"So we simply cannot pass the Geiger Check."
"Then we shall blast off without it," she replied, woman-like.
Pell laughed harshly. "Before we reach the Heaviside the planet-mounted
blasters will fry us to a cinder!"
She was still unperturbed. "Then you must figure a way to get us off
without that happening," she replied. "After all, you're the pilot."
Pell spread his hands helplessly. "Ah, woman, thy logic is flawless,"
he muttered half-aloud.
Thoughtfully he looked through the waist port at the liner which had
almost completed loading. An idea struck him. He turned to the girl
again.
"Get Heintz and harness yourselves in those shock suits. And use these
shock chairs in the waist--they're safer. We will blast off the instant
that liner does."
* * * * *
In spite of the iron control which had kept her face impassive, Gret
Helmuth gasped.
"Do you think we can evade the planet-mounteds by that means?" she
asked, her outlander accent very apparent.
He shrugged his shoulders. "Maybe. They won't be able to shoot even if
they track us both all the way to the Heaviside because they won't know
which one is us. But when we hit Heaviside, they'll know--our ship will
be pushing 20 G's and the liner a miserable four. We should be out of
their range by then, though. However, don't count on it too much--we'll
have every DIC warship in the system on our tail and we may have to
fight yet." He turned and disappeared up the little passage-way.
In the control room Pell wriggled awkwardly into the ungainly shock
suit that would enable him to live during tremendous accelerations.
Squeezing in behind the massive board, he seated himself in the
throne-like shock chair and flipped on the inter-com.
"Pell to waist ... can you hear me?"
"Gotcha," the voice of Heintz came over. "We're ready."
"Are the blasters on this tub armed, Heintz?"
"Yeah. Armed 'em myself this afternoon."
"Cross your fingers ... Pell out."
Briefly the electros shrieked up the scale to inaudibility followed by
the muffled, reluctant keening of the converter. Pell looked through
the forward plastine observation shield. The liner was also warming up
its converters; occasionally a shower of red-hot cinders flew out of
the blast pit as the pilot gunned his converters. Any minute now ...
there it was!
Slowly the huge liner wallowed from its elevated cradle cushioned on a
pillar of blue flame. Pell opened his own feed valves a trifle and his
primitive converter responded nicely, thrusting the Mark III out of its
cradle and up after the passenger liner. Slowly Pell advanced the feed,
trying to match the liner's lift. Presently he lost sight of the liner
as its speed mounted, but he was familiar with the trajectory it used
and he followed it at four G's.
His vizer light was blinking an angry red. He flipped it on and the
corpulent, blotched face of a petty official blossomed out of the gray
nothingness of the screen.
"What is the meaning of this outrage?" he blustered at Pell. "If you do
not decelerate at once, I shall order the planet-mounteds to fire on
you!"
Pell tried to force a blank look on his face. "What do you mean, sir?
This is a DIC passenger liner headed for Mars. Didn't we pass the
Geiger Check?"
The official looked sick. Then his face became an enraged, mottled red.
"If you think you can get away with this...." he sputtered.
Pell laughed at him and flipped the vizer off. He looked at his
instruments ... another minute now. The back of his shoulders crawled
as he contemplated the unpleasant possibility of a planet-mounted
blaster burning the little ship to a cinder. Over his vizi-phone he
heard the official trying to contact the liner. Again he looked quickly
at his instruments. _Now!_
Savagely he opened the converter feed valves and the little ship leaped
forward. His fingers played with practiced ease on the jet keys,
forcing the ship into a wildly spiralling trajectory. Its path soon
resembled a jagged fork of lightning. Let 'em try to get a fix on that,
he reflected.
Far off to his left he fancied he saw the dim, almost-spent radiance
of a blaster probing for him. Laughing to himself, he straightened the
course of the ship and piled on the acceleration. Like the second hand
of a clock, the acceleration dial moved up the scale.
An eye-searing 12 G's ... then 15 ... 18.... Finally the needle came to
quivering rest at a lung-torturing, bone-crushing 20 G's. The converter
screamed just above audio-frequency. The wheezy thing seemed to be
pushing like a little trooper, Pell reflected.
His inter-com crackled for a moment, then he heard the labored voice of
Gret Helmuth.
"Nice work, Pell. Do you think there will be any more trouble getting
out of the system?"
"No, but hold tight, just in case. How's Heintz?"
"He's ... asleep."
Pell grunted to himself. He was worried about the fat man; the
acceleration wouldn't do his heart much good. He tried to settle back
in his shock suit more comfortably, then realized that the acceleration
held him like a vise. Already the oil-cushioned buoyancy pads seemed
to thrust into him like spikes. Breathing deeply, he manipulated the
massagers in his shock suit.
Just beyond Orbit Luna, Pell gradually swung the nose of the ship
toward the nadir of the solar elliptic and the ship streaked out of the
system. Turning up the detectors to full sensitivity, Pell tried to
relax and sleep--because sleep was actually the only thing to do under
tremendous accelerations.
* * * * *
Painfully Pell awoke. He let his eyes flicker over the instruments and
nodded with satisfaction as he saw that the ship's velocity had reached
400 miles per second. Stiffly he cut the converter to one G and locked
in the robot controls. Instantly the tremendous weight was removed from
his body. He shrugged out of his shock suit with every bone in his body
aching in discord.
When he had clambered through the narrow passage-way to the waist he
saw that Gret was likewise divesting herself of the cumbersome garment.
"We're pushing 400 a second now," he reported. "In another 20 hours we
can drop into hyper-space. How's it going back here?"
Gret indicated Heintz who seemed to be asleep. But the ragged gasps of
his breathing belied this; Pell knew he was unconscious.
"He's been like this since blast-off--his heart, I believe," she stated
matter-of-factly.