Rawson's voice screamed against the shriek of the wind. "Throw him a
line!"
The man's struggling head sank below the surface. A frantic hand fought
against the ooze, sank steadily deeper. The hand disappeared. Bubbles
from the man's dying breath broke the surface. The slime drifted
together again and was smooth and liquid again with the peace of death.
Rawson shuddered.
He stared at Durk who was looking dumbfounded into the pool. One of the
crew had been lost under Durk's command. Would there be others?
When the chill winds of night came, Rawson was sitting inside a cave
that looked down on the sink hole.
Rawson was carefully, meticulously, studying the crew and the lay of
the land, like a general studies the ground before a battle.
He looked down into the depression which was like a huge inside-out
face. The ridge on which the space ship rested looked like a monstrous
nose between the two giant eyes--the farther eye the quicksand pool and
the nearer a shallow swamp over which hung the swamp gas.
The crew was camped by a small fire near the swamp. Near them lay young
Seymour, with his hands and feet bound.
Even in the cave the wind moaned incessantly and drove the bitter sand
into Rawson's mouth. It blasted across the glassy ridge and whipped the
fires beside the space ship.
If I can rescue Seymour, Rawson thought, we'll control the ship, if we
manage to hold the control room. But he realized the difficulty.
Between the cave and the whipping fires of the crew, Rawson could see
the mist that hung low over the swamp, just out of the reach of the
wind. Sometimes a little of the mist was carried away and brought to
his nose--swamp gas.
On silent feet, Rawson crept toward the swamp. The guard did not look
up.
Rawson lay beside the soft, decayed soil and vegetation. Under cover of
his body he snapped his automatic lighter. He hurled the blazing light
into the swamp.
He leaped back.
Immediately a flame flashed across the swamp and leaped toward the sky
and the roar of the explosion brought the entire crew to their feet
with their flame ray weapons in their hands.
They stampeded toward the safety of the space ship.
Under cover of the explosion, Rawson rushed toward Seymour, picked him
up and fled with him into the darkness of the sandy desert, beyond the
hills.
"Gee, sir!" the boy said after he recovered from his astonishment, and
they lay in hiding on top of a tall hill and looked down on the excited
bustle of the camp. "Did you do that?"
Rawson smiled grimly. "Nothing to it. Swamps create marsh gas, or
methane gas, which is highly inflammable. A little fire will make a
stagnant pocket of the gas go up with a bang."
Young Seymour looked at the lights of the camp with troubled eyes. "I'm
sorry you rescued me, sir."
"What's this, Mr. Seymour?"
The young fellow avoided his captain's eyes. "I been thinking, sir,
that--well, maybe, Underofficer Durk is right."
"So Durk's been talking to you, convincing you that I haven't enough
experience to command a space ship!"
"I feel miserable about the whole thing, sir. It's--oh, gee, captain.
Durk's got the ship and the men and he's had twenty-five years in the
spaceways. He ought to know what's doing."
Rawson's voice was suddenly raw as Jovian liquor. "All right, Mr.
Seymour. I understand. Get going!"
* * * * *
The boy slunk away like a whipped dog. Once he hesitated and looked
back, and then with lowered shoulders, he ploughed his way through the
sand toward the space ship.
Rawson watched him go. He felt as though he had been deserted by his
last friend.
This leaves me all alone, Rawson thought. Me against the crew. I've got
to get command of the ship. The serum's got to go through. Saturn's
depending on me.
I still say Mom's right. You've got to know how to do things and have
the guts to carry them through. I'm not quitting.
And Jennifer Kane would be disappointed in me if I quit on my Star
Point oath. She was so proud when I graduated. And when I received my
promotions. Moved from underofficer to commander in three years. No
wonder Durk is so bitter.
But it takes scientific knowledge these days--that's it. Science will
win a way out for me--
Rawson's mind began to work like an intricate machine. Thousands of
stimuli of knowledge had been injected into his brain during his
training; now his mind began to select and analyze these stimuli for
the purpose of finding a solution to his predicament.
Rawson's self-respect was the rock of his courage.
I'll have to do this alone, he thought. As he saw that the crew members
about the space ship had quieted down and that the camp was still for
the night, he rose and fought his way against the wind toward the space
ship, across the slippery neck of rock.
The space ship was dark and silent. A crew man nodded sleepily beside
the fire to the left. Yet he had to be careful. Other members of the
crew might leap out at him at any moment.
He slipped inside the space ship. He found the space suit. He donned
it quickly, fastened the space helmet around his head. The space suit
would help him in any emergency.
He was moving from the lockers to the control room past the port when a
guard saw him. The man grabbed for him. "Gotcha!"
But the muscles strung on his bony frame exploded in power and the crew
man fell aside. Rawson leaped through the lock and landed on the white
ridge beside the quicksand pool.
The guard's yells brought the rest of the crew, and they advanced on
him from all sides.
He backed slowly from the menacing circle, looking for an opening
through which to dart. But they came from both sides of the ship. In
his rear was the slimy quicksand. He backed toward it.
One of the crew's stumbling feet loosened a boulder and it came
hurtling toward Rawson. He leaped aside but his crane-like feet landed
on gravel and he started to slide off balance backwards.
The crew realized before Rawson did what was happening. "He's sliding
into the quicksand! Stop him!"
Rawson felt the pressure of the wet sand on the space suit. He
struggled for a hold on the rocks. They came away in his hands. He
slid deeper.
He felt the suction at his feet, climbing up to his waist, over his
shoulders.
The white quicksand went over the space suit visor and cut out the
light of the moon. Still he kept sinking, slowly, steadily, in the
depths.
* * * * *
With an effort he forced his hand to his belt and adjusted the levers
to permit oxygen for his breathing to swell the space suit.
He could breath, but he could not control his movements. The pressure
of the wet sand weighted heavily on him and smothered him in a blanket
of darkness.
He moved down slowly as on greased feathers into a bottomless pit. His
legs dangled limply, drifting now this way, now that. He put his arms
out to steady himself, but the muck gave way before him.
He heard only the slight bubbling sound of the oxygen escaping through
the vent in his space suit.
He felt a sucking pull on his body and on his limbs as he went
down--down--
At last he hung suspended. His weight balanced the density of the
pressure of the sand.
His mind worked furiously--in a race with death.
He remembered the slight alkaline taste that had penetrated to his
mouth and nose back on the surface. Alkaline?
He had read about that--in the "_Cross Currents of Space_"--Orus was
the borax planet.
And suddenly his training in the chemistry of borax rushed through his
frantic mind.
He smiled grimly to himself as he reached for the heat ray gun at his
waist. No, it hadn't been lost. He detached it and forced it through
the quicksand in front of him.
Carefully he aimed the heat ray gun upward, pressed the trigger.
Light so bright and intense and so hot that Rawson felt the heat and
light in the clutching quicksand bored a hole through the muck.
It was a thin rod of penetration, about two inches wide and extended
straight upwards to where Rawson thought the edge of the pit would be.
Long and patiently he trained the heat ray gun.
And as he waited a chemical change took place before his eyes. In the
light of the heat ray gun, he saw a thin rod of white porous mass
forming. It extended through the quicksand upward along the line of the
heat ray.
And as he watched, the white mass melted into a clear liquid. He kept
the heat ray gun concentrated until its power died and the weapon
became a useless piece of metal.
Rawson had won. He had created liquid glass.
Patiently he waited for the liquid to harden. Would it make it possible
for him to escape this quicksand death?
For hours he hung suspended in the ooze. When he judged that there had
been time enough for the liquid to harden into glass, he extended his
hand toward it.
His groping fingers found a strong, smooth rod fused to the rock above.
Hand over hand he made his way up, forcing himself through the heavy
ooze. When he reached the top, he crawled out, half dead and staggered
to firm ground.
He stumbled. But he saw at a glance that he had drifted far from the
place where he had fallen in. The space ship was several hundred yards
away, completely hidden by a hill.
A few feet more, he staggered and stumbled into a dank pool. He took
off the space helmet and drank deeply and crammed some concentrated
food pills into his mouth.
His muscles were sore and weary. He knew he had to rest. He found the
coolness of a cave. Hardly had he dropped to the sandy floor when he
fell into an exhausted sleep.
* * * * *
For hours he lay and his body regenerated its youthful vitality.
He stirred restlessly in his sleep when he felt the pressure of another
hand on his. He sat up abruptly, on guard.
A freckled boy's face was looking down on him with wonder in the blue
eyes. "Captain Rawson, sir," Seymour said. "I was explorin' and found
you here. Gee, sir, how did you escape out of the quicksand?"
Rawson regarded the young man with wonder. "Sit down, Mr. Seymour."
Rawson explained about the borax and his escape. "But what about you
and Durk?"
The boy made circles in the sand with his foot. His eyes avoided the
captain's. "I couldn't stand it, sir. My conscience. It wasn't right.
You're the captain, no matter what Durk says."
"Thanks. Okay, let's get going."
Purposely they strode across the sand toward the space ship. But as
they neared the top of the hill beyond which lay the space ship, they
heard a series of loud explosions. Rawson recognized those sounds.
With a rush he was on top of the hill and staring at the space ship.
The explosions came from there. The ports were closed and there was no
one on the bridge.
The ship was taking off!
Rawson's skeleton-like body shuddered in dismay. He yelled but he knew
it was futile. No one could hear him above the roar of the rockets.
And if they did? Durk might find it convenient to report that the
captain had been lost on the expedition.
For once in his life, Rawson admitted fear to himself--to be deserted
on this waste planet!
The space ship quivered under the impact of the rockets. And Rawson
noticed a queer thing about that vibration--it was normal in itself,
but it was never intended to occur on a glassy cliff that sloped into a
quicksand.
The vibration loosed the pull of gravity of the ship--its steadiness on
the ridge--it slipped sideways.
It slipped sideways into the quicksand.
The space ship moved sideways over the edge of the cliff and started to
sink beneath the lake of quicksand.
As the bottom half of the hull disappeared below the surface of the
ooze, the top ports opened and the crew began leaping from the hull
onto the cliff.
Rawson counted them. They were all there. All sixty--there should be
sixty-one. But one had been lost in the quicksand at the first landing.
The crew stood huddled in a bunch and watched the top of the hull
disappear below the quicksand.
Rawson's crane-like legs carried him toward the crew. Their faces
showed repentance.
It was a miserable bunch of men that faced him, and the most miserable
of all was Underofficer Durk.
Rawson for a moment said nothing. He watched the last air bubbles that
seeped up from the space ship at the bottom of the quicksand. The
bubbles broke one by one. The sand smoothed out again, leaving a slimy
smoothness that revealed nothing--that failed to betray the loss of all
hope.
Rawson's voice whipped like a lash. "Well, Mr. Durk! Have you thought
of a solution of the predicament of the crew and yourself?"
Durk's eyes did not meet Rawson's. Durk's voice mumbled. "Yore the
captain, sir."
Rawson shuddered within himself. He was the captain--captain of a space
ship that no longer existed. They were stranded on a desolate planet
with no food and no weapons.
Weapons? He still had his heat ray gun, but it was burned out--no good.