Spacehounds Triumphant
Now that the hexan threat that had so long oppressed the humanity of the
_Sirius_ was lifted, that dull gray football of armor steel was filled
with relief and rejoicing as the pilot laid his course for Europa.
Lounges and saloons resounded with noise as police, passengers, and such
of the crew as were at liberty made merry. The control room, in which
were grouped the leaders of the expedition and the scientists, was
orderly enough, but a noticeable undertone of gladness had replaced the
tense air it had known so long.
"Hi, men!" Nadia Stevens and Verna Pickering, arms around each other's
waists, entered the room and saluted the group gaily before they became
a part of it.
"'Smatter, girls--tired of dancing already?" asked Brandon.
"Oh, no--we could dance from now on," Verna assured him. "But you see,
Nadia hadn't seen that husband of hers for fifteen minutes, and was
getting lonesome. Being afraid of all you men, she wanted me to come
along for moral support. The real reason I came, though," and she
narrowed her expressive eyes and lowered her voice mysteriously, "is
that you two physicists are here. I want to study my chosen victims a
little longer before I decide over which of you to cast the spell of
my fatal charm."
"But you can't do that," he objected, vigorously. "Quince and I are
going to settle that ourselves some day--by shooting dice, or maybe each
other, or...." he broke off, listening to an animated conversation going
on behind them.
"... just simply outrageous!" Nadia was exclaiming. "Here we saved his
life, and I fed him a lot of my candy, and we went to all the trouble of
bringing their ship back here almost to Jupiter for them, and then they
simply dashed off without a word of thanks or anything! And he always
acted as though he never wanted to see or hear of any of us again, ever!
Why, they don't _think_ straight--as Norman would say it, they're _full_
of little red _ants_! Why, they aren't even _human_!"
"Sure not." Brandon turned to the flushed speaker. "They couldn't be,
hardly, with their make-up. But is it absolutely necessary that all
intelligent beings should possess such an emotion as gratitude? Such a
being without it does seem funny to us, but I can't see that its lack
necessarily implies anything particularly important. Keep still a
minute," he went on, as Nadia tried to interrupt him, "and listen to
some real wisdom. Quince, _you_ tell 'em."
"They are, of course, very highly developed and extremely intelligent;
but it should not be surprising that intelligence should manifest
itself in ways quite baffling to us human beings, whose minds work so
differently. They are, however ... well, peculiar."
"I _won't_ keep still!" Nadia burst out, at the first opportunity.
"I don't want to talk about those hideous things any more, anyway.
Come on, Steve, let's go up and dance!"
Crowninshield turned to Verna, with the obvious intention of leading
her away, but Brandon interposed.
"Sorry, Crown, but this lady is conducting a highly important
psychological research, so your purely social claims will have to wait
until after the scientific work is done."
"Why narrow the field of investigation?" laughed the girl. "I'd rather
widen it, myself--I might prefer a general, even to a physicist!"
They went up to the main saloon and joined the melee there, and after
one dance with Verna--all he could claim in that crowd of
men--Crowninshield turned to Brandon.
"You two seem to know Miss Pickering extraordinarily well. Would I be
stepping on your toes if I give her a play?"
"Clear ether as far as we're concerned." Brandon shrugged his shoulders.
"She's been kicking around under foot ever since she was knee high to a
duck--we gave her her first lessons on a slide rule."
"Don't be dumb, Norman. That woman's a knock-out--a riot--a regular
tri-planet call-out!"
"Oh, she's all x, as far as that goes. She's a good little scout,
too--not half as dumb as she acts--and she's one of the squarest little
aces that ever waved a plume; but as for _playing_ her--too much like
our kid sister."
"Good--me for her!" and they made their way back down to the control
room.
Stevens, after his one dance with Nadia, had already returned. Brandon
and Crowninshield found him seated at the calculating machine,
continuing a problem which already filled several pages of his notebook.
"'Smatter, Steve? So glad to see a calculator and some paper that you
can't let them alone?"
"Not exactly--just had a thought a day or so ago. Been computing the
orbit of the wreckage of the _Arcturus_ around Jupiter. Think we should
salvage it--the upper half, at least. It was left intact, you know."
"H ... m ... m. That would be nice, all right. Dope enough?"
"Got the direction solid, from my own observations; the velocity's a
pretty rough approximation though. But after allowing for my probable
error, it figures an ellipse of low eccentricity, between the orbits of
Io and Europa. Its period is short--about two days."
"Isn't it wonderful to have a brain?" Brandon addressed the room at
large. "The kid's clever. Nobody else would have thought of it, except
maybe Westfall. Let's see your figures. Um ... m ... m. According to
that, we're within an hour of it, right now." He turned to the pilot and
sketched rapidly.
"Get on this line here, please, and decelerate, so that the stuff'll
catch up with us, and pass the word to the lookouts. Stevens and I will
take the bow plates.
"That's a good idea," he went on to Stevens, as they took their places
at main and auxiliary ultra-banks. "Lot of plunder in that ship.
Instruments, boats, and equipment worth millions, besides most of the
junk of the passengers--clothes, trunks, trinkets, and what-not. You're
there, bucko!"
"Thanks, Chief," ... and they fell silent, watching the instruments
carefully, and from time to time making computations from the readings
of the acceleration and flight meters.
"There she is!" An alarm bell had finally sounded, the ultra-lights had
flared out into space, and upon both screens there shone out images of
the closely clustered wreckage of the _Arcturus_. But both men were more
interested just then in the mathematics of the recovery than in the
vessel itself.
"Missed it eight minutes of time and eleven divisions on the scale,"
reported Stevens. "Not so good."
"Not so bad either--I've seen worse computation." Thus lightly was
dismissed a mathematical feat which, a few years earlier, before the
days of I-P computers, would have been deemed worthy of publication in
"The Philosophical Magazine."
* * * * *
Director Newton was called in, and it was decided that the many small
fragments of the vessel were not worth saving; that its upper half
was all that they should attempt to tow the enormous distance back to
Tellus. The pace of the _Sirius_ was adjusted to that of the floating
masses, and tractor beams were clamped upon the undamaged portion of the
derelict, and upon the two slices from the nose of the craft. A couple
of the larger fragments of wreckage were also taken, to furnish metal
for the repairs which would be necessary. Acceleration was brought
slowly up to normal, and the battle-scarred cruiser of the void, with
her heavy burden of inert metal, resumed her interrupted voyage toward
Europa; the satellite upon which the passengers and crew of the
ill-fated _Arcturus_ had been so long immured. On she bored through the
ether, detector screens full out and greenly scintillant Vorkulian
wall-screens outlining her football shape in weird and ghastly light;
unafraid now of any possible surviving space-craft of the hexans.
But if the hexans detected her, they made no sign. Perhaps their fleet
had been destroyed utterly; perhaps it had been impressed upon even
their fierce minds that those sparkling green screens were not to be
molested with impunity! The satellite was reached without event and down
into the crater landing shaft the two enormous masses of metal dropped.
Callisto's foremost citizens were on hand to welcome the Terrestrial
rescuers, and revelry reigned supreme in that deeply buried Europan
community. All humanity celebrated. The Callistonians rejoiced because
they were now freed from the age-old oppression of the hexan hordes;
because they could once more extend their civilization over the Jovian
satellites and live again their normal lives upon the surface of those
small worlds.
The Terrestrials were almost equally enthusiastic in the reunion that
marked the end of the long imprisonment of the refugees.
As soon as the hull of the _Arcturus_ had been warmed sufficiently to
permit inspection, its original passengers were allowed to visit it
briefly, to examine and to reclaim their belongings. Of course, some
damage had been done by the cold of interplanetary space, but in general
everything was as they had left it. Stevens and Nadia were among the
first permitted aboard. They went first to the control room, where
Stevens found his bag still lying behind Breckenridge's desk, where he
had thrown it when he first boarded the vessel. Then they made their
way up to Nadia's stateroom, which they found in meticulous order and
spotless in its cleanliness--there is neither dust nor dirt in space.
Nadia glanced about the formal little room and laughed up at her
husband.
"Funny, isn't it, sweetheart, how little we know what to expect? Just
think how surprised I would have been, when I left this room, if I had
been told that I would have a husband before I got back to it!"
Breckenridge's first thought was for his precious triplex automatic
chronometer, which he found, of course, "way off"--six and three-tenths
seconds fast. Having corrected the timepiece from that of the _Sirius_,
he immersed himself in the other delicate instruments of his
department--and he was easy to find from that time on.
Overcrowded as the _Sirius_ already was, it was decided that the
original complement of the _Arcturus_ should occupy their former
quarters aboard her during the return trip. To this end, corps of
mechanics set to work upon the salvaged hulk. Heavy metal work was no
novelty to the Callistonian engineers and mechanics, and the _Sirius_
also was well equipped with metal-working machines and men. Thus the
prow was welded; armored, insulating air-breaks were built along the
stern, which was the plane of hexan cleavage, electrical connections
were restored; and lastly, a set of the great Vorkulian wall-screen
generators, absorbers, and dissipators was installed, with sufficient
accumulator capacity for their operation. Director Newton studied this
installation in silence for some time, then went in search of Brandon.
"I hadn't considered the possibility of being attacked again
between here and Tellus, but there's always the chance," he admitted.
"If you think that there is any danger, we will crowd them all into the
_Sirius_. It will not be at all comfortable, but it will be better than
having any more of us killed."
"With that outfit they'll be as safe as we will," the scientist assured
him. "They can stand as much grief as we can. We'll do the fighting for
the whole outfit from here, and anything we meet will have to take us
before they can touch them. So they had better ride it there, where
they'll have passengers' accommodations and be comfortable. As to
danger, I don't know what to expect. They may all be gone and they may
not. We're going to expect trouble every meter of the way in, though,
and be ready for it."
Everything ready and thoroughly tested, and stream of power flowing
into the _Arcturus_ from the cosmic receptors of her sister ship, the
passengers and their new possessions were moved into their former
quarters. There was a brief ceremony of farewell, the doors of the
airlocks were closed, the careful check-out was gone through, and the
driving projectors of the _Sirius_ lifted both great vessels up the
shaft, slowly and easily. And after them, as long as they could be seen,
stared the thousands of Callistonians who thronged the great shaft's
floor. Many of the spectators were not, strictly speaking, Callistonians
at all. They were really Europans, born and reared in that hidden city
which was to have been the last stronghold of Callisto's civilization.
In that throng were hundreds who had never before seen the light of the
sun nor any of the glories of the firmament, hundreds to whom that brief
glimpse was a foretaste of the free and glorious life which was soon to
be theirs.
Up and up mounted that powerful tug-boat of space, with her heavy barge,
falling smoothly upward at normal acceleration. Below her first Europa,
then mighty Jupiter, became moons growing smaller and smaller. In their
stateroom Nadia's supple waist writhed in the curve of Stevens' arm as
she turned and looked up at him with sparkling eyes.
"Well, big fellow, how does it feel to be out of a job? Or are you going
over there every day on a tractor beam to work, as Norman suggested?"
"Not on your sweet young life!" he exclaimed. "Norm thought he was
kidding somebody, but it registered zero. It gives me the pip to loaf
around when there's a lot of work to do, but this is entirely different.
Nothing's driving us now, and a fellow's entitled to at least one
honeymoon during his life. And what a honeymoon this is going to be,
little spacehound of my heart! Nothing to do but love you all the way
from here to Tellus! Whoopee!"
"Oh, there's a couple of other things to do," she reminded him gaily.
"You've got to smoke a lot of good cigarettes, I must eat a lot of
Delray's chocolates, and we both really should catch up on eating fancy
cooking. Speaking of eating, isn't that the second call for dinner? It
_is_!" and they went along the narrow hall toward the elevator. To these
two the long journey was to seem all too short.
Long though the voyage was, it was uneventful. The occupants of the
two vessels were in constant touch with each other by means of the
communicators, and there was also much visiting back and forth in
person. Stevens and Nadia came often to the _Sirius_, and were
accompanied frequently by Verna Pickering, who claimed anew her ancient
right of "kicking around under foot," wherever Brandon and Westfall
might chance to be--and at such times General Crowninshield was
practically certain to appear. And upon days when the beautiful brunette
did not appear, the commandant generally found it necessary to inspect
in person something in the _Arcturus_.
Day after day passed, and even the new and ultra-powerful detector
screens of the _Sirius_ remained unresponsive and cold. Day after day
the plates before the doubled lookouts and observers remained blank.
Power flowed smoothly and unfailingly into the cosmic receptors, and
the products of conversion were discharged with equal smoothness and
regularity from the forty-five gigantic driving projectors. The tractor
beam held its heavy burden easily and the generators functioned
perfectly. And finally a planet began to loom up in the stern lookout
plates.
Verna, the irrepressible, was in the control room of the _Sirius_,
quarreling adroitly with Brandon and deftly flirting with Crowninshield.
Glancing into the control screen she saw the planet in its end block,
then studied the instruments briefly.
"We're heading for _Mars_!" she declared with conviction. "I thought
it looked that way yesterday, but supposed it must be only apparent--a
trick of piloting or something about the orbit. I thought of course you
were taking us back home--but you can't _possibly_ get to Tellus on any
such course as this!"
"Sure not," Brandon replied easily. "Certainly it's Mars. Isn't that
where the _Arcturus_ started out for? Whoever said we were going to
Tellus? Of course, if any of the passengers want to go right back the
IPC will undoubtedly furnish transportation _gratis_. But paste this in
your hat, Verna, for future reference--when spacehounds start out to go
anywhere they _go_ there, even if they have to spend a year or so on
minus time to do it!"
Closer and closer they approached the red planet, swinging around in a
wide arc in order to make their course coincide exactly with the pilot
ray of check station M14, which was now precisely in its scheduled
location in space. At the chief pilot's desk in the control room of the
_Arcturus_, Breckenridge checked in with the station, then calculated
rapidly the instant of their touching the specially-built bumper
platforms of spring steel, hemp, and fiber which awaited them upon the
Martian dock of the Interplanetary Corporation. Within range of the
terminal, he plugged into it, waited until the tiny light flashed its
green message of attention, and reported.
"IPV _Arcturus_; Breckenridge, Chief Pilot; trip number forty-three
twenty-nine. Checking in--four hundred forty-six days, fifteen hours,
eleven minutes, thirty-eight and seven-tenths seconds minus!"
THE END.
Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Amazing Stories July,
August and September 1931. Extensive research did not uncover any
evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.
End of Project Gutenberg's Spacehounds of IPC, by Edward Elmer Smith