What happened then was not in any wise comprehensible to Chip Warren.
Had Blacky Jordan turned viciously on the latecomer, striking her
down as brutally as he had Chip and Salvation--that would have been
understandable. Or had he meekly begged forgiveness--that, too, Chip
could have understood. For the girl was--had to be!--either one of two
things. Servant or mistress of the pirate chieftain.
But Jordan did neither of these things. Instead, he fingered his cheek
where it flamed dull scarlet against brown, and his eyes were cloudy
pools of anger and some contrasting emotion Chip could not name. His
fingers twitched, his mouth worked. Then something like a shrug stirred
his shoulders; he turned to his silently watching followers.
"Well--what are you standin' around here for? You got work to do, ain't
you? Well, get goin', then!"
With obedient alacrity the mob dispersed. Chip had his first clear,
unobstructed view of the terrain upon which the _Chickadee_ had
crashed. He saw that his guess had been a good one. It was an asteroid.
And judging by the swift dip of the horizon, the visible arch of the
distant landscape, a rather small one. Barely a mile in diameter. A
mere sliver in the colossal débris of the Belt.
But, then, whence came its gravity? Though he wore no bulger he felt
comfortably secure on this tiny fragment of matter. And how did a
floating rock of this size maintain an atmosphere of Earth normal?
These were perplexing questions, but there was no opportunity now to
solve them. For the girl had helped Salvation to his feet, had lent him
a shoulder in support, and now was moving away. Jordan glared at her
pettishly.
"An' just where do you think you're goin'?"
The Lorelei's gaze did not meet his, it passed clear through him as if
he did not exist. Her voice was icy cold.
"Stand aside, please! I'm taking him below."
And again Blacky Jordan backed down! As before, his manner toward
the girl was baffling. It was peremptory, yet at the same time
conciliatory; at once truculent and submissive! He gave in with a
graceless shrug.
"Oh, all right! Take 'em _all_ below. I can't waste any more time
on 'em right now. But I'll see 'em again later. Especially _you_--"
He jerked his head toward Salvation, then stared thoughtfully at
Chip--"and you, too, bucko. Yeah. Me and you is goin' to have a nice
little talk later on."
And he stalked away. Hope flared in Chip that now he might find a
chance to improve their lot. Not one of the men was guarding them.
Only this girl, and she was preoccupied with Salvation--
But--his hope was vain. No gaoler needs guard prisoners immured on a
desert isle. Their weapons had been stripped from them, their ship was
a tangled heap of wreckage. And there was no other space vessel in
sight.
Chip looked at Syd. Palmer's shake of the head confessed an equal
bewilderment. Perhaps the answer to this mad situation lay where the
girl led. The two spacemen followed.
* * * * *
Their way took them into a tunnel which sloped for a few hundred
yards into the earth, then debouched into a small cavern. Into the
far wall of this was set a grilled gateway which, when opened by the
girl, revealed--an elevator. Into this she helped Salvation. Chip and
Syd, delayed by the same doubt, held back. The girl, noting their
hesitation, addressed them directly for the first time.
"This way," she said. "Come on! Quickly!"
Chip said suspiciously, "Just a minute, sister. How do we know this
isn't a trick of some kind--"
Her eyes flamed electric-blue, and her voice cracked like a whip.
"Don't be a fool! Get in here--and hurry! When he thinks it over he may
change his mind. We're getting away with murder!"
It didn't make sense, but there was nothing to gain by lingering here.
The two entered the conveyance, the girl pressed a button and concealed
motors whined as they began to descend swiftly. But the last word was
still Chip's.
"That's just what you _have_ been getting away with," he acknowledged
grimly, "but you're nearing the end of your rope now--Lorelei!"
In the semidarkness, the girl's eyes were pools of liquid surprise.
"Getting away with--end of--I don't understand?"
"Murder!" gritted Chip. "Murder and piracy. A dozen spacecraft within
the past two months, scuttled and every man of their crews done to
death. But your siren-song won't tempt many more, Lorelei. The Space
Patrol is on to your alluring little trap. You may finish _us_ off, but
the battle fleet will find you eventually, and when it does--"
He didn't finish his prophecy, for the elevator came to rest; the door
opened. And peering in at them, hurrying forward to greet them and take
the sagging weight of the aged missionary from the girl's arm, was a
white-haired old man.
"Alison!" he cried. "You're back safely! Thank the Lord! You shouldn't
have gone above. It's dangerous, child, dangerous to mingle with such
scoundrels! Who are these--?"
And then the girl did a surprising thing. A particularly surprising
thing, inasmuch as a few minutes ago, facing Blacky Jordan like a
golden Valkyr, her boldness had won from Chip Warren a grudging
admiration. She fled to the old man's side, buried her face in his
shoulder and cried:
"Daddy--this piracy, this murder and bloodshed--these men think _I_ am
part of it!"
The old man said, "Now, now, dear!" soothingly, and glared reproof
at his visitors. "There must be some mistake--" And to the others he
suggested, "Gentlemen, will you come with me? We must get to the bottom
of this."
Their journey this time was short. Through one door to a series of
warm, well-lighted chambers. But stupefying. Because here, at what Chip
realized must be the very core of the tiny planetoid, had been carved
from solid rock quarters that matched, in efficiency and luxury, any
elaborate dwelling on the face of a civilized planet!
Comfortable living chambers were here, furnished in excellent taste.
And through the doorways leading to adjacent rooms Chip glimpsed
white-tiled compartments wherein were visible rows upon rows of beakers
and flasks, retorts, motor-units, experimental apparatus. Laboratories,
beautifully arranged and maintained! He stared at his host in
astonishment.
"How--?" he stammered. "Who--?"
"Will you be seated, gentlemen?" suggested the older man. "There!
Now, let us get to the root of this frightful affair. You accused my
daughter of implication--?"
Chip said, "We--we had ample reason to, sir. First let me introduce
myself and my friends. I am Chip Warren ... this is my friend and
shipmate, Syd Palmer ... and this is Salvation Smith...."
"Salvation Smith! Not really? I've heard of you, Padre," said the
old man. "You were engaged in bringing spiritual light to the
Martian outlanders at about the time I was supplying Mars with a
more--er--mechanical type--"
Salvation lifted his head suddenly.
"Grayland Blaine! Dr. Grayland Blaine. The greatest astrophysicist in
the System!"
"Thank you, Padre. You flatter me. And this is my daughter, Alison. But
now--to business. You were saying--?"
"Tell him, Chip," bade Salvation. "I don't know how Dr. Blaine and his
daughter got involved with Blacky Jordan. But I know one thing--that
they're as innocent of any wrongdoing as any pair alive."
Chip needed no second invitation. A great gladness was upon him that
the girl now listening to his words was not what he had feared and
believed. Eagerly he embarked on his story, told them everything from
the moment of his meeting Haldane to the moment Alison Blaine had so
fortuitously appeared in time to save Salvation.
But if his spirits were high, those of his listeners seemed to sink
lower with each word. When he had finished, a gloom hung heavily upon
Dr. Blaine's brow. He looked at his daughter and sighed.
"It is worse than we feared and suspected, my dear. They _are_ using
my inventions, but not for the benefit to mankind I intended. Instead,
they have distorted them to their own foul purposes. And we are
helpless to stop them!"
"Your--your inventions?" repeated Syd Palmer.
* * * * *
Dr. Blaine nodded somberly. "Yes. You say you saw Alison's face in your
_perilens_? And heard her voice calling for help?"
"On every cycle! That was the amazing part. Every wavelength carried
her image, and her voice came through in spite of the fact that the
audio was not turned on."
"But naturally," assented the old man. "That is the principle on
which it operates. I call it the 'omniwave.' It is a new method of
superimposing sound and light waves on receptors in such a way that
they can be transmitted through any medium over a series of overlapping
wavelengths ranging from 30 kilocycles down to 4,000 Angstrom units. It
requires only a supersensitive iconoscope of my own devising, coupled
with radiant-projectors--"
"It blanketed," Chip told him, "every instrument on our ship. We
tried to tune it out so we could see where we were going, but it was
impossible. The result was we were easy prey for Jordan's gang. They
clamped a tractor on us, crashed us on this asteroid. Only thing I
don't understand," he frowned, "is how we managed to get within their
range. I was blind-flying, true. But I forejetted the _Chickadee_ to
avoid the possibility of ramming any asteroid--"
Again Dr. Blaine shook his head.
"You would have had a hard time avoiding this one, my boy. Because, you
see, it was not sitting stationary. It was moving toward you."
"Moving toward--Oh, no, Doctor! Impossible. The asteroids follow a
clockwise course about the Sun!"
"Not this one," denied the old man. "Because this is no ordinary
asteroid, Warren. This whole rock, this mass of matter in space--is a
navigable spaceship!"
Salvation's jaw dropped open. He said in hallowed tones, "'Surely the
Lord worketh in wondrous ways His marvels to unfold!' You said--a
spaceship, Dr. Blaine?"
Blaine's shoulders drooped dispiritedly.
"Yes. This is the great invention on which I have labored in secret for
years. The invention which I had hoped would prove a glorious boon to
man. The construction of that one type of space-voyager which could be
destroyed by only a most devastating catastrophe.
"As you all know well, the major hazard of spaceflight is that the
craft employed, however strongly constructed, is ever but a mote as
compared with those hurtling celestial bodies it may chance to meet
in space. Thus the efforts of science have ever been to cut down the
collision risk. The Moran deflector ... the permalloy hood ... the
automatic warp ... these are a few of the devices used. With some
success, yes; but--there are failures, too. Each year more than a
hundred ships crash headlong, or are crashed into by rogue asteroids,
meteor swarms, bits of cosmic débris of mountainous size.
"Patrol lightships have been placed in those locations recognized to
be most dangerous to space travel. But you know that the toll taken by
relentless Nature on these gallant ships is terrible.
"I therefore dreamed that Man might build a gigantic lightship from a
solid asteroid! A rock so large that no tiny meteor could damage it,
one of sufficient mass to repel the advance of rogue asteroids. To the
accomplishment of this I bent my efforts. You are within the result."
"You mean," Chip demanded, "this entire planetoid is equipped with
rockets? It can fly itself?"
"Exactly. With an atomblast my laborers hollowed out living quarters,
control chambers. At one-eighth mile intervals jets have been installed
in the asteroid. These are fed from the central explosion chamber.
In addition, gravity and atmosphere of Earth normal constant are
maintained, when the planetoid is at rest, by means of energy-warp
accumulators."
The old man sighed. "It was a fond dream. But just as it neared
fruition, came tragedy. Blacky Jordan's pirate gang, by sheer chance,
landed on the _Aurora_--the name of my cosmic craft. Trusting fool
that I am, I made them welcome, took them into my refuge and proudly
displayed its mechanism."
Chip nodded.
"I can guess the rest. They took over. Since then they've held you
prisoners here, and used this as their base. And the image of Alison--"
"A recording," explained Blaine, "made when she attempted, vainly,
to call for help. Jordan was clever enough to realize its value. Now
whenever he sights a craft which he wishes to ravage, he tempts it
within range by playing the visual record. When the unwary ship is
drawn near enough, it finds itself blanketed, as you were. And Jordan
then smashes the _Aurora_ into the hapless vessel."