The Golden Age of Science Fiction Novels Vol 04 Page 16

  Quade was right. It was a perilous venture. Most ships, with their controlled gravity-screens, were able to turn or stop on a micron. But the bulk of this special vessel defeated its own purpose to some extent. She was a bulking, lumbering, leviathan, and yet potentially vulnerable to the dangerous menace of the comet. Now she streaked out from the Moon with mad disregard for trespassers in her path.

  Space traffic had been warned. A lane had been cleared. An intricate chart and map was before Quade, citing the orbit of every known asteroid and meteor in his route. The hull repellers were turned on full power, to give warning of any large body nearby. No other precautions could be taken, unless the crew wore space armor day and night.

  It was the asteroid belt which provided the greatest obstacle. The outer hull was riddled by hundreds of punctures. A smaller vessel could have slid through the uncharted meteorite swarm. Quade's craft could not, though he managed to avoid the main body, which would have ruined the ship completely.

  The repellers blew out with a terrific crash under the strain of trying to throw off countless small but massive bodies. But the second hull, built of super-steel, withstood the slackened speed of most of the interplanetary missiles. A few got through, but emergency valves were immediately employed.

  Two gravity-screens were destroyed

  The ship thundered on amidst the stars. Inside the control cabin, there was blank silence. Quade, Gerry, and Strike looked at one another in dismay.

  Quade was the first to recover. He flicked over an audiophone switch and yelled commands. Emergency galvanized him into an energetic dynamo.

  "Morgan, mobilize the crew. Get a report right away. Let me know the extent of the damage. Prepare space suits for outside repairs."

  "Yes, sir."

  "Outside repairs?" Gerry said. "We're nearly at the comet."

  "So what?" Quade asked. "We're not taking this boat into the coma with a weakened hull. Even after repair it'll be plenty risky."

  "But we may enter the coma any time. If your crew is outside then"

  Her pause was significant.

  "It'll be a volunteer job," Quade replied grimly. He turned to the audiophone again. "Well?"

  "All the men have volunteered, Tony," Morgan reported briefly. He went on to list the damage.

  "Issue space suits. Put enough men inside to take care of that job. Get volunteers to go outside. Be with you right away. Send up an emergency pilot to handle the ship."

  "Oh. You're going out too," Gerry said.

  "Yeah."

  "So am I," Tommy Strike remarked happily. "Every little bit helps."

  He turned to the door.

  "Tommy!" Gerry cried. "No. You can't." She hesitated, breathing hard. "If you do, I'm going too."

  Quade intervened. "We need every man we can get. But volunteers only. Strike doesn't have to go."

  "Listen, Gerry, I'm going out and you're going to stay here," Tommy said. "You can help by piloting the boat, so the emergency pilot can go outside with us. As Tony says, we need every hand."

  Gerry, about to remonstrate, caught Quade's eye. There was a satirical look in it, as though the movie man expected Gerry to display some 'feminine' reaction, perhaps even throw a fit. The woman's lips tightened.

  "Right," she said succinctly. "Scram, boys."

  Quade and Strike went out. Gerry turned to the controls. Her gaze went to the visiplate, to the glowing menace of the comet dangerously near. A red spark on the screen showed the progress of the ship. Gerry blinked rapidly.

  Meanwhile, Quade was mobilizing his men. Some were already working on the wall of the ship, welding on emergency patches hastily brought from the storerooms. Others were struggling into space suits and lining up before the air-locks. Some were entering the inner hull of the craft, protected by their armor, bearing with them the necessary tools.

  Most of the welding machines were mounted on universal ball-bearing tripods of light metal that could be rolled easily across the hull. In each device was a small gravity-control unit, so the machine could be fixed firmly in place for the actual repair work. Quade superintended the exodus.

  Outside the air-lock, clad in his armor and transparent helmet of flexible glass, he started the first unit of men at the ship's prow. It would have been impossible to locate each microscopic puncture in the huge area of the hull. But as the crew emerged, each picked up a portable tank, equipped with a flexible hose which ended in a round disc, easily seven feet in diameter.

  A man would place this disc flat against the hull, turn a nozzle in the tank, and walk quickly forward, dragging the hose after him. The mass of the ship, coupled with the suits' gravityunits, made this means of progression possible. In the trail of each disc, a smear of sticky substance gleamed whitely, congealing immediately in the vacuum of space. Soon a good portion of the hull was completely plated with the stuff.

  Tony Quade barked an order into his suit's audiophone. Inside the vessel, a man turned a screw, letting into the forward compartments of the hull a special gas that expanded swiftly. Where punctures occurred in the outer hull, the elastic coating exploded into huge bubbles, black in contrast to the surrounding whiteness. These marked the goal of dozens of men, hurrying toward the punctures with their welding units.

  It was a remarkable example of well-trained coordination. Strike, busy dragging a hose and disc toward the stern, was impressed. He looked at Quade with renewed respect. More than once, he glanced ahead at the tremendous sweep of the comet, blotting out half the heavens.

  Black void, star-speckled, lay all around. The men worked in airless emptiness, with the Sun a far disc astern. The pallid glare of Almussen's Comet threw their weirdly elongated shadows grotesquely along the hull. In the absence of air the sharp contrast between light and darkness was striking. The helmet lights, naturally, threw no beams, since there were no air-motes to reflect the illumination.

  Inside the ship Gerry Carlyle sat at the controls, her face drained of all color, and grimly drove the vessel at top speed toward the comet. Inexorably the red dot on the visiplate screen crept toward the white boundary of the coma. When it entered it, any man still outside the ship would die instantly under the terrific electronic bombardment.

  And Tommy Strike was out there. That was the only thought she could get through her mind.

  Every man in the crew realized the peril. Tony Quade had grimly explained the dangers. But not one thought of giving up his job, though the comet was the target of apprehensive glances. Welding machines clamped pneumatically against the hull. Pale fires sputtered and blazed. Slowly, in an eternity, the crippled giant was mended.

  But its race through the void continued unchecked. In the control room, Gerry Carlyle gnawed her lips and watched the red dot leap swiftly toward the white circle of the comet's head.

  Two inches lay between. At this speed, the gap would be bridged all too soon. Gerry's hand hovered momentarily over a button, and then drew back. No. Deceleration must not begin yet. But there was so little time!

  The audiophone skirled. Quade's voice rasped out, clipped and staccato.

  "What's the distance? How much time have we?" Gerry made a quick computation and told him. The movie man whistled.

  "Yeah. Well, follow the course. See you soon."

  "Quade — " Gerry said.

  "What?"

  "Nothing," the woman whispered, and turned back to the controls. There were dark shadows under her eyes. Danger for herself she could face without flinching. But this was something entirely different. If Strike died under the electronic bombardment, it would be her hand that had killed him. Strained reasoning, perhaps — but Gerry loved her man.

  She looked at the visiplate. Suddenly she became conscious that she had been holding her breath for some time. The woman exhaled deeply and tried to relax. It was useless.

  The red speck crawled toward the comet. It was less than an inch away.

  Half an inch.

  All the future crawled by her. Gerry was immobile at
the controls. There was hell in her eyes. No sound came to her from the outside hull. She could guess nothing of what was happening there. And that was, perhaps, the worst. She didn't know whether Strike was still alive or not. Should she call Quade on the audiophone?

  A quarter of an inch, and the gap still narrowed.

  The red speck touched the white circle.

  Gerry's iron control snapped. She flicked a switch, called: "Quade! We're in the coma —"

  "Hold it, kid," said a low voice behind her. The woman whirled, pivoting on her seat. Tommy Strike, disheveled but grinning, was standing on the threshold, unzippering his space suit. Behind him came Quade, his face glistening with perspiration.

  Gerry's reaction was instantaneous.

  "It's about time," she snapped. "I've been —"

  And then the tornado struck!

  Only a super-ship could have withstood it even for a moment. The electronic bombardment would have destroyed an ordinary liner instantly. Gerry spun back toward the control panel. Her slim fingers played the keyboard like a pianist's. The vessel rocked, shuddered, swayed, screaming in tortured agony.

  No meteorite-storm, this. The very fabric of matter was the target for a blast of pure, unadulterated energy that raved and tore at the hull. Refrigerators rose into a shrill, high-pitched whine of incredible power.

  Nevertheless the outer hull glowed red. The weak patches flared into white incandescence.

  The skeleton of the ship strained and stretched as though on the rack. Girders and struts of toughest metal screeched. Gerry felt a warning tingle in her fingertips.

  Quade sprang to the audiophone.

  "Special suits on," he shouted. "Double-quick, every man!"

  He dragged three black suits from a locker, threw one to Strike, donned one himself, and pushed Gerry from the controls with little tenderness.

  "Get into it," he snapped, his mittened hands manipulating buttons. "Hurry."

  Gerry obeyed. She knew that not even the ship's armor could entirely withstand the terrific bombardment of radioactivity. Too much of it would short-circuit a brain, unless protected by a helmet such as Gerry was hastily putting on.

  Usually a space ship is silent. But now it was bedlam. The motors keened in rhythmic, throbbing pulsations. The visiplate glowed and paled. It showed nothing but a racing flood of white light. The instruments and gauges were haywire.

  "Blind flying," Quade grunted. "If we crack up —"

  He turned the ship into a narrowing spiral and began to decelerate. A bell rang warningly.

  "One of the patches has gone out," Strike said. "Listen. I can go inside the hull with a welder and repair it."

  "Wouldn't work," Quade snapped. "You wouldn't last three seconds."

  "My armor —"

  The movie man merely shook his head silently and bent over the controls. The ship drove on doggedly, battling an environment that no space craft had ever encountered in history. Searing, blasting fires of pure energy battered at the hull. Instruments were useless. Exposed metal began to glow with dim, faint fluorescence.

  Quade was worrying about his precious film. Raw celluloid would have been rendered useless minutes ago. He had known that in advance. The special thin-wire film he had taken in lieu of it might resist the bombardment. But then it might not. There was no way to tell.

  Suddenly, without warning, it was over. The crackling thunder of the storm died. The visiplate gave a last flare and became normal. It showed —

  The nucleus of the comet! Something that had never been seen before by any human being.

  Quade had a brief impression of a pale mass expanding with terrifying speed, a globe that rushed toward him like a thunderbolt. Small at first, it grew nearly to the Moon's size before he could decelerate. It was dangerous business. Swift deceleration would cause something worse than the bends — caisson disease — and a crack-up would mean insanity, death.

  Quade swung the ship aside, circling the comet's body in a wide orbit. He could as yet make out no features of the sphere beneath him. The ship was moving too fast. He touched buttons.

  The quick deceleration punched him in the stomach and slammed him against the padded control panel. Gerry and Strike went flying across the room, to bounce off the cushioned walls. That was the worst of it.

  Quade pushed more buttons. The ship slowed down and spiraled inward. It wobbled badly. More of the gravity-screens had blown out.

  "We've got to land for repairs," he said briefly. "Strike, check up on the damage."

  Tommy nodded and went out. Gerry came to peer over Quade's shoulder at the visiplate.

  "It looks — dead," she said. "No mountains or bodies of water. Just a featureless sphere, smaller than the Moon."

  "Featureless?" Quade retorted. "Look over there."

  Rising from the pale surface beneath them was a black structure, tiny in the distance, resembling a huge monolith or tower. It flashed past and was gone.

  The vessel slanted down swiftly. It paused, hung in mid-air, dropped to a clumsy, lopsided landing.

  "Whew!" Quade leaned back in his seat, relaxing for a few moments. "What a job."

  He removed his helmet and wriggled out of the special suit.

  "Well, we're here," he announced, sighing with relief.

  Gerry watched Tony crunch a caffeine citrate tablet between his teeth and swallow it wryly.

  "There's life here, Quade. That tower —"

  "Looks like it. But we've got to take precautions."

  "Exactly. The air here can't be breathable. I'll find out."

  She examined the automatic atmosphere analyzer.

  "Cyanogen," she said. "We can't breathe it, of course. We'll need space suits outside the ship at all times."

  Quade pondered. "What sort of life-form can live in cyanogen?"

  "'Why not cyanogen instead of oxygen? I can't guess what the life-forms might look like. But there must be life. That tower proves it."

  "First of all, though, we need rest and repairs," Quade said. "We don't want to be marooned here when the comet reaches the Sun." He barked orders into the audiophone, and rose to superintend matters. "None of the crew was hurt. That's lucky."

  Events marched. For the nonce, Gerry was left out of things, and she didn't like it. Even Tommy Strike seemed to ignore her. He was always busy inside the hull, welding on a patch. The huntress wandered about for a time, frustration mounting within her.

  At last she decided to take matters into her own small but capable hands. After all, she wasn't merely the supercargo.

  She donned a space suit, pocketed a gas-gun and an explosive-projectile pistol, and let herself into a space-lock. The outer valve slid open. Gerry stepped out, closing the portal after her.

  Loose, gritty gravel crunched under her booted feet. She looked toward a sharply curved horizon of low, rolling dunes, all apparently composed of the same substance. No vegetation was visible.

  Well, that was logical enough, she thought. A comet, being made of a lot of loose particles bound together by mutual attraction, would have a fairly solid core. But the surface should be pretty much like deep, loose gravel. The stones themselves resembled granite — hard, gray, rounded by eons of friction.

  Gerry looked up. A little thrill of awe shook her.

  No sky stretched above. A flood of white flame was her heaven. She was inside the comet — within the coma! The vault above her was neither blue nor the starry black of space. It was pure white, seething and crawling in strange, vast tides, rippling in amazing perpetual motion.

  These were all — the pale glory of the sky, the gravel dunes all around, and, behind Gerry, the towering bulk of the ship. But the woman had marked her direction well. She stepped out confidently in the direction where the black tower had reared.

  She was, perhaps, too confident. But after all she was Catch-'em-Alive Carlyle. She had made certain that, if necessary, she could communicate with the ship by her suit's audiophone.

  Gerry Carlyle, the first hu
man being to stand on a comet's surface. A little smile touched her red lips. That really meant something.

  She hiked on doggedly. It was hard going, and the loose gravel made the muscles of her calves ache. She consulted a magnetic compass, which wasn't working. She shrugged and continued trudging. Gerry, of course, had an excellent sense of direction.

  But the rolling dunes were utterly featureless, bathed in the shadow's white glow. The nucleus was a land of perpetual daylight…

  On she went, and on. How far was the tower? A warning premonition touched Gerry. Perhaps she had been too rash. After all, this was a new world, with unknown and probably dangerous life-forms. But a glance at her weapons reassured her. She went on.

  Something like a blue basketball rolled down the slope of a dune toward her.

  Gerry stopped immediately. Her gloved hands went with deceptive casualness to the butts of her guns. She stood alert, waiting.

  A blue basketball, a foot or so in diameter, stopped ten feet from Gerry. She was able to scrutinize it closely.

  The bluish tinge was light, she saw, and the outer skin was translucent, almost transparent. Inside the globe a smaller black object floated, seemingly in liquid. There were no signs of any organs. Eyes, ears, respiratory apparatus, the thing had none of these.

  It started to grow, with the speed of a nightmare mushroom.

  It expanded to four feet in diameter before Gerry reacted. She read menace in the creature's actions, or thought she did. Her hand snapped the gas-gun from her belt.

  Immediately the sphere vanished, disappeared like the figment of a dream. Where it had been was nothing.

  Gerry stood frozen, wondering if the creature had exploded, or departed with incredible speed. But, instinctively, she knew that neither of these guesses was the correct one.

  Some instinct made her turn. The blue sphere was rolling slowly toward her from the opposite direction, now nearly six feet in diameter.