Destination—Death!
“CQX! CQX! Calling _Maid of Mercury_!”
Saul Duncan looked up from the mike. “No answer. Their radio’s dead.”
“Your wife did her job,” Olcott grunted, fingering his mustache. He had
regained his usual impassivity, though Hartman, in the background, had
not. The scientist, without his daily quart of _khlar_, was a nervous
wreck, puffing cigarette after cigarette in a vain attempt to calm
himself.
“There she is.” Duncan nodded at the visiplate, where the bulk of the
_Maid_ lay, occulting stars. “We’ll use visual signals. First, though,
we’ll have to—”
His fingers moved swiftly. A four-inch blaster cannon sent its bolt of
electronic energy ravening through space, across the _Maid’s_ bow.
Lights on the cruiser’s hull blinked into rainbow colors.
Paralleling the _Maid_, steadily drawing closer, the smaller ship kept
on its course.
Duncan said, “They noticed that. They’ll be watching the visiplate—”
“What are you telling them?”
“To send over the radium, or we’ll blast ’em to hell.”
“Good!”
But Duncan’s lips were tight. He was bluffing, of course. Blasting an
unarmed ship full of passengers—well, if it came to a showdown, he
could not do it, even if Andrea had not been on board. However, the
_Maid’s_ captain couldn’t know that. He wouldn’t dare take the risk.
Answering lights flashed on the larger ship’s hull. Duncan read them
aloud with the ease of long practice.
“No radium aboard. Is this a joke?”
“Send another blast,” Olcott suggested.
Duncan’s response was to fire a bolt that melted two of the _Maid’s_
stern tubes into slag. That didn’t harm anyone in the passenger ship,
but it showed that he was presumably in earnest. And he had to get
Andrea aboard now. She had smashed the radio, and probably was already
under arrest. Well—
“Sending radium. Don’t fire again.”
“Send one of your passengers also. Jane Horton.” Andrea was booked under
that alias, Olcott had said.
There was a pause. Then—“Jane Horton victim of Plutonians. Must have
turned off power in Helmet. Found dead in radio room just before you
made contact.”
Saul Duncan’s fingers didn’t move on the keys. Deep within him,
something turned into ice. He was hearing a voice, seeing a face, both
phantoms, for Andrea was dead.
Andrea was dead.
The words were meaningless.
He became conscious of Olcott at his side, talking angrily.
“What’s wrong? What did they say?”
Duncan looked at Olcott. The dead, frozen fury in the pilot’s eyes
halted Olcott in mid-sentence.
Automatically Duncan’s hand moved over the keyboard.
“Send the body to me.”
Then he waited.
On the visiplate was movement. A port gaped in the _Maid’s_ hull, the
escape-hatch with which all ships were provided. Based on torpedo-tube
principle, powered by magnetic energy, the projector was built to hurl
crew or passengers out of the ship’s sphere of attraction. Sometimes the
rockets would fail, in which case the vessel would crash on any nearby
body. If that danger threatened, a man in a spacesuit, equipped with
auxiliary rockets, could survive for days in the void, provided he was
not dragged down with the ship. The projector took care of that.
Now, tuned to minimum power, it thrust a bulky object out into space,
pushing it toward the cruiser. Gravitation did the rest. The spacesuit
dropped toward the smaller vessel, thudded against the hull. Duncan
threw a series of hull magnets, one after another, till the suit was at
an escape valve.
Five minutes later the space coffin lay at Duncan’s feet.
* * * * *
Through the bars that protected the transparent face-plate he could see
Andrea, her long lashes motionless on her cheeks. Duncan’s face was
suddenly haggard. Olcott’s voice jarred on his taut nerves.
“What happened? Did they—”
“The Plutonians killed her,” Duncan said. “She turned off her Helmet,
and they killed her.”
Hartman was staring at a lead box attached to the spacesuit. “They sent
the radium!”
Duncan’s lips twisted in a bitter smile. With a quick movement he went
to the controls and turned the cruiser into a new course. On the
visiplate, the _Maid_ began to draw away.
Olcott said, “How long will it take us to get back to Earth?”
“We’re not going back.” Duncan’s voice held no emotion.
“What?”
“Andrea’s dead. The Plutonians killed her. You and Hartman helped.”
Olcott’s big body seemed to tense. “Don’t be a fool. What good will it
do to murder us? What’s done is done. You—”
“I’m not going to murder you,” Duncan said. “The Plutonians will take
care of that.”
“You’re crazy!”
Briefly a flash of murderous fury showed in Duncan’s eyes. He repressed
it.
“I’m taking this boat to Pluto. I’m going to blast hell out of the
Plutonians. They’ll get us eventually, all of us. That’ll be swell. I
don’t want to live very long now. But before I die, I’m going to smash
as many of the Plutonians as I can, because they killed Andrea. And you
two are going with me, because you got Andrea into this mess.”
Hartman said shakily, “It’s suicide. No ship can get within a million
miles of Pluto!”
“This ship can. It’s dead black, with rocket screens. And the Plutonians
haven’t found us yet—which proves something. Hold it!” The gun flashed
into Duncan’s hand as Olcott jerked forward. “I’ll kill you myself if I
have to, but I’d rather let the Plutonians do it.” He motioned the
others to the back of the cabin as a light flashed on the board. After a
moment Duncan nodded.
“That was the _Maid_. They managed to repair their radio. Andrea didn’t
have time to smash it thoroughly before. They’re talking to a patrol
boat.”
Olcott’s teeth showed. “Well?”
“We don’t want to be stopped—now.” Duncan fingered the controls. The
bellow of rockets grew louder. A shuddering vibration rocked the little
cruiser.
“Not too fast!” Hartman said warningly. “This ship crashed once. It’s
still weak.”
For answer Duncan only increased the power. The thunder of the tubes
grew deafening. Already they had crossed the Lunar Line, heading outward
in the plane of the ecliptic.
Duncan rose and went to the spacesuit that held Andrea’s body. He
wrenched the intertron knob free from the Helmet.
“We want no Varra spy here.” The knob was not glowing, and, without
power, the Varra was not _en rapport_ with the Helmet, but Duncan was
taking no chances.
Grimly he went back to the controls. Hartman and Olcott watched him,
vainly trying to fight back their fear.
The heavy, crashing roar of the rockets mounted to a deafening
crescendo.