Читать книгу Vandals of the Void - James Morgan Walsh - Страница 4
ОглавлениеSanders Acts
FEELING free of the cabin I sat down to think the matter out. Some space-ships overdue--two others reporting excessive cold though the heaters were working all right--that was all. Yet it was enough to galvanize Harran to activity, enough in his opinion to justify him calling me on duty.
What did it mean? What was that odd hint of alien forces? One felt disposed to say nonsense.
Nothing is nonsense nowadays. Less than a century ago mankind sighed because there was nothing left to explore. Today we have reached beyond the world. We have discovered other worlds or had them discover us--not quite the same as I may some day relate. At least we know that we have much to learn.
We have set foot on four of the nine planets, the other five are in the process of being explored and we are not without hopes that soon the Galaxy may be penetrated by our space liners. Not much when one comes to think of it.
Idle speculation, of course, which took me nowhere. Hume, I must see and talk to. It was clearly a matter of which he should be informed.
I got up in search of him but the moment I sealed the door behind me I turned the other way and went instead down to my own cabin.
Everything was as I had left it. My baggage was still packed. My steward would have opened it and stowed my things away in the ordinary course had I not warned him to leave it alone. There were things in it I had no wish for anyone to see.
I opened one grip, delved down t the bottom and sighed with relief as I felt my hand touch the cold metal of the box I had hidden there. It was sealed and locked but I broke the one and undid the other and drew out the ray tube from its nest of cottonwool.
It was a queer little weapon, six inches long and no thicker than a lead pencil, but it could do deadly work up to fifty yards. I slipped the full magazine of twelve charges, no bigger than match heads, into the hollow butt and slid the catch over. A spare tube and the two thousand extra charges that were still in the box made me hesitate.
There was a little ledge over my bed, One of the supporting girders of the deck above rested on the partition separating my cabin from its neighbor, formed an angle and a dark shelf where the light did not penetrate. I slipped my little box in there, pushed it far back so that no abrupt motion of the ship would dislodge it.
Then I went in search of Captain Hume. On the way up to the control-room I slipped my silver badge out of my pocket and fastened it in my coat. A warning would not hurt him. He would guess the moment he saw it and not be altogether taken by surprise.
A light metal ladder--had it been detached I could have carried it easily in one hand--led from the promenade deck to the control deck above. The upper end of it was closed by a bar upped into place, charged, as I knew too well from experience, with a current that would give a nasty shock to any unauthorized person who attempted to force a passage.
One of the crew stood guard beside it, a ray tube in hand. It was all more or less show for not once in a hundred trips does the need arise to use it. But routine is routine. The man flung the tube forward dramatically as my head appeared above the level of the deck flooring.
"I want to see Captain Hume," I said. "It's important. The name is Sanders. "
As I spoke I kept my hand clutched over the left lapel of my coat. It looked like a purely nervous gesture such as any man might make but it was not. I did it of design, to hide the blaze of the badge pinned to my coat. I had no mind to broadcast my service before the appropriate moment.
THE fellow stared doubtfully at me. "Stay there," he said harshly. I could see him plainer now, as he could see me. A touch of the Martian in him, I thought, though I could not be sure.
The scrutiny no doubt satisfied him of my lack of evil intent for he touched a button on the rail beside him and the bar lifted, giving me passage. The pressure of the button, too, must have set a signal for Hume, for even as I reached the deck level a door opened and a face looked out.
It was Hume himself. He looked by no means pleased to see me. Perhaps from what had gone before he already guessed at the possibilities of disturbance behind me.
"You wanted to see me?" he said. "What is the trouble now, Jack?"
I slanted an eye toward the control room. "You're not alone?" I said.
"Something for my private ear?" he said with a frown. "Well, you can say it just as well out here. There are four pairs of ears in there, you know."
I dropped my hand from my lapel, and the flash of the badge caught his eye. His face went nearly purple at the sight.
"By the Planets!" he exploded. "This is intolerable! No man's command is his own these days."
"Steady," I hushed him. "It's not as bad as that. I've no wish to supersede you. What I want is cooperation. I'll tell you why."
He cooled down at that and I gave him the gist of my communicator message. "I don't like it," he said at the end. "There may be nothing in it--on the other hand there may be a lot. What am I to do?"
"What I'd like you to do, if you don't mind;" I said mildly, "is this. Call me the moment you sight or find your instruments recording anything out of the ordinary. I'd like a chat with any other space-ship we pass. And, of course, if we meet a Guards Patrol..."
"May the Guards fuse!" he snapped. "No, I didn't mean that, Jack. But no skipper likes to think that at any click of the clock he may cease to be master in his own ship. You know that."
"I know. I'd prefer not to take command. I've never done it yet where I could find a skipper willing to work in conjunction with me."
I held out my hand. For a moment he hesitated, then gripped it.
"There will be no trouble between us, that I'll warrant you," he assured. "I'll see you're kept posted and whoever is on watch will have instructions to call you at any hour of the twenty-four if anything appears."
He stopped. His eyes lingered on my badge. I slipped the badge into my pocket. "There's no need," I said, "to advertise trouble before it comes."
He looked relieved. "I'm having you put at my table," he remarked. "I'll see you there the first meal I'm free. By the way, do you want to scan--"
"The ship's papers?" I said and hesitated.
He met me halfway. "Perhaps it would be better if you did. I'll have the purser warned. He's a discreet soul. You'd better confide in him."
He walked back with me to the bar at the head of the stairs and spoke to the man on guard. "Mr. Sanders is to be admitted whenever he wishes," he said and the man saluted. I fancied he looked at me more curiously than ever and I wondered if he suspected my official status.
Parey, the purser, was still in the throes of documentation when I appeared but he took my intrusion in good part. "I've seen you before," he said. "What's it now? Something broken loose?"
"I hope not," I returned. "I'm coming to you in confidence though." I told him much of what I had told Hume.
I THOUGHT he was a little shaken by the revelation but he tried to make light of it.
"You fellows are always alarmists," he said, "particularly the shore-end." It was odd how the old sea-jargon still lingered in speech.
"The shore-end, AS you call it," I reminded him, "is staffed with men who have all graduated in space."
"That's the trouble," he grinned "They don't realize that conditions have changed since they came back to the atmosphere. However, here's the passenger list, shore-compiled, so any errors aren't mine. You'll mark that."
I took it--the crew list too. Nothing startling in either--an average ship': company, an average passenger list Earthmen preponderantly, the minority of Martians and Venusians about equally balanced. One name caught my eye as I ran down the list.
"Nomo Kell?" I said puzzled. "Queer name, that. It isn't of Earth origin."
Parey smiled. "Nor Mars nor Venus either, I'll be bound. Like to see his prints?"
He meant the duplicate identification papers and photographs that are always handed in for checking at the office when an interplanetary passage is booked. Strictly speaking Parey had no right to offer me the documents. They are supposed to be confidential and ever had I demanded sight of them he should have surrendered them only under protest. But I think he realized that in my case the more I knew the less harm was likely to come to anyone.
The details were not illuminating They ran to the effect that Nomo Kell was a Martian citizen, qualification the statutory one of twenty years residence. The spaces that should have contained his birthplace, parentage and so on were bracketed by the one word Unknown.
"Queer," I commented.
"Queerer still," said Parey as he handed me the photo. "Look at this and see why."
I held the thing up to the light and looked it over. The colors came out exceptionally well and threw the man's, features into vivid relief. The scale at the side of the picture showed that he stood between seven and eight feet in height, a giant of his kind.
His eyes were an odd kind of purple. Even in that color print they seemed extraordinarily alive. His skin, face ears and hands, was an odd red that gave the suggestion of having been boiled.
But the queerest thing of all about him was the shape of his head, I had never seen anything like it before. It was crested. A ridge of something that looked like horn started a little above his forehead and ran back, as I found from the note, to his occiput.
"Where in the Universe does such a one come from?" I asked. "Is he a freak?"
Parey frowned. "Anything but that," he said. "He came across on our last drift. In talk with some other passengers certain questions about Mercury came up. He flatly contradicted the others' views, told them quite definitely they were wrong, let it appear that in some way he knew what he was talking about. See the suggestion?"
"That he is a Mercurian. But that's nonsense."
PAREY looked at me owlishly. "Because we haven't made that planet yet eh? Too close to the Sun our scientists say, too risky. Perhaps so. Nonetheless it would be easier for Mercurians, granted there are any such, to come to us than-it would be for us to go to them."
"We don't even know it is inhabited," I pointed out.
"We don't even know that it isn't," he countered.
He was right there. I drew up a report that night before I went to bed, condensed it as much as possible and took it to the signals room for transmission to Harran. The operator looked it over in a puzzled fashion.
"What the blazes is this?" he asked. "Don't you know all messages must be written in a recognizable tongue?"
"That doesn't apply where I'm concerned," I said. "Send it as it stands."
"Why?" he said, a trifle defiantly.
I showed him why, He stared at my badge with a droop to his lip, It was marvellous the effect that little silver shape could have on the recalcitrant.
I could see, however, that he was still curious as to the language in which the message was written. I did not tell him it was a tongue that had ceased to be a living language on Earth nearly fifteen hundred years ago. He was too young to know that it was only three-quarters of a century since it had ceased to be taught in the schools as a so-called classical language.
I waited until the fading of the helio glow showed the message had gone through and the flash-back brought an acknowledgment of its receipt. Then I went off with the intention of turning in.
I had been but a few hours on the Cosmos but in that short space of time my plans had been materially altered. What else might happen before we entered the Martian atmosphere was purely a matter of conjecture. I preferred not to speculate.
