Читать книгу Wanderers of the Wolf-Moon - Nelson S. Bond - Страница 6

Sparks snapped off the switches and followed him to the door of the radio turret. Sparks was a stunted, usually-grinning, little redhead named Hannigan. But he wasn’t grinning now. He laid an anxious hand on Greg’s arm. “If I was you,” he said, “if I was you, Malcolm, I don’t think I’d say nothing to the boss about this. Not just yet, anyhow.”

Greg said, “Why not?”

Sparks spluttered and fussed and made heavy weather of answering.

“Well, for one thing, it ain’t important. It would only worry him. And then there’s the womenfolks, they scare easy. Which of course they ain’t no cause to. Atmospherics don’t mean nothing. I’ve rode out worse storms than this—plenty of times. And in worse crates than the Carefree.”

Greg studied him carefully from behind trim plasta-rimmed spectacles. He drew a deep breath. He said levelly, “So it’s that bad, eh, Sparks?”

“What bad? I just told you—”

“I know. Sparks, I’m not a professional spaceman. But I’ve studied astrogation as few Earthlubbers have. It’s been my hobby for years. And I think I know what we’re up against.

“We hit a warp-eddy last night. We’ve been trapped in a vortex for more than eight hours. Lord only knows how many hundreds of thousands of miles we’ve been borne off our course. And now we’ve blasted into a super-ionized belt of atmospherics. Your radio signals are blanketed. You can’t get signals in or out. We’re a deaf-mute speck of metal being whirled headlong through space. Isn’t that it?”

“I don’t know what—” began Sparks hotly. Then he stopped, studied his companion thoughtfully, nodded. “O.Q.,” he confessed, “that’s it. But we ain’t licked yet. We got three good men on the bridge. Townsend...Graves...Langhorn. They’ll pull out of this if anybody can. And they ain’t no sense in scaring the Old Man and his family.”

“I won’t tell them,” said Greg. “I won’t tell them unless I have to. But between you and me, what are the odds against us, Sparks?”

The radioman shrugged.

“Who knows? Vortices are unpredictable. Maybe the damn thing will toss us out on the very spot it picked us up. Maybe it will give us the old chuckeroo a million miles the other side of Pluto. Maybe it will crack us up on an asteroid or satellite. No way of telling till it happens.”

“And the controls?”

“As useless,” said Sparks, “as a cow in a cyclone.”

“So?”

“We sit tight,” said Sparks succinctly, “and hope.”

Malcolm nodded quietly. He took off his spectacles, breathed on them, wiped them, replaced them. He was tall and fair; in his neat, crisply pressed business suit he appeared even slimmer than he was. But there was no nervousness in his movements. He moved measuredly. “Well,” he said, “that appears to be that. I’m going up to the dining dome.”

Sparks stared at him querulously.

“You’re a queer duck, Malcolm. I don’t think you’ve got a nerve in your body.”

“Nerves are a luxury I can’t afford,” replied Greg. “If anything happens—and if there’s time to do so—let me know.” He paused at the door. “Good luck,” he said.

“Clear ether!” said Sparks mechanically. He stared after the other man wonderingly for a long moment, then went back to his control banks, shaking his head and muttering.

* * * *

Gregory Malcolm climbed down the Jacob’s-ladder and strode briskly through the labyrinthine corridors that were the entrails of the space yacht Carefree. He paused once to peer through a perilens set into the ship’s port plates. It was a weird sight that met his gaze. Not space, ebony-black and bejewelled with a myriad flaming splotches of color; not the old, familiar constellations treading their ever-lasting, inexorable paths about the perimeter of Sol’s tiny universe, but a shimmering webwork of light, so tortured-violet that the eyes ached to look upon it. This was the mad typhoon of space-atmospherics through which the Carefree was now being twisted, topsy-turvy, toward a nameless goal.

He moved on, approaching at last the quartzite-paned observation rotunda which was the dining dome of the ship.

His footsteps slowed as he composed himself to face those within. As he hesitated in the dimly-lighted passage, a trick of lights on glass mirrored to him the room beyond. He could see the others while they were as yet unaware of his presence. Their voices reached him clearly.

J. Foster Andrews, his employer and the employer of the ten thousand or more men and women who worked for Galactic Metals Corporation, dominated the head of the table. He was a plump, impatient little Napoleon. Opposite him, calm, graceful, serene, tastefully garbed and elaborately coiffured even here in deep space, three weeks from the nearest beauty shop, sat his wife, Enid.

On Andrews’ right sat his sister, Maud. Not young, features plain as a mud fence, but charming despite her age and homeliness simply because of her eyes; puckish, shrewdly intelligent eyes, constantly aglint with suppressed humor at—guessed Greg—the amusing foibles and frailties of those about her.

She gave her breakfast the enthusiastic attention of one too old and shapeless to be concerned with such folderol as calories and dietetics, pausing only from time to time to share smidgeons of food with a watery-eyed scrap of white, curly fluff beside her chair. Her pet poodle, whom she called by the opprobrious title of “Cuddles.”

On J. Foster’s left sat his daughter, Crystal. She it was who caused Gregory Malcolm’s staid, respectable heart to give a little lurch as he glimpsed her reflected vision—all gold and crimson and cream—in the glistening walls. If Crystal was her name, so, too, was crystal her loveliness.

But—Greg shook his head—but she was not for him. She was already pledged to the young man seated beside her. Ralph Breadon. He turned to murmur something to her as Greg watched; Greg saw and admired and disliked his rangy height, his sturdy, well-knit strength, the rich brownness of his skin, his hair, his eyes.

The sound of his own name startled Greg.

“Malcolm!” called the man at the head of the table. “Malcolm! Now where in blazes is he, anyhow?” he demanded of no one in particular, everyone in general. He spooned a dab of liquid gold from a Limoges preserve jar, tongued it suspiciously, frowned. “Bitter!” he complained.

“It’s the very best Martian honey,” said his wife.

“Drylands clover,” added Crystal.

“It’s still bitter,” said J. Foster petulantly.

His sister sniffed. “Nonsense! It’s delightful.”

“I say it’s bitter,” repeated Andrews sulkily. And lifted his voice again. “Malcolm! Where are you?”

“You called me, sir?” said Malcolm, moving into the room. He nodded politely to the others. “Good morning, Mrs. Andrews...Miss Andrews...Mr. Breadon....”

“Oh, sit down!” snapped J. Foster. “Sit down here and stop bobbing your head like a teetotum! Had your breakfast? The honey’s no good; it’s bitter.” He glared at his sister challengingly. “Where have you been, anyway? What kind of secretary are you? Have you been up to the radio turret? How’s the market today? Is Galactic up or down?”

Malcolm said, “I don’t know, sir.”

“Fine! Fine!” Andrews rattled on automatically before the words registered. Then he started, his face turning red. “Eh? What’s that? Don’t know! What do you mean, you don’t know? I pay you to—”

“There’s no transmission, sir,” said Greg quietly.

“No trans—nonsense! Of course there’s transmission! I put a million credits into this ship. Finest space-yacht ever built. Latest equipment throughout. Sparks is drunk, that’s what you mean! Well, you hop right up there and—”

* * * *

Maud Andrews put down her fork with a clatter. “Oh, for goodness sakes, Jonathan, shut up and give the boy time to explain! He’s standing there with his mouth gaping like a rain-spout, trying to get a word in edgewise! What’s the trouble, Gregory?” She turned to Greg, as Jonathan Foster Andrews wheezed into startled silence. “That?”

She glanced at the quartzite dome, beyond which the veil of iridescence wove and cross-wove and shimmered like a pallid aurora.

Greg nodded. “Yes, Miss Andrews.”

Enid Andrews spoke languidly from the other end of the table.

“But what is it, Gregory? A local phenomenon?”

“You might call it that,” said Greg, selecting his words cautiously. “It’s an ionized field into which we’ve blasted. It—it—shouldn’t stay with us long. But while it persists, our radio will be blanketed out.”

Breadon’s chestnut head came up suddenly, sharply.

“Ionization! That means atmosphere!”

Greg said, “Yes.”

“And an atmosphere means a body in space somewhere near—” Breadon stopped, bit his lip before the appeal in Malcolm’s eyes, tried to pass it off easily. “Oh, well—a change of scenery, what?”

But the moment of alarm in his voice had not passed unnoticed. Crystal Andrews spoke for all of them, her voice preternaturally quiet.

“You’re hiding something, Malcolm. What is it? Is there—danger?”

But Greg didn’t have to answer that question. From the doorway a harsh, defiantly strident voice answered for him. The voice of Bert Andrews, Crystal’s older brother.

“Danger? You’re damn right there’s danger! What’s the matter with you folks—are you all deaf, dumb and blind? We’ve been caught in a space-vortex for hours. Now we’re in the H-layer of a planet we can’t even see—and in fifteen minutes or fifteen seconds we may all be smashed as flat as pancakes!”

The proclamation brought them out of their chairs. Greg’s heart sank; his vain plea, “Mr. Andrews—” was lost in the medley of Crystal’s sudden gasp, Enid Andrews’ short, choking scream, J. Foster’s bellowing roar at his only son.

“Bert—you’re drunk!”

Bert weaved precariously from the doorway, laughed in his father’s face.

“Sure I’m drunk! Why not? If you’re smart you’ll get drunk, too. The whole damn lot of you!” He flicked a derisive hand toward Greg. “You too, Boy Scout! What were you trying to do—hide the bad news from them? Well, it’s no use. Everybody might as well know the worst. We’re gone gooses...geeses...aw, what the hell! Dead ducks!” He fell into a chair, sprawled there laughing mirthlessly with fear riding the too-high notes of his laughter.

J. Foster turned to his secretary slowly. His ire had faded; there was only deep concern in his voice.

“Is he telling the truth, Malcolm?”

Greg said soberly, “Partly, sir. He’s overstating the danger—but there is danger. We are caught in a space-vortex, and as Mr. Breadon realized, the presence of these ionics means we’re in the Heaviside-layer of some heavenly body. But we may not crack up.”

Maud Andrews glanced at him shrewdly.

“Is there anything we can do?”

“Not a thing. The officers on the bridge are doing everything possible.”

“In that case,” said the older woman, “we might as well finish our breakfast. Here, Cuddles! Come to momsy!” She sat down again. Greg looked at her admiringly. Ralph Breadon stroked his brown jaw. He said, “The life-skiffs?”

“A last resort,” said Greg. “Sparks promised he’d let me know if it were necessary. We’ll hope it’s not—”

But it was a vain hope, vainly spoken in the last, vain moment. For even as he phrased the hopeful words, came the sound of swift, racing footsteps up the corridor. Into the dining dome burst Hannigan, eyes hot with excitement. And his cry dispelled Greg’s final hopes for safety.

“Everybody—the Number Four life-skiff—quick! We’ve been caught in a grav-drag and we’re going to crash!”