Earth's last hope against the vicious
radio-plague. A gleaming ship racing to
bring salvation back from Venus. And hidden
on the ship a thirteenth man--a plague
carrier whose touch brought screaming death.
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Planet Stories Summer 1944.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
This was it. Its slim bright shape was Earth's last hope.
What matter the sweat, the blood and the tears that had gone into each
rivet, every plate? What matter the eyes blurred and dulled with plans,
blueprints? What matter the cost.
This was it.
It was done.
They stood there--the riveters, the welders; the draughtsmen, the
engineers; the mathematicians, the technicians--and there glowed in
their eyes a living flame.
This was the ship of hope.
Its rockets flickered into blue flames. Their soft purr of power
deepened. Abruptly, the earth was trembling to the throaty roar of
rockets.
In its long steel-rollered cradle, the ship trembled.
One of the workers, his denim trousers grease-stained, bending down,
scooped up a handful of the dust at his feet, flung it at the shining
ship.
"Just for luck," he said.
In the glass bulge atop the shining ship, John Bairn, the pilot, licked
feverish lips. He brushed the black hair away from his gray eyes. His
stubby fingers raced over the keys of the control panel before him.
His right hand touched--almost reverently--the scarlet handle of the
firing lever.
He pushed the lever forward one notch ... two ... three....
He braced himself in the hydraulic-cushioned pilot's chair.
"Venus, here we come!"
The rockets roared faintly even in this sound-proofed cubicle. Then the
pounding blood in his ears washed out all other sound. The pounding in
his ears grew throatier, louder.
The 9G acceleration blacked him out.
That dive was a little too steep, he was thinking, first time I ever
blacked out with somebody on my tail. He jerked his head around to see
where the butcher was. And then he remembered.
He looked ahead. The stars were steady white flames in the black pool
of space. Ah, there it was! The pale green flame that was Venus.
Somewhere, there, lay Earth's salvation.
Arlington Arden, the metal expert, came into the cubicle then, his
blond face pale.
"Some shove, huh?" he opined.
Bairn nodded, his gray eyes watched the orientation chart whose red and
green and yellow lights were flickering in the rhythm that showed they
were on the mathematically-charted course.
"Think the stuff is really there, Arlie?" Bairn questioned.
"We're staking our lives on it, John."
"Yeah, and the lives of a billion like us. What if it isn't?"
"Venus' spectrum shows its presence. It's not an emanation that is
easily duplicated. If it isn't, it's too much of a grim joke--because
the money in this ship could have paid for a thousand experiments. My
Mary's got a touch of blue coloring in her skin--the first symptom,
y'know."
"Sorry," Bairn said, and his voice was soft.
"Beautiful," Arden said. "I hope Mary can see it sometime." He was
looking out at space, his arms clasped behind him. "It's not like I
thought, though--this being the first humans to see the stars away from
earth." He stopped.
"It's so damn big and beautiful it hurts," he said at last.
"Yeah, I know," Bairn put in. "It makes guys like us feel cheap and
small."
"No!" The word was explosive. Bairn jerked around in the pilot's cradle
and stared. Arden had a frown on his forehead.
"And who in blue blazes are you?" Bairn snapped.
"Joe," the big blocky youngster said, as if that explained everything.
"Joe, huh?" Bairn grunted. "How did you get on this ship?"
* * * * *
Joe's brown eyes stared steadily at Bairn, and his big shoulders
shrugged. "I stowed away." And then as the two stared blankly at him,
he hurried on:
"I had to. Really. There's a legend in our family that a man named Joe
will be the first to reach the stars. It was promised way back when. So
I had to come. I had to!"
Bairn grunted again. "Isn't much we can do about it now, I guess. But
you'll have to earn your way. What can you do?"
Joe grinned--a big grin that made Bairn and Arden smile.
He shrugged and grinned again. "I don't know. But I'll be good for
something. You'll see."
"All right. Arlie, will you take him down to the rocket room? Maybe the
gang can find something for him to do."
"Come on, Joe," Arden said.
Joe shook his head. "Not just yet," he answered. "I'd like to tell you
something first." He pointed out toward the stars. "A minute ago, you
said"--he nodded at Bairn--"this makes us feel cheap and small.
"You're wrong. You're just afraid. All this is man's--yours, mine,
ours. It's just so darn big, we don't realize it. But this is our
destiny--that's what the prophet said a long time ago. It took a
disease like that sweeping the Earth now to get us here. But we're
here. The stars are our destiny. No sense in being otherwise. No sense
in feeling cheap and small." He stopped, looked at Bairn and Arden.
"Don't you feel it?" Joe asked. "This first time the Earth shackles are
loosed? Don't you feel the power and understanding and strength the
stars give you out here?
"This is where I belong," Joe said. "Out here where you can see what
you're reaching for. That's why I had to come." He stopped and a slow
embarrassed flush crept over his face.
"See what I mean?"
Surprisingly, it was Bairn who answered:
"Thanks, kid, you're good for something all right. I don't know what it
is about you, but you give a guy a sense of--peace, I guess you'd say."
"Belonging?" Arden put in. "That it, Johnny?"
"Yeah, that's it," Bairn said, and turned back to his orientation
board. "So run along, kid."
Arlie Arden, leading the way down the circular staircase that went to
the power room, said abruptly:
"You're no city man, are you, Joe? I've never seen cloth like that made
in the cities. That tunic you're wearing looks like it's made up for
the north forests."
"No," Joe answered shortly, "I'm not a city man. I'm a wooder." They
left the stairway, moved along a tube passage.
"Not a member of that crazy cult that wants a back-to-the-forests
movement?"
Joe's denial was quick, and Arden looked at him sharply. The stowaway
was looking down at his toes as he walked on. Arden shrugged.
"Here," Arden said at last, stopping before a huge oval door that
jutted from the tube. He twisted a wheel on the door, pushed the heavy
portal open.
Arden watched the stowaway as he stepped into the power room. Joe
stopped and his brown eyes lifted first, then dropped down to rest on
the huge generators that were making the air pulse with vibration. Then
his eyes moved to the huge dull-metal bulk that occupied the whole far
end of the power room. His gaze took in the feeder pipe that evenly
cleaved the huge bulk of the machine in half; the long neat rows of
switches and valves that broke the austere front of the power plant.
Joe breathed deep once then turned questioningly to Arden who was
watching him.
* * * * *
"That's what drives the ship, Joe," Arden said. "Reduced to its simple
terms it's an atom smasher. Hidden deep within that bulky outfit lies
a block of uranium, constantly bombarded with electrons made a trifle
heavier by running up against a magnetic current operating at right
angles to them. The resultant disturbance of the uranium is harnessed
and fed into the rocket tubes."
Arden glanced at Joe whose eyes were fixed on the feeder pipe.
"That's a funny thing, Joe, that pipe you're looking at."
"Why?"
"Through that pipe comes water."
"Water?"
Arden nodded. "For some reason that not even the technicians who worked
on that plant know, microscopic jets of water have to be hurled into
the chamber with the bombarding particles to cause proper power."
"Water?" Joe asked. "You drive this ship with water?"
Arden smiled. "Yes, water and the help--not negligible either--of
uranium. It'll take exactly two hundred and twelve gallons of water to
drive to Venus, and the same amount back--at least that's what Black
Tom figures." Arden nodded to the huge dark-skinned, black-haired man
in white coveralls who stood by an instrument panel, checking figures
off on a clip board he held.
"Come on, Joe," Arden said, heading for a ladder that was bolted to
the wall at one side of the huge power room. Joe followed up the
ladder, was on the heels of Arden as the metal expert crawled through a
cubbyhole at the top.
"See?" Arden said straightening up. "Water."
Joe looked at the row of horizontal metal cylinders that stretched
before him. The tops of them were a foot taller than his head, and he
moved to the side, and counted aloud to eleven before Arden said:
"We might starve and go naked, but we'll never run out of catalyst or
get thirsty," Arden opined. "Each of those tanks holds six hundred
gallons and there're twenty-four of them."
Joe moved to the nearest of the tanks, rubbed his hands on the moist
surfacing and commented absently:
"It feels like velvet."
Arden laughed a little. "Come on, Joe, I'll turn you over to Black Tom
and he'll put you to work doing something. He never likes to see anyone
idle."
They crawled out of the wall cubby and down the ladder. A second
white-garbed man had joined the power room head and they were talking
together as Arden and Joe approached.
"That's Whitey Burnet," Arden said, and started, for Joe had halted
dead in his tracks.
Black Tom Morrissey and Burnet turned then. Morrissey said, "Hello,
Arlie," briefly and turned back to his gauge panel. Burnet stood rigid
for a moment at the sight of Joe.
Then with three quick strides Burnet was at Joe. He said softly:
"Damn you, Joe." And lashed out with a hard fist. The blow caught Joe
on the cheek, cutting the skin, and staggering him momentarily.
Joe started to swing his browned fist up, then slowly he lowered it. He
looked at Burnet with quiet brown eyes.
"I can't hit you, Paul. You know that."
Paul's face was white. "No," he said, and he was almost bitter. "I know
that." Then he turned his back on Joe and walked away.
Arden's blue eyes watched the by-play, observed:
"Whitey doesn't like you very much, huh?"
Joe's brown eyes were dull looking as he pulled his gaze from Burnet's
retreating back and looked at Arden.
"No," he said, and his voice was flat. "Paul doesn't like me much."
With an effort he smiled, added: "Shall we find out what I can do?"
Arden nodded....
Joe Wilding met the rest of the crew at the arbitrary meal that was
termed supper.
* * * * *
Joe came in behind Arden, and unobtrusively slid to one side of the
door, and watched the men around the table laughing and joking.
Arden said:
"Fellas, I'd like you to meet a new crew member."
The laughing and joking stopped, and the eyes of eleven men measured
Joe Wilding. Black Tom winked at Joe and went back to his eating.
Whitey Burnet, after a brief angry glance, turned back to his plate.