Captain Future 17 - The Tenth Planet (Spring 1944), page 7
Chapter 11: Catastrophe Averted
THE Comet slowed down, and cruised at a leisurely pace toward this second ring of asteroids. It stopped finally near a matter-creating machine that was turning out huge clouds of sodium chloride. The plans for these machines, brought back to Earth by Captain Future from his successful search for the birthplace of matter, had been submitted to the Board of Governors along with other details by Curt Newton.
Jackson, the engineer in charge, seemed flattered at their visit. He came aboard at Loring’s invitation somewhat hesitantly, but soon showed an overwhelming desire to talk.
“This, of course, is old stuff to you gentlemen,” he said apologetically. “But it’s new to me, and I still can’t get over my luck at being placed in charge here.”
The engineer was staring respectfully at the imitation Captain Future. Hro Zan smiled, as he had been taught, and observed casually, “Yes, yes, I can imagine,” and excused himself, leaving the engineer alone with Blackbeard and Loring.
“I’m no scientist myself,” remarked Loring. “I’m just Captain Future’s business manager. All I can see is that you’re creating something out of nothing. It looks pretty mysterious to me.”
“Remarkable, but not mysterious. We’re creating the lighter elements from the cosmic energy being radiated through our portion of space. The cosmic potential being rather low, we have no choice but to import the heavier metals.” Jackson indicated the several dozen nozzles. “In the original mechanism, these numbered hundreds. But Captain Future himself devised this simplified form for our present purpose.”
“Each nozzle, I imagine, emits a different element,” Loring remarked.
“A different isotope of each element. You’ll have noticed that each machine is creating just one or two elements, the isotopes being approximately in the same proportion as in the elements found on Earth. That simplifies operations exceedingly. That, in fact, is one of the reasons the Interplanetary Government has been willing to take charge of preliminary operations, leaving to the Futuremen only the task of fitting in the final core.”
Blackbeard, who had been watching and listening intently, now interrupted. “I see half a dozen of the machines are creating only oxygen. I don’t like it.”
The engineer stared at the offending machines, and laughed. “I suppose you’re afraid the oxygen will go off into space. But you needn’t fear. It’s being held in place near each ship by artificial gravity.
LORING regarded Blackbeard distrustfully. “How did you know they were making oxygen?”
“By watching which nozzles the clouds came from. The oxygen is formed as a fine mist, which, immediately vaporizes.”
The engineer nodded. “I was wondering myself how you knew, but of course, that’s the answer. Future has published several scientific articles about the device, and you appear to have read them carefully. Incidentally, this question of oxygen is the only one on which Captain Future and the Interplanetary authorities disagreed. I hope he’s not angry at the change in his original plans.”
“He’s not angry,” replied Loring dryly.
“I’m glad of that. You see, he suggested that the manufacture of oxygen be left to the last, so that the gas might be held by the natural gravity of the new planet. He had some objection, which I don’t remember, to the use of the gravity machines. But that would have meant that in the latter stages of construction, our workmen would be forced to use space suits, delaying things considerably. So, quite wisely, it seems to me —”
Blackbeard interrupted harshly. “You think so? Take a look at that!”
One of the asteroids which he had indicated a moment or two before had suddenly erupted into flames. The matter-creating machine, the men who had been operating it, the space-ship in which they had come, all had disappeared. They were now glowing gas and incandescent cinders in a sea of dazzling fire.
As Loring and Jackson gaped, Blackbeard rushed for the controls of the Comet. The ship was speeding toward the scene of the disaster before they had recovered their wits. Loring’s face became white.
“Stop, you space-blasted fool, you’re heading right for the fire!”
He threw himself hysterically at Blackbeard, who brushed him away impatiently with one hand. The tear-drop-shaped vessel skirted the flames so closely that it seemed the very plates would have buckled under the heat. Then it was past, racing for the next oxygen-producing asteroid. That one blazed up unexpectedly ahead of them, and again Blackbeard missed it by the narrowest of margins.
The imitation android and robot were rushing forward to learn what was happening. Loring screamed at them almost hysterically.
“Stop him! He’s trying to wreck the ship! He’s trying to get us burned alive!”
The fake robot lumbered forward, then stopped at sight of the weapon in Blackbeard’s free hand.
“Get back or I’ll drill your brain-box. Sorry, Grag, but there’s no time to explain.”
The Jovian inside the robot’s shell was a prudent man. He halted, uncertainly. The next moment, Blackbeard had brought the Comet to a landing on a third asteroid. Jackson was shouting orders over his short-wave radio set. In space suits they rushed out of the Comet.
The clouds of newly formed oxygen had stopped rushing from the nozzles. Instead, another gas was now hissing out into the void, then collecting around them.
“That’ll stop it,” announced the engineer in charge. “Nothing like a nitrogen blanket to head off an explosive wave.” He looked up to see Blackbeard racing toward him. “Take your time, Mister. We’ve got her under control.”
Blackbeard’s eyes were blazing like one of the stricken asteroid. He looked more than ever like an ancient pirate. “Cut off your nitrogen, and cut it off in a hurry! Shoot on your oxygen again.”
“What, man, you must be crazy! That would be sure suicide!”
Blackbeard’s fist caught him on the jaw, and he went down. Two men nearby started for him, but Blackbeard ducked quickly, and plunged for the bank of control keys. Next moment, enormous clouds of oxygen rolled out, at ten times the previous rate.
Two men caught up with him then, and hit him together. Blackbeard went over backward, and they threw themselves at him. The chief engineer, following closely behind Blackbeard, was staggering toward the control back.
“The man’s crazy,” he was muttering. “If the explosion doesn’t get us this will. Ten times the normal rate!”
BLACKBEARD’S arm shot out of a tangled mass of arms and legs just as the engineer was about to bring his fist down on the control keys, and closed about Jackson’s ankle. The engineer tumbled down, his head landing in the stomach of one of his own men. The man exclaimed painfully, “Ouff!” and relaxed.
Blackbeard’s fist smashed into the solar plexus of his other still dangerous opponent. The man gasped, clawed feebly at him, then sank back. Blackbeard rose to his feet.
Off in the distance, several other asteroids were ablaze. Loring, not waiting to see what would happen, had taken off in the Comet, and was now hovering in space, watching fearfully. But the asteroid upon which Blackbeard had been battling so fiercely was still apparently untouched.
A dazed victim of Blackbeard’s fists was lifting himself to his feet, grunting with pain.
“Quick man!” Blackbeard spoke fiercely. “Where’s the space-radio?”
“You think I’ll tell you?” snarled the assistant engineer. He shouted suddenly to a fourth man, who stood some distance away, watching the scene open-mouthed. “Quick, Jan, radio for help! This man’s crazy!”
Blackbeard caught Jan just as he reached the radio, hurled him away.
“Calling all remaining asteroids!” he began. A guttural reply reached his ears. “I don’t care if that isn’t the proper signal! This is a matter of life and death — your life and death! Cut off your nitrogen, and switch on your oxygen again, full force! Yes, I know it isn’t safe, but it’s safer than being caught in that explosive wave! And it’s kept us untouched so far! Hurry up, men!”
Another asteroid sprang into sudden brilliance. And then, on its neighbor, the nitrogen stopped rolling out, gave way to high-pressure oxygen again. Slowly, the flames on the ill-fated asteroids died away, leaving only a mass of glowing rocks that would take months and perhaps years to radiate their heat into space once more.
The men he had fought so fiercely a few moments before approached cautiously now. There was no longer any fight in them. They stared at Blackbeard in sheer admiration. They knew that he had saved their lives, but they still couldn’t figure out how.
Half an hour later, aboard the Comet once more, Blackbeard apologized.
“Sorry I had to be so rough, but as you can see for yourselves, I had little time.”
Loring growled angrily. The chief engineer who had returned aboard their ship nodded. “So that’s why Captain Future objected to the use of the artificial gravity. A pity his advice was disregarded.”
“He must have known the danger of this happening,” agreed Blackbeard. “Artificial gravity is produced by electro-gravitational waves, which don’t ordinarily interfere with the operation of the cosmic ray condenser. But occasionally, some of the partially spent rays, consisting mostly of high-speed particles, are emitted together with the created matter. The atoms of the excited matter are partially energized, and become exceedingly reactive chemically under the influence of the electro-gravitational waves.”
“And when they happen to be oxygen, just aching for a chance to combine with whatever’s around, there’s all space to pay,” added Jackson. “But what I don’t quite understand is how you stopped the explosions.”
“The first explosive wave was limited to its own asteroid. But the radiations emitted by the explosion had no trouble leaping the gap, and setting off another explosion on the neighboring one. Nitrogen was of no use in trying to damp the explosion because under the conditions that existed it would have combined with the oxygen to form nitric oxide. The one way to prevent the explosions from spreading was to absorb the emitted radiations harmlessly... and the most effective absorbing agent was high-pressure oxygen.”
THE chief engineer grinned slowly. “Why, of course! I remember that even in the early Twentieth Century chemists knew that explosions had both lower and upper limits. Many gas reactions wouldn’t begin until the oxygen was increased beyond a certain minimum amount, and would stop again when it passed a maximum. I should have thought of that myself.”
Loring growled again, and studied Blackbeard’s face curiously. He had certainly made no mistake in hiring this man. His knowledge of science seemed almost equal to that which the real Captain Future had possessed.
The engineer was shaking hands with Blackbeard. “We are certainly in your debt,” he commented. “If not for you, these explosions would have wrecked everything so far done — probably have meant the end of the project. It’s a pity,” he added, “that Future is so busy with his experiments that he didn’t notice what was happening.”
After they had returned Jackson to his main base, Loring and Blackbeard interchanged glances.
“No use letting him know that Future’s mind has weakened,” observed Loring.
“Perhaps not. But he was certainly curious.”
Loring shrugged. “Let him make what he can of Future’s pre-occupation. Meanwhile, seeing as the whole thing is at present being run by the Interplanetary Government, we’re not really necessary. We’d better get out of here.”
A few hours later, they were beyond the outer asteroid ring, headed for the Moon. Loring himself was at the controls again. Although he maneuvered the ship with reasonable skill, Blackbeard knew from his previous handling of the controls, that he himself could do better. He waited until Loring had twisted out of a particularly knotty traffic tangle, and was drying his forehead. Then he stepped over to the control panel.
“Mind if I try my hand?” he asked.
“You’re a little more polite than you were before. Sure you’re used to ships as complicated as this one?”
“You’ll see, Mr. Loring.”
Half unwillingly, Loring made way for him. Blackbeard’s strong fingers slid over the controls as if they were old friends. Loring’s eyes narrowed as he watched Blackbeard handle levers and instruments whose use he himself did not know.
“The Comet has several pieces of mechanism not found in any other ship. How do you happen to understand about them?”
Blackbeard laughed. “Don’t let Captain Future kid you, Loring. Some of these things aren’t as exclusive as he pretends.”
There was clear space ahead of them, and without warning, the Comet leaped ahead. Hurled backward by the sudden acceleration, Loring rebounded as if from a cushion of force in the air. Then the effects of the acceleration died away, and Loring’s hair stood on end. For suddenly, though they were not more than four hours out of Mars, they were approaching Earth.
A HOWL of terror rose in Loring’s throat, to be choked off by his frightened lips. They would crash! At that speed they couldn’t help it!
The force cushion surrounding him was suddenly removed, and he fell to the floor. The Comet was proceeding at its normal pace again, heading for the Moon. Loring bounded to his feet in fury.
Blackbeard grinned at him. “How do you like the way I handle the ship?”
“You blasted space-devil, you almost wrecked us!”
“Do you have any idea of how many million miles we’ve covered in as many seconds?”
Loring gained control of himself. Time was important to him, and he owed something to Blackbeard for that. All the same, he resented the way in which the man had taken control of the Comet. Loring watched Blackbeard’s fingers for a moment without speaking. Then:
“How did you get that extra speed?” he snapped in angry tones.
“By means of the vibration drive.”
Blackbeard’s eyes suddenly clouded. He had answered without thinking. How had he himself known the name of this mechanism?
He wondered if he could have worked for Captain Future before.
Loring continued to eye him suspiciously as the tear-drop-shaped vessel drove for the Moon.
His eyes widened, as without instructions, Blackbeard headed for the side of the satellite that held the laboratories of the Futuremen.
“You know where Captain Future lives?” he demanded.
“Of course, who doesn’t?”
There were plenty of people who didn’t.
Loring made no further comment as the ship braked, began to settle down smoothly.
Blackbeard’s hands flashed rapidly over the instrument panel. The Comet came to rest peacefully in a moon crater that might have been hollowed out for her.
Loring breathed a sigh of relief. There had been no difficulty at all in landing. Which meant that all he had heard about the automatic defenses of the Moon-home was a lot of nonsense.
Probably nothing more than rumors that Captain Future had spread for his own purposes.
He did not notice that Blackbeard’s brow was wrinkled. The bearded man was wondering at himself. Why had his fingers moved over the instrument panel as they did? Certainly not for the purpose of braking the ship.
It was almost as if his hands retained a special memory of this place that his mind did not, as if in his hands lay the secret of his past.
But he had long since decided not to try to force a solution. He put the problem out of his mind once more, slipped into a space suit, and led the hesitating Loring out upon the Moon’s surface.
The next moment a small three-headed monster leaped at them with rows of glistening teeth bared.
Chapter 12: Moon-Home, Sweet Home
LORING started back in terror, his hands seeking the atom pistol at his side. The three-headed monster that had frightened him now began to shrink into the ground. It oozed into a crevice, became a harmless gray rock from which the sunlight glistened. As two timid eyes peeked out from one side, Blackbeard shook with silent laughter.
The three pretended Futuremen, strangely ill at ease and subdued in what was supposedly their own home, had followed Loring and Blackbeard out of the ship. The tiny wireless set inside Blackbeard’s helmet brought him the android’s words.
“Why, it’s Oog!”
Every one in the System had heard of the Futuremen’s famous pets — Oog, the meteor-mimic, treasured by Otho, and Eek, the moon-pup which had won Grag’s metal heart. As Blackbeard watched, the little meteor-mimic, which could imitate every object it had ever seen, changed to a fat little white lump, its natural form. It stared at Otho as if puzzled, then moved slowly away.
Eek, a small gray bear-like animal, came suddenly upon the scene, galloping toward Grag — and stopped just as suddenly. Grag, as if chagrined, rumbled angrily.
“The stupid beast! Every time we’re away for more than a few weeks, he doesn’t recognize me! He’s got a memory as short as his appetite is long!”
The two animals huddled together, as if for protection. They circled warily about the group of men and approached Blackbeard. But when he leaned over as if to pet them, they retreated hurriedly. “You’ve got a way with the beasts,” said Loring.
“It’s a way that doesn’t go very far,” replied Blackboard. He stared in wonderment at the moon-pup. And the small, sharp-snouted animal stared back in bewilderment, its telepathic sense telling it that here was a familiar figure, and its eyes assuring it that the figure was a completely strange one.
Loring started toward the glassite windows of the dome that indicated the Moon-laboratory. Struck by a sudden thought, he turned to Blackbeard.
“Get back to the ship,” he ordered. “The entrance to the laboratory is a secret, and Captain Future wants it to remain one.”
Blackbeard nodded agreeably. “You’re the boss,” he said.
THEY watched the airlock of the ship close behind his stalwart figure. Then the pretended android faced the man who had hired him.
