7
In the midst of the chaos I was aware that all the remaining discsstruck us upon the port stern quarter. The broken dome of the sternshowed a jagged hole, but the up-sliding cross-bulkhead partially shutit off. Two or three of the crew and the stern lookout were gonebehind that closing bulkhead. Their bodies in a moment would be blowninto space.
"It may hold, Drac. Order Waters out of his cubby. Forward!"
I was calling the engine-room. "Order your men up by the bow, not thestern." But I got no answer from the engine-chief.
I raised Grantline. "Order your men forward: Clear amidships! I wantto close the central bulkheads. If the stern one breaks with thepressure...."
"Right, Gregg. Are we lost?"
"God knows! We'll know in a minute or two. Get all your men into theirspace-suits. Keep in the bow. Prepare the exit-port there."
"Right, Gregg. You coming down?"
"Yes. When I finish." I cut him off. "Drac, get out of here! Did youorder Waters forward?"
"He won't leave."
"Why the hell not?"
"He thinks he may be able to get communication with Earth."
"He can't stay where he is; there's no protection up here! When thatstern bulkhead goes...."
It was breaking. I could see it bending sternward under the pressure.And at best it was leaking air, so that the decks were a rush of wind.Already Drac and I were gasping with the lowered pressure.
"Drac, get out of here. Go get Waters; bring him forward. The hellwith his transmitter: this is life or death!"
"But you?"
"I'm coming down. From the forward deck, call the hull control rooms.Order everybody forward and to the deck."
"What about the pressure pumps?"
"I can keep them going from here."
I set the circulating system to guide the fresh air forward, but itwas futile against the sucking rush of wind toward the stern. As thepumps speeded up I saw, with the little added pressure, the greatcross panel of the stern bulkhead straining harder. It would go in amoment.
Drac was clinging to me. "Tell me what to do!"
"I've told you what to do!" I shoved him to the catwalk. "Get out ofhere. Get Waters forward. Get the men out of the hull."
His anguished eyes stared at me; then he turned and ran forward on thecatwalk. I saw him forcibly dragging the bald-headed Waters from thehelio cubby. It was the last time I ever saw either of them.
A buzzer was ringing in the turret, and I plunged back for it. Theexertion put a band of pain across my chest, a panting constrictionfrom the lowering pressure.
Fanning, assistant engineer, was still at the pressure pumps. Hisvoice came up: "Pumps and renewers working. Will you use the gravityshifters?"
"Hell, no! Get out of there, Fanning. We're smashed. Air going. It's amatter of minutes--abandoning ship. Get forward!"
Suddenly the stern bulkhead cracked with a great diagonal rift. Iwaited a moment to give them all time to get forward; then I slid allthe cross 'midship bulkheads.
It was barely in time. The stern bulkhead went out with a gale ofwind, but the barrier amidships stemmed it. Half of the vesselsternward was devoid of air, but here in the bow we could last alittle longer. Beneath me I could see Grantline's men--some of them,not all--and a few of the stewards, crew and officers, crowding thedeck, donning space-suits. The two side chambers were ready; half adozen men crowded into each of them. The deck doors slid closed. Theouter ports opened; helmeted, goggled, bloated figures were blown bythe outgoing air from the chamber into space. Then the outer slideswent closed. The pumps filled up the chambers; the deck doors openedagain. Another batch of men....
I saw Grantline, suited but with his helmet off, dashing from one sideof the deck to the other, commanding the abandonment.
The central bulkheads seemed momentarily holding. Then little redlights in the panel board before me showed where in the hull corridorsthe doors were leaking, cracking, giving away, breaking under thestrain. The whole ribbed framework of the vessel was strained andslued. The bulkhead sides no longer set true in the casements. Air waswhining everywhere and pulling sternward.
It was the last stand; I was aware that the alarm siren had ceased.There was a sudden stillness, with only the shouts of the remainingmen at the exit-ports mingling with the whine of the wind and theroaring in my head. I felt detached, far-away; my senses were reeling.
I staggered to the gauges of the Erentz system, the system whereby anoscillating current, circling within the double-shelled walls of hulland dome, absorbed into negative energy much of the interior pressure.The main walls of the vessel were straining outward. The _Cometara_could collapse at any moment. I started for the catwalk door. Theelectro-telescope stood near it and I yielded to a vague desire togaze into the eyepiece. The instrument was still operative. I swept itsternward.
The enemy ship had not vanished. By what strange means, I cannot say,its velocity had been checked. A few thousand miles from us, it wasmaking a narrow, close-angle turn. Coming back? I thought so.
I suddenly realized my intention of having all the gravity-plates inneutral before abandoning the ship. I seized the controls now. Anagony of fear was upon me that the shifting valves would fail. Butthey did not. The plates slid haltingly, reluctantly.
I recall staggering to the catwalk. It seemed that the centralbulkhead was breaking. There were fallen figures on the deck beneathme. I stumbled against the body of a man who had tangled himself inthe stays of the ladder rail and was hanging there.
I think I fell the last ten feet to the deck. The roaring in my ears,the bands tightening about my chest encompassed all the world.
Then I was on my feet again, and I stumbled over another body. It wasgarbed in a space-suit, with the helmet beside it. I stripped it ofthe suit. I was panting, with all the world whirling in a daze,bursting spots of light before my eyes.
Ten feet away down the deck was the opened door of the pressurechamber. A bloated figure came into my dreamlike vista, moving for thepressure door. It turned, saw me, came leaping and bent over me. I sawbehind the vizor that it was Grantline. His bloated, gloved handshelped me don my suit.
He helped me with my helmet. The metal tip on Grantline's gloved handtouched the contact-plate on my shoulder. His voice sounded from thetiny audiphone grid within my helmet. "Gregg! Thank God I found you!All right?"
"Yes." My head was clearing.
"I've got the chamber ready. We're the last, Gregg."
I gripped his shoulder. "You're sure there's nobody else?"
"No. I've been everywhere I could reach. The central bulkheads arealmost gone."
He pushed me into the pressure chamber. There was hardly need to closethe door after us. I stood gripping him as he opened the small outerslides. The abyss was at our feet; the outgoing wind tore at us like agale, so that we stood gripping the casements.
"Thank God you've got a power-suit, Gregg. So have I. We must keeptogether."
"Yes."
I could feel the floor grid of the chamber shuddering beneath my feet.The _Cometara_ was cracking, bursting outward throughout her length;at any instant she might collapse.
For a moment we stood poised. Beneath us, here at the brink weremillions upon millions of miles of emptiness, the remote, unfathomablevoid. Blazing worlds down there in the black darkness.
"Good-by, Gregg. It may be the end for us."
"Good luck, Johnny."
His bloated figure dropped away from me. I waited just an instant, andthen I dove into space.
For a moment there was a chaos of strangeness, the wrench to my senseof the transition. I had been the inhabitant of a little world, the_Cometara_, with a gravity beneath my feet. Now, in a breath, I had noworld to inhabit. I was alone in space. No gravity; nothing solid totouch; emptiness.
I was in a world to myself, and the abnormality of it brought a mentalshock. But in a moment the adjustment came. I passed the transition,the sense of falling.
The firmament steadie
d and my senses cleared. My dive from the_Cometara_ carried me in a slow arc some three hundred feet away.There had been a sense of falling, but no actual fall. My velocity wasretarded, with the mass of the _Cometara_ pulling at me. I went like atoy boat in water shoved by a child, quickly slowing. In a fewmoments, the velocity was gone, and I hung poised. I saw Grantline'sbloated form not over fifty feet from me. He waved an arm at me.
Out here in the void I lay weightless, as though upon an infinitelysoft feather bed. I could kick, flounder, but not endow myself withmotion. I craned my neck, gazed around through the bulging vizor pane.
The Earth and the Sun hung level with the white star-dots strewneverywhere. I could not see that unknown light-beam from Greater NewYork; it was shafting out now in the other direction, so that theEarth hid it from me. Venus was visible to one side of the Sun. Theenemy light-stream from Grebhar was apparent; and as I turned my bodyand bent double to look behind me, I saw Mars and the sword-like rayfrom Ferrok-Shahn. The beams streamed off like the radiance of theMilky Way, faintly luminous but seemingly visible for an infinitedistance.
The _Cometara_ was obviously falling now toward the Moon, drawnirresistibly, and all of us with her, toward the lunar surface. Itseemed so close, that black and white mountainous disc. We were, Isuppose, some twenty thousand miles from it, gathering speed as itpulled at us. But that motion was not apparent now. Distance dwindledall these celestial motions, so that all the firmament seemed frozeninto immobility.
But there was some motion. Twenty or more bloated figures, thesurvivors from the wreck of the _Cometara_, were encircling it invarying orbits, revolving around it like tiny satellites. Some wereclosing in, drawn against it. I saw one plunge against the wreckeddome, and begin crawling like a fly. And I found that the forces ofthe firmament were molding my orbit also. My outward plunge waschecked. I poised for an indeterminate instant, and then I took myorbit. I too, was a satellite of the _Cometara_.
I gazed at the wreck of the _Cometara_. My ship! My first command! Sosmoothly, confidently rising from the Earth only a few hours ago; andshe had come to this. She lay askew in the heavens. The dome wascracked throughout all its length and smashed like a shell at thesterntip.
I could see the interior litter beneath the dome, the twisted andstrained lines of the hull. A dead ship now, the mechanisms stilled;dead and silent inside, with all the warmth gone out of it. All theair dissipated, so that in every cubby, every dark corridor of thatbroken hull there was the coldness and silence of interplanetaryspace.
I suppose these thoughts swept me within a few seconds. I saw myselfstarting to revolve in my orbit. Perhaps my motion would carry mearound indefinitely; or I might be drawn down to the vessel as thoseother survivors had been drawn.
Grantline, with one of the few power suits, was coming toward me now,with tiny fluorescent streams back along his body from his shoulderblades. I switched on my own mechanism. It moved me toward him, andour gravity attracted us. We shut off the power when twenty feetapart; drifted together; contacted; bounced apart like rubber balls asour inflated suits struck. Then in a moment we had drifted back andclung.
I touched the metal plate of his shoulder. "Working all right?"
"Yes. Thank God for this much, Gregg. I wonder how many are alive."
In the chaos of the abandonment, many of the men's air mechanisms hadfailed to operate. It is always so in times of disaster. We could see,revolving around the wreck, and motionless against its dome, thosehorrible flabby, deflated suits where the delicate Erentz mechanismhad failed. Within was only a corpse.
"Too many," I said. "And not more than four or five of us with power.What shall we do first? Round them up? We must all get together."
His answering voice was grim. "We can tow them from the wreck. Six orseven of us altogether have power. Do you suppose we can get away,Gregg? Get loose from the ship before she falls?"
Only trying it could tell us that. The _Cometara_, and all of us withher, were plunging for the Moon. We would seek out the men who werealive and tow them in a string. If we could break the gravity pull ofthe ship, and then struggle upward from the Moon, we could maintainourselves here in space until some rescue ship from Earth, Venus orMars would come and pick us up.
"You take one side, Gregg; I'll take the other. Don't go aboard; shemight collapse."
"I'll pick up the men without power and alive. The others with powersuits will do the same. Then we'll meet out here, about where we arenow?"
"Yes. And hurry, Gregg! Every mile toward the Moon makes it that muchharder. We're falling fast."
"Good luck!" I shoved away from him. And within a minute, as he wentin an arc toward the _Cometara_ bow and I toward her stern, I suddenlythought of that returning enemy vessel. My last look through the'scope had shown that she was returning; and then I had forgotten it.
My gaze swept the firmament now. I had no 'scope instruments withinthe helmet. With the naked eye the enemy ship was not in sight. But Iknew that meant little; within a moment she could come in view and behere if she were going at any great velocity.
There were on the _Cometara_, at the time of the disaster, somesixty-odd men; perhaps forty had gotten away. And I could see verysoon that not more than fifteen, or less, out here were alive. Twowith power were ahead of me now, slowly floating past the wrecked domeof the stern. One had picked up two others, found them alive and wastowing them out. They went past me, moving very slowly so that I couldsee that two were all that one of us could tow and attain any velocityat all.
I contacted with the leader. He was one of Grantline's men.
"Two or three hundred feet out," I directed. I gestured. "Grantlinesaid to meet out there. I'll tow others."
"Yes. Around the stern you'll find--God! Haljan, look!"
A mile from us the enemy ship was in view. Passing--no! Stopping! Withincredible retardation she had plunged into view, was here, and yethad no great forward velocity. She seemed no more rapid than a greatair liner winging past, so close that her reddish-tinged bulging hulllength showed clearly. The discs were gone. The funnel set on top ofher was sloped diagonally toward us as she rolled on her side, so thatmomentarily I could see down into it. There was some mechanism downthere. The bow radiance was a narrow opalescent beam in advance of thebow.
"Slowing, Haljan!"
"Yes, stopping. Don't try to meet Grantline. Tow your men away!"
"Or should we board the _Cometara_ and hide?"
"No. They've come back to bombard her."
I kicked at him violently. With his two drifting figures clingingbehind, he swung past me. I headed behind the stern. Upon its danglingframework several of our men were glued, lying there inert. I caught aglimpse of the interior of the stern, the littered deck; men lyingthere had been stricken before they had time to get into their suits.
On the outside, forward, I saw Grantline come rounding the bow, towinga figure and heading for another. On the outside of the bow-peak agroup of others were perched, gesticulating for help. I started thatway; then I saw another, and nearer figure in a power suit heading forthem. I swung back. There were two figures on the outside of theunder-hull whom I could more quickly reach. Inverted flies. Their feetwere on the keel. They stooped and waved toward me.
I took a swoop. Passing close down the hull, my rocket-streams struckthe hull plates and gave me sudden downward velocity. I shot down, outpast the keel. And again I saw the enemy ship. She hung poised, nomore than two miles away. And as I looped over, with all the black,star-strewn firmament in a dizzy whirl, the great Moon-disc, firstabove, and then below me, I saw the bow-beam of the enemy swinging. Itcame to the _Cometara_, and there it clung.
I had gone perhaps fifty feet below the keel with my dive when Irighted. I was mounting. I saw the opalescent ten-foot circle of thebeam moving along the _Cometara_ hull. It seemed to do no damage; thensuddenly it darted down and clung to me.
I felt nothing save the impact of a gentle push, something shovingwith a ponderable force against m
e.
I saw the _Cometara_ receding, the heavens swinging as I turned over.The red disc of the distant Earth swooped. The Moon surfacemomentarily seemed rotating and lifting above me.
I was helpless, rolling, then whirling end-over-end. Then again Isteadied. The beam was gone from me.
I saw the _Cometara_, a full mile away from me! The enemy ship wasagain in motion, moving toward me, and between the _Cometara_ and theEarth. And the beam was steady upon the _Cometara's_ mid-section.
The _Cometara_ had a new velocity now. I could not miss it. She wasdwindling rapidly in visual size; relative to me, she was receding,falling upon the Moon. More than that she was being pushed downward bythe repulsive force of the strange enemy beam upon her. I stared, aswith all the little dots which were our men around and upon her, shewent down into the void.
I found myself presently alone up here, with the enemy ship hoveringnearby. Its maneuvering to thrust the wrecked _Cometara_ toward theMoon had brought it within a mile of me. The bow-beam was still on the_Cometara_; and then abruptly it vanished.
The _Cometara_ had almost dwindled beyond the sight of my unaidedvision. By chance, undoubtedly, the beam had fallen upon me and thrustme from the wreck. I was alone up here now with the enemy, but theymay not have noticed me, or cared. I found my power mechanism intact.I turned it on; slowly, like a log in water, I began moving away.
A minute. Five minutes. The _Cometara_ was lost. Grantline, all themen, were lost; with that added downward thrust they could never freethemselves from the falling wreck.
I was jerked out of my thoughts by the sight of an oncoming red blob.Something was coming from the enemy ship, red with the sunlight andearthlight, silvered by the Moon and the stars. It took form. It was adisc, another of those cursed whirling discs, sent to annihilate me!
Then, when it was a quarter of a mile away, I saw that it was a discwhich was turning slowly. Rocket radiances came from its rotatingcircumference; it came sailing directly at me, so swiftly that my ownvelocity was futile.
Another minute and I was caught. I saw that the disc was some fifteenfeet in diameter, and that it bulged, so that within its convex floorand ceiling was a space of several feet.
I cut off my power and with pounding heart lay waiting. The space-suithad no weapons for equipment save a knife hung in the belt. I drew itout, held it in my gloved fingers.
The disc sailed upon its level, vertical axis. Its rotation slowed; Isaw little windows set around its convex middle. It came up and bumpedme with its metal side. I kicked away, shoved off. Shapes were movingin a dim interior light behind the port-panes. Little hand-beams ofradiance darted out. They seemed to seize me, draw me.
I found myself glued helplessly to the convex outer surface of thedisc. The rotation gathered speed again, but I looked presently onlyat the gleaming surface to which I was pinned. Had I been a metal barupon the horns of an electro-magnet, I could not have been morehelpless.
An interval passed. With the contact plate of my fingers against thishull it seemed that I could hear voices within, strange,indistinguishable words. I twisted, but could not see into the port.
Again the rotation was slowing. The near shape of the enemy vesselswung close and past; and again and again I saw that we were over it,dropping down into the wide black opening of the funnel-top. It yawnedpresently like a great black tunnel, into which we fell.
The jar of landing knocked me loose, and no doubt the attractionradiance also released me. I fell another space, bounced up and sankback. I thought that something like a sliding port-door closed overme.
And then, in the dimness, figures were gripping me. I lashed andstruck, but the knife was wrenched away.
I was a prisoner in a pressure-port of the enemy ship!