Authors: Mike Jurist
"Is
she ready yet?" she queried of the official. He shook his head. "Not yet. The mechanics found that your rocket tubes weren't firing synchronously. They're truing them up."
"Oh! How long will it take?"
"Perhaps two or three hours more."
Despair hammered at her. It was almost two now. Another two—say, three hours meant that Kerry had a five hour start. Her flier was a speedy little job, but with the
Flash's
souped-up rockets, it would take her maybe twenty-odd hours to catch up to it. And that meant—
Again she deliberately closed her eyes to the possible consequences. This whole terrible mess had been her doing, and she must undo it as far as she could.
"You must hurry the mechanics," she gasped. "Tell them there'll be a very special tip if they can shade that time."
"I'll tell them, Miss Kenton." He started away, stopped. “Of course, if you're in a real hurry, and you're not going far out,
the tubes might work adequately enough as is, if you keep favoring the right-hand one. But for any long distance—
Hmm! You'll pardon my asking—it's regulations, you know kit where
are
you going?"
"Oh! Er—just to the moon."
She had to think fast. Local traffic—which meant up to and including the orbit of the moon—required no special clearance.
"Well, then—"
She gestured him on. "No; I'd rather be sure everything's okay," she said hurriedly.
"As you wish." But as he went to the drome, he wondered. "There's something smelly about this whole blamed business," he muttered to himself. "First Mr. Foote. Then young Dale. Then Mr. Kenton. Then the Commission. And
now
Miss Kenton. Hmm! Perhaps I had better contact the Commission." Then he shook his head at himself in violent negative. "And get Miss Kenton on my neck—and Old Fireball?" He mopped his forehead. "Willie Briggs!" he berated himself. "You keep your nose out of this! You know of nothing; you acted in good faith; you've kept strictly within the rules—except, hmm, for old Foote—and they can't hang anything on you. She
said
she was going to the moon, didn't she?"
With which comforting thought he proceeded to the drome.
It was exactly five in the afternoon and the flier had still not appeared. Sally was in an agony of impatience; she pleaded, she stormed; she offered fabulous rewards for haste. But the sweaty mechanics, for all their herculean efforts, could proceed no faster. They had found a cracked firing pin. "It won't last fifty thousand miles," the foreman explained. "And then you'll be driftin' helpless in space, calling for a tow. We're doin' the best we can, ma'am."
At long last the sleek little one-seater was trundled out, swung into the firing cradle. She hopped on board, the ports slid shut; the men fell back.
She slammed into the seat, panting jitterishly to herself: "More time lost! I'm pointed toward the moon; but I didn't dare make them suspicious." She punched at the controls. The craft lifted in a long shining rush.
The foreman shaded his eyes. "A beauty, aunt she?" he said admiringly.
''Yes," nodded the official absently. "One of the finest one seaters ever made."
The foreman stared; then he chuckled. "I didn't mean the ship, sir. I meant the
girl."
He looked up again; let out an alarmed cry. "Hey! She's shifting course away from the moon. Jumping Jupiter, did we foozle the job?"
The official looked up. He was haggard. "No, I don't think so," he said slowly.
"But she's heading way out inta space. I thought she could navigate."
"She can. Er . . . Joe . . .”
"Yes?"
"Keep your lip buttoned about this."
The foreman stared; but the official had already walked hurriedly away. He scratched his head. "Well, I'll be double-rocketed!" he said with considerable feeling. He evidently found comfort in the ejaculation; for he repeated it several times as he went back to the drome.
CHAPTER 10
SALLY settled down for a long, hard chase. She spread her charts, checked the direct course to Ganymede. It would take about twenty hours of pushing at top speed to catch up with the
Flash.
And she bad some twenty-three hours fuel supply in her tanks. That would be enough. Because Kerry, of course, would turn back when he heard her news. He'd either give her some drums to replenish her supply, or she could latch on his magnetic plates. Everything would turn out all right.
With this comforting assurance, she tested her equipment, found everything in apple-pie working order. The rockets throbbed steadily and softly; the Earth swung in a wide arc underneath and turned into a huge ball that contracted slowly to the size of the moon; and then grew smaller and smaller until it was only the most brilliant star in the heavens.
The hours fled, and still the rockets kept up their full-throated song. She nibbled at some food, swallowed several drink-pellets, made certain that the re-oxygenation apparatus was functioning properly. It was.
She gave herself up to visions of their meeting, way out in space. Her dimples showed as she anticipated that. Wouldn't Kerry be surprised?
And
thankful! She wouldn't tell him—at least not until they got back—that she had been responsible for what happened. "But after all," she defended herself in this imaginary conversation, "it was your fault, Kerry. Had you told me what you were planning, I would have taken your side. As you see, now that I know, I've come to warn you."
The smile deepened; she hummed softly to herself. When they got back, she thought, she'd help him get hold of one of those racing craft. Once started on even terms, she had sufficient confidence in Kerry to feel that he would beat out the others,
including
her father.
"Why,"
she exclaimed suddenly, "I could hire Clem (that was last year's winner of the Planetary Derby) to pilot his own ship. Then
no
one will be able to get to Comet X ahead of him."
A ship came up fast on her visor screen, dazzling in the reflected glow of the distant sun. Sally shrank instinctively in her seat, as if thus to avoid observation. It was the space-liner out of Mars on its regular run to Earth. The liner swerved toward her, and the buzzer sputtered, as the ship called for her to make radio contact. Sally gritted her teeth and kept her switch closed. The liner hesitated, then proceeded on its course; Sparks wondering audibly to himself at this tiny craft so far out in space that refused to talk. "Some damn fool," he muttered, "out on a joy ride. Ought to have his license revoked." Then he shrugged and forgot it.
Sally breathed easier as the big liner disappeared rapidly and she had space once again all to herself. She did not want to answer embarrassing questions, or have her escapade reported back on Earth.
The hours sped by. She was steadily accelerating for maximum speed—about three hundred miles a second. It usually took about eight hours to do this. Faster acceleration not only was enormously wasteful of fuel, but could cause the pilot to black out from the immense pressure. Once that speed was attained, she could then coast along, using her precious fuel merely to overcome the contrary tug of the sun and to shift course. Even so, as she watched her instruments, Sally became a trifle anxious. Her tanks were already half empty, and the mark was falling with disconcerting speed. Yet she dared not stop accelerating. Kerry, she knew, would be pushing his ship to the limit; the capacious hold of a cargo ship could accommodate an immense amount of fuel.
More hours passed. One quarter full. One sixth full. The rocket tubes were laboring with the constant strain of acceleration. Sally herself became somewhat dizzy. There was a roaring in her ears. She blinked at the speed counter that converted the thrust of the reactors into miles per second. Ah! The pointer had finally crept to the required mark. With a sigh of relief she cut her power down to a whisper. She had reached the limit of endurance, both of her ship and of herself.
But her tanks were only a tenth full! Sally stared at the damning pointer in dismay. She bad used up more fuel than she had expected; and she was only nine hours out. Certainly she could coast; but the steady counter-pull of the sun would gradually slow her down and eventually reverse her direction to a long, interminable, slanting fall toward its burning bosom.
She flung open her visor screen, plugged in all radio channels. Not a thing showed on the screen but the vast immensity of space, spangled with a host of coldly frightening stars. Not even a whisper of sound broke the deathly silence. Only the tiniest thrumming from her own tubes.
For the first time in her life Sally felt panic. She was a trifle over ten million miles away from Earth, and horribly alone. The Mars-Earth run was fairly well trafficked; but she had cut across the lane immediately after sighting the liner. The direct Ganymede route was one of the least frequented in the System. Most ships going to that distant outpost preferred to head first for Ceres in the Asteroid Belt to break voyage and refuel. A dreadful thought struck her. Suppose Kerry had done just that! What had made her take it for granted that lie would head directly for Ganymede? Suppose even he had taken on enough fuel to swing straight for the comet? In that case she would never catch him! She couldn't even contact Earth at this distance. Her radio was powered only for a radius of about three million miles.
Sally shook her head sharply to clear her thoughts, tried to still the sudden hammering of her heart. She must make up her mind fast what to do. She made some rapid calculations. If she kept her rockets on to hold to a steady three-hundred-mile-a-second gait, she had, without allowing for unexpected contingencies, enough in her tanks to keep her going for another ten hours.
Or,
she could drop the chase and cut back to the intersection with the Mars-Earth run where there was a chance of contacting some ship. But that would mean failure, and a disastrous end to all Kerry's plans. He would never forgive her for that; and properly so.
With a steady hand she increased the power. Long streamers of flame shot backward into space, and the little flier throbbed with renewed power.
The die was cast! She would either catch up to Kerry or— But that way lay madness!
The hours continued to pass. Once she had to swerve wide of her course to avoid an oncoming stream of meteors. The fuel pointer sank alarmingly. Space was a total void. Not a ship cut across the screen. By the seventeenth hour the pointer hovered near zero. A half hour later the rockets gave a last futile sputter; died. Silence lay like a palpable thing within the little craft.
Sally sagged against her seat. Already she was losing speed; slowly, very slowly, as the sun's tug—and even that of distant Earth—began to make themselves felt. Slowly, but inexorably.
Frantically she studied the screen. Nothing but the cold mockery of the stars. She switched on her radio transmitter for maximum sending. Out sped the dots and dashes that represented the space call for help. She paused; listened intently. No answering call. She sent again.
Slowly, inexorably, speed dropped. Twenty-one hours after she had commenced this mad venture the pointer hovered at two hundred miles a second. Exactly the maximum velocity which Kerry had told her could be wrung out of the
Flash.
Within minutes her own speed would fall below; and that would be that.
She set the distress signal at the automatic; so that it pulsed continuously out into space. Even that would eventually fail; as her stored current gave out. Without power, the flier began to drift. The pull of the nearer planets, of the entire universe, shifted it off the original course. Within an hour or two it would be even off the unfrequented Ganymede lane, and moving out into uncharted regions where no regular liner or space cargo boat ever ventured. Not even a prospector would have any reason to come out here.
Sally surveyed her situation. It was bad. She had enough food and drink for another two Earth days, if severely rationed. But she couldn't possibly last that long. Within a few hours the juice, severely drained by the steady radio signal, would break down; and with it, her re-oxygenation apparatus. Already her trained ear could hear the slight hesitation in its normal whir; and it seemed to her that she was finding difficulty in breathing. Or was that merely a psychological reaction to her predicament?
She faced the fact that she was going to die. Should she put an end to it now, without waiting for the inevitable agonies; or should she persevere for the outside chance? She decided on the latter. Then there was only one thing to do. Go to sleep. In repose her breathing would slow down, and the precious stock of air would last a bit longer. In the meantime the signal was pulsing. When that gave out—Sally shrugged: "Oh, well, it's been a good life while it lasted!"
Then she was dreaming: of little incidents in childhood, of her father, of Kerry.
The lights dimmed; the oxygen apparatus gave a sob and quit; the radio stopped sending. Her sleep thickened as the air grew foul; her dreams became frightening. Someone, something, was sitting on her chest, pressing . . . pressing . . .
Then even that passed; and a dark, silent ship moved decelerating on an erratic orbit.
It took Sparks almost twenty-eight hours out to put his sending and receiving equipment back into working order. Kerry Dale's calculated stumble had not only broken the screen, but fused tubes, wires and connections into shapeless metal.
Sparks sweated, grumbled and swore. What the hell was this all about? He had never shipped before with such a crazy captain as this Kerry Dale. Or
was
he crazy? Sparks remembered what had happened that time when they had wangled old Simeon Kenton out of that asteroid of pure thermatite.
He, Sparks, had thought Dale crazy
then.
But now! A sneaking suspicion had grown on Sparks that Kerry's flop into the screen had not been accidental. First, it had cut off what seemed to be the beginning of an important official announcement. The chairman of the Interplanetary Commission didn't usually appear in person to deliver a Commission order. Second, the mad haste to beat the noon gun in getting the
Flash
away from Megalon. Third, Kerry's whistling insouciance over the wreckage of the screen; and his smiling refusal to tell anyone where the devil they were going, and why. Fourth, the pushing of the old cargo boat to maximum speed, until every strut groaned and complained; as if—as if—yes, Sparks said it finally outright to himself—as if someone was pursuing them.