Spacehounds of IPC
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Edward Elmer Smith >> Spacehounds of IPC
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"Well, little fellow, it's time to shove off, and then some. You might
as well sleep here, and I'll go in there. If anything scares you, yell.
Good-night, old trapper!"
"Wait a minute, Steve." Nadia flushed, and her brown eyes and black
eyebrows, in comparison with her golden-blond hair, lent her face a
quizzical, elfin expression that far belied her feelings as she stared
straight into his eyes. "I've never even been away from the Earth
before, and with all this happening I'm simply scared to death. I've
been trying to hide it, but I couldn't stand it alone, and we're going
to be together too long and too close for senseless conventions to
affect us. There's two bunks over there--why don't you sleep in one
of them?"
He returned her steadfast gaze for a moment in silence.
"All x with me, Nadia," he answered, keeping out of his voice all
signs of the tenderness he felt for her, and of his very real admiration
for her straightforward conduct in a terrifying situation. "You trust
me, then?"
"_Trust_ you! Don't be silly--I know you! I know you, and I know Brandon
and Westfall--I know what you've done, and exactly the kind of men you
are. _Trust_ you!"
"Thanks, old golf-shootist," and promises were made and received
in a clasp from which Nadia's right hand, strong as it was, emerged
slightly damaged.
"By the way, what is your first name, fellow-traveller?" she asked in
lighter vein. "Nobody, not even Dad or Breckie, ever seems to call you
anything but 'Steve' when they talk about you." She was amazed at the
effect of her innocent question, for Stevens flushed to his hair and
spluttered.
"It's _Percy_!" He finally, snorted. "Percival Van Schravendyck Stevens.
Wouldn't that tear it?"
"Why, I think Percival's a real nice name!"
"Silence!" he hissed in burlesque style. "Young woman, I have revealed
to you a secret known to but few living creatures. On your life, keep
it inviolate!"
"Oh, very well, if you insist. Good-night--Steve!" and she gave him a
radiant and honest smile: the first smile he had seen since the moment
of the attack.
CHAPTER III
Castaways Upon Ganymede
Upon awakening, the man's first care was to instruct the girl in the
operation of the projectors, so that she could keep the heavily-armored
edge of their small section, which she had promptly christened "The
Forlorn Hope," between them and the grinding, clashing mass of wreckage,
and thus, if it should become necessary, protect the relatively frail
inner portions of their craft from damage.
"Keep an eye on things for a while, Nadia," he instructed, as soon as
she could handle the controls, "and don't use any more power than is
absolutely necessary. We'll need it all, and besides, they can probably
detect anything we can use. There's probably enough leakage from the
ruptured accumulator cells to mask quite a little emission, but don't
use much. I'm going to see what I can do about making this whole wedge
navigable."
"Why not just launch what's left of this lifeboat? It's space-worthy,
isn't it?"
"Yes, but it's too small. Two or three of the big dirigible projectors
of the lower band are on the rim of this piece-of-pie-shaped section
we're riding, I think. If so, and if enough batteries of accumulators
are left intact to give them anywhere nearly full power, we can get an
acceleration that will make a lifeboat look sick. Those main dirigibles,
you know, are able to swing the whole mass of the _Arcturus_, and what
they'll do to this one chunk of it--we've got only a few thousand tons
of mass in this piece--will be something pretty. Also, having the metal
may save us months of time in mining it."
He found the projectors, repaired or cut out the damaged accumulator
cells, and reconnected them through the controls of the lifeboat.
He moved into the "engine-room" the airtanks, stores, and equipment
from all the other fragments which, by means of a space-suit, he could
reach without too much difficulty. From the battery rooms of those
fragments--open shelves, after being sliced open by the shearing ray--he
helped himself to banks of accumulator cells from the enormous driving
batteries of the ill-fated _Arcturus_, bolting them down and connecting
them solidly until almost every compartment of their craft was one mass
of stored-up energy.
Days fled like hours, so furiously busy were they in preparing their
peculiar vessel for a cruise of indefinite duration. Stevens cut himself
short on sleep and snatched his meals in passing; and Nadia, when not
busy at her own tasks of observing, housekeeping, and doing what little
piloting was required, was rapidly learning to wield most effectively
the spanner and pliers of the mechanic and electrician.
"I'm afraid our time is getting short, Steve," she announced, after
making an observation. "It looks as though we're getting wherever it
is we're going."
"Well, I've got only two more jobs to do, but they're the hardest of the
lot. It is Jupiter, or can you tell yet?"
"Jupiter or one of its satellites, I think, from the point where they
reversed their power. Here's the observation you told me to take."
"Looks like Jupiter," he agreed, after he had rapidly checked her
figures. "We'll pass very close to one of those two satellites--probably
Ganymede--which is fine for our scheme. All four of the major satellites
have water and atmosphere, but Ganymede, being largest, is best for our
purposes. We've got a couple of days yet--just about time to finish up.
Let's get going--you know what to do."
"Steve, I'm afraid of it. It's too dangerous--isn't there some other
way?"
"None that I can see. The close watch they're keeping on every bit of
this junk makes it our only chance for a get-away. I'm pretty sure I
can do it--but if I should happen to get nipped, just use enough power
to let them know you're here, and you won't be any worse off than if
I hadn't tried to pull off this stunt."
He donned a space-suit, filled a looped belt with tools, picked up a
portable power-drill, and stepped into the tiny air-lock. Nadia deftly
guided their segment against one of the larger fragments and held it
there with a gentle, steady pressure, while Stevens, a light cable
paying out behind him, clambered carefully over the wreckage, brought
his drill into play, and disappeared inside the huge wedge. In less than
an hour he returned without mishap and reported to the glowing girl.
"Just like shooting fish down a well! Most of the accumulator cells were
tight, and installing the relays wasn't a bad job at all. Believe me,
girl, there'll be junk filling all the space between here and Saturn
when we touch them off!"
"Wonderful, Steve!" Nadia exclaimed. "It won't be so bad seeing you go
into the others, now that you have this one all rigged up."
* * * * *
Around and around the mass of wreckage they crept, and in each of the
larger sections Stevens connected up the enormous fixed or dirigible
projectors to whatever accumulator cells were available through
sensitive relays, all of which he could close by means of one radio
impulse. The long and dangerous task done, he stood at the lookout
plate, studying the huge disk which had been the upper portion of the
lower half of the _Arcturus_ and frowning in thought. Nadia reached over
his shoulder and switched off the plate.
"Nix on that second job, big fellow!" she declared. "They aren't really
necessary, and you're altogether too apt to be killed trying to get
them. It's too ghastly--I won't stand for your trying it, so that
ends it."
"We ought to have them, really," he protested. "With those special
tools, cutting torches, and all the stuff, we'd be sitting pretty.
We'll lose weeks of time by not having them."
"We'll just have to lose it, then. You can't get 'em, any more than
a baby can get the moon, so stop crying about it," she went over the
familiar argument for the twentieth time. "That stuff up there is all
grinding together like cakes of ice in a floe; the particular section
you want is in plain sight of whoever is on watch; and those tools and
things are altogether too heavy to handle. You're a husky brute, I know,
but even you couldn't begin to handle them, even if you had good going.
I couldn't help you very much, even if you'd let me try; and the fact
that you so positively refuse to let me come along shows how dangerous
you know the attempt is bound to be. You'd probably never even get up
there alive, to say nothing of getting back here. No, Steve, that's out
like a light."
"I sure wish they'd left us weightless for a while, sometime, if only
for an hour or two," he mourned.
"But they didn't!" she retorted, practically. "So we're just out of luck
to that extent. Our time is about up, too. It's time you worked us back
to the tail end of this procession--or rather, the head end, since we're
traveling 'down' now."
Stevens took the controls and slowly worked along the outer edge of the
mass, down toward its extremity. Nadia put one hand upon his shoulder
and he glanced around.
"Thanks, Steve. We have a perfectly wonderful chance as it is, and we've
gone so far with our scheme together that it would be a crying shame not
to be able to go through with it. I'd hate like sin to have to surrender
to them now, and that's all I could do if anything should become of you.
Besides..." her voice died away into silence.
"Sure, you're right," he hastily replied, dodging the implication of
that unfinished sentence. "I couldn't figure out anything that looked
particularly feasible anyway--that's why I didn't try it. We'll pass
it up."
Soon they arrived at their objective and maintained a position well in
the van, but not sufficiently far ahead of the rest to call forth a
restraining ray from their captors. Already strongly affected by the
gravitational pull of the mass of the satellite, many of the smaller
portions of the wreck, not directly held by the tractors, began to
separate from the main mass. As each bit left its place another beam
leaped out, until it became apparent that no more were available, and
Stevens strapped the girl and himself down before two lookout plates.
"Now for it, Nadia!" he exclaimed, and simultaneously threw on the power
of his own projectors and sent out the radio impulse which closed the
relays he had so carefully set. They were thrown against the restraining
straps savagely and held there by an enormous weight as the gigantic
dirigible projectors shot their fragment of the wreck away from the
comparatively slight force which had been acting upon it, but they
braced themselves and strained their muscles in order to watch what
was happening. As the relays in the various fragments closed, the
massed power of the accumulators was shorted dead across the converters
and projectors instead of being fed into them gradually through the
controls of the pilot, with a result comparable to that of the explosion
of an ammunition dump. Most of the masses, whose projectors were fed
by comparatively few accumulator cells, darted away entirely with a
stupendous acceleration. A few of them, however, received the unimpeded
flow of complete batteries. Those projectors tore loose from even
their massive supports and crashed through anything opposing them like
a huge, armor-piercing projectile. It was a spectacle to stagger the
imagination, and Stevens grinned as he turned to the girl, who was
staring in wide-eyed amazement.
"Well, ace, I think they're busy enough now so that it'll be safe
to take that long-wanted look at their controls," and he flashed
the twin beams of his lookout light out beyond the upper half of the
_Arcturus_--only to see them stop abruptly in mid-space. Even the
extremely short carrier-wave of Roeser's Rays could not go through the
invisible barrier thrown out by the tiny, but powerful globe of space.
"No penetration?" Nadia asked.
"Flattened them out cold. 'However,' as the fox once remarked about the
grapes, 'I'll bet they're sour, anyway.' We'll have some stuff of our
own, one of these days. I sure hope the fireworks we started back there
keep those birds amused until we get out of sight, because if I use much
more power on these projectors we may not have juice enough left to stop
with."
"You're using enough now to suit me--I'm so heavy I can hardly lift
a finger!"
"You'd better lift 'em! You must watch what's going on back there while
I navigate around this moon."
"All x, chief.... They've got their hands full, apparently. Those rays
are shooting around all over the sky. It looks as though they were
trying to capture four or five things at once with each one."
"Good! Tell me when the moon cuts them off."
* * * * *
At the awful acceleration they were using, which constantly increased
the terrific velocity with which they had been traveling when they made
good their escape, it was not long until they had placed the satellite
between them and the enemy; then Stevens cut down and reversed his
power. Such was their speed, however, that a long detour was necessary
in order to reduce it to a safe landing rate. As soon as this could be
done, Stevens headed for the morning zone and dropped the "Hope" rapidly
toward the surface of that new, strange world. Details could not be
distinguished at first because of an all-enshrouding layer of cloud, but
the rising sun dispelled the mist, and when they had descended to within
a few thousand feet of the surface, their vision was unobstructed.
Immediately below them the terrain was mountainous and heavily wooded;
while far to the east the rays of a small, pale sun glinted upon a vast
body of water. No signs of habitation were visible as far as the eye
could reach.
"Now to pick out a location for our power-plant. We must have a
waterfall for power, a good place to hide our ship from observation, and
I'd like to have a little seam of coal. We can use wood if we have to,
but I think we can find some coal. This is all sedimentary rock--it
looks a lot like the country along the North Fork of the Flathead, in
Montana. There are a lot of coal outcrops, usually, in such topography
as this is."
"We want to hide in a hurry, though, don't we?"
"Not particularly, I think. If they had missed us at all, they would
have had us long ago, and with all the damage we did with those
projectors they won't be surprised at one piece being missing--I imagine
they lost a good many."
"But they'll know that somebody caused all that disturbance. Won't they
hunt for us?"
"Maybe, and maybe not--no telling what they'll do. However, by the time
they can land and get checked up and ready to hunt for us, we'll be a
mighty small needle, well hidden in a good big haystack."
For several hours they roamed over the mountainous region at high
velocity, seeking the best possible location, and finally they found
one that was almost ideal--a narrow canyon overhung with heavy trees,
opening into a wide, deep gorge upon a level with its floor. A mighty
waterfall cascaded into the gorge just above the canyon, and here
and there could be seen black outcrops which Stevens, after a close
scrutiny, declared to be coal. He deftly guided their cumbersome wedge
of steel into the retreat, allowed it to settle gently to the ground,
and shut off the power.
"Well, little fellow-conspirator against the peace and dignity of the
Jovians, I don't know just where we are, but wherever it is, we're here.
We got away clean, and as long as we don't use any high-tension stuff or
anything else that they can trace, I think we're as safe as money in a
bank."
"I suppose that I ought to be scared to death, Steve, but I'm not--I'm
just too thrilled for words," Nadia answered, and the eager sparkle in
her eyes bore out her words. "Can we go out now? How about air? Shall we
wear suits or go out as we are? Have you got a weapon of any kind? Hurry
up--let's do something!"
"Pipe down, ace! Remember that we don't know any more about anything
around here than a pig does about Sunday, and conduct yourself
accordingly. Take it easy. I'm surprised at the gravity here. This is
certainly Ganymede, and it has a diameter of only about fifty seven
hundred kilometers. If I remember correctly, Damoiseau estimated its
mass at about three one-hundredths that of the Earth, which would make
its surface gravity about one-sixth. However, it is actually almost a
half, as you see by this spring-balance here. Therefore it is quite a
little more massive than has been...."
"What of it? Let's go places and do things!"
"Calm yourself, Ginger, you've got lots of time--we'll be here for quite
a while, I'm afraid. We can't go out until we analyze the air--we're
sure lucky there's as much as there is. I'm not exactly the world's
foremost chemist, but fortunately an air-analysis isn't much of a job
with the apparatus we carry."
While Nadia controlled her impatience as best she could, Stevens
manipulated the bulbs and pipettes of the gas apparatus.
"Pressure, fifty-two centimeters--more than I dared hope for--and
analysis all x, I believe. Oxygen concentration a little high, but
not much."
"We won't have to wear the space-suits, then?"
"Not unless I missed something in the analysis. The pressure corresponds
to our own at a height of about three thousand meters, which we can get
used to without too much trouble. Good thing, too. I brought along all
the air I could get hold of, but as I told you back there, if we had to
depend on it altogether, we might be out of luck. I'm going to pump some
of our air back into a cylinder to equalize our pressure--don't want
to waste any of it until we're sure the outside air suits us without
treatment."
* * * * *
When the pressure inside had been gradually reduced to that outside and
they had become accustomed to breathing the rarefied medium, Stevens
opened the airlock and the outside doors, and for some time cautiously
sniffed the atmosphere of the satellite. He could detect nothing harmful
or unusual in it--it was apparently the same as earthly air--and he
became jubilant.
"All x, Nadia--luck is perched right on our banner. Freedom, air, water,
power, and coal! Now as you suggested, we'll go places and do things!"
"Suppose it's safe?" Her first eagerness to explore their surroundings
had abated noticeably. "You aren't armed, are you?"
"No, and I don't believe that there was a gun of any kind aboard the
_Arcturus_. That kind of thing went out quite a while ago, you know.
We'll take a look, anyway--we've got to find out about that coal before
we decide to settle down here. Remember this half-gravity stuff, and
control your leg-muscles accordingly."
Leaping lightly to the ground, they saw that the severed section of
fifty-inch armor, which was the rim of their conveyance, almost blocked
the entrance to the narrow canyon which they had selected for their
retreat. Upon one side that wall of steel actually touched the almost
perpendicular wall or rock; upon the other side there was left only a
narrow passage. They stepped through it, so that they could see the
waterfall and the gorge, and stopped silent. The sun, now fairly high,
was in no sense the familiar orb of day, but was a pale, insipid thing,
only one-fifth the diameter of the sun to which they were accustomed,
and which could almost be studied with the unshielded eye. From their
feet a grassy meadow a few hundred feet wide sloped gently down to the
river, from whose farther bank a precipice sprang upward for perhaps
a thousand feet--merging into towering hills whose rugged grandeur was
reminiscent of the topography of the moon. At their backs the wall of
the gorge was steep, but not precipitous, and was covered with shrubs
and trees--some of which leaned out over the little canyon, completely
screening it, and among whose branches birds could now and then be seen
flitting about. In that direction no mountains were visible, indicating
that upon their side of the river there was an upland plateau or bench.
To their right the river, the gorge, and the strip of meadow extended
for a mile or more, then curved away and were lost to sight. To their
left, almost too close for comfort, was the stupendous cataract,
towering above them to a terror-inspiring height. Nadia studied it
with awe, which changed to puzzled wonder.
"What's the matter with it, Steve? It looks like a picture in slow
motion, like the kind they take of your dives--or am I seeing things?"
"No, it's really slow, compared to what we're used to. Remember that
one-half gravity stuff!"
"Oh, that's right, but it certainly does look funny. It gives me the
creeps."
"You'll get used to it pretty quick--just as you'll get used to all the
rest of the things having only half their earthly weight and falling
only half as fast as they ought to when you drop them. Well, I don't see
anything that looks dangerous yet--let's go up toward the falls a few
meters and prospect that outcrop."
With a few brisk strokes of an improvised shovel he cleared the outcrop
of detritus and broke off several samples of the black substance, with
which they went back to the "Forlorn Hope."
"It's real coal," Stevens announced after a series of tests. "I've seen
better, but on the other hand, there's lots worse. It'll make good gas,
and a kind of a coke. Not so hot, but it'll do. Now we'd better get
organized old partner, for a long campaign."
"Go ahead and organize--I'm only the cheap help in this enterprise."
"Cheap help! You're apt to be the life of the party. Can you make and
shoot a bow and arrow?"
"I'll say I can--I've belonged to an archery club for five years."
"What did I tell you? You're a life saver! Here's the dope--we've got
to save our own supplies as much as possible until we know exactly what
we're up against, and to do that, we've got to live off the country.
I'll fake up something to knock over some of those birds and small game,
then we can make real bow-strings and feathered arrows and I'll forge
some steel arrow-heads while you're making yourself a real bow. We'd
better make me about a hundred-pound war bow, too...."
"A _hundred_!" interrupted Nadia. "That's a lot of bow, big boy--think
you can bend it?"
"You'd be surprised," he grinned. "I'm not quite like Robin Hood--I've
been known to miss a finger-thick wand at a hundred paces--but I'm not
exactly a beginner."
"Oh, of course--I should have known by your language that you're an
archer, otherwise you'd never have used such an old-fashioned word as
'pounds.' I shoot a thirty-five-pound bow ordinarily, but for game I
should have the heaviest one I can hold accurately--about a forty-five,
probably."
"All x. And as soon as I can I'll make us a couple of suits of fairly
heavy steel armor, so that we'll have real protection if we should need
it. You see, we don't know what we are apt to run up against out here.
Then, with that much done, it'll be up to you to provide, since I'll
have to work tooth and nail at the forges. You'll have to bring home the
bacon, do the cooking and so on, and see what you can find along the
line of edible roots, grains, fruits, and what-not. Sort of reverse the
Indian idea--you be the hunter and I'll keep the home fires burning.
Can do?"
"What it takes to do that, I've got," Nadia assured him, her eyes
sparkling. "Have you your job planned out as well and as fittingly as
you have mine?"
"And then some. We've got just two methods of getting away from
here--one is to get in touch with Brandon, so that he'll come after us;
the other is to recharge our accumulators and try to make it under our
own power. Either course will need power and lots of it...."
"I never thought of going back in the 'Hope.' Suppose we could?"
"About as doubtful as the radio--I think that I could build a pair of
matched-frequency auto-dirigible transmitter and receptor units, such as
are necessary for space-ships fed by stationary power-plants, but after
I got them built, they'd take us less than half way there. Then we'd
have only what power we can carry, and I hate even to think of what
probably would happen to us. We'd certainly have to drift for months
before we could get close enough to any of our plants to radio for help,
and we'd be taking awful chances. You see, we'd have to take a very
peculiar orbit, and if we should miss connections passing the inner
planets, what the sun would do to us at the closest point and where
what's left of us would go on the back-swing, would be just too bad!
Besides, if we can get hold of the _Sirius_, they'll come loaded for
bear, and we may be able to do something about the rest of the folks
out here."
* * * * *
"Oh!" breathed the girl. "Wouldn't it be wonderful if we could!
I thought, of course, they'd all be...." her voice died away.
"Not necessarily--there's always a chance. That's why I'm trying the
ultra-radio first. However, either course will take lots of power,
so the first thing I've got to do is to build a power plant. I'm
going to run a penstock up those falls, and put in a turbine, driving
a high-tension alternator. Then, while I'm trying to build the
ultra-radio, I'll be charging our accumulators, so that no time will
be lost in case the radio fails. If it does fail--and remember I'm not
counting on its working--of course I'll tackle the transmission and
receptor units before we start out to drift it."
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