The Space Trilogy (75 page)

This was a mystery the astronomers would have to solve for themselves. He did not imagine that it would take them very long, when they really turned their minds to the subject.

The tractor came crawling cautiously down the steep inner slopes of the great walled-plain, and the latticework of the telescopes appeared on the horizon. They looked, Sadler thought, exactly like a couple of factory chimneys surrounded by scaffolding. Even in his short stay here, he had grown quite fond of them and had come to think of them as personalities, just as did the men who used them. He could share the astronomer's concern that any harm might befall these superb instruments, which had brought knowledge back to Earth from a hundred thousand million light-years away in space.

A towering cliff cut them off from the sun, and darkness fell abruptly as they rolled into shadow. Overhead, the stars began to reappear as Sadler's eyes automatically adjusted for the change in light. He stared up into the northern sky, and saw that Wheeler was doing the same.

Nova Draconis
was still among the brightest stars in the sky, but it was fading fast. In a few days, it would be no more brilliant than Sirius; in a few months, it would be beyond the grasp of the unaided eye. There was, surely, some message here, some symbol half glimpsed on the frontiers of imagination. Science would learn much from
N. Draconis,
but what would it teach the ordinary world of men?

Only this, thought Sadler. The heavens might blaze with portents, the galaxy might burn with the beacon lights of detonating stars, but man would go about his own affairs with a sublime indifference. He was busy with the planets now, and the stars would have to wait. He would not be overawed by anything that they could do; and in his own good time, he would deal with them as he considered fit.

Neither rescued nor rescuers had much to say on the last lap of the homeward journey. Wheeler was obviously beginning to suffer from delayed shock, and his hands had developed a nervous tremble. Jamieson merely sat and watched the Observatory approaching, as if he had never seen it before. When they drove through the long shadow of the thousand-centimetre telescope, he turned to Sadler and asked: "Did they get everything under cover in time?"

"I believe so," Sadler replied. "I've not heard of any damage."

Jamieson nodded absent-mindedly. He showed no sign of pleasure or relief; he had reached emotional saturation, and nothing could really affect him now until the impact of the last few hours had worn away.

Sadler left them as soon as the tractor drove into the underground garage, and hurried to his room to write up his report. This was outside his terms of reference, but he felt glad that at least he was able to do something constructive.

There was a sense of anticlimax now—a feeling that the storm had spent its fury and would not return. In the aftermath of the battle, Sadler felt far less depressed than he had for days. It seemed to him that both Earth and the Federation must be equally overawed by the forces they had released, and both equally anxious for peace.

For the first time since he had left Earth, he dared to think once more of his future. Though it could still not be wholly dismissed, the danger of a raid on Earth itself now seemed remote. Jeannette was safe, and soon he might be seeing her again. At least he could tell her where he was, since events had made any further secrecy absurd.

But there was just one nagging frustration in Sadler's mind. He hated to leave a job undone, yet in the nature of things this mission of his might remain forever uncompleted. He would have given so much to have known whether or not there had been a spy in the Observatory…

Nineteen

The liner
Pegasus,
with three hundred passengers and a crew of sixty, was only four days out from Earth when the war began and ended. For some hours there had been a great confusion and alarm on board, as the radio messages from Earth and Federation were intercepted. Captain Halstead had been forced to take firm measures with some of the passengers, who wished to turn back rather than go on to Mars and an uncertain future as prisoners of war. It was not easy to blame them; Earth was still so close that it was a beautiful silver crescent, with the Moon a fainter and smaller echo beside it. Even from here, more than a million kilometres away, the energies that had just flamed across the face of the Moon had been clearly visible, and had done little to restore the morale of the passengers.

They could not understand that the law of celestial mechanics admit of no appeal. The
Pegasus
was barely clear of Earth, and still weeks from her intended goal. But she had reached her orbiting speed, and had launched herself like a giant projectile on the path that would lead inevitably to Mars, under the guidance of the sun's all-pervading gravity. There could be no turning back: that would be a manoeuvre involving an impossible amount of propellant. The
Pegasus
carried enough dust in her tanks to match velocity with Mars at the end of her orbit, and to allow for reasonable course corrections en route. Her nuclear reactors could provide energy for a dozen voyages—but sheer energy was useless if there was no propellant mass to eject. Whether she wanted to or not, the
Pegasus
was headed for Mars with the inevitability of a runaway streetcar. Captain Halstead did not anticipate a pleasant trip.

The words MAYDAY, MAYDAY came crashing out of the radio and banished all other preoccupations of the
Pegasus
and her crew. For three hundred years, in air and sea and space, these words had alerted rescue organizations, had made captains change their course and race to the aid of stricken comrades. But there was so little that the commander of a space-ship could do; in the whole history of astronautics, there have been only three cases of a successful rescue operation in space.

There are two main reasons for this, only one of which is widely advertised by the shipping lines. Any serious disaster in space is extremely rare; almost all accidents occur during planet-fall or departure. Once a ship has reached space, and has swung into the orbit that will lead it effortlessly to its destination, it is safe from all hazards except internal, mechanical troubles. Such troubles occur more often than the passengers ever know, but are usually trivial and are quietly dealt with by the crew. All space-ships, by law, are built in several independent sections, any one of which can serve as a refuge in an emergency. So the worst that ever happens is that some uncomfortable hours are spent by all while an irate captain breathes heavily down the neck of his engineering officer.

The second reason why space-rescues are so rare is that they are almost impossible, from the nature of things. Spaceships travel at enormous velocities on exactly calculated paths, which do not permit of major alterations—as the passengers of the
Pegasus
were now beginning to appreciate. The orbit any ship follows from one planet to another is unique; no other vessel will ever follow the same path again, among the changing patterns of the planets. There are no "shipping-lanes" in space, and it is rare indeed for one ship to pass within a million kilometres of another. Even when this does happen, the difference of speed is almost always so great that contact is impossible.

All these thoughts flashed through Captain Halstead's mind when the message came down to him from Signals. He read the position and course of the distressed ship—the velocity figure must have been garbled in transmission, it was so ridiculously high. Almost certainly, there was nothing he could do—they were too far away, and it would take days to reach them.

Then he noticed the name at the end of the message. He thought he was familiar with every ship in space, but this was a new one to him. He stared in bewilderment for a moment before he suddenly realized just who was calling for his assistance…

Enmity vanishes when men are in peril on sea or in space. Captain Halstead leaned over his control desk and said: "Signals! Get me their captain."

"He's on circuit, sir. You can go ahead."

Captain Halstead cleared his throat. This was a novel experience, and not a pleasant one. It gave him no sort of satisfaction to tell even an enemy that he could do nothing to save him.

"Captain Halstead,
Pegasus,
speaking," he began. "You're too far away for contact. Our operational reserve is less than ten kilometres a second. I've no need to compute—I can see it's impossible. Have you any suggestions? Please confirm your velocity; we were given an incorrect figure."

The reply, after a four-second time-lag that seemed doubly maddening in these circumstances, was unexpected and astonishing.

"Commodore Brennan, Federal cruiser
Acheron.
I can confirm our velocity figure. We can contact you in two hours, and will make all course corrections ourselves. We still have power, but must abandon ship in less than three hours. Our radiation shielding has gone, and the main reactor is becoming unstable. We've got manual control on it, and it will be safe for at least an hour after we reach you. But we can't guarantee it beyond then."

Captain Halstead felt the scalp crawl at the back of his neck. He did not know how a reactor could became unstable—but he knew what would happen if one did. There were a good many things about the
Acheron
he did not understand—her speed, above all—but there was one point that emerged very clearly and upon which Commodore Brennan must be left in no doubt.

"Pegasus
to
Acheron,"
he replied. "I have three hundred passengers aboard. I cannot hazard my ship if there is danger of an explosion."

"There is no danger—I can guarantee that. We will have at least five minutes' warning, which will give us ample time to get clear of you."

"Very well—I'll get my airlocks ready and my crew standing by to pass you a line."

There was a pause longer than that dictated by the sluggish progress of radio waves. Then Brennan replied:

"That's our trouble. We're cut off in the forward section. There are no external locks here, and we have only five suits among a hundred and twenty men."

Halstead whistled and turned to his navigating officer before answering.

"There's nothing we can do for them," he said. "They'll have to crack the hull to get out, and that will be the end of everyone except the five men in the suits. We can't even lend them our own suits—there'll be no way we can get them aboard without letting down the pressure." He flicked over the microphone switch.

"Pegasus
to
Acheron.
How do you suggest we can assist you?"

It was eerie to be speaking to a man who was already as good as dead. The traditions of space were as strict as those of the sea. Five men could leave the
Acheron
alive—but her captain would not be among them.

Halstead did not know that Commodore Brennan had other ideas, and had by no means abandoned hope, desperate though the situation on board the
Acheron
seemed. His chief medical officer, who had proposed the plan, was already explaining it to the crew.

"This is what we're going to do," said the small, dark man who a few months ago had been one of the best surgeons on Venus. "We can't get at the airlocks, because there's vacuum all round us and we've only got five suits. This ship was built for fighting, not for carrying passengers, and I'm afraid her designers had other matters to think about besides Standard Spaceworthiness Regs. Here we are, and we have to make the best of it.

"We'll be alongside the
Pegasus
in a couple of hours. Luckily for us, she's got big locks for loading freight and passengers: there's room for thirty or forty men to crowd into them, if they squeeze tight—
and aren't wearing suits.
Yes, I know that sounds bad, but it's not suicide. You're going to breathe space, and get away with it! I won't say it will be enjoyable, but it will be something to brag about for the rest of your lives.

"Now listen carefully. The first thing I've got to prove to you is that you can live for five minutes without breathing—in fact,
without wanting to breathe.
It's a simple trick: Yogis and magicians have known it for centuries, but there's nothing occult about it and it's based on common-sense physiology. To give you confidence, I want you to make this test."

The M.O. pulled a stop watch out of his pocket, and continued:

"When I say 'Now!' I want you to exhale completely—empty your lungs of every drop of air—and then see how long you can stay before you have to take a breath. Don't strain—just hold out until it becomes uncomfortable, then start breathing again normally. I'll start counting the seconds after fifteen, so you can tell what you managed to do. If anyone can't take the quarter minute, I'll recommend his instant dismissal from the Service."

The ripple of laughter broke the tension, as it had been intended to; then the MO held up his hand, and swept it down with a shout of "Now!" There was a great sigh as the entire company emptied its lungs; then utter silence.