Sparks spluttered and fussed and made heavy weather of answering.
"Well, for one thing, it ain't important. It would only worry him. And
then there's the womenfolks, they scare easy. Which of course they
ain't no cause to. Atmospherics don't mean nothing. I've rode out
worse storms than this--plenty of times. And in worse crates than the
_Carefree_."
Greg studied him carefully from behind trim plasta-rimmed spectacles.
He drew a deep breath. He said levelly, "So it's _that_ bad, eh,
Sparks?"
"What bad? I just told you--"
"I know. Sparks, I'm not a professional spaceman. But I've studied
astrogation as few Earthlubbers have. It's been my hobby for years. And
I think I know what we're up against.
"We hit a warp-eddy last night. We've been trapped in a vortex for
more than eight hours. Lord only knows how many hundreds of thousands
of miles we've been borne off our course. And now we've blasted into a
super-ionized belt of atmospherics. Your radio signals are blanketed.
You can't get signals in or out. We're a deaf-mute speck of metal being
whirled headlong through space. Isn't that it?"
"I don't know what--" began Sparks hotly. Then he stopped, studied his
companion thoughtfully, nodded. "O.Q.," he confessed, "that's it. But
we ain't licked yet. We got three good men on the bridge. Townsend ...
Graves ... Langhorn. They'll pull out of this if anybody can. And they
ain't no sense in scaring the Old Man and his family."
"I won't tell them," said Greg. "I won't tell them unless I have to.
But between you and me, what are the odds against us, Sparks?"
The radioman shrugged.
"Who knows? Vortices are unpredictable. Maybe the damn thing will toss
us out on the very spot it picked us up. Maybe it will give us the old
chuckeroo a million miles the other side of Pluto. Maybe it will crack
us up on an asteroid or satellite. No way of telling till it happens."
"And the controls?"
"As useless," said Sparks, "as a cow in a cyclone."
"So?"
"We sit tight," said Sparks succinctly, "and hope."
Malcolm nodded quietly. He took off his spectacles, breathed on them,
wiped them, replaced them. He was tall and fair; in his neat, crisply
pressed business suit he appeared even slimmer than he was. But there
was no nervousness in his movements. He moved measuredly. "Well," he
said, "that appears to be that. I'm going up to the dining dome."
Sparks stared at him querulously.
"You're a queer duck, Malcolm. I don't think you've got a nerve in your
body."
"Nerves are a luxury I can't afford," replied Greg. "If anything
happens--and if there's time to do so--let me know." He paused at the
door. "Good luck," he said.
"Clear ether!" said Sparks mechanically. He stared after the other man
wonderingly for a long moment, then went back to his control banks,
shaking his head and muttering.
* * * * *
Gregory Malcolm climbed down the Jacob's-ladder and strode briskly
through the labyrinthine corridors that were the entrails of the
space yacht _Carefree_. He paused once to peer through a _perilens_
set into the ship's port plates. It was a weird sight that met his
gaze. Not space, ebony-black and bejewelled with a myriad flaming
splotches of color; not the old, familiar constellations treading
their ever-lasting, inexorable paths about the perimeter of Sol's
tiny universe, but a shimmering webwork of light, so tortured-violet
that the eyes ached to look upon it. This was the mad typhoon of
space-atmospherics through which the _Carefree_ was now being twisted,
topsy-turvy, toward a nameless goal.
He moved on, approaching at last the quartzite-paned observation
rotunda which was the dining dome of the ship.
His footsteps slowed as he composed himself to face those within. As
he hesitated in the dimly-lighted passage, a trick of lights on glass
mirrored to him the room beyond. He could see the others while they
were as yet unaware of his presence. Their voices reached him clearly.
J. Foster Andrews, his employer and the employer of the ten thousand
or more men and women who worked for Galactic Metals Corporation,
dominated the head of the table. He was a plump, impatient little
Napoleon. Opposite him, calm, graceful, serene, tastefully garbed and
elaborately coiffured even here in deep space, three weeks from the
nearest beauty shop, sat his wife, Enid.
On Andrews' right sat his sister, Maud. Not young, features plain as a
mud fence, but charming despite her age and homeliness simply because
of her eyes; puckish, shrewdly intelligent eyes, constantly aglint with
suppressed humor at--guessed Greg--the amusing foibles and frailties of
those about her.
She gave her breakfast the enthusiastic attention of one too old and
shapeless to be concerned with such folderol as calories and dietetics,
pausing only from time to time to share smidgeons of food with a
watery-eyed scrap of white, curly fluff beside her chair. Her pet
poodle, whom she called by the opprobrious title of "Cuddles."
On J. Foster's left sat his daughter, Crystal. She it was who caused
Gregory Malcolm's staid, respectable heart to give a little lurch as
he glimpsed her reflected vision--all gold and crimson and cream--in
the glistening walls. If Crystal was her name, so, too, was crystal her
loveliness.
But--Greg shook his head--but she was not for him. She was already
pledged to the young man seated beside her. Ralph Breadon. He turned
to murmur something to her as Greg watched; Greg saw and admired and
disliked his rangy height, his sturdy, well-knit strength, the rich
brownness of his skin, his hair, his eyes.
The sound of his own name startled Greg.
"Malcolm!" called the man at the head of the table. "Malcolm! Now where
in blazes is he, anyhow?" he demanded of no one in particular, everyone
in general. He spooned a dab of liquid gold from a Limoges preserve
jar, tongued it suspiciously, frowned. "Bitter!" he complained.
"It's the very _best_ Martian honey," said his wife.
"Drylands clover," added Crystal.
"It's still bitter," said J. Foster petulantly.