Subspace Explorers. E.E. "Doc" Smith
took four days to clean the ship of Dekon foam and to treat the hot spots that the automatics had missed. Four long days of heartbreaking labor in weightlessness and four too-short nights of sleep in the heavenly—to seven of them, at least—artificial gravity of the lifecraft. With the hulk deconned to zero (all ruptured radiators had of course been blown automatically at the time of catastrophe) Jones and Deston went over the engine rooms item by item.
The subspace drives were fused ruins. Enough normal-space gear was in working order, however, so that they could put on one gravity of drive, which was a vast relief to all. Then Jones began to jury-rig an astrogation set-up and Deston went to help Adams.
A few evenings later Adams said, “Well, that covers all the preliminary observations I am equipped to make. Thanks a lot for your help, Babe, I won’t bother you any more for a while.”
Deston grinned ruefully. “You’ll have to, Doc. I don’t mean the routine—clean-up, bodies, effects, and so on—Lopresto’s handling that. You’ve learned a lot of stuff that none of the rest of us can make head or tail of. That makes you the director; we’re only the cheap help.”
“I’ve learned scarcely anything yet; only that when we approach any planet we must do so with extreme—I might almost say fantastic—precautions.”
“Blasting at normal, it’ll be a mighty long time before we have to worry about that.”
“Not as long as you think, Babe,” Jones said. “We’re in toward the center of the galaxy somewhere; stars are a lot thicker here. It’s only about a third of a light-year to the nearest one. Point three five, I make it.”
“But what’s the chance of its having a Tellus-Type planet?”
“Oh, that isn’t necessary,” Adams said. “Any planet will, it is virtually certain, enable us to restore subspace communication.”
“It’ll still be a mighty long haul,” Deston said. “The shape the engines are in, I doubt if they’ll stand up under more than about one gee on a long pull. We can’t do much better than that anyway, because we’ve got no grav-control—the Q-converters are all shot and we can’t fix ’em.”
“We’ll travel at one gravity,” Barbara said. “Babies; remember?”
“I’ll figure it that way,” Deston said, and went to work with his slide-rule. A few minutes later he reported, “Neglecting the Einstein Effect, which is altogether too hairy for a slipstick, I make it about fourteen months. But since velocity at turnover will be crowding six-tenths of a light, that neglect makes it just a guess.”
“We’ll compute it tomorrow morning,” Jones said. “For your information, all, we’re heading for that star now.”
CHAPTER II
THE ZETA FIELD
The tremendous Chaytor engines of the Procyon were again putting out their wonted torrents of power. The starship, now a mere spaceship, was on course at one gravity. The lifecraft were in their berths, but the five and the four still lived in them rather than in the vast and oppressive emptiness that the liner then was. And outside of working hours the two groups did not mix.
In Lifecraft Three, four men sat at two tables. Ferdy Blaine and Moose Mordan were playing cards for small stakes. Ferdy was of medium size, lithe and poised, built of rawhide and spring steel. Moose the Muscle was six feet five and weighed a good two sixty. The two at the other table had been planning for days. They had had many vitriolic arguments, but neither had made any motion toward his weapon.
“Play it my way and we’ve got it made, I tell you!” Newman pounded the table with his fist. “Seventy five megabucks if it’s a dime! Heavier loot than your second-string syndicate ever even thought of in one haul! I’m almost as good an astrogator as Jones is and a better engineer, and at practical electronics I’m just as good as Pretty Boy Deston is.”
“Oh, yeah?” Lopresto sneered. “How come you’re only a crew chief, then?”
“Only a crew chief!” Newman yelled. “D’ya think I’m dumb or something? Or don’t know where the big moola is at? Or ain’t in exactly the right spot to collect right and left? Or I ain’t got exactly the right connections? With Mister Big himself? You ain’t that dumb!”
“Dumb or not, before I make a move I’ve got to be sure that we can get back without ’em.”
“You can be damn sure. I got to get back myself, don’t I? But paste this in your hat—I get the big platinum blonde.”
“You can have her. Too big. The little yellow-head’s my dish.”
Newman sneered into Lopresto’s hard-held face. “But remember this, you small-time, chiseling punk. Rub me out after we kill them and you get nowhere. You’re dead. Chew on that awhile and you’ll know who’s boss.”
After just the right amount of holding back and objecting, Lopresto agreed. “You win, Newman, the way the cards lay. So all that’s left is—when? Tomorrow?”
“Not quite. Let ’em finish figuring course, time, distance, turnover—all that stuff. They can do it a lot faster and some better than I can. I’ll tell you when.”
“Okay, and I’ll give the signal. When I yell NOW we give ’em the business.”
Newman went to his cabin and the muscle called Moose said, “I don’t like that ape, boss. Before you gun him, let me work him over a little, huh?”
“We’ll let him think he’s top dog for a while yet; then you can have him.”
* * * *
A few evenings later, in Lifecraft Two, Barbara said, “You’re worried, Babe, and everything’s going so smoothly. Why?”
“Too smoothly altogether. That’s why. Newman ought to be doing a slow burn and goldbricking all he dares, and he isn’t. And I wouldn’t trust Lopresto as far as I can throw a brick chimney by its smoke. I smell trouble. Shooting trouble.”
“But they couldn’t do anything without you two!” Bernice protested. “Could they, Ted, possibly?”
“They could, and I think they intend to. Being a crew chief, Newman is a jackleg engineer, a good practical ’troncist, and a rule-of-thumb astrogator, and we’re computing every element of the flight. And if he’s what I think he is... ” Jones paused.
“Could be,” Deston said. “One of an organized ring of pirate-smugglers. But there isn’t enough plunder that they could get away with to make it pay.”
“No? Think again. Not plunder; salvage. With either of us alive, none. With both of us dead, can you guess within ten megabucks of how much they’ll collect?”
“Blockhead!” Deston slapped himself on the forehead. “And they aren’t planning on killing the girls until the last act.”
Both girls shrank visibly and Barbara said, “I see.”
Deston went on, “They know they’ll have to get both of us at once—the survivor would lock the ship in null-G and they’d be sitting ducks... and it won’t be until we’ve finished the computations. We very seldom work together. If we make it a point never to be together on duty... ”
“And be sure to always have our talkies turned on,” Jones put in, grimly.
“Check. They’ll have to think up some reason for getting everybody together, which will be the tip-off. Blaine will probably draw on me... ”
“And he’ll kill you,” Jones said, flatly. “You’re fast, I know, but he’s a professional—probably one of the fastest guns in all space.”
“Yes, but... I’ve got a... I mean I think I can... ”
Bernice,