Glass 5 showed that the forepeak and secondary chamber had been ripped
open. Glass 5 also showed that bulkhead doors there had automatically
closed. For the rest, excluding the motors, everything seemed in order.
The oxygen suppliers were functioning smoothly on auxiliary batteries.
Likewise the heat units, one for each level, showed normal operation.
All lights were lit.
Standish glanced out the port. Whatever the ship had struck, it was out
of his vision range now. Propelled by the forward surge of the dying
motors, the ship must have advanced a great distance since the fatal
crash.
Now the ship was drifting. Drifting without steerageway.
"Derelict," Standish said slowly. "It looks like I've got a one-way
ticket to eternity."
He took the elevator down to the lower level again and made his way
along the grating to the engine room. Carefully he examined the six
ato-turbines with an experienced eye.
Standish had grown up with atomic motors. He had served an
apprenticeship at his father's solar plant at Sun City, and he had
graduated from the New York School of Technology. As a boy of sixteen,
he had built his first minature atom smasher during vacation days.
Now he moved along the narrow catwalk between the motors, touching a
wire here, an armature there. The two port engines, he found, were
wrecked completely. Likewise the two starboard. Two forward machines
remained, and of these he saw one had an inch-wide crack in its
combustion chamber. But the other....
Standish drew in a breath of satisfaction. The last motor was disabled
but not beyond repair. Without further ado, he peeled off his coat,
seized a Stillson wrench and fell to work.
It took him a long time, and the task drew his mind away from the
horror about him. With the patience of long experience, Standish made
his repairs. At length it was completed, and he paused with bated
breath while he pressed the starting button.
The motor began, sluggishly at first, then faster and faster. Presently
it was droning evenly as if nothing had almost wrecked it earlier.
"One motor isn't much," he told himself. "But it may be enough."
For the third time he returned to the control room. There, triumph
met his gaze. The master indicator showed a definite forward movement
through space. The crippled ship was moving, though slowly.
Standish turned his attention next to the visiscreens and emergency
radio with which the liner had kept in contact with Earth and Sirius.
Neither the transmitting nor the receiving sets showed any response
when he turned on the control switch. A glance back of the panels
showed shattered tubes and broken apparatus.
He went out on the deck and climbed to the pilot cuddy. One look
through the three-directional glassite shield told a grim story. But it
was a full minute before the significance of it all probed into him.
The view ahead was utterly unfamiliar. Strange stars and constellations
glowed in the void. Far off to his left was the white radiance of
a spiral nebula. To the right, the galaxies seemed to blend in a
bewildering array of light and matter, stretching on into infinitude.
Standish's knowledge of cosmography was limited. He knew that straight
lines connecting Sirius with Procyon and Betelguese would constitute a
nearly equilateral triangle. He knew, too, that Betelguese, Sirius and
Regel--all of the first magnitude--formed a lozenge-shaped figure, with
Orion's belt in the center.
But try as he would, he could locate none of these stellar landmarks.
* * * * *
Turning, he looked for the liner's log. With information as to the
ship's time of departure from Earth and an average calculation of her
speed, he might hope to chart his position.
The log, however, had not been filled out. The Sirians apparently had
grown careless in their repeated trips through space.
Standish's teeth came down hard on his pipe stem. He was lost!
Hopelessly lost! A solitary spark of life in a man-made projectile,
wandering the immensities of the Universe.
Mechanically, the Earthman set the automatic directionscope for a
larger spot of light far ahead and threw in the massmeter which would
effectually warn him of any body within collision range in his path.
Had the liner pilot paid attention to that dial, he reflected, the
crash might have been avoided.
Stars paraded, swung past. The Big Dipper flamed away, curiously
changed in outlines. Or was it the Big Dipper? Standish didn't know.
Material thoughts supplanted cosmic ones then. There was work to be
done, ghoulish work which common decency demanded he perform. The dead
must be disposed of.
It was a hard task, and he accomplished it by carrying the bodies of
the Sirian officers and crew to the baggage chamber in the stern and
casting them free through the airlock. On the second level which had
held the Earth prisoners the work was even more difficult. Heavy bars
and plates had to be lifted free. But at length Standish stood alone on
the ship.
He recognized the gnawing sensation in his midsection then as hunger.
Finding the galley supplied with both fresh meats and vegetables as
well as food concentrates, he ate well. The food served to restore some
of his confidence.
When he returned to the pilot cuddy, he saw that the bright spot for
which he had set the directionscope had enlarged to a great orange
globe that covered the entire glassite shield. Even as he watched, the
outlines of land and seas took form.
The needle of the massmeter began to quiver spasmodically, but
Standish held to his course. It had occurred to him that this world
might possibly be inhabited and that he might obtain aid for his return
to Earth, or at least the proper directions.
But as he drew closer, the land resolved itself into thick jungle and
smooth eroded mountain tops, barren of any building or structure. The
planet, on this hemisphere at least, was devoid of life.
A bell clanged above the massmeter, warning him the ship was in the
danger zone. He seized the wheel and turned it hard over. At the same
time he moved the power switch to the last notch.
The liner swung sluggishly. And then the thing Standish had feared
happened! The single motor buckled under the strain and ceased. Without
resistance, the ship swept full into the gravitational field of the
planet and plunged downward.
Like a man in a dream Standish saw jungle rush up to meet him. An
instant later there was a terrific crash, and he felt himself hurled
into oblivion.