” Bob told him. “You’d run smack into those boulders ahead.”
Jakes frowned and nodded slowly. “Hey, that’s right. I forgot all about them. We’d better swing the Icarius around, and do it quick. Shouldn’t be too heavy here.”
That seemed to be the only answer, and they got into their space suits again, which seemed to be a regular job on this moon. Outside, they saw that there was plenty of room for the maneuver under the tent-like dome. And the whole ship shouldn’t weigh enough on this moon to bother them.
But the force of inertia was as strong as ever. Here, a man could probably lift a thousand pounds with his little finger. But he couldn’t have jerked it up, any more than on Earth. The old law that things resist change of motion with a force proportional to their mass—not merely their weight—still applied. The Icarius had a motion of zero, and changing it to anything else took a lot of work and effort. Even with the light weight, there was also some friction working against them—and almost none in their favor to hold them down.
Bob finally solved it by fastening a line to the ship and having the three brace themselves against one of the slim metal supports for the mock-up. It took minutes of straining at the cord to get the ship into a slow motion, barely visible to their eyes, but it did begin turning.
And at least there was no sign outside, as there would have been if they’d slewed her around with the steering jets.
Once in motion, it wasn’t hard to overcome friction here enough to keep her turning. But at the end, it proved equally hard to stop the ship, and a long process of trial and error was needed to get her lined up to suit Simon Jakes.
This tune, they were all sweating from honest labor. Juan started back inside, but Simon and Bob both had the same idea. They flopped down on their stomachs and began peering out under the slit at the bottom of the fabric. When they were close to it—but carefully not touching it—they could see a fair amount of the rocky terrain around them.
Bob slid over beside Jakes and touched helmets with him, not trusting the use of radio, which might carry far enough for the black ships to detect. “We could leave one man outside here to keep guard. And leave the outer seal of the air lock open. Then if things happen, he could make a dash for it, perhaps bang on the inner lock and let the others know it was time to do something. You could take off while I was getting through the inner lock.”
“And you could get squashed flat under the acceleration pressure,” Simon answered.
“Nope. But we might let the air out of the ship, and keep our space suits on. Then we could keep both seals of the lock open.”
This seemed like the best idea. Bob ducked his head down and looked out again.
For a second, his heart seemed to explode. Coming down gently as a feather and almost touching the surface was the hull of a great black ship! As he swiveled his gaze, he saw another—and beyond that a third. They were arranged together at the side of the mock-up, and there was no question but what they were coming with a full knowledge of where the Icarius was hidden!
He touched Jakes and pointed, unable to speak. The older boy glimpsed the ship and jerked. “Back,” he said hoarsely. He began scrambling backward over the ground, too startled to think of turning around or getting to his feet. Bob yanked him up, and they scrambled as swiftly as they could toward the lock.
Simon was the logical one to go through first, and he made no protests as Bob gave him a push. The lock moved through its cycle slowly. Then Bob was in it, and finally emerging.
Jakes’s white face was already free of his helmet. “Strip,” he said in a whisper that was as natural as it was ridiculous. “Work the ship better without the suit.”
He left the suit lying where it was, Bob following his example. Now there was no reason for not using the radar. Juan had it turned on, and it showed the three ships among the boulders, mixed with the skeletal framework of the mock-up. Radar never gave a completely clear picture, but something was apparently opening on one of the ships, as if a landing party was in progress.
“Ready,” Jakes said. He glanced back, and then set his controls carefully before releasing the lock that kept them inactive.
Bob was getting used to taking off at the full power of the jets. But this had the added flavor of a high scream from the bottom of the ship as it slid over the rough ground, and the view of waiting rocks just ahead, which they barely missed; but the rocks were far behind before this realization struck home. The ship came upward slowly, straightened, and then leaped out into space.
“Where?” Simon asked.
“Outpost,” Bob decided instantly. It was the nearest place and the safest. They might have thrown off some pursuit by twisting around and heading down toward Neptune, but that lay millions of miles away, and the aliens obviously had some means of detecting them.
“If they’re putting out landing parties, we have some chance,” he decided. “It may take a few minutes for them to realize what is going on and get all their men— or whatever they are—back.”
Then he saw that his hopes were futile. On the screen, he spotted one of the big ships lifting easily. As he watched, the other two also rose toward them. They were already a fair distance away but that wouldn’t mean much if these ships could travel as the other aliens had done.
At first, it didn’t seem probable, since they came up from the surface at a leisurely clip, and seemed to be moving about in an aimless fashion. “Looking for us,” Jakes guessed. “Either that or making sure we didn’t
