Yes, their leaving home, leaving their parents, their friends, their
whole world, could not be changed. Yet it seemed to them that their
punishment was out of all proportion to their crime. Thinking back on
it, Carl Wyant no longer remembered the petty grievance against his
parents which made him decide to run away.
Mainly, of course, it had been because his father dropped his keys to
the interstellar space-ship he had recently requisitioned from the
Space Council. Both Carl and his buddy, Rex, the young fellow who lived
next door and belonged to the same Scout Troop, had been caught up with
the idea of visiting the stars, without parental supervision. To visit
the stars! That was a thrilling thought.
At first they planned to be gone a month. But after landing on one
of the Centaurian planets, four and a half light-years away, the
tremendous excitement that gripped them burned away thoughts of their
parents, who must certainly be suffering agonies because of their
disappearance. Beyond Centauri were other stars--and others beyond
_them_.
They never tired as the sub-etheric warp hurled them through the dark
reaches of infinity at several times light-speed. For the first time,
they were living.
By this time, the alarm had gone throughout the known universe. Two
boys on the loose. Carl, an expert at Morse Code, deciphered the wild
dit-dit-da's.
"Boy, are they looking for us!"
Rex's deep chest came out. "We'll be pretty famous when we get back, I
guess." The thought pleased him. "Those smart alecs that always picked
on me at school will change their tune."
"Ah, Rex, nobody ever picked on you." Carl was slimmer than Rex, though
a year older. He added, "All you had to do was join in the fun and
you'd have got along swell."
A dangerous flush crept up from Rex's thick, powerful neck. "I say they
picked on me."
Carl said hastily, "Okay, okay." He dropped the subject. Sometimes Rex
could be pretty touchy. But he was handy to have around and most of the
time was a good guy. Both fellows had studied celestial navigation and
mechanics, but Rex had it all over Carl when it came to handling the
small ship, so Carl let him take the controls most of the time.
* * * * *
Suddenly the ship had gone haywire. Neither Carl nor Rex was technician
enough to understand that the etheric warp engines had been overdriven.
The engines, down to the last accumulator cell, exploded with a mighty,
tearing roar that blew gaping holes in bulkheads, deck-plates, and
overheads. Carl was knocked out, but Rex held on.
He crash-landed the ship--on Worta, the lone planet of the unlisted,
dying red star. The ship landed in a snow-bank, and the heat of the
landing turned tons of snow into steaming, boiling water. By the time
they had inventoried the situation, there was a smooth lake of ice
around them and the ship was frozen in up to the edge of the airlocks.