The Space Opera MEGAPACK ®. Jay Lake
when over the purring of his engine he thought he heard Dorothy’s voice raised in a scream. He did not wait to make sure, but whirled his machine about and the purring changed instantly to a staccato roar as he threw open the throttle and advanced the spark. Gravel flew from beneath his skidding wheels as he negotiated the turn into the Vaneman grounds at suicidal speed. But with all his haste he arrived upon the scene just in time to see the door of the space-car close. Before he could reach it the vessel disappeared, with nothing to mark its departure save a violent whirl of grass and sod, uprooted and carried far into the air by the vacuum of its wake. To the excited tennis-players and the screaming mother of the abducted girl it seemed as though the great metal ball had vanished utterly—only Seaton, knowing what to expect, saw the line it made in the air and saw for an instant a minute dot in the sky before it disappeared.
Interrupting the clamor of the young people, each of whom was trying to tell him what had happened, he spoke to Mrs. Vaneman.
“Mother, Dottie’s all right,” he said rapidly but gently. “Steel’s got her, but they won’t keep her long. Don’t worry, we’ll get her. It may take a week or it may take a year, but we’ll bring her back,” and leaping upon his motorcycle, he shattered all the speed laws on his way to Crane’s house.
“Mart!” he yelled, rushing into the shop, “they’ve got Dottie, in a bus made from our plans. Let’s go!” as he started on a run for the testing shed.
“Wait a minute!” crisply shouted Crane. “Don’t go off half-cocked. What is your plan?”
“Plan, hell!” barked the enraged chemist. “Chase ’em!”
“Which way did they go, and when?”
“Straight up, full power, twenty minutes ago.”
“Too long ago. Straight up has changed its direction several degrees since then. They may have covered a million miles, or they may have come back and landed next door. Sit down and think—we need all your brains now.”
Regaining his self-possession as the wisdom of his friend’s advice came home to him, Seaton sat down and pulled out his pipe. There was a tense silence for an instant. Then he leaped to his feet and darted into his room, returning with an object-compass whose needle pointed upward.
“DuQuesne did it,” he cried exultantly. “This baby is still looking right at him. Now let’s go—make it snappy!”
“Not yet. We should find out how far away they are; that may give us an idea.”
Suiting action to word, he took up his stopwatch and set the needle swinging. They watched it with strained faces as second after second went by and it still continued to swing. When it had come to rest Crane read his watch and made a rapid calculation.
“About three hundred and fifty million miles,” he stated. “Clear out of our solar system already, and from the distance covered he must have had a constant acceleration so as to approximate the velocity of light, and he is still going with full.…”
“But nothing can possibly go that fast, Mart, it’s impossible. How about Einstein’s theory?”
“That is a theory, this measurement of distance is a fact, as you know from our tests.”
“That’s right. Another good theory gone to pot. But how do you account for his distance? D’you suppose he’s lost control?”
“He must have. I do not believe that he would willingly stand that acceleration, nor that he would have gone that far of his own accord. Do you?”
“I sure don’t. We don’t know how big a bar they are carrying, so we can’t estimate how long it is going to take us to catch them. But let’s not waste any more time, Mart. For Cat’s sake, let’s get busy!”
“We have only those four bars, Dick—two for each unit. Do you think that will be enough? Think of how far we may have to go, what we may possibly get into, and what it will mean to Dottie if we fail for lack of power.”
Seaton, though furiously eager to be off, paused at this new idea, and half-regretfully he replied:
“We are so far behind them already that I guess a few hours more won’t make much difference. It sure would be disastrous to get out near one of the fixed stars and have our power quit. I guess you’re right, we’d better get a couple more—make it four, then we’ll have enough to chase them half our lives. We’d better load up on grub and X-plosive ammunition, too.”
* * * *
While Crane and Shiro carried additional provisions and boxes of cartridges into the “Skylark,” Seaton once more mounted his motorcycle and sped across the city to the brass foundry. The manager of the plant took his order, but blandly informed him that there was not that much copper in the city, that it would be a week or ten days before the order could be filled. Seaton suggested that they melt up some copper cable and other goods already manufactured, offering ten times their value, but the manager was obdurate, saying that he could not violate the rule of priority of orders. Seaton then went to other places, endeavoring to buy scrap copper, trolley wire, electric cable, anything made of the ruddy metal, but found none for sale in quantities large enough to be of any use. After several hours of fruitless search, he returned home in a towering rage and explained to Crane, in lurid language, his failure to secure the copper. The latter was unmoved.
“After you left, it occurred to me that you might not get any. You see, Steel is still watching us.”
Fire shot from Seaton’s eyes.
“I’m going to clean up that bunch,” he gritted through his teeth as he started straight for the door.
“Not yet, Dick,” Crane remonstrated. “We can go down to Wilson’s in a few minutes, and I know we can get it there if he has it. The “Skylark” is all ready to travel.”
No more words were needed. They hurried into the space-car and soon were standing in the office of the plant in which the vessel had been built. When they had made their wants known, the iron-master shook his head.
“I’m sorry, Crane, but I have only a few pounds of copper in the shop, and we have no suitable furnace.”
Seaton broke out violently at this, but Crane interrupted him, explaining their inability to get the metal anywhere else and the urgency of their need. When he had finished, Wilson brought his fist down upon his desk.
“I’ll get it if I have to melt up our dynamos,” he roared. “We’ll have to rig a crucible, but we’ll have your bars out just as soon as the whole force of this damned scrap-heap can make ’em!”
Calling in his foreman, he bellowed orders, and while automobiles scoured the nearby towns for scrap copper, the crucible and molds were made ready.
Nearly two days passed before the gleaming copper cylinders were finished. During this time Crane added to their already complete equipment every article he could conceive of their having any use for, while Seaton raged up and down the plant in a black fury of impatience. Just before the bars were ready, they made another reading on the object-compass. Their faces grew tense and drawn and their hearts turned sick as second followed second and minute followed minute and the needle still oscillated. Finally, however, it came to rest, and Seaton’s voice almost failed him as he read his figures.
“Two hundred and thirty-five light-years, Mart. They’re lost, and still going. Good-bye, old scout,” holding out his hand, “Tell Vaneman that I’ll bring her back or else stay out there myself.”
“You must be crazy, Dick. You know I am going.”
“Why? No use in both of us taking such a chance. If Dottie’s gone, of course I want to go too, but you don’t.”
“Nonsense, Dick. Of course this is somewhat farther than we had planned on going for our maiden voyage, but where is the difference? It is just as safe to go a thousand light-years as only one, and we have power and food for any contingency. There is no more danger in this trip than there is in