"There's also a pressure porte in the dome, just over the control
turret. If we can get some Erentz pressure suits down in the keel--"
Whether he understood me or not, I didn't stop to find out. I had still
only a very vague idea myself, just the glimmer of a desperate plan
which might work out.
"You better lead," I suggested. "I'll direct you. Len Smith showed me
down there. If we run into anybody you can fool them long enough for me
to jump them."
Unless it might be the Martian, with his belt bristling with electronic
guns. Vehemently I prayed we could keep clear of him. Silently,
furtively, we padded into the lower corridor. No sound. With young
Blake close ahead of me, we went down onto the mid-level catwalk. Still
there was nothing save eerie lights and deserted rooms. Nothing? A
ghastly reek came through a doorway at me. I glanced in.
"The dead," Blake whispered with a shudder. "Said they were going to
cast them out a porte, but they didn't yet."
* * * * *
The dead. That catwalk room was a reeking, ghastly charnel house. A
good thirty bodies--men, women and children of three worlds, piled in a
horrible litter. I gasped. All the passengers were here. There had been
no disembarking of passengers, as Torio had ironically described to
Nina.
We went on. Descended another level. We were in the keel now. Suddenly
footsteps sounded on the catwalk above us. One of the crew passed along
it. Fortunately he did not look down through the grid.
"Got by that by a margin," I whispered. "Straight ahead, Jim. Then half
a flight down."
From one of the storehouse rooms just ahead of us a man suddenly
emerged. I shrank against the dark corridor wall.
"Oh, you, Durk," the man said softly. "Lookit what I found in
here--cask of alcoholite. Good drinkin', Durk."
Jim Blake is only a boy, but he didn't shrink from his job. I was
tensed to leap past him upon the man in the doorway. The fellow
abruptly saw me. He squealed, "Look, behind you--"
That's all he ever did say. Blake went at him like a little springing
leopard. The knife flashed; the man went down with only a choked gurgle
of blood in his throat.
"Got him," Blake murmured.
"Good enough. Come on."
The emergency pressure porte was to one side of the corridor, an oblong
compartment, with one tiny segment of the tubelight up in its ceiling
sending down a faint pallid sheen. The inner door here was open so that
normal air pressure was in the porte.
"Luck better be with us now," I murmured. "Let's see what they've left
in the emergency equipment room."
It was here on the other side the corridor. My heart pounded with
triumph. There were plenty of Erentz suits and helmets here. Both young
Blake and I had used the familiar Carpley suit and helmet for outer
stratosphere flying. These were not so very different, save that the
electronic current in the double shell of the fabric circulated faster,
for the more speedy absorption of the interior pressure within the
suit, when worn in the vacuum of Space.
We had them on in a moment, with the huge goggling helmets buckled at
the throat. Through my glassite bull's-eye I could see young Blake's
weirdly disguised face. He was trying to smile; but he was probably
pretty fairly frightened. For which I don't blame him; I was myself.
The baggy, still deflated suits hung on us in great grotesque folds. I
touched my metal-tipped glove to the metal plate on his shoulder for
audiphone contact.
"Think you can work it all right?" I murmured.
"Yes. Yes, sure."
"Keep with me when we get outside," I cautioned.
"Yes. I'll--I'll try."
I was in an agony of apprehension that someone would come and catch us
here before we could get the porte closed. But no one did. Our pressure
suits caused no trouble. The Erentz mechanism controls, renewal of the
interior air, and the pressure-absorbing current, are simple enough
to work. Within a minute our suits were bloated, huge. And then as we
stepped into the pressure room, I saw what clarified and altered all
my vague plans. A complete get-away! It was possible now, for here on
a rack of the pressure room floor lay a little volplane--emergency
Space-sled, its canoe-like hull some twenty feet long, its wings for
air gliding folded against its sides. It was provisioned with emergency
food and water. I bent over it with hurried, triumphant examination.
The stern had a tiny outboard rocket engine; and in the bow were small
manually controlled gravity plates. It was ready; the descent to Earth
in it could be made, with fair safety, and perhaps in a week.
* * * * *
We slid the inner pressure door closed. An exit out of a pressure room
can be swiftly made. We opened the small vents of the outer panels. The
air of the room started hissing out into the vacuum outside.
"Easy," I murmured. "Not too fast. We don't want to get blown out."
Within a minute we could open the outer door; the last escaping air
went with a thin hissing rush. At the threshold before us yawned the
vast abyss of Space. I stood for a second gazing down at the great
mottled reddish ball of Earth. Forty thousand miles down to it. There
was a little launching rack out here to hold the volplane. We slid it
out; locked it into position. I had told Blake now what I was going to
try and do. He demurred at waiting here in the volplane, but I forced
him.
"You can see up from here," I murmured. "Somebody has to launch it.
When I give you the signal, shove it off. You can pick us up."
"If we have luck," I murmured it to myself.
He nodded comprehension.
Then, cautiously, I stepped from the threshold, out into Space. An
empty abyss of forty thousand miles, down to the Earth's surface
beneath me. Though I knew very well what would happen to me, of course,
I must say that I had to steel myself grimly, to step off from the
brink of that threshold. It made my senses momentarily reel. But the
weird sensation was gone in a moment.
It was like a diver taking a step under water. I did not fall. I had
let myself off the brink gingerly; and I felt my body sluggishly moving
out a foot or two, with all the universe slowly, dizzily turning over.
I am no skilled mathematician. Given the gross tonnage of the little
_X-87_, doubtless astronomers could figure the relation of its gravity
pull upon me, so close, compared to the giant bulk of the Earth, so far
away. Perhaps even at forty thousand miles, and against the pull of the
Moon, some two hundred thousand miles above me, and the _X-87_ only a
foot or two--the Earth would slowly have drawn me down. But I knew that
there was an aura of the vessel's artificial interior gravity out here.
Len Smith had told me of many tests which had been made between the
Earth and the Moon.
At all events, I drifted downward a few feet, like a waterlogged chunk
of wood slowly turning over. Then slowly I came back; landed in a
clumsy, struggling heap against the ship's glistening alumite side. To
each of us, himself is the center of the Universe. Cautiously I stood
up. At once the vessel seemed my little world, lying flat on its side
under me, with the reddish giant Earth to my right, the round white
Moon to the left; and over my head, the great glittering vault of the
Heavens, star-strewn upon a background of black velvet.
I seemed to weigh perhaps a pound or two. Like a fly, gingerly I
crawled along the vessel's bulging side. Then I came to the dome. The
roof deck within was grotesquely tilted on end. The vision of it was
blurred by the glassite pressure plates, but it seemed unoccupied,
slowly righting itself as I crawled up the bulge, cautiously clinging
to avoid having my own efforts cast me off.
Then at last I came to the top, with the little _X-87_ right side
up under my feet and the Moon above me. I knew that from the roof
deck I could be seen up here as a distorted, shadowy blob. My heart
was pounding with the fear that an alarm would come, but none did.
I reached, at last, the little pressure porte in the dome over the
control turret and chart room. I had two deflated Erentz suits and
helmets lashed to me. The emergency panel was here, like a trap door
under me. Through its transparent bull's-eye I could see into the
small, dim compartment under me. The lower panel was open, but there
was a lever out here by which I could slide it closed. Would it make
any sound and alarm Torio in the chart room under it? I held my breath
as it slid. There was no commotion.
* * * * *
It took only a minute to let the air out of the little scaled pressure
room. Then cautiously I dropped down into it, with the interior
gravity gripping me so that suddenly I was my normal weight once more.
Breathless, tense, I lay flat, with my suit deflating as I stared down
into the chart room. Nina and Torio were there. I could see them, but
not hear them. She was in a chair, with him standing before her.
And then I caught my breath. What was this? An angle of the control
turret also was within my line of vision. A crimsoned figure lay there;
the body of Captain Mackensie. He had finished his work; charted the
course--and this was his reward.
A little of the outside of the turret also was visible. It did not seem
that the guard was out there now. Had he been sent away, so that Torio
now might be alone with Nina? Fervently I hoped so.
There was no alarm as I cautiously slid the trap in the chart room
ceiling.
"Oh--Oh, please--let me alone!"
"But, my dear little lady, do you want me to kill Penelle? Surely
you--" The snaky Torio got no further than that. I was some fifteen
feet directly above him. Perhaps he was aware of my hurtling body but
he had no chance to avoid it as I crashed down upon him. The work-knife
in my gloved, metal-fingered hand stabbed. He went limp under me, with
blood gushing from his chest where the knife had gone to its hilt.
My helmet was up in the pressure room. "Nina, climb up!" I slid the
little wall ladder into position for her. "Quick, now! Get into the
pressure suit up there. Inflate it, and wait for me."
White and grim, she obeyed wordlessly. I started her up the ladder,
swung for the hidden wall safe. Would the leaden cylinder of the
catalyst still be here? It was. I strapped it quickly to my belt.
Then I dashed for the instrument cubby. A little explosive
time-bomb.... I found one; and hurried with it into the control
turret, where I placed it against the mechanisms of the Erentz
current--that huge electronic stream which circulated throughout all
the double-shelled plates of the vessel to absorb the inner pressure.
Ten minutes? Would that give us time enough?
Nina was in the pressure suit when in a minute more I reached the upper
room.
"Good enough, Nina. Now, the helmet! Your brother Jim is outside--safe."