_Out of Control_
Walter Harkness had built this ship with Chet's help. They had designed
it for space-travel. It was the first ship to leave the Earth under its
own power, reach another heavenly body, and come back for a safe
landing. But they had not installed any luxuries for the passengers.
In the room where the three were confined, there were no
self-compensating chairs such as the high-liners used. But the
acceleration of the speeding ship was constant, and the rear wall became
their floor where they sat or paced back and forth. Their bonds had been
removed, and one of Harkness' hands was gripping Diane's where they sat
side by side. Chet was briskly limbering his cramped muscles.
He glanced at the two who sat silent nearby, and he knew what was in
their minds--knew that each was thinking of the other, forgetting their
own danger; and it was these two who had saved his life on their first
adventure out in space.
Walt--one man who was never spoiled by his millions; and Diane--straight
and true as they make 'em! Some way, somehow, they must be saved--thus
ran his thoughts--but it looked bad for them all. Schwartzmann?--no use
kidding themselves about that lad; he was one bad hombre. The best they
could hope for was to be marooned on the Dark Moon--left there to live
or to die amid those savage surroundings; and the worst that might
happen--! But Chet refused to think of what alternatives might occur to
the ugly, distorted mind of the man who had them at his mercy.
There was no echo of these thoughts when he spoke; the smile that
flashed across his lean face brought a brief response from the
despondent countenances of his companions.
"Well," Chet observed, and ran his hand through a tangle of blond hair,
"I have heard that the Schwartzmann lines give service, and I reckon
I heard right. Here we were wanting to go back to the Dark Moon,
and,"--he paused to point toward a black portlight where occasional
lights flashed past--"I'll say we're going; going somewhere at least.
All I hope is that that Maxie boy doesn't find the Dark Moon at about
ten thousand per. He may be a great little skipper on a nice, slow,
five-hundred-maximum freighter, but not on this boat. I don't like his
landings."
* * * * *
Diane Delacouer raised her eyes to smile approvingly upon him. "You're
good, Chet," she said; "you are a darn good sport. They knock you down
out of control, and you nose right back up for a forty-thousand foot
zoom. And you try to carry us with you. Well, I guess it's time we got
over our gloom. Now what is going to happen?"
"I'll tell you," said Walter Harkness, looking at his watch: "if that
fool pilot of Schwartzmann's doesn't cut his stern thrust and build up a
bow resistance, we'll overshoot our mark and go tearing on a few hundred
thousand miles in space."
Diane was playing up to Chet's lead.
"_Bien!_" she exclaimed. "A few million, perhaps! Then we may see some
of those Martians we've been speculating about. I hear they are
handsome, my Walter--much better looking than you. Maybe this is all for
the best after all!"
"Say," Harkness protested, "if you two idiots don't know enough to worry
as you ought, I don't see any reason why I should do all the heavy
worrying for the whole crowd. I guess you've got the right idea at that:
take what comes when it gets here--or when we get there."
Small wonder, thought Chet, that Herr Schwartzmann stared at them in
puzzled bewilderment when he flung open the door, and took one long
stride into the room. Stocky, heavy-muscled, he stood regarding them, a
frown of suspicion drawing his face into ugly lines. Plainly he was
disturbed by this laughing good-humor where he had expected misery and
hopelessness and tears. He moved the muzzle of a detonite pistol back
and forth.
* * * * *
"You haff been drinking!" he stated at last. "You are intoxicated--all
of you!" His eyes darted searching glances about the little room that
was too bare to hide any cause for inebriation.
It was Mam'selle Diane who answered him with an emphatic shake of her
dark head; an engaging smile tugged at the corners of her lips. "_Mais
non!_ my dear Herr Schwartzmann," she assured him; "it is joy--just
happiness at again approaching our Moon--and in such good company, too."
"Fortunes of war, Schwartzmann," declared Harkness; "we know how to
accept them, and we don't hold it against you. We are down now, but your
turn will come."
The man's reply was a sputtering of rage in words that neither Chet nor
Harkness could understand. The latter turned to the girl with a
question.
"Did you get it, Diane? What did he say?"
"I think I would not care to translate it literally," said Diane
Delacouer, twisting her soft mouth into an expression of distaste; "but,
speaking generally, he disagrees with you."
Herr Schwartzmann was facing Harkness belligerently. "You think you know
something! What is it?" he demanded. "You are under my feet; I kick you
as I would _meinen Hund_ and you can do nothing." He aimed a savage kick
into the air to illustrate his meaning, and Harkness' face flushed
suddenly scarlet.
* * * * *
Whatever retort was on Harkness' tongue was left unspoken; a sharp look
from Chet, who brought his fingers swiftly to his lips in a gesture of
silence, checked the reply. The action was almost unconscious on Chet's
part; it was as unpremeditated as the sudden thought that flashed
abruptly into his mind--
They were helpless; they were in this brute's power beyond the slightest
doubt. Schwartzmann's words, "You know something. What is it?" had fired
a swift train of thought.
The idea was nebulous as yet ... but if they could throw a scare into
this man--make him think there was danger ahead.... Yes, that was it:
make Schwartzmann think they knew of dangers that he could not avoid.
They had been there before: make this man afraid to kill them. The
dreadful alternative that Chet had feared to think of might be
averted....
All this came in an instantaneous, flashing correlation of his conscious
thoughts.
"I'll tell you what we mean," he told Schwartzmann. He even leaned
forward to shake an impressive finger before the other's startled face.
"I'll tell you first of all that it doesn't make a damn bit of
difference who is on top--or it won't in a few hours more. We'll all be
washed out together.
"I've landed once on the Dark Moon; I know what will happen. And do you
know how fast we are going? Do you know the Moon's speed as it
approaches? Had you thought what you will look like when that fool pilot
rams into it head on?
"And that isn't all!" He grinned derisively into Schwartzmann's flushed
face, disregarding the half-raised pistol; it was as if some secret
thought had filled him with overpowering amusement. His broad grin grew
into a laugh. "That isn't all, big boy. What will you do if you do land?
What will you do when you open the ports and the--" He cut his words
short, and the smile, with all other expression, was carefully erased
from his young face.
"No, I reckon I won't spoil the surprise. We got through it all right;
maybe you will, too--maybe!"
* * * * *
And again it was Diane who played up to Chet's lead without a moment's
hesitation.
"Chet," she demanded, "aren't you going to warn him? You would not allow
him and his men to be--"
She stopped in apparent horror of the unsaid words; Chet gave her an
approving glance.
"We'll see about that when we get there, Diane."
He turned abruptly back to Schwartzmann, "I'll forget what a rotten
winner you have been; I'll help you out: I'll take the controls if you
like. Of course, your man, Max, may set us down without damage; then
again--"
"Take them!" Schwartzmann ungraciously made an order of his acceptance.
"Take the controls, Herr Bullard! But if you make a single false move!"
The menacing pistol completed the threat.
But "Herr Bullard" merely turned to his companion with a level,
understanding look. "Come on," he said; "you can both help in working
out our location."
He stepped before the burly man that Diane might precede them through
the door. And he felt the hand of Walt Harkness on his arm in a pressure
that told what could not be said aloud.
* * * * *
There were pallid-faced men in the cabin through which they passed; men
who stared and stared from the window-ports into the black immensity of
space. Chet, too, stopped to look; there had been no port-holes in that
inner room where they had been confined.
He knew what to expect; he knew how awe-inspiring would be the sight of
strange, luminous bodies--great islands of light--masses of
animalculae--that glowed suddenly, then melted again into velvet black.
A whirl of violet grew almost golden in sudden motion; Chet knew it for
an invisible monster of space. Glowingly luminous as it threw itself
upon a subtle mass of shimmering light, it faded like a flickering flame
and went dark as its motion ceased.
Life!--life, everywhere in this ocean of space! And on every hand was
death. "Not surprising," Chet realized, "that these other Earthmen are
awed and trembling!"
The sun was above them; its light struck squarely down through the upper
ports. This was polarized light--there was nothing outside to reflect or
refract it--and, coming as a straight beam from above, it made a
brilliant circle upon the floor from which it was diffused throughout
the room. It was as if the floor itself was the illuminating agent.
No eye could bear to look into the glare from above; nor was there need,
for the other ports drew the eyes with their black depths of unplumbed
space.
Black!--so velvet as to seem almost tangible! Could one have reached out
a hand, that blackness, it seemed, must be a curtain that the hand could
draw aside, where unflickering points of light pricked through the dark
to give promise of some radiant glory beyond.
* * * * *
They had seen it before, these three, yet Chet caught the eyes of
Harkness and Diane and knew that his own eyes must share something of
the look he saw in theirs--something of reverent wonder and a strange
humility before this evidence of transcendent greatness.
Their own immediate problem seemed gone. The tyranny of this glowering
human and his men--the efforts of the whole world and its struggling
millions--how absurdly unimportant it all was! How it faded to
insignificance! And yet....
Chet came from the reverie that held him. There was one man by whom this
beauty was unseen. Herr Schwartzmann was angrily ordering them on, and,
surprisingly, Chet laughed aloud.
This problem, he realized, was _his_ problem--his to solve with the help
of the other two. And it was not insignificant; he knew with some sudden
wordless knowledge that there was nothing in all the great scheme but
that it had its importance. This vastness that was beyond the power of
human mind to grasp ceased to be formidable--he was part of it. He felt
buoyed up; and he led the way confidently toward the control-room door
where Schwartzmann stood.
The scientist, whom Schwartzmann had called Herr Doktor Kreiss, was
beside the pilot. He was leaning forward to search the stars in the
blackness ahead, but the pilot turned often to stare through the rear
lookouts as if drawn in fearful fascination by what was there. Chet took
the controls at Schwartzmann's order; the pilot saluted with a trembling
hand and vanished into the cabin at the rear.
"Ready for flying orders, Doctor," the new pilot told Herr Kreiss. "I'll
put her where you say--within reason."
Behind him he heard the choked voice of Mademoiselle Diane: "_Regardez!
Ah, mon Dieu_, the beauty of it! This loveliness--it hurts!"
* * * * *
One hand was pressed to her throat; her face was turned as the pilot's
had been that she might stare and stare at a quite impossible moon--a
great half-disk of light in the velvet dark.
"This loveliness--it hurts!" Chet looked, too, and knew what Diane was
feeling. There was a catch of emotion in his own throat--a feeling that
was almost fear.
A giant half-moon!--and he knew it was the Earth. Golden Earth-light
came to them in a flooding glory; the blazing sun struck on it from
above to bring out half the globe in brilliant gold that melted to
softest, iridescent, rainbow tints about its edge. Below, hung
motionless in the night, was another sphere. Like a reflection of Earth
in the depths of some Stygian lake, the old moon shone, too, in a
half-circle of light.
Small wonder that these celestial glories brought a gasp of delight from
Diane, or drew into lines of fear the face of that other pilot who saw
only his own world slipping away. But Chet Bullard, Master Pilot of the
World, swung back to scan a star-chart that the scientist was holding,
then to search out a similar grouping in the black depths into which
they were plunging, and to bring the cross-hairs of a rigidly mounted
telescope upon that distant target.
"How far?" he asked himself in a half-spoken thought, "--how far have we
come?"
* * * * *
There was an instrument that ticked off the seconds in this seemingly
timeless void. He pressed a small lever beside it, and, beneath a glass
that magnified the readings, there passed the time-tape. Each hour and
minute was there; each movement of the controls was indicated; each
trifling variation in the power of the generator's blast. Chet made some
careful computations and passed the paper to Harkness, who tilted the
time-tape recorder that he might see the record.
"Check this, will you, Walt?" Chet was asking. "It is based on the time
of our other trip, acceleration assumed as one thousand miles per hour
per hour out of air--"
The scientist interrupted; he spoke in English that was carefully
precise.
"It should lie directly ahead--the Dark Moon. I have calculated with
exactness."
Walter Harkness had snatched up a pair of binoculars. He swung sharply
from lookout to lookout while he searched the heavens.
"It's damned lucky for us that you made a slight error," Chet was
telling the other.
"Error?" Kreiss challenged. "Impossible!"
"Then you and I are dead right this minute," Chet told him. "We are
crossing the orbit of the Dark Moon--crossing at twenty thousand miles
per hour relative to Earth, slightly in excess of that figure relative
to the Dark Moon. If it had been here--!" He had been watching Harkness
anxiously; he bit off his words as the binoculars were thrust into his
hand.
"There she comes," Harkness told him quietly; "it's up to you!"
But Chet did not need the glasses. With his unaided eyes he could see a
faint circle of violet light. It lay ahead and slightly above, and it
grew visibly larger as he watched. A ring of nothingness, whose outline
was the faintest shimmering halo; more of the distant stars winked out
swiftly behind that ghostly circle; it was the Dark Moon!--and it was
rushing upon them!
* * * * *
Chet swung an instrument upon it. He picked out a jet of violet light
that could be distinguished, and he followed it with the cross-hairs
while he twirled a micrometer screw; then he swiftly copied the reading
that the instrument had inscribed. The invisible disk with its ghostly
edges of violet was perceptibly larger as he slammed over the
control-ball to up-end them in air.
Under the control-room's nitron illuminator the cheeks of Herr Doktor
Kreiss were pale and bloodless as if his heart had ceased to function.
Harkness had moved quietly back to the side of Diane Delacouer and was
holding her two hands firmly in his.
The very air seemed charged with the quick tenseness of emotions.
Schwartzmann must have sensed it even before he saw the onrushing death.
Then he leaped to a lookout, and, an instant later, sprang at Chet
calmly fingering the control.
"Fool!" he screamed, "you would kill us all? Turn away from it! Away
from it!"
He threw himself in a frenzy upon the pilot. The detonite pistol was
still in his hand. "Quick!" he shouted. "Turn us!"
Harkness moved swiftly, but the scientist, Kreiss, was nearer; it was he
who smashed the gun-hand down with a quick blow and snatched at the
weapon.
Schwartzmann was beside himself with rage. "You, too?" he demanded.
"Giff it me--traitor!"
* * * * *
But the tall man stood uncompromisingly erect. "Never," he said, "have I
seen a ship large enough to hold two commanding pilots. I take your
orders in all things, Herr Schwartzmann--all but this. If we die--we
die."
Schwartzmann sputtered: "We should haff turned away. Even yet we might.
It will--it will--"
"Perhaps," agreed Kreiss, still in that precise, class-room voice,
"perhaps it will. But this I know: with an acceleration of one thousand
m.p.h. per hour as this young man with the badge of a Master Pilot says,
we cannot hope, in the time remaining, to overcome our present velocity;
we can never check our speed and build up a relatively opposite motion
before that globe would overwhelm us. If he has figured correctly, this
young man--if he has found the true resultant of our two motions of
approach--and if he has swung us that we may drive out on a line
perpendicular to the resultant--"
"I think I have," said Chet quietly. "If I haven't, in just a few
minutes it won't matter to any of us; it won't matter at all." He met
the gaze of Herr Doktor Kreiss who regarded him curiously.
"If we escape," the scientist told him, "you will understand that I am
under Herr Schwartzmann's command; I will be compelled to shoot you if
he so orders. But, Herr Bullard, at this moment I would be very proud to
shake your hand."
And Chet, as he extended his hand, managed a grin that was meant also
for the tense, white-faced Harkness and Diane. "I like to see 'em dealt
that way," he said, "--right off the top of the deck."
But the smile was erased as he turned back to the lookout. He had to
lean close to see all of the disk, so swiftly was the approaching globe
bearing down.
* * * * *
It came now from the side; it swelled larger and larger before his eyes.
Their own ship seemed unmoving; only the unending thunder of the
generator told of the frantic efforts to escape. They seemed hung in
space; their own terrific speed seemed gone--added to and fused with the
orbital motion of the Dark Moon to bring swiftly closer that messenger
of death. The circle expanded silently; became menacingly huge.
Chet was whispering softly to himself: "If I'd got hold of her an hour
sooner--thirty minutes--or even ten.... We're doing over twenty thousand
an hour combined speed, and we'll never really hit it.... We'll never
reach the ground."
He turned this over in his mind, and he nodded gravely in confirmation
of his own conclusions. It seemed somehow of tremendous importance that
he get this clearly thought out--this experience that was close ahead.
"Skin friction!" he added. "It will burn us up!"
He has a sudden vision of a flaming star blazing a hot trail through the
atmosphere of this globe; there would be only savage eyes to follow
it--to see the line of fire curving swiftly across the heavens.... He,
himself, was seeing that blazing meteor so plainly....
His eyes found the lookout; the globe was gone. They were close--close!
Only for the enveloping gas that made of this a dark moon, they would be
seeing the surface, the outlines of continents.
Chet strained his eyes--to see nothing! It was horrible. It had been
fearful enough to watch that expanding globe.... He was abruptly aware
that the outer rim of the lookout was red!
For Chet Bullard, time ceased to have meaning; what were seconds--or
centuries--as he stared at that glowing rim? He could not have told. The
outer shell of their ship--it was radiant--shining red-hot in the night.
And above the roar of the generator came a nerve-ripping shriek. A wind
like a blast from hell was battering and tearing at their ship.
"Good-by!" He has tried to call; the demoniac shrieking from without
smothered his voice. One arm was across his eyes in an unconscious
motion. The air of the little room was stifling. He forced his arm down;
he would meet death face to face.
* * * * *
The lookout was ringed with fire; it was white with the terrible white
of burning steel!--it was golden!--then cherry red! It was dying, as the
fire dies from glowing metal plunged in its tempering bath--or thrown
into the cold reaches of space!
In Chet's ears was the roar of a detonite motor. He tried to realize
that the lookouts were rimmed with black--cold, fireless black! An
incredible black! There were stars there like pinpoints of flame! But
conviction came only when he saw from a lookout in another wall a circle
of violet that shrank and dwindled as he watched....
A hand was gripping his shoulder; he heard the voice of Walter Harkness
speaking, while Walt's hand crept to raise the triple star that was
pinned to his blouse.
"Master Pilot of the World!" Harkness was saying. "That doesn't cover
enough territory, old man. It's another rating that you're entitled to,
but I'm damned if I know what it is."
And, for once, Chet's ready smile refused to form. He stared dumbly at
his friend; his eyes passed to the white face of Mademoiselle Diane;
then back to the controls, where his hand, without conscious volition,
was reaching to move a metal ball.
"Missed it!" he assured himself. "Hit the fringe of the air--just the
very outside. If we'd been twenty thousand feet nearer!... He was moving
the ball: their bow was swinging. He steadied it and set the ship on an
approximate course.
"A stern chase!" he said aloud. "All our momentum to be overcome--but
it's easy sailing now!"
He pushed the ball forward to the limit, and the explosion-motor gave
thunderous response.