Which was a bit optimistic. The auxiliaries weren't etheric warpers.
They were rocket engines. The fuel a ship like this carried would
take it a few billion miles, but what was that in the vastness of
interstellar space, with the nearest solar system two light-years away?
Carl's long slim fingers bit mercilessly into the palms of his hands.
His voice was a thin cry of protest, drifting out over the sterile
vistas of Worta, the ice planet.
"Rex, we're done for. We can't get back. We're marooned."
They were marooned, but not done for. The Wortans found them one day
and took them to their city a thousand feet under the planet. These
Wortans, the few of them that remained, were quiet, kindly people. Ages
ago, they had fought their last retreat from the bitter surface cold.
They had dug beneath the crust. They were savages now, their former
mighty civilization forgotten, and were unlearned, save in agriculture
and the skillful breeding of such fur-and-meat-producing animals as the
_col_, the _friga_, the _hask-nor_. And, since they were human in form,
themselves, they accepted these strangers that came among them.
They never came to the surface of Worta, but that unexplainable sense
of theirs which enabled them to perceive disharmony, much as one
flinches at a sour discord, brought them up to investigate.
Carl was grateful to them for their simple wisdom, their understanding.
From the first, however, Rex was a "sour chord" among them. An inner
conceit, perhaps growing out of a race consciousness, painted him with
an unmasked hostility.
But it was all of a year after their arrival before M'hort, chief of
the Wortans, revealed his feelings to Carl. He drew Carl into his
_meegan_--his rock-dwelling--one day. M'hort was tall as Carl, but his
eyes were faceted and insect-like, great horny reptilian lumps stood
out on his bony-joints, and his smoothly-scaled skin reflected the
eternal fluorescence of this underground land like a polished mirror.
Carl's smile was rueful when M'hort explained about Rex. "Rex never was
one to get along with people. He told me you people don't like him."
"How sad!" said M'hort.
"He's never stopped dreaming that we might get back to Earth."
"If only," said M'hort, "he would join us at our festivals as you do!
If only he would laugh when we gather for meals! But, ah, he will do
none of these things. Many times he sits in his _meegan_ and broods.
You say he insists there is a way to return to your planet?"
Carl was embarrassed for his friend. "When we first landed," he
explained, "Rex thought that somehow we could use the auxiliaries."
"Ah, yes," said M'hort, trying hard to understand these things which
were strange to him. "The auxiliaries."
"You see, we can manufacture unlimited quantities of rocket fuel with
the fuel-generator that most ships carry. It's a catalytic process,
the raw material being any fairly dense rock.
"The auxiliaries were a sort of obsession with Rex. I couldn't control
him. In the few days before you found us, he manufactured seven or
eight tons of merbohydrate. He filled the ship full. I let him have his
way. We lifted the ship and left Worta. Rex was certain we could find
another planet and get back to Earth by a stepping-stone method."
"Ah, but there are no other planets near enough," said M'hort,
recalling this fact which Carl had previously taught him.
"Within light-years. As I say, I let Rex have his way until half the
fuel was used up. Then I had to fight him."
Carl looked ashamedly at his fists. "I knocked him out as we came back
to Worta. But somehow he never gave up the idea that we could use the
auxiliaries somehow."
"How very sad! And you say there is little chance of the Earth people
coming for you?"
"Very little. Worta and its sun aren't even entered in the _Star
Catalogue_. It's an unlisted system, although the Stellar Survey
Institution has been working like crazy the past hundred years to
survey the whole works."
M'hort touched the boy's hand sympathetically. "Someday they will come
for you! But, in the meantime, it would be wonderful if your friend saw
the futility of his ways."
* * * * *
During the first year of their stay on Worta, Rex stayed close to Carl,
confiding in him, making those trips to the surface of the snowed-under
world. Then he took to wandering the great winding corridors and
chambers and dead underground cities of Worta alone. Carl would have
liked to explore with him, for there was an unending fascination in
this dying civilization. Once upon a time the Wortans had been great.
The quaint webbed architecture of the spired and domed buildings, the
delicate traceries, on the walls and the sculptured figures standing
in the squares--these were a timeless wonder. But Rex didn't want Carl
along, for Rex had closed up clam-like, his broad, square face held a
sullen fanaticism, and Carl knew he had his mind set on escape.
Carl went to Rex's _meegan_ and sat on his spider-silk chair and whiled
away the time by reading a scroll from the Wortan library until Rex
should return. Both Carl and Rex had learned the complex language, the
reading, the writing, the speaking of it, though Carl was much the more
proficient.
Rex came in silently, a big man-size fellow with pale, beardless
cheeks, dressed Indian-like in the thin, cured leather of the _col_.
His moccasins padded and Carl looked up from the scroll with a start.
Rex said shortly, "Hello, Carl." He threw himself on the pile of
sleeping-furs in the corner, locked his hands behind his head and
stared straight up at the fluorescent ceiling with hard, unblinking
eyes.
Carl uncomfortably put the scroll away. "Rex, I want to have a talk
with you."
"Shoot," said Rex.
"You're not making it very easy for yourself, Rex."
"Oh! You're going to start moralizing again!"
"I wouldn't call it moralizing. I'm getting fed up with the way you
act, if you want it straight. The Wortans are swell people and I get
along with them fine. But it's just as if I was marooned alone. What I
mean is, I don't have anybody to talk to."
Rex's lips curled in a half-smile. "Maybe you haven't treated me
half-decent, either, if you want to know it."
"_I_ haven't!"
"Nope. You want to stick here the rest of your life in these crummy,
cold, underground rat-holes. No soap. I'm going to get back to Earth
somehow."
"The auxiliaries," Carl said sarcastically.
Rex came to his knees with a violent motion, eyes burning. "Don't talk
to me like that, Carl! I've got a way to get out of here."
"Yeah?" Carl refused to be intimidated. "How's the master-mind going to
work it?"
Rex paused and then said slowly, "I'm going to create a distress
signal."
"Distress sig--" Carl stiffened incredulously. "Rex, you're nuts!"
Rex smiled a slow, secret, satisfied smile. "I don't think so. 'Member
when we were scouts? 'Member that time we got lost in the Big Neck
Valley? We burned green wood and got a smoky fire started and used a
blanket to send up a smoky SOS signal. We knew the rest of the troop
was somewhere near and would see the signal. They came and got us.
"Well, this is the same thing. We're lost. This solar system never has
been discovered, but we both know we're still in the known universe.
All around us, maybe no more than fifty or sixty light-days off, are
traffic lanes. Passenger ships, freighters. Then there's the SSI. It
has ships everywhere. I figure if we send out a distress signal they're
bound to see it over the sub-etheric, fifth-order ray detector. They'll
see that signal as soon as I get started."
Carl was quiet. He was worried. This was a turn of affairs he hadn't
expected. He remembered how fixed Rex's mind was on the subject of
escape. Too fixed. Almost fanaticism. He hoped with all his heart Rex
wasn't sick. Yet that the kid should kneel there, with that brightness
in his eyes, and suggest sending up a distress signal which was to be
sent across billions of miles of space--
"All right, Rex," he said gently. "I'm listening. You're to send up a
distress signal and attract the attention of a Stellar Survey ship."
A derisive smile grew on Rex's lips. "You're listening," he scoffed.
"Liar. You think I'm bats. But I'll show you."
He lay down again and turned his face to the wall and shortly Carl
heard his deep breathing. Carl left.
That was in the second year. But another year passed. Carl found
himself growing up. He had the shoulders of a man, and he could look
back with a whimsical ruefulness on the immaturity which had led him
and Rex to run away from home like callow ten-year-olds.
Carl longed for Earth, no less than Rex. Unlike Rex, he subdued the
longing, but whenever his lonesome thoughts threatened to engulf him he
diverted himself by climbing the thousand feet to the planet's surface.
It was on such a voyage that he found the space-ship gone.
Carl and Rex had agreed to leave the ship on an eminence, so that if
anybody did come they would see the ship and investigate. But the ship
was undeniably gone, and Carl knew Rex had taken it.
He stood on the icy mesa where they had parked it, and Carl looked out
on the drear vastness of Worta with sick eyes. He refused to believe
Rex had gone away and left him. He stayed there for hours, waiting,
then reluctantly went back into the bowels of Worta.
Rex showed up for the evening meal, though, taking his place at the
great long _yee_--the festival table--where the forty-odd Wortans who
remained had their meals. After the meal, Carl cornered him.
Rex twisted away from Carl's detaining hand. "I've got a right to take
a ride if I want to, haven't I?"
Carl felt guilty at having even asked, the way Rex put it. Rex did have
that right. Carl let it slide. But the frequent disappearance of the
ship troubled him increasingly. Every time he stood hip-deep in snow on
the upper world and saw the ship was gone, a chill worked through his
heart. He would find himself looking into the lowering dark sky at the
impersonal stars. Fastening his gaze on the dying red star around which
Worta revolved. It was not a large sun. In another million years it
would burn out. Then Worta would truly be dead.
* * * * *
He was convinced there was more to Rex's use of the ship than the
loneliness of a nineteen-year-old wanting to take a ride. Rex had a
purpose. Yet he let it slide until the end of the fourth year. Then his
interference was not his doing. He was wandering far underground when a
runner came panting up.
"M'hort must see you in his _meegan_," the runner panted.
Carl went at once, heart constricted. Nothing ever happened in these
underground caves. Whatever M'hort wanted to see him about was urgent.
M'hort met him at the entrance and gripped his arm. His eyes bored into
Carl's. "I sense that something is wrong, friend Carl," he said. "It is
a great terror in my breast. It is about Rex, of course. I see--I see a
great flame. Now tell me what you know!"
Carl blurted out the story. "He's making plenty long trips someplace,"
he said huskily. "He's been caving in a big hillside of rock these past
couple years. Making merbohydrate."