Earthbound (Winston Science Fiction Book 1) (13 page)

The scraping again, and Pete was thrown flat on his back when the door finally came up all the way. He looked at Ushuaia Joe stretched out near him on the ice, and they began to laugh. But they sobered quickly after that, as they began to follow Mr. Fairchild through the trapdoor and down a flight of wooden stairs. Everything was cold and damp and dark as blackest night.

Ganymede Gus explored the space with his flashlight, found a light switch, snapped it on. Pete saw comfortable living quarters, with a radar screen and powerful radio transmitter off to one side. A hall led out to a large bunk room, a kitchen, a bathroom.

“All the comforts of home,” Clarence Roth murmured. He hardly ever spoke, but when he did, he regretted it — which was the reason for his usual silence.

“Ain’t that nice,” Sam’s booming voice almost purred. “Clare thinks we’ll have all the comforts —”

“Don’t call me that!”

“Shut up, both of you!” Mr. Fairchild snapped irritably. “We have enough on our hands without you two arguing all the time. First, we’ll have to set this camp up, and that will take some effort. After that I’ll radio our ships in space, one at a time. When they come in, Pete’ll guide them down with radar. Won’t you, Peter?”

Pete did not answer. Instead, he found the heating unit, activated it. He crossed back to the trapdoor, saw that someone had shut it. He climbed halfway up the stairs, felt heat in the ceiling, heat which would keep the door from freezing over again until they would have time to build an igloo of ice blocks over it.

After that, they all were busy. It took them three days to set up camp and another two to cut blocks of ice and construct an igloo over the trapdoor.

One night after they had made the igloo, Pete found Mr. Fairchild bending over the radio transmitter. “F, calling Ship One. F, calling ship — go ahead, Ship One.”

Of course, he could not expect an answer at once. Radio, like light, was the fastest thing in the universe — each traveling at better than 186,000 miles per second. But that incredible speed still meant that ten or twelve minutes must elapse before Mr. Fairchild’s message reached the asteroid belt, and another ten or twelve minutes for a return message, if any.

Mr. Fairchild leaned back, lit a cigarette and puffed thoughtfully. “I’ve never asked you, Peter. You will bring those ships in for us, won’t you?”

“Why should I aid an illegal enterprise?”

“Why? Because there’s money in it for you, that’s why.”

“I don’t want your money, I don’t want any part of it. You brought me down here against my will, and I helped set up the camp because all our lives were at stake if I didn’t. But that’s all. I don’t see why I should bring your ships in.”

“Then I’ll tell you why. Once I call those ships to Earth, there will be no turning back. They won’t have enough fuel to leave this planet again, and landing any place else would mean prison. In that case, they’d try to come down whether you helped them or not. Without you at the radar screen it would be suicide, and you know it. Would you like to send all those men to their deaths?”

“It wasn’t my idea in the first place,” Pete said. But he was fencing meaninglessly, and he knew it. He would have no choice except to bring in the ships.

“You’ll do it,’’ Mr. Fairchild informed him.

Pete nodded glumly. “I’ll do it.”

Less than a half-hour later, a voice came in through the receiver, clearing Earth’s Heaviside layer with a lot of static. “Ship One to F! We heard you, F!. Lord, man, where were you? We’ve been hiding out here in the asteroids until we all have grown beards. We thought you’d been caught or something, and it’s been touch and go all the way, because those now graduate Cadets are patrolling the swarm as if it was their backyard. They’d find us sooner or later, unless — tell me, F, can we get out of here? Where do we go? Over, F, Over.”

Mr. Fairchild smiled, flicked the switch over to sending. “You return to Earth,” he ordered. “We’ll wait for you on the Antarctic Continent, and I want you to let me know at once when you can make it to the following south-polar coordinates —”

“He talking far?” Ushuaia Joe demanded.

Pete nodded. “Very far, Joe.”‘

The answer came, half an hour later: “Wonderful, F! We’re starting at once, naturally. Give us exactly twenty days and we’ll float in over your heads. That’s all, F. We’re signing off and rocketing in!”

“You see,” Mr. Fairchild explained, “the authorities will never find us here in Antarctica. It’s Earth’s final frontier, and except for a base at Little America some five hundred miles northeast of our present position, it’s deserted. Our plane will be icebound until summer, but by that time we should be able to blast it clear and start bringing goods, north. We’ll let the ice bury the spaceships completely, so if anyone on the hijacked ships got a good look at them, they’ll never be traced. Small loss, with millions of dollars in cargo coming in.”

“All obtained illegally!” Pete raged.

“Peter, please. There is business and business — and who is to draw the line between shrewd manipulation and out-and-out stealing?”

“There are laws for that! The Government has been able to draw that line for hundreds of years, and the vast majority of people like it.”

“I do believe you’re an idealist.”

“Maybe I am. I only know that if everyone thought as you do, we couldn’t have any civilization at all. I only know. . . .”

The radio was buzzing again. “F! Hello, F. Boss, we’ve been spotted. I think they beamed onto our radio or something. Anyway, there’s a patrol ship closing in. just a small one, boss, but I think it can outrun us. You want us to rocket away or fight? Over, F.”

“Fight!” Mr. Fairchild fairly screamed into his transmitter. “You have no choice, not if you think they can outrun you. Disable them at the very least, but fight. They must not be able to follow. You have long-range blasters on your ship, and I doubt if a small patrol scout vessel could match them. You are to fight! That is all.”

Then, to Pete: “Carelessness! They can spoil everything if they’re caught —”

“So you’re willing to have them murder anyone in that patrol ship! That does it, Mr. Fairchild — I won’t bring that ship in for you if it gets here.”

The bleak depths of deep space. On the fringe of the asteroid belt, two hundred million miles from Earth. Two graduate Cadets in their small cruiser.

“That’s ridiculous,” Roger Gorham insisted. “Part of a radio message, unscrambled at the last minute, so you figure it’s the pirates.”

Garr nodded his head stubbornly. “I didn’t insist, Roger. I’m not sure. But on the other hand, we’re not turning back until we find out.”

“Aw, you’re as bad as Pete. You’re acting just as if this were a game of cops-and-robbers. Because of that, we have to go rocketing out at full speed, and I thought we’d be able to rest today.”

“I didn’t become a Cadet to rest! Pete sure wouldn’t —”

“Pete! That’s all I hear, Pete. But he’s not here with you. I am.”

“Well — hey! Hey, look ahead. See it?”

Roger frowned. “Of course I see it. A spaceship. So what? There’s no law against taking a ship out here on the fringes of the asteroid belt.”

“No, there isn’t any law. But Ceres had no ship listed for this sector, and they wouldn’t miss a big baby like that. Give them a signal and see if they answer it.”

A few minutes later,, Roger was still frowning. “They didn’t answer, but they seem to be coming closer.”

“Hold it!” Garr cried. “That ship is armed to the teeth.” He set the controls on automatic, crossed the cabin to the port blaster. “I’m going to fire across their beam,” he muttered, triggering the big space-cannon.

Together they watched the beam of raw energy streak out from their ship, saw it zoom off through space a mile ahead of the unknown vessel.

“Radio them again, Roger!”

Pause. “I did, Garr — and there’s no answer. I — I’m scared.”

Garr sat down at the controls again, turning the ship in a steep bank which threw Roger against the stanchions. “I think I’d better make it hard for them to hit us, in case that’s their idea. I wish Pete were here — Roger!”

“W-what?”

“They’re shooting at us!”

Roger saw it too. Three beams of energy roaring out at them across the void.

Garr slammed down on the controls, sent their ship rocketing away, preparing for a turn and a new approach.

“Call headquarters on Ceres!” he cried. “Give them our location and . . .”

Something jarred their ship, shook it. The lights blinked out, and a moment later Roger whimpered, “The radio d-doesn’t work.”

“Try it again!”

“It s-still d-doesn’t work!”

Garr swore under his breath, stood up. “Neither do the controls. They must have got our main power line, Roger — hello! Look, they’re going away. I guess they know they’ve disabled us.”

“Can we get out of here?”

Garr shook his head. I don’t think so. We’ve got enough food, water and air, so we don’t have to worry —”

“But what?”

“But we’ll have to repair that radio fast, or our number’s up. We’re still moving, Roger, at ten miles a second. And we’re heading straight into the thick of the asteroid belt.”

“Well, we should plow through it in a day or so —”

“No. There are millions of particles in there — some pieces tiny, others miles in diameter. There’s the most cockeyed, complicated gravitational -field in the solar system. We’ll plow in, and slow down. Gravity’ll get us. First one hunk of rock, then another. Our speed forward will slow down to zero, but we’ll bounce back and forth between those hunks of stone until one decides to hold us permanently.

“Our only hope is to fix that radio fast and send out our position. But tell me, Roger, do you know any prayers?”

“I — I —” Roger began to blubber. “Wait! There’s the life-rocket.”

“Only big enough for one,” Garr muttered.

“‘Well, one of us could go out in it, reach Ceres and report the position of the other.” Roger looked at Garr hopefully.

Garr snorted. That would help, of course. But if it had been Pete, if it had been anyone else, they would have tossed a coin. He knew, however, that Roger would be helpless alone in the derelict.

He looked up wearily. “You take the life-rocket and get out of here. Come on, scram before I change my mind! I’ll stay with the ship.”

Chapter 13 — Escape!

Mr. Fairchild still sat hunched over his radio, chain-smoking. Finally, the signal came through again, and he listened eagerly.

“Hello, F! Ship One calling F. We engaged patrol cruiser successfully. She’s disabled and plowing into the asteroid belt so fast she’ll be mashed to a pulp. That’s all, F — except that we’re rocketing for Earth now. See you soon!”

Mr. Fairchild chuckled. “I knew they could do it, and the odds against another patrol ship picking them up are tremendous. All we’ll have to do is wait.”

“You can wait,” Pete told him. “I’m getting out of here.”

“You’re
what?
”

“I said I’m getting out of here. That’s murder, what your men did to the patrol ship. I want no part of it.”

“Is that so? just how do you propose to get out of here?”

Pete shrugged. “I don’t know. But I’ve had enough.”

“That’s fine,” Mr. Fairchild snickered. “So you’re going to walk all the way to Little America. You realize, of course, that the jet plane is already icebound for the balance of the winter.”

Pete frowned. “I hadn’t thought of that,” he admitted. But there was a way — there had to be a way! He couldn’t stay here at the Antarctic base. The longer he remained, the more he’d be implicated. And more important than that, if he could somehow escape and reach the authorities, he’d put a stop to Mr. Fairchild’s activities. One patrol ship had been hit, and from what he’d heard, it looked like sure death for its two-man crew. Idly he wondered if he knew them. It was barely possible that a graduate Cadet was involved. . . .

Pete waited until everyone had retired for the arbitrary night period. There was no night or day in Antarctica, and certainly no night and day in their under-ice camp, but the same eight hours out of each twenty-four they slept. Pete crept softly from his bunk, padded out into the hall. Beyond the bunk room was another door which he knew entered into a storeroom. Sam and Ushuaia Joe had placed their supplies inside, but Pete himself had never seen inside the room.

He found the door unlocked, pushed against it slowly, felt it give. Soon, flashlight in hand, he entered the place. He saw neat little mounds of food, saw the radar set disassembled against one wall. But what attracted his attention was a sled.

A jet sled!

Apparently it had been left there by the explorers who had constructed the base years before. A large sled, easily big enough for two men and supplies; in a pinch it might even hold three. And the gleaming metal of the jet-tubes jutted out behind it. With that sled he could reach Little America, or at least he would have a good chance of doing so. But his enthusiasm quickly waned. The sled was aluminum, probably, quite light, but still it undoubtedly weighed two hundred pounds or more, including fuel. One man could not hope to carry it up to the surface. Two men might be able to, provided no one interfered with them. Even if Pete could enlist aid — which seemed more than doubtful — they’d have their hands full escaping themselves, not to mention taking the sled with them.

Not Sam, certainly. Not Clarence Roth. Ganymede Gus? Gus was a bitter ex-spaceman, but totally unpredictable. Ushuaia Joe?

Pete shrugged his shoulders. It was worth a try. He moved silently back through the hall, crept into the bunk room, found Joe’s cot. He flashed his light in the Indian’s eyes, and waited until Joe began to stir. Then he clamped his free hand over Joe’s mouth motioning for silence. The Indian’s eyes looked puzzled, but his head nodded. When Pete released him he grunted, shook his head to clear it of sleep, followed Pete outside as silently as the blackness all around them.

Together they entered the storeroom. Pete began at once:

“Why’d you come with us, Joe?”

“Why? I bored, that’s why.”