The Space Trilogy (9 page)

Naturally this started many theories circulating. One was that the ship had been chartered secretly by Prince Edward, who as everybody knew had been trying to get out into space for years. It seems the British Parliament wouldn't let him go, the heir to the throne being considered too valuable to risk on such dangerous amusements as space-flight. However, the Prince is such a determined young man that no one will be surprised if he turns up on Mars one day, having disguised himself and signed on with the crew. If he ever tries anything like this, he'll find plenty of people ready to help him.

But Peter, of course, had a much more sinister theory. The arrival of a mysterious and untalkative spaceship fitted in perfectly with his ideas on inter-planetary crime. If you wanted to rob a space-station, he argued, how else would you set about it?

We laughed at him, pointing out that the
Cygnus
had done her best to arouse suspicion rather than allay it. Besides, she was a small ship and couldn't carry a very large crew. The two men who'd come across to the Station were probably all she had aboard.

By this time, however, Peter was so wrapped up in his theories that he wouldn't listen to reason, and because it amused us we let him carry on, and even encouraged him. But, of course, we didn't take him seriously.

The two men from the
Cygnus
would come aboard the Station at least once a day to collect any mail from Earth and to read the papers and magazines in the rest room. That was natural enough, if they had nothing else to do, but Peter thought it highly suspicious. It proved, according to him, that they were reconnoitring the Station and getting to know their way around. 'To lead the way, I suppose,' said someone sarcastically, 'for a boarding-party with cutlasses.'

Then, unexpectedly, Peter turned up fresh evidence that made us take him a little more seriously. He discovered from the Signal Section that our mysterious guests were continually receiving messages from Earth, using their own radio on a waveband not allocated for official or commercial services. There was nothing illegal about that—they were operating in one of the 'free ether' bands—but once again it was distinctly unusual.
And they were using code.
That, of course, was very unusual, to say the least. Peter was naturally very excited at all this. 'It proves that there's something funny going on,' he said belligerently. 'No one engaged on honest business would behave like this. I won't say that they're going in for something as—well, old-fashioned—as piracy. But what about drug smuggling?'

'I should hardly think,' put in Tim Benton mildly, 'that the number of drug addicts in the Martian and Venusian colonies would make this very profitable.'

'I wasn't thinking of smuggling in
that
direction,' retorted Peter scornfully. 'Suppose someone's discovered a drug on one of the planets and is smuggling it back to Earth?'

'You got
that
idea from the last Dan Drummond adventure but two,' said somebody. 'You know, the one they had on last year—all about the Venus lowlands.'

'There's only one way of finding out,' continued Peter stubbornly. 'I'm going over to have a look. Who'll come with me?'

There were no volunteers. I'd have offered to go, but I knew he wouldn't accept me.

'What, all afraid?' Peter taunted.

'Just not interested,' replied Norman. 'I've got better ways of wasting my time.'

Then, to our surprise, Karl Hasse came forward.

'I'll go,' he said. Tm getting fed up with the whole affair, and it's the only way we can stop Peter harping on it.'

It Was against safety regulations for Peter to make a trip of this distance by himself, so unless Karl had volunteered he would have had to have dropped the idea.

'When are you going?' asked Tim.

'They come over for their mail every afternoon, and when they're both aboard the Station we'll wait for the next eclipse period and slip out.'

That was the fifty minutes when the Station was passing through Earth's shadow: it was very difficult to see small objects at any distance then, so they had little chance of detection. They would also have some difficulty in finding the
Cygnus
, since she would reflect very little starlight and would probably be invisible from more than a mile away. Tim Benton pointed this out.

'I'll borrow a Beeper from Stores,' replied Peter. 'Joe Evans will let me sign for one.'

A Beeper, I should explain, is a tiny radar set, not much bigger than a hand-torch, which is used to locate objects that have drifted away from the Station. It's got a range of a few miles on anything as large as a space-suit, and could pick up a ship a lot farther away. You wave it around in space and when its beam hits anything you hear a series of 'Beeps'. The closer you get to the reflecting object, the faster the beeps come, and with a little practice you can judge distances pretty accurately.

Tim Benton finally gave his grudging consent for this adventure, on condition that Peter kept in radio touch all the time and told him exactly what was happening. So I heard the whole thing over the loudspeaker in one of the workshops. It was easy to imagine that I was out there with Peter and Karl, in that star-studded darkness, with the great shadowy Earth below me, and the Station slowly receding behind.

They had taken a careful sight of the
Cygnus
while she was still visible by reflected sunlight, and had waited for five minutes after we'd gone into eclipse before launching themselves in the right direction. Their course was so accurate that they had no need to use the Beeper: the
Cygnus
came looming up at them at just about the calculated moment, and they slowed to a halt.

'All clear,' reported Peter, and I could sense the excitement in his voice. 'There's no sign of life.'

'Can you see through the ports?' asked Tim. There was silence for a while, apart from heavy breathing and an occasional metallic click from the space-suit's controls. Then we heard a 'bump' and an exclamation from Peter.

That was pretty careless,' came Karl's voice. 'If there's anyone else inside, they'll think they've run into an asteroid.'

'I couldn't help it,' protested Peter. 'My foot slipped on the jet control.' Then we heard some scrabbling noises as he made his way over the hull.

'I can't see into the cabin,' he reported. 'It's too dark. But there's certainly no one around. I'll go aboard. Is everything O.K.?'

'Yes: our two suspects are playing chess in the recreation room. Norman's looked at the board and says they'll be a long time yet.' Tim chuckled: I could see he was enjoying himself and taking the whole affair as a great joke. I was beginning to find it quite exciting.

'Beware of booby-traps,' Tim continued. Tm sure no experienced pirates would walk out of their ship and leave it unguarded. Maybe there's a robot waiting in the air-lock with a ray-gun!'

Even Peter thought this unlikely, and said so in no uncertain tones. We heard more subdued bumpings as he moved round the hull to the air-lock, and then there was a long pause while he examined the controls. They're standard on every ship, and there's no way of locking them from outside, so he did not expect much difficulty here.

'It's opening,' he announced tersely. 'I'm going aboard.'

There was another anxious interval. When Peter spoke again, he was much fainter owing to the shielding effect of the ship's hull, but we could still hear him when we turned the volume up.

The control room looks perfectly normal,' he reported, more than a trace of disappointment in his voice. 'We're going to have a look at the cargo.'

'It's a little late to mention this,' said Tim, 'but do you realize that
you're
committing piracy, or something very much like it? I suppose the lawyers would call it "unauthorized entry of a spaceship without the knowledge and consent of the owners". Anyone know what the penalty is?'

Nobody did, though there were several alarming suggestions. Then Peter called to us again.

This is a nuisance. The hatch to the stores is locked. I'm afraid we'll have to give up—they'll have taken the keys with them.'

'Not necessarily,' we heard Karl reply. 'You know how often people leave a spare set in case they lose the one they're carrying. They always hide it in what they imagine is a safe place, but you can usually deduce where it is.'

Then go ahead, Sherlock. Is it still all clear at your end?'

'Yes: the game's nowhere near finished. They seem to have settled down for the afternoon.'

To everyone's extreme surprise, Karl found the keys in less than ten minutes. They had been tucked into a little recess under the instrument panel.

'Here we go!' shouted Peter gleefully.

'For goodness' sake don't interfere with anything,' cautioned Tim, now wishing he'd never allowed the exploit. 'Just have a look round and come straight home.'

There was no reply: Peter was too busy with the door. We heard the muffled 'clank' as he finally got it open and there were scrapings as he slid through the entrance. He was still wearing his space-suit, so that he could keep in touch with us over the radio. A moment later we heard him shriek: 'Karl! Look at this!'

'What's the fuss?' replied Karl, still as calm as ever. 'You nearly blew in my ear drums.'

We didn't help matters by shouting our own queries, and it was some time before Tim restored order.

'Stop yelling, everybody! Now, Peter, tell us exactly what you've found.'

I could hear Peter give a sort of gulp as he collected his breath.

'This ship is full of
guns
!' he gasped. 'Honest—I'm not fooling! I can see about twenty of them, clipped to the walls. And they're not like any guns I've ever seen before. They've got funny nozzles and there are red and green cylinders fixed beneath them. I can't imagine what they're supposed—'

'Karl!' Tim ordered. 'Is Peter pulling our legs?'

'No,' came the reply. 'It's perfectly true. I don't like to say this, but if there
are
such things as ray-guns, we're looking at them now.'

'What shall we do?' wailed Peter. He didn't seem at all happy at finding this support for his theories.

'Don't touch anything!' ordered Tim. 'Give us a detailed description of everything you can see, and then come straight back.'

But before Peter could obey, we all had a second and much worse shock. For suddenly we heard Karl gasp: 'What's that?' There was silence for a moment: then a voice I could hardly recognize as Peter's whispered: 'There's a ship outside. It's connecting up. What shall we do?'

'Make a run for it,' whispered Tim urgently—as if whispering made any difference. 'Shoot out of the lock as quickly as you can and come back to the Station by different routes. It's dark for another ten minutes—they probably won't see you.'

'Too late,' said Karl, still hanging on to the last shreds of his composure. 'They're already coming aboard. There goes the outer door now.'

Five
STAR TURN

For a moment no one could think of anything to say. Then Tim, still whispering, breathed into the microphone: 'Keep calm! If you tell them that you're in radio contact with us, they won't dare touch you.'

This, I couldn't help thinking, was being rather optimistic. Still, it might be good for our companions' morale, which was probably at a pretty low ebb.

'I'm going to grab one of those guns,' Peter called. 'I don't know how they work, but it may scare them. Karl, you take one as well.'

'For heaven's sake be careful!' warned Tim, now looking very worried. He turned to Ronnie.

'Ron, call the Commander and tell him what's happening—quickly! And get a telescope on the
Cygnus
to see what ship's over there.'

We should have thought of this before, of course, but it had been forgotten in the general excitement.

They're in the control room now,' reported Peter, 'I can see them. They're not wearing space-suits, and they aren't carrying guns. That gives us quite an advantage.'

I suspected that Peter was beginning to feel a little happier, wondering if he might yet be a hero.

'I'm going out to meet them,' he announced suddenly. 'It's better than waiting in here, where they're bound to find us. Come on, Karl.'

We waited breathlessly. I don't know what we expected—anything, I imagine, from a salvo of shots to the hissing or crackling of whatever mysterious weapons our friends were carrying. The one thing we didn't anticipate was what actually happened.

We heard Peter say (and I give him full credit for sounding quite calm): 'What are you doing here, and who are you?'

There was silence for what seemed an age. I could picture the scene as clearly as if I'd been present—Peter and Karl standing at bay behind their weapons, the men they had challenged wondering whether to surrender or to make a fight for it.

Then, unbelievably, someone laughed. There were a few words we couldn't catch, in what seemed to be English, but they were swept away by a roar of merriment. It sounded as if three or four people were all laughing simultaneously, at the tops of their voices.