Spacehounds of IPC

E >> Edward Elmer Smith >> Spacehounds of IPC

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"You say it easy, Steve, but how can you build all those things, with
nothing to work with?"

"It's going to be a real job--I'm not try to kid you into thinking it'll
be either easy or quick. Here's the way everything will go. Before I can
even lay the first length of the penstock, I've got to have the pipe--to
make which I've got to have flat steel--to get which I'll have to cut
some of the partitions out of this ship of ours--to do which I'll have
to have a cutting torch--to make which I'll have to forge nozzles out of
block metal and to run which I'll have to have gas--to get which I'll
have to mine coal and build a gas-plant--to do which...."

"Good heavens, Steve, are you going back to the Stone Age? I never
thought of half those things. Why, it's impossible!"

"Not quite, guy. Things could be a lot worse--that's why I brought along
the whole 'Forlorn Hope,' instead of just the lifeboat. As it is, we've
got several thousand tons of spare steel and lots of copper. We've got
ordinary tools and a few light motors, blowers, and such stuff. That
gives me a great big start--I won't have to mine the ores and smelt the
metals, as would have been necessary otherwise. However, it'll be plenty
bad. I'll have to start out in a pretty crude fashion, and for some of
the stuff I'll need I'll have to make, not only the machine that makes
the part I want, but also the machine that makes the machine that
makes the machine that makes it--and so on, just how far down the line,
I haven't dared to think."

"You must be a regular jack-of-all-trades, to think you can get away
with such a program as that?"

"I am--nothing else but. You see, while most of my school training
was in advanced physics and mathematics, I worked my way through by
computing and designing, and I've done a lot of truck-horse labor of
various kinds besides. I can calculate and design almost anything, and
I can make a pretty good stab at translating a design into fabricated
material. I wouldn't wonder if Brandon's ultra-radio would stop me,
since nobody had even started to build one when I saw him last--but I
helped compute it, know the forces involved as well as he did at that
time, and it so happens that I know more about the design of coils and
fields of force than I do about anything else. So I may be able to work
it out eventually. It isn't going to be not knowing how that will hold
me up--it'll be the lack of something that I can't build."

"And that's where you will go back and back and back, as you said about
building the penstock?"

"Back and back is right, if I can find all the necessary raw
materials--that's what's probably going to put a lot of monkey-wrenches
into the machinery." And Stevens went to work upon a weapon of offense,
fashioning a crude, but powerful bow from a strip of spring steel strung
with heavy wire.

"How about arrows? Shall I go see if I can hit a bird with a rock, for
feathers, and see if I can find something to make arrows out of?"

"Not yet--anyway, I'd bet on the birds! I'm going to use pieces of this
light brace-rod off the accumulator cells for arrows. They won't fly
true, of course, but with their mass I can give them enough projectile
force to kill any small animal they hit, no matter how they hit it."

After many misses, he finally bagged a small animal, something like
a rabbit and something like a kangaroo, and a couple of round-bodied,
plump birds, almost as large as domestic hens. These they dressed,
with considerable distaste and a noticeable lack of skill.

"We'll get used to it pretty quick, Diana--also more expert," he said
when the task was done. "We now have raw material for bow-strings and
clothes, as well as food."

"The word 'raw' being heavily accented," Nadia declared, with a grimace.
"But how do we know that they're good to eat?"

"We'll have to eat 'em and see," he grinned. "I don't imagine that any
flesh is really poisonous, and we'll have to arrive at the ones we like
best by a process of trial and error. Well, here's your job--I'll get
busy on mine. Don't go more than a few hundred meters away and yell if
you get into a jam."

"There's a couple of questions I want to ask you. What makes it so
warm here, when the sun's so far away and Jupiter isn't supposed to be
radiating any heat? And how about time? It's twelve hours by my watch
since sunrise this morning, and it's still shining."

"As for heat, I've been wondering about that. It must be due to internal
heat, because even though Jupiter may be warm, or even hot, it certainly
isn't radiating much, since it has a temperature of minus two hundred at
the visible surface, which, of course, is the top of the atmosphere. Our
heat here is probably caused by radioactivity--that's the most modern
dope, I believe. As for time, it looks as though our days were something
better than thirty hours long, instead of twenty-four. Of course I'll
keep the chronometer going on I-P time, since we'll probably need it in
working out observations; but we might as well let our watches run down
and work, eat, and sleep by the sun--not much sense in trying to keep
Tellurian time here, as I see it. Check?"

"All x. I'll have supper ready for you at sunset. 'Bye!"

A few evenings later, when Stevens came in after his long day's work,
he was surprised to see Nadia dressed in a suit of brown coveralls and
high-laced moccasins.

"How do I look?" she asked, pirouetting gayly.

"Neat, but not gaudy," he approved. "That's good mole-skin--smooth,
soft, and tough. Where'd you make the raise? I didn't know we had
anything like that on board. What did you do for thread? You look like
a million dollars--you sure did a good job of fitting."

"I had to have something--what with all the thorns and brush, there was
almost more of me exposed than covered, and I was getting scratched up
something fierce. So I ripped up one of the space-suits, and found out
that there's enough cloth, fur, and leather in one of them to make six
ordinary suits, and thread by the kilometer. I was awfully glad to see
all that thread--I had an idea that I'd have to unravel my stockings or
something, but I didn't. Your clothes are getting pretty tacky, too, and
you're getting all burned with those hot coals and things. I'm going to
build you a suit out of leather for your blacksmithing activities."

"Fine business, ace! Then we can save what's left of our civilized
clothes for the return trip. What do we eat?"

"The eternal question of the hungry laboring man! I've got a roasted
bongo, a fried filamaloo bird, and a boiled warple for the meat dishes.
For vegetables, mashed hikoderms and pimola greens. Neocorn bread."

"Translate that, please, into terms of food."

"Translate it yourself, after you eat it. I changed the system on you
today. I've named all the things, so it'll be easier to keep track of
those we like and the ones we don't."

With appetites sharp-set by long hours of hard labor they ate heartily;
then, in the deepening twilight, they sat and talked in comradely
fashion while Stevens smoked one precious cigarette.

* * * * *

It was not long until Nadia had her work well in hand. Game was
plentiful, and the fertile valley and the neighboring upland yielded
peculiar, but savory vegetable foods in variety and abundance; so that
soon she was able to spend some time with Stevens, helping him as much
as she could. Thus she came to realize the true magnitude of the task he
faced and the real seriousness of their position.

As Stevens had admitted before the work was started, he had known that
he had set himself a gigantic task, but he had not permitted himself to
follow, step by step, the difficulties that he knew awaited him. Now,
as the days stretched into weeks and on into months, he was forced to
take every laborious step, and it was borne in upon him just how nearly
impossible that Herculean labor was to prove--just how dependent any
given earthly activity is upon a vast number of others. Here he was
alone--everything he needed must be manufactured by his own hands, from
its original sources. He had known that progress would be slow and he
had been prepared for that; but he had not pictured, even to himself,
half of the maddening setbacks which occurred time after time because
of the crudity of the tools and equipment he was forced to use. All too
often a machine or part, the product of many hours of grueling labor,
would fail because of the lack of some insignificant thing--some item
so common as to be taken for granted in all terrestrial shops, but
impossible of fabrication with the means at his disposal. At such times
he would set his grim jaw a trifle harder, go back one step farther
toward the Stone Age, and begin all over again--to find the necessary
raw material or a possible substitute, and then to build the apparatus
and machinery necessary to produce the part he required. Thus the
heart-breaking task progressed, and Nadia watched her co-laborer become
leaner and harder and more desperate day by day, unable in any way to
lighten his fearful load.

In the brief period of rest following a noonday meal, Stevens lay prone
upon the warm, fragrant grass beside the "Forlorn Hope," but it was
evident to Nadia that he was not resting. His burned and blistered hands
were locked savagely behind his head, his eyes were closed too tightly,
and every tense line of his body was eloquent of a strain even more
mental than physical. She studied him for minutes, her fine eyes
clouded, then sat down beside him and put her hand upon his shoulder.

"I want to talk to you a minute, Steve," she said gently.

"All x, little fellow--but it might be just as well if you didn't touch
me. You see, I'm getting so rabid that I can't trust myself."

"That's exactly what I want to talk to you about." A fiery blush burned
through her deep tan, but her low, clear voice did not falter and her
eyes held his unflinchingly. "I know you better than you know yourself,
as I've said before. You are killing yourself, but it isn't the work,
frightfully hard and disheartening as it is, that is doing it--it's
your anxiety for me and the uncertainty of everything. You haven't been
able to rest because you have been raging and fuming so at unavoidable
conditions--you have been fighting _facts_. And it's all _so_ useless,
Steve, between you and me--everything would check out on zero if we'd
just come out into the open."

The man's gaunt frame seemed to stiffen even more rigidly.

"You've said altogether too much or else only half enough, Nadia. You
know, of course, that I've loved you ever since I got really to know
you--and that didn't take long. You know that I love you and you know
how I love you--with the real love that a man can feel for only one
woman and only once in his life; and you know exactly what we're up
against. Now that _does_ tear it--wide open!" he finished bitterly.

"No, it doesn't, at all," she replied, steadily. "Of course I know that
you love me, and I glory in it; and since you don't seem to realize
that I love you in exactly the same way, I'll tell you so. Love you!
Good heavens, Steve, I never dreamed that such a man as you are really
existed! But you're fighting too many things at once, and they're
killing you. And they're mostly imaginary, at that. Can't you see that
there's no need of uncertainty between you and me? That there is no need
of you driving yourself to desperation on my account? Whatever must be
is all x with me, Steve. If you can build everything you need, all well
and good. We'll be engaged until then, and our love will be open and
sweet. If worst comes to worst, so that we can neither communicate with
Brandon and Westfall nor leave here under our own power--even that is
nothing to kill ourselves about. And yes, I do know exactly what we
are facing. I have been prepared for it ever since I first saw what a
perfectly impossible thing you are attempting. You are trying to go from
almost the Age of Bronze clear up to year-after-next in a month or two.
Not one man in a million could have done as much in his lifetime as you
have done in the last few weeks, and I do not see how even you, with
what little you have to work with, can possibly build such things as
power-plants, transmitters, and ultra-radio stations. But what of
it? For the day that it becomes clear that we are to remain here
indefinitely; that day we will marry each other here, before God.
Look around at this beautiful country. Could there be a finer world
upon which to found a new race? When we decided to cut loose from the
_Arcturus_ I told you that I was with you all the way, and now I'll
repeat it, with a lot more meaning. No matter what it's like, Steve, no
matter where it leads to, I'm with you--_to--the--end--of--the--road_.
Here or upon Earth or anywhere in the Universe. I am yours for life and
for eternity."

* * * * *

While she was speaking, the grim, strained lines upon Stevens' face
had disappeared, and as she fell silent he straightened up and gently,
tenderly, reverently he took her lithe body into his arms.

"You're right, sweetheart--everything _will_ check out on zero, to
nineteen decimals." He was a man transfigured. "I've been fighting
windmills and I've been scared sick--but how was I to think that a
wonder-girl like you could ever love a mutt like me? You certainly are
the gamest little partner a man ever had You're the world's straightest
shooter, ace--you're a square brick if there ever was one. Your sheer
nerve in being willing to go the whole route makes me love you more than
ever, if such a thing can be possible, and it certainly puts a new face
on the whole cock-eyed Universe for me. However, I don't believe it
will come to that. After what you've just said, I sure will lick that
job, regardless of how many different factories it takes to make one
armature--I'll show that mess of scrap-iron what kind of trees make
shingles!"

The girl still in his arms, he rose to his feet and released her slowly,
reluctantly, unwilling ever to let her go. Then he shook himself, as
though an overwhelming burden had been lifted from his shoulders, and
laughed happily.

"See this cigarette?" he went on lightly. "The Last of the Mohicans.
I'm going to smoke it in honor of our engagement." He drew the fragrant
smoke deep into his lungs and frowned at her in mock seriousness.

"This would be a nice world to live on, of course, but the jobs here
are too darn steady. It also seems to be somewhat lacking in modern
conveniences, such as steel-mills and machine tools. Then, too, it is
just a trifle too far from the Royal and Ancient for you really to enjoy
living here permanently, and besides, I can't get my favorite brand
of cigarettes around here. Therefore, after due deliberation, I don't
believe we'll take the place--we'll go back to Tellus. Kiss me just once
more ace, and I'll make that job think a cyclone has struck it right on
the center of impact. Like Samuel Weller, or whoever it was, I'm clear
full of 'wigor, wim, and witality'!"

The specified kiss and several others duly delivered he strode blithely
away, and the little canyon resounded with the blows of his heavy sledge
as he attacked with renewed spirit the great forging, white-hot from his
soak-pit, which was to become the shaft of his turbo-alternator. Nadia
watched him for a moment, her very heart in her eyes, then picked up her
spanner and went after more steel, breathing a long and tremulous, but
supremely happy sigh.

CHAPTER IV

Ganymedean Life

Slow, hard, and disheartening as the work had been at first, Stevens
had never slackened his pace, and after a time, as his facilities
increased, the exasperating setbacks decreased in number and severity
and his progress became faster and faster. Large as the "Forlorn Hope"
was, space was soon at a premium, for their peculiarly-shaped craft
became a veritable factory, housing a variety of machinery and
equipment unknown in any single earthly industrial plant. Nothing
was ornamental--everything was stripped to its barest fundamental
necessities--but every working part functioned with a smooth precision
to delight the senses of any good mechanic.

In a cavern under the falls was the great turbine, to be full-fed by the
crude but tight penstock which clung to the wall of the gorge, angling
up to the brink of that stupendous cataract. Bedded down upon solid
rock there was a high-tension alternator capable of absorbing the entire
output of the mighty turbine. This turbo-alternator was connected to
a set of converters from which the energy would flow along three great
copper cables--the receptors of the lifeboats being altogether too small
to carry the load--to the now completely exhausted accumulators of the
"Forlorn Hope." All high-tension apparatus was shielded and grounded,
so that no stray impulses could reveal to the possible detectors of
the Jovians the presence of this foreign power plant. Housings, frames,
spiders, all stationary parts were rough, crude and massive; but
bearings, shafts, armatures, all moving parts, were of a polished
and finished accuracy and balance that promised months and years of
trouble-free operation. Everything ready for the test, Stevens took off
his frayed and torn leather coveralls and moccasins and climbed nimbly
up the penstock. He never walked down. Opening the head-gate, he poised
sharply upon its extremity and took off in a perfect swan-dive; floating
unconcernedly down toward that boiling maelstrom two hundred feel below.
He struck the water with a sharp, smooth "slup!" and raced ashore,
seizing his suit as he ran toward the turbo-alternator. It was running
smoothly, and, knowing that everything was tight at the receiving end,
he lingered about the power plant until he was assured that nothing
would go wrong and that his home manufactured lubricating oil and grease
would keep those massive bearings cool.

Hunger assailed him, and glancing at the sun, he noted that it was well
past dinner-time.

"Wow!" he exclaimed aloud. "The boss just loves to wait meals--she'll
burn me up for this!"

He ran lightly toward "home," eager to tell his sweetheart that the
long awaited moment had arrived--that power was now flowing into their
accumulators.

"Hi, Diana of the silver bow!" he called. "How come you no blow the
dinner bell? Power's on--come give it a look!"

There was no answer to his hail, and Stevens paused in shocked
amazement. He knew that never of her own volition would she be out so
late--Nadia was gone! A rapid tour of inspection quickly confirmed that
which he already knew only too well. Forgotten was his hunger, forgotten
the power plant, forgotten everything except the fact that his Nadia,
the buoyant spirit in whom centered his Universe, was lost or ... he
could not complete the thought, even to himself.

Swiftly he came to a decision and threw off his suit, revealing the
body of a Hercules--a body ready for any demand he could put upon it.
Always in hard training, months of grinding physical labor and of heavy
eating had built him up to a point at which he would scarcely have
recognized himself, could he have glanced into a mirror. Mighty but
pliable muscles writhed and swelled under his clear skin as he darted
here and there, selecting equipment for what lay ahead of him. He donned
the heavily armored space-suit which they had prepared months before,
while they were still suspicious of possible attack. It was covered with
heavy steel at every point, and the lenses of the helmet, already of
unbreakable glass, had been re-enforced with thick steel bars. Tank and
valves supplied air at normal pressure, so that his powerful body could
function at full efficiency, not handicapped by the lighter atmosphere
of Ganymede. The sleeves terminated in steel-protected rubber wristlets
which left his hands free, yet sheltered from attack--wristlets tight
enough to maintain the difference in pressure, yet not tight enough
to cut off the circulation. He took up his mighty war-bow and the full
quiver of heavy arrows--full-feathered and pointed with savagely barbed,
tearing heads of forged steel--and slipped into their sheaths the long
and heavy razor-sharp sword and the double-edged dirk, which he had
made and ground long since for he knew not what emergency, and whose
bell-shaped hilts of steel further protected his hands and wrists.
Thus equipped, he had approximately his normal earthly weight; a fact
which would operate to his advantage, rather than otherwise, in case
of possible combat. With one last look around the "Forlorn Hope," whose
every fitting spoke to him of the beloved mistress who was gone, he
filled a container with water and cooked food and opened the door.

* * * * *

"It won't be long now; now it won't be long." Nadia caroled happily,
buckling on her pack straps and taking up bow and arrows for her daily
hunt. "I never thought that he could do it, but what it takes to do
things, he's got lots of," she continued to improvise the song as she
left the "Hope" with its multitudinous devices whose very variety was
a never-failing delight to her; showing as it did the sheer ability of
the man, whose brain and hands had almost finished a next-to-impossible
task.

Through the canyon and up a well-worn trail she climbed, and soon came
out upon the sparsely timbered bench that was her hunting grounds. Upon
this day, however, she was full of happy anticipation and her mind was
everywhere except upon her work. She was thinking of Stevens, of their
love, of the power which he might turn on that very day, and of the
possible rescue for which she had hitherto scarcely dared to hope.
Thus it was that she walked miles beyond her usual limits without
having loosed an arrow, and she was surprised when she glanced up at
the sun to see that half the morning was gone and that she was almost
to the foothills, beyond which rose a towering range of mountains.

"Snap out of it, girl!" she reprimanded herself. "Go on wool-gathering
like this and your man will go hungry--and he'll break you right off
at the ankles!" She became again the huntress, and soon saw an animal
browsing steadily along the base of a hill. It was a six-legged,
deer-like creature, much larger than anything she had as yet seen. But
it was meat and her time was short, therefore she crept within range
and loosed an arrow with the full power of her hunting bow. Unfamiliar
as she was with the anatomy of the peculiar creature, the arrow did
not kill. The "hexaped," as she instantly named it, sped away and she
leaped after it. She, like her companion, had developed amazingly in
musculature, and few indeed were the denizens of Ganymede, who could
equal her speed upon that small globe, with its feeble gravitational
force.

Up the foothills it darted. Beyond the hills and deep into a valley
between two towering peaks the chase continued before Nadia's third
arrow brought the animal down. Bending over the game, she became
conscious of a strange but wonderful sweet perfume and glanced up,
to see something which she certainly had not noticed when the hexaped
had fallen. It was an enormous flower, at least a foot in diameter and
indescribably beautiful in its crimson and golden splendor. Almost level
with her head the gorgeous blossom waved upon its heavy stem; based
by a massive cluster of enormous, smooth, dark green leaves. Entranced
by this unexpected and marvelous floral display, Nadia breathed deeply
of the inviting fragrance--and collapsed senseless upon the ground.
Thereupon the weird plant moved over toward her, and the thick leaves
began to enfold her knees. This carnivorous thing, however, did not like
the heavy cloth of her suit and turned to the hexaped. It thrust several
of its leaves into the wounds upon the carcass and fed, while two other
leaves rasped together, sending out a piercing call.

In answer to the sound the underbrush crackled, and through it and upon
the scene there crashed a vegetable-animal nightmare--the parent of the
relatively tiny thing whose perfume had disabled the girl.

Its huge and gorgeous blossom was supported by a long, flexible,
writhing stem, and its base was composed of many and highly specialized
leaves. There were saws and spears and mighty, but sinuous tendrils;
there were slender shoots which seemed to possess some sense of
perception; there was the massive tractor base composed of extensible
leaves which by their contraction and expansion propelled the mass along
the ground. Parent and child fell upon the hexaped and soon bones and
hair were all that remained The slender shoots then wandered about the
unconscious girl in her strange covering, and as a couple of powerful
tendrils coiled about her and raised her into the air over the monstrous
base of the thing, its rudimentary brain could almost be perceived
working as it sluggishly realized that, now full fed, it should carry
this other victim along, to feed its other offspring when they should
return to its side.

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