"Glory be!" exclaimed Syd. "There's enough to dip a whole battle unit
in that one ball! What are we going to Titania for? Why not fly this to
Earth immediately and let the Council know--"
"Because Amborg knows," replied Chip grimly, "that this came from
Titania. He was nearby when Jenkins said so in his dying breath. That
was probably the secret Amborg's thugs had been trying to probe from
the miner all night. I have a hunch that Amborg is out there somewhere
right now!"
He nodded toward the quartzite view-pane. Outside lay space--the long,
dreary reaches of space between Mars and Uranus. But it didn't look
like space. Not like space as navigators a short ten years ago had
known it, an eternal pall of blackness spangled with the livid dots of
a myriad stars.
This was a blotched, striped, crazy-quilt of color. Crimson, ochre,
emerald--all the hues of the rainbow merged into a faery, magic
loveliness. This was space as seen when Man traveled at the terrific
speed attainable only through the use of the recently developed
V-I unit, velocity intensifier, invented by that mad genius of the
spaceways, Lancelot Biggs of the lugger, _Saturn_.
Five years ago, in the year 2210, the fastest craft in the ether
had had a top speed of approximately 200,000 miles per hour. Now
almost every ship was equipped with the V-I adapter that gave it a
flight-potential limited only by the critical velocity of light. Where
once it would have required almost ten months to reach Titania, second
satellite of far Uranus, the trio could now expect to gain their
destination, traveling at a speed of more than 650,000,000 mph., in
something less than half that many _days_!
"I have a hunch," repeated Chip, "that Amborg and his crew are
somewhere out there right now, speeding, as we are, to Titania. Of
course we can't tell. We're not equipped with a magno-tector, and we
couldn't see them unless by sheer chance they should approach within
our visibility parellax.
"But when we get to Titania and slow down, we must go on the alert.
Salvation has told me about Amborg. He's a hard, brilliant man with a
dangerously criminal mind. Let him find Jenkins' ore-deposit and the
Federation of Planets would pay through the nose for his discovery.
Jenkins said there was a whole mine of ekalastron. With that at his
disposal, Amborg could make himself a robber baron. An Emperor of the
outlaw world."
"Which is why," Salvation offered gravely, "we must get there before he
does. Lay claim to the deposit, somehow secure its safety against the
arrival of I.P.S. troops. Can we but find the mine, soldiers will come
in jigtime from New Oslo on Uranus. But--"
Syd nodded.
"I see. But we couldn't walk into the garrison and hand them a line
about a "mine" of ekalastron. They'd shove us into the nearest
looney-bin. And I wouldn't blame them a bit. If I didn't know Chip
Warren like I know my own lovely pan--but suppose we meet Amborg?"
"'The Lord,'" said Salvation, "'is my strength and my salvation. In His
hands do I place my guidance.'" His lean hands flexed powerfully. "We
destroy them," he said gently, "like the rats they are...."
Thus four days sped by in plan and conjecture. And on the fifth day Syd
Palmer cut the velocity-intensifiers to normal, and a scant thousand
miles beneath them, so accurate had been Chip's astrogation, gleamed
the silvery mote which was Titania, second child of the mother planet,
Uranus.
"Well done, my son!" approved Salvation. "The best landcast I've ever
seen!"
Palmer was less exuberant. He stared at Titania, scratched his yellow
crest morbidly.
"A damn snowball!" he mourned. "A damned snowball, eight hundred miles
in diameter! Sweet crimes of Beelzebub, Chip, how do you ever expect
to find a pinpoint of a mine on that huge hunk of ice? It will take us
ages!"
"We'll cruise at low elevation," said Chip, "until we see something.
There must be a dark spot showing against that sheen of white
somewhere. Jenkins spoke of caverns and natives and flame. We have
plenty of supplies--_look out!_"
He leaped even as he shouted. Leaped to the panels and jammed the full
strength of his six foot plus frame to a deflecting lever. The control
room of the _Chickadee_ whirled giddily as the little ship spun into
a crazy spiral; Palmer yelped, skidding helplessly across the floor.
Salvation let loose a roar and clung ardently to a stanchion, his
silvery locks whipping straight out from his head with the force of the
drive.
Chip threw himself into the bucket-shaped pilot's-chair, gained
possession of the controls. An instant later, the _Chickadee_ was
tossing through the maddest gyrations Chip could devise. Fore, loft
and jet, with hypos throbbing, the little craft was blasting, shaking,
quivering like a leaf in a cyclone.
And above the tumult of racing hypos came the sound of Syd's voice:
"What is it, Chip? Amborg?"
Chip nodded tightly, his hands gripping the control levers, his eyes
glued to the perilens through which he saw the enemy craft. A larger
ship, with a red fang darting from its prow, slashing viciously at
the bobbing _Chickadee_. "It's Blaze Amborg, all right! And he means
business! He's got an Ingermann ray-rotor on that crate of his; he's
trying to burn us clean out of the ether!"
* * * * *
Chip Warren and Syd Palmer were the co-owners of the _Chickadee_; it
was Chip whose alertness had saved them in that first, terrifying
moment, Chip it was who still held the controls. But it was Salvation
Smith who usurped the mastership during the crisis.
"Hell's flaming damnation!" he cried, and there rang in his voice a
rage above weak need of profanity. "Lend now Thy servant strength, O
Lord, to smite these sons of Hurkan!" He whirled on Palmer, snarling.
"Break out bulgers for us in case they should pierce the hull! Chip,
son, do the controls answer well? Good! Keep dodging. Swing aft; the
beam can't nip you there! You've armament aboard this heap?"
Syd, tugging three spacesuits from the store-closet, puffed over his
shoulder, "Only a low-cycle heat-gun. There! Under that tarp. Press the
green stud to clear the nose from the hull-plates. It's retractable--"
"You're telling me," bellowed Salvation, "how to rig a cannon? I was
teethed on a lanyard, praise be to Jehovah!" He had the tarpaulin off
in a jiffy, the fore-irons open, and shot an experimental burst from
the small weapon. He smiled. "Good! But you've got to get closer to
him, Chip; this thing is only effective at short range."
Chip said dubiously, "I don't know, Padre. Perhaps we should cut and
run for it. If that beam hits us--"
"Are we mice," bellowed Salvation, "or men? You've got to get closer!
The Lord is our right hand. 'Surely the evil shall fail, yea, the way
of the transgressor shall perish!'" He loosed another blast from the
small gun, breathed a sigh of satisfaction. "Aaah! that's better!
Closer!"
"You're the skipper!" decided Chip suddenly. A jab of the finger, the
stern-jets crackled and the _Chickadee_ cut suddenly to starboard,
swinging straight toward the craft of Blaze Amborg.
So unexpected was the move that it caught the enemy gunner napping.
For an instant he had a clear target before him. But he had not been
expecting such luck, and before he could center his sights on the
_Chickadee_, the smaller vessel was streaking down upon and over his
own.
And Salvation Smith's voice shouted triumph through the room.
"'Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord!'" he intoned, "'I shall repay!'"
His hand jerked the release-stud.
And as though the metal skin of the enemy boat were tinfoil held above
a flame, there appeared suddenly upon its hull a leprous spot of black,
from the curling edges of which silvery alloy sloughed off in rolling,
sluggish waves. From within the ship small motes poured forth, sucked
out by the frigid vacuum of space to explode and die frightfully; sore,
raw, pressured clots of matter that had been men. The other ship reeled
for a moment like a stricken hart, then crumpled upon itself, a wildly
spinning boomerang of death.
"You got 'em!" squealed Syd Palmer from his vantage spot at the
perilens. "Got 'em all, Padre! No--there goes a life-skiff from the
wreck!" His voice rose in sharp fear. "_Omigod!_ Swing out, Chip!
Swing--"
But Chip had seen the new danger as quickly as his comrade. Here was
peril beyond Amborg's fondest devising. As the stricken ship, folding
upon itself, spun aimlessly in space, its forejet wheeled like a
flaming spiral--and from the prow still flamed the withering, crimson
ray now untended by living hands!
Like a gigantic scythe it flailed the ether, swinging a huge curve
directly toward the _Chickadee_. Vainly Chip jammed the studs before
him, striving to escape above, below or beyond that sword of doom.
There came the ear-splitting crash of impact, metal screamed thin
agony, rending itself to shreds somewhere aft; the _Chickadee_
shuddered like a pole-felled steer under its mortal wound.
Instinct shot Chip's hands to the lock-stud which sealed the control
chamber airtight from the rest of the ship; that action alone spared
them for a few minutes. But each of them knew the ship was doomed to
crash. Syd croaked, "Here! The bulgers! Get in them--_quick_!"
Split seconds later, they were three grotesque figures huddled before
the control board, staring through quartzite globular headpanes at
Chip's last, frenzied efforts to break the fall of the _Chickadee_.
The studs beneath his fingers were unresponsive as the inarticulate
phalanges of a broken limb. In vain and desperately he struggled to
gain a modicum of control over the falling craft, now firmly gripped by
Titania's gravitational field. They had fallen into the high atmosphere
of the little globe, now; thin winds howled and bansheed about their
sharded hull, and the walls of the room began to heat.
The aft jets were dead, the anti-gravs broken, helpless. There remained
but one possible way in which to keep them from being crushed to bits.
A prow landing, braked by the fore jets. It was dangerous, but--
"There!" cried Syd. "Look there, Chip! Below us!"
Chip risked a brief glance, saw that the smooth and icy surface of
Titania was broken by a long, ragged swatch of black. Ironic laughter
curled the corners of his tight-set lips. What a quirk of fate that
here, with death but a hair's-breadth removed, they should unwittingly
find that for which under happier circumstances they might have sought
endlessly and in vain. The promised spot of habitation on the bleak
little moon of Uranus.
"I'm fore-jetting!" he crisped. "Stand by for--a fadeout!"
Salvation's hand was on his shoulder, reassuringly, somehow warm
despite its casement of rubberoid fabric. "Be of strong heart, my son,"
he said simply, "He who watcheth the fall of the smallest sparrow, He
shall not fail His own in their hour of need."
Then Chip pressed the necessary, the only remaining responsive keys.
And the control room trembled like a hurt thing, seemed to stop
stock-still in space, shake itself for a moment--then plunge on.
Forejets flamed blast upon roaring blast. Chip felt the gravitational
force seem to lessen as the flares beat stubbornly against the adamant
breast of the globe below. Drop ... stagger ... drop again ... the
shocking concussion of brakes ... then a swift, dizzy, headlong fall....
Wild winds howled, and the din of metals tortured beyond endurance
slashed at Chip's eardrums. He was aware of the last cry of Syd Palmer,
his life-long friend. "Luck, Chip, old pal--!" And the remembered ghost
of Salvation's promise. "He shall not fail His own--"
Then a horrendous crash jarred his head back on the seat. A smashing
veil of crimson settled before his eyes ... then there was darkness.
And silence.
* * * * *
He felt some mad conceit that this was death ... that the restless
fingers of the gray unalive plucked at his arm, bidding him rise and
stir forward toward he knew not what.
Then suddenly he was awake, alive, and conscious--and it was not death,
but life; fingers _did_ tug at him, but they were the figures of--
"_'Ranies!_" cried Chip. "Hands off, you! Or--"
The green complexioned native growled some guttural comment, moved
closer rather than away, and pinioned Chip's arms to his sides. Chip
saw, now, that the _Chickadee_, though battered and broken beyond hope
of repair, had miraculously grounded without destroying them all. For
Syd was stirring, and Salvation, too, but each of them was surrounded
by green natives, as was Chip. These creatures, the nearest approach to
Man's physiology that had ever been found in the System, were tall and
rugged, masterfully built. They were equipped with native lariats or
bolas; these they whipped cuttingly about their captives.
Chip strained lashed fingers toward the heat-pistol in his belt. But
Salvation, seeing his motion, stopped him.
"No, lad! Relax! Don't make a hostile move!"
Chip growled, "No damned greenie is going to make a trussed duck out of
me. If I can reach this gun--"
"If you value your life," said Salvation, "and your welfare, keep your
hands quiet and your wits active! These creatures aren't Uranians.
They're Titanians. An offspring of the parent race, but as savage and
untamed as beasts.
"I don't know what they plan to do with us. I have heard they are
a strange, mystical race; their tribal rites and taboos are many
and--dangerous! Our only chance is to be quiet, try to reason with
them, convince them we are not foes but friends--"
All three were securely tied, now, save for their legs. The tallest
Titanian, evidently the group chieftain, grunted a word of command.
Strong arms prodded Chip and his fellows forward, out of the broken
_Chickadee_, into the bleak landscape of Titania.
They had crashed in the dark spot Chip had viewed from above. They
discovered, now, that this spot was dark because--incredibly--here the
thick, icy blanket had been stripped away to discover the raw and
rocky core of the Uranian moon.
Black rocks thrust jagged spires skyward, mountains of stone girdled
this one clear space on the whole of Titania; greater wonder still,
gnarled and stunted trees, lichens of hardiest verdure, eked a
precarious existence from the grudging soil.
And here the natives had--a village. One coarser, cruder, than the
village of the meanest of Earth's savages, but a village nonetheless.
Slab dwellings dabbed with thick black clay, a central structure,
larger than the rest, something that looked like a market--or community
gathering-spot.
Chip's wonderment had made him impervious at first to such trivia
as personal comfort and discomfort. He found now, though, that he
was cold. By dint of much effort, he managed to squirm a hand to his
belt-studs, operate the tiny needle that increased the warmth of his
space-suit.
Almost immediately there came a howl from the green native maintaining
a vigilant grip on Chip's arm; the fellow leaped away, bellowing angry,
guttural speech at his leader.
And Salvation spun to Chip swiftly.
"Chip--turn down that heat, boy!"
"B--but--" stammered Chip.
"Quickly!"
Chip obeyed. It was well he did so, for the leader was moving toward
him menacingly. With a cautious finger he touched Chip's suit. Then,
apparently mollified to discover it satisfactorily cold, he snarled a
word or two and the little party moved on.
Chip stared at the old missionary.
"But, why?" he demanded. "What did I do wrong? I don't get it. I was
freezing, and--"
"Then you've got to freeze," said Salvation Smith, "and like it. Until
we can escape from these creatures. Do you have any idea how cold it is
here on Titania, my boy?"