Rhythm Rides the Rocket
By Bob Olsen
Science Fiction Classics No. 6
Published By
COLUMBIA PUBLICATIONS, Inc.
60 HUDSON STREET
New York, N.Y.
Printed in the U.S.A.
Having piloted the Spaceship Goddard through that perilous zone of
pelting planetoids and ghostly derelicts which make the region between
Mars and Jupiter a nerve-wracking nightmare for space-pilots, Captain
Timothy Verger felt an urgent need for rest and relaxation. Turning the
controls over to Alphonse LeDoux, the regular Interplanetary Company's
pilot, he opened the door which led to the main cabin.
On the threshold he paused and gingerly inhaled a disgusted sniff.
The place reeked--not that Captain Verger was particularly squeamish
about odors. A veteran space-flyer does not expect the interior of
a rocket-ship to smell like a spruce forest. The sensations which
offended Verger's nostrils were not exactly unpleasant--but they
certainly did not belong in an interplanetary freighter. They were
feminine smells--the mingled fragrance of talcum powder, cold cream and
perfume. And if the odors were incongruous, the sights and the sounds
which accompanied them were even more so.
The cabin was crowded with women. There must have been at least twenty
of them, ranging in ages from eighteen to twenty-five. All of them were
playing lustily on horns, clarinettes and other musical instruments.
"Of all the unheard-of things!" Verger thought as he ducked beneath the
flare of an enormous tuba and sidestepped to avoid the sudden thrust of
a trombone slide. "A band rehearsal in the space-lanes, a million miles
from nowhere--and a female band at that!"
Squeezing between the compactly grouped musicians, Verger could not
help brushing against the elbow of the bass-drummer. She was somewhat
older than the others--perhaps thirty, he guessed. Although she was
not exactly what a television scout would call glamorous, she was the
kind of girl who would interest almost any man except a middle-aged,
chronic woman-hater like Verger. Framed in a cloud of wavy red hair,
her full red lips, pert nose and humorous eyes told an eloquent story
of wholesome good nature.
As Verger slid past her, mumbling an inaudible apology, she flashed a
white-toothed smile at him, shocking him with a deliberate brazen wink.
Though he tried to look stern and indifferent, he had to smile back at
her in spite of himself.
Opening the door of the men's stateroom, Verger gave a cursory greeting
to Professor Anderson, who was seated before a small bench which he
had rigged up in one corner of the cramped quarters. He was working
on a peculiar contraption which looked like a small horn attached to
a strange jumble of coils and tubes. Knowing that Anderson was an
inventor as well as a composer and music-teacher, Verger assumed that
the device was some new kind of band instrument.
Weary and nervous, the pilot crawled into his hammock and attempted to
relax. It was a difficult task. Hard as he tried, he could not shake
off the feeling of tense anxiety which disturbed and tormented him.
"There's nothing to worry about," he tried to assure himself. "LeDoux
is an experienced pilot with almost as many space hours to his credit
as I have."
Nevertheless Captain Verger couldn't squeeze from his mind the thought
that the safety of this ship with its three men and its twenty women
depended on him and on him alone.
In the hope of clearing up certain matters which puzzled him, Verger
began talking to Anderson.
"Would you mind giving me the low-down on this crazy voyage?" he asked.
Anderson countered with, "Do you mean to say you don't know why you are
here?"
"Frankly, I don't," the Captain admitted. "My orders simply directed
me to report to the Earth Republic spaceport on Mars and to pilot the
space-freighter Goddard with a cargo of supplies for the thermolium
mines on Ganymede. It was somewhat surprising for me to find out most
of the so-called 'supplies' were female bipeds and peck-horns stained
with lipstick."
* * * * *
Anderson laughed. "It does seem rather incongruous, doesn't it?"
"Yeah," Verger agreed. "Whatever that word means, it's all right. What
I want to know is--why?"
"Being an inveterate bachelor, I suppose you wouldn't understand,"
Anderson smiled. "However, since you have spent many years on far-flung
planets and satellites, perhaps you can realize that the lives of
the eighty or ninety men who were exiled to the thermolium mines on
Ganymede are not very pleasant."
Verger sniffed. "They must be cream-puffs if they kick about Ganymede.
It has the nicest climate in the solar system--when you get used to it."
"It isn't the climate the men object to," Anderson amplified. "Their
discontentment is due to being deprived of things they formerly
enjoyed. Most of them were married just before they embarked for
Ganymede, you know."
"First I heard of that," was Verger's abbreviated comment.
Anderson continued: "The government promised to transport the exiles'
wives to Ganymede as soon as it could feasibly be accomplished. This is
the first ship-load."
"Do you mean to tell me that all those female horn-tooters are married
to Ganymedian exiles?" Verger exclaimed.
Anderson nodded.
"But why the trombones and saxophones?"
"That also is part of the campaign for more contented miners," the
inventor explained. "A ballot discloses that, next to their wives, the
thing most needed by the exiles is music."
"I see," Verger grinned. "A variation of the old wheeze about wine,
women and song."
"Something like that. And, since liquor is taboo, only the women and
the music remained. On this first trip there was room enough for
only one-fourth of the wives who wanted to join their husbands. They
were about to draw lots when some one thought of the bright idea of
selecting first the women who could play band instruments, thereby
providing musical consolation for the benefit of the less fortunate men
whose wives were delayed in transit."
"I suppose you were the one who picked the horn-blowers," Verger
assumed.
"Yes, and since an immediate departure was imperative, I was ordered
to accompany them and to train them during the long, tedious voyage.
I feel quite proud of their progress. By the way, what do you think of
our band of exiles' wives?"
Verger parried the question with another one: "Did you say all those
girls are married--even the red-headed bass-drummer?"
"Oh, you mean Helen Green?" Anderson smiled. "Yes, she's married--like
all the rest of the girls."
"The tramp--the chiseling tramp," Verger murmured to himself as he
turned his face to the wall and fell asleep.
CHAPTER II
Forced Landing!
Following hours of fitful slumber during which he dreamed of all the
perils and catastrophes that could possibly bedevil a space-ship,
Verger awoke with a start which would have bounced him out of his
hammock had he not taken the precaution of zipping himself in. More
than ever before, a premonition of impending disaster crowded into his
worried mind.
Squeezing a handful of water from a drinking tube, he quickly washed
his hands and face, hurried to the control room and strapped himself
into the starboard control seat.
"Shall I relieve you, Al?" he panted.
LeDoux glanced at the chronometer and said, "No, thanks, Tim. I still
have forty-seven minutes left of my shift." Then, seeming to sense
a note of tension in his friend's voice, he exclaimed, "What's the
matter, old man?"
"Oh, nothing," Verger assured him. "You know, of course, that I never
interfere with the work of another flyer. No dual-seat piloting for me."
"For Pete's sake, spill it!" Alphonse cried. "What's wrong with the way
I'm running this ash-can?"
"If you don't mind my saying so, I think you're shooting too darn close
to Callisto."
"Maybe so," LeDoux conceded. "We're several hours behind our schedule.
I figured I might make it up by using the full force of Jupiter's
gravitational pull. That meant shaving a slice out of Callisto's
stratosphere, but we have plenty of momentum to carry us past the
satellite without any risk."
"Let's hope so," was Verger's pessimistic response. "I'd hate to make a
forced landing on Callisto."
"Why?" LeDoux wanted to know. "Isn't Callisto inhabited?"
"Sure, it's inhabited. That's the trouble. The natives of Callisto are
unquestionably the most fearful and the most ruthless fiends in the
known universe."
"What's so fearful about them?" his companion asked.
"Well, for one thing, they're too blamed curious."
"Curious?" LeDoux questioned. "Is that such a terrible crime?"
"It is when it is carried to extremes, like they do. Maybe you haven't
heard, but the Callisto boys have an unpleasant habit of grabbing every
human being they can get hold of, merely for the playful purpose of
cutting them open to find out what makes them tick. Vivisection, I
guess you'd call it."
"Nice people!" was LeDoux's comment.
"Yeah, and the worst of it is that there's nothing we humans can do
about it. No weapon known to man can harm them. They shed lethal rays
like a duck sheds water. Bullets from old-fashioned machine guns go
right through them without apparent damage. I ought to know because--"
Leaving his sentence suspended in space, Verger exclaimed, "Leaping
Luna! What's that?"
Staring through the thick, super-transparent window in the direction
which the captain indicated, LeDoux saw a weird, lavender-hued beam
shoot out from the surface of Callisto. For two or three tense seconds
it whipped around in a spiral path which centered the beam right on the
nose of the Goddard, bathing the craft with its throbbing, blinding
glare.
There was a jolt which nearly snapped the strong bands of webbing
which strapped the two men into their control seats. Followed then
that horrible, oppressive feeling of excessive weight, which told the
experienced space-pilots that their velocity was being decelerated
rapidly--far more rapidly than any sensible pilot would dare to retard
his flight by means of braking rockets.
Like a swimmer trying to fight his way out of the clutches of a
dangerous riptide, LeDoux strove to steer the Goddard diagonally across
the powerful current of quivering, menacing energy, but his attempts
to maneuver the rocket-ship out of the beam's perilous influence were
fruitless.
With inexorable power, the beam seemed to be sucking the space-ship
toward the surface of the satellite, while at the same time it was
retarding the Goddard's terrific speed.
* * * * *
Closer and closer loomed the enormous globe of Callisto, until it
blotted out everything else. Finally, with an almost imperceptible jar,
the rocket-ship pancaked into a nest of grotesque vegetation which
clothed the perilous satellite.
Verger, who had closed his eyes to guard himself against blindness,
opened them just in time to see a preposterous object thrust itself
out of an enormous hole only a few feet away, and wrap itself about
the space-ship. It was not a snake, nor was it exactly similar to the
tentacle of a large cephalopodous animal. There was something about
its creepy, slithering movements which suggested the pseudopodia of an
amoebean organism, if one could stretch one's imagination sufficiently
to conceive of an amoeba of such cosmic size.
Tearing his fascinated gaze away from this horrible object, which
seemed to be holding the space-ship imprisoned in its ominous embrace,
Verger unbuckled the straps of his control seat and hurried back to the
women's quarters. Fortunately, all the girls had been zipped snugly in
their spring-braced hammocks at the moment when the beam had struck
the space-ship. Although they were all somewhat shaken and badly
frightened, none of them was seriously injured.