"Good. Block them in."
The captain's face receded, and a scene of tragic horror filled the
opalescent visiplate. The men were not standing at attention at all.
They were slumping against the Perseus' central charging plant in
attitudes of abject despair.
* * * * *
Madness burned in the eyes of three or four of them. Others had torn
open their shirts, and raked their flesh with their nails. Petty officer
Caldwell was standing as straight as a totem pole, clenching and
unclenching his hands. The second assistant engineer was sticking out
his tongue. His face was deadpan, which made what was obviously a terror
reflex look like an idiot's grimace.
Lawton moistened his lips. "Men, listen to me. There is some sort of
plant outside that is giving off deliriant fumes. A few of us seem to be
immune to it.
"I'm not immune, but I'm fighting it, and all of you boys can fight it
too. I want you to fight it to the top of your courage. You can fight
_anything_ when you know that just around the corner is freedom from a
beastliness that deserves to be licked--even if it's only a plant.
"Men, we're blasting our way free. The bubble's wearing thin. Any minute
now the plants beneath us may fall with a soggy plop into the Atlantic
Ocean.
"I want every man jack aboard this ship to stand at his post and obey
orders. Right this minute you look like something the cat dragged in.
But most men who cover themselves with glory start off looking even
worse than you do."
He smiled wryly.
"I guess that's all. I've never had to make a speech in my life, and I'd
hate like hell to start now."
It was petty officer Caldwell who started the chant. He started it, and
the men took it up until it was coming from all of them in a
full-throated roar.
I'm a tough, true-hearted skyman,
Careless and all that, d'ye see?
Never at fate a railer,
What is time or tide to me?
All must die when fate shall will it,
I can never die but once,
I'm a tough, true-hearted skyman;
He who fears death is a dunce.
Lawton squared his shoulders. With a crew like that nothing could stop
him! Ah, his energies were surging high. The deliriant weed held no
terrors for him now. They were stout-hearted lads and he'd go to hell
with them cheerfully, if need be.
It wasn't easy to wait. The next half hour was filled with a steadily
mounting tension as Lawton moved like a young tornado about the ship,
issuing orders and seeing that each man was at his post.
"Steady, Jimmy. The way to fight a deliriant is to keep your mind on a
set task. Keep sweating, lad."
"Harry, that winch needs tightening. We can't afford to miss a trick."
"Yeah, it will come suddenly. We've got to get the rotaries started the
instant the bottom drops out."
He was with the captain and Slashaway in the control room when it came.
There was a sudden, grinding jolt, and the captain's desk started moving
toward the quartz port, carrying Lawton with it.
"Holy Jiminy cricket," exclaimed Slashaway.
The deck tilted sharply; then righted itself. A sudden gush of clear,
cold air came through the ventilation valves as the triple rotaries
started up with a roar.
Lawton and the captain reached the quartz port simultaneously. Shoulder
to shoulder they stood staring down at the storm-tossed Atlantic,
electrified by what they saw.
Floating on the waves far beneath them was an undulating mass of
vegetation, its surface flecked with glinting foam. As it rose and fell
in waning sunlight a tainted seepage spread about it, defiling the clean
surface of the sea.
But it wasn't the floating mass which drew a gasp from Forrester, and
caused Lawton's scalp to prickle. Crawling slowly across that
Sargasso-like island of noxious vegetation was a huge, elongated shape
which bore a nauseous resemblance to a mottled garden slug.
Forrester was trembling visibly when he turned from the quartz port.
"God, Dave, that would have been the _last straw_. Animal life. Dave,
I--I can't realize we're actually out of it."
"We're out, all right," Lawton said, hoarsely. "Just in time, too.
Skipper, you'd better issue grog all around. The men will be needing it.
I'm taking mine straight. You've accused me of being primitive. Wait
till you see me an hour from now."
Dr. Stephen Halday stood in the door of his Appalachian mountain
laboratory staring out into the pine-scented dusk, a worried expression
on his bland, small-featured face. It had happened again. A portion of
his experiment had soared skyward, in a very loose group of highly
energized wavicles. He wondered if it wouldn't form a sort of
sub-electronic macrocosm high in the stratosphere, altering even the air
and dust particles which had spurted up with it, its uncharged atomic
particles combining with hydrogen and creating new molecular
arrangements.
If such were the case there would be eight of them now. _His_ bubbles,
floating through the sky. They couldn't possibly harm anything--way up
there in the stratosphere. But he felt a little uneasy about it all the
same. He'd have to be more careful in the future, he told himself. Much
more careful. He didn't want the Controllers to turn back the clock of
civilization a century by stopping all atom-smashing experiments.
Transcriber's Note:
This e-text was produced from Comet July 1941. Extensive
research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright
on this publication was renewed.