Astounding Stories, April, 1931 by Various (all ebook reader txt) 📗
- Author: Various
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We had hit the meteorite. I remembered the crash. I remembered falling. I remembered striking my head.
But I was still alive. There was air to breathe and there was firm material under me. I opened my eyes.
For the first instant, it seemed I was in an utterly strange room. Nothing was familiar. Everything was—was inverted. Then I glanced upward, and I saw what had happened.
I was lying on the ceiling of the navigating room. Over my head were the charts, still glowing, the chronometers in their gimballed beds, and the television disc. Beside me, sprawled out limply, was Correy, a trickle of dried blood on his cheek. A litter of papers, chairs, framed licenses and other movable objects were strewn on and around us.
My first instinctive, foolish thought was that the ship was upside down. Man has a ground-trained mind, no matter how many years he may travel space. Then, of course, I realized that in the open void there is not top nor bottom; the illusion is supplied, in space ships, by the gravity pads. Somehow, the shock of impact had reversed the polarity of the leads to the pads, and they had become repulsion pads. That was why I had dropped from the floor to the ceiling.
All this flashed through my mind in an instant as I dragged myself toward Correy. Dragged myself because my head was throbbing so that I dared not stand up, and one shoulder, my left, was numb.
or an instant I thought that Correy was dead. Then, as I bent over him, I saw a pulse leaping just under the angle of his jaw.
"Correy, old man!" I whispered. "Do you hear me?" All the formality of the Service was forgotten for the time. "Are you hurt badly?"
His eyelids flickered, and he sighed; then, suddenly, he looked up at me—and smiled!
"We're still here, sir?"
"After a fashion. Look around; see what's happened?"
He glanced about curiously, frowning. His wits were not all with him yet.
"We're in a mess, aren't we?" he grinned. "What's the matter?"
I told him what I thought, and he nodded slowly, feeling his head tenderly.
"How long ago did it happen?" he asked. "The blooming clock's upside down; can you read it?"
I could—with an effort.
"Over twenty minutes," I said. "I wonder how the rest of the men are?"
With an effort, I got to my feet and peered into the operating room. Sev[124]eral of the men were moving about, dazedly, and as I signalled to them, reassuringly, a voice hailed us from the doorway:
"Any orders, sir?"
It was Kincaide. He was peering over what had been the top of the doorway, and he was probably the most disreputable-looking officer who had ever worn the blue-and-silver uniform of the Service. His nose was bloody and swollen to twice its normal size. Both eyes were blackened, and his hair, matted with blood, was plastered in ragged swirls across his forehead.
"Yes, Mr. Kincaide; plenty of them. Round up enough of the men to locate the trouble with the gravity pads; there's a reversed connection somewhere. But don't let them make the repairs until the signal is given. Otherwise, we'll all fall on our heads again. Mr. Correy and I will take care of the injured."
he next half hour was a trying one. Two men had been killed outright, and another died before we could do anything to save him. Every man in the crew was shaken up and bruised, but by the time the check was completed, we had a good half of our personnel on duty.
Returning at last to the navigating room, I pressed the attention signal for Kincaide, and got his answer immediately.
"Located the trouble yet, Mr. Kincaide?" I asked anxiously.
"Yes, sir! Mr. Hendricks has been working with a group of men and has just made his report. They are ready when you are."
"Good!" I drew a sigh of relief. It had been easier than I thought. Pressing the general attention signal, I broadcasted the warning, giving particular instructions to the men in charge of the injured. Then I issued orders to Hendricks:
"Reverse the current in five seconds, Mr. Hendricks, and stand by for further instructions."
Hastily, then, Correy and I followed the orders we had given the men. Briefly we stood on our heads against the wall, feeling very foolish, and dreading the fall we knew was coming.
It came. We slid down the wall and lit heavily on our feet, while the litter that had been on the ceiling with us fell all around us. Miraculously, the ship seemed to have righted herself. Correy and I picked ourselves up and looked around.
"We're still operating smoothly," I commented with a sweeping glance at the instruments over the operating table. "Everything seems in order."
"Did you notice the speed indicator, sir?" asked Correy grimly. "When he fell, one of the men in the operating room must have pulled the speed lever all the way over. We're at maximum space speed, sir, and have been for nearly an hour, with no one at the controls."
e stared at each other dully. Nearly an hour, at maximum space speed—a speed seldom used except in case of great emergency. With no one at the controls, and the ship set at maximum deflection from her course.
That meant that for nearly an hour we had been sweeping into infinite space in a great arc, at a speed I disliked to think about.
"I'll work out our position at once," I said, "and in the meantime, reduce speed to normal as quickly as possible. We must get back on our course at the earliest possible moment."
We hurried across to the charts that were our most important aides in proper navigation. By comparing the groups of stars there with our space charts of the universe, the working out of our position was ordinarily, a simple matter.
But now, instead of milky rectangles, ruled with fine black lines, with a fiery red speck in the center and the bodies of the universe grouped around in green points of light, there were[125] only nearly blank rectangles, shot through with vague, flickering lights that revealed nothing except the presence of disaster.
"The meteoric fragment wiped out some of our plates, I imagine," said Correy slowly. "The thing's useless."
I nodded, staring down at the crawling lights on the charts.
"We'll have to set down for repairs, Mr. Correy. If," I added, "we can find a place."
Correy glanced up at the attraction meter.
"I'll take a look in the big disc," he suggested. "There's a sizeable body off to port. Perhaps our luck's changed."
He bent his head under the big hood, adjusting the controls until he located the source of the registered attraction.
"Right!" he said, after a moment's careful scrutiny. "She's as big as Earth, I'd venture, and I believe I can detect clouds, so there should be atmosphere. Shall we try it, sir?"
"Yes. We're helpless until we make repairs. As big as Earth, you said? Is she familiar?"
Correy studied the image under the hood again, long and carefully.
"No, sir," he said, looking up and shaking his head. "She's a new one on me."
onning the ship first by means of the television disc, and navigating visually as we neared the strange sphere, we were soon close enough to make out the physical characteristics of this unknown world.
Our spectroscopic tests had revealed the presence of atmosphere suitable for breathing, although strongly laden with mineral fumes which, while possibly objectionable, would probably not be dangerous.
So far as we could see, there was but one continent, somewhat north of the equator, roughly triangular in shape, with its northernmost point reaching nearly to the Pole.
"It's an unexplored world, sir. I'm certain of that," said Correy. "I am sure I would have remembered that single, triangular continent had I seen it on any of our charts." In those days, of course, the Universe was by no means so well mapped as it is today.
"If not unknown, it is at least uncharted," I replied. "Rough looking country, isn't it? No sign of life, either, that the disc will reveal."
"That's as well, sir. Better no people than wild natives who might interfere with our work. Any choice in the matter of a spot on which to set her down?"
I inspected the great, triangular continent carefully. Towards the north it was a mass of snow covered mountains, some of them, from their craters, dead volcanoes. Long spurs of these ranges reached southward, with green and apparently fertile valleys between. The southern edge was covered with dense tropical vegetation; a veritable jungle.
"At the base of that central spur there seems to be a sort of plateau," I suggested. "I believe that would be a likely spot."
"Very well, sir," replied Correy, and the old Ertak, reduced to atmospheric speed, swiftly swept toward the indicated position, while Correy kept a wary eye on the surface temperature gauge, and I swept the terrain for any sign of intelligent life.
found a number of trails, particularly around the base of the foothills, but they were evidently game trails, for there were no dwelling places of any kind; no cities, no villages, not even a single habitation of any kind that the searching eyes of the disc could detect.
Correy set her down as neatly and as softly as a rose petal drifts to the ground. Roses, I may add, are a beautiful and delicate flower, with very soft petals, peculiar to my native Earth.
We opened the main exit immediately. I watched the huge, circular door back slowly out of its threads, and finally swing aside, swiftly and silently,[126] in the grip of its mighty gimbals, with the weird, unearthly feeling I have always had when about to step foot on some strange star where no man has trod before.
The air was sweet, and delightfully fresh after being cooped up for weeks in the Ertak, with her machine-made air. A little thinner, I should judge, than the air to which we were accustomed, but strangely exhilarating, and laden with a faint scent of some unknown constituent—undoubtedly the mineral element our spectroscope had revealed but not identified. Gravity, I found upon passing through the exit, was normal. Altogether an extremely satisfactory repair station.
Correy's guess as to what had happened proved absolutely accurate. Along the top of the Ertak, from amidships to within a few feet of her pointed stem, was a jagged groove that had destroyed hundreds of the bright, coppery discs, set into the outer skin of the ship, that operated our super-radio reflex charts. The groove was so deep, in places, that it must have bent the outer skin of the Ertak down against the inner skin. A foot or more—it was best not to think of what would have happened then.
y the time we completed our inspection dusk was upon us—a long, lingering dusk, due, no doubt, to the afterglow resulting from the mineral content of the air. I'm no white-skinned, stoop-shouldered laboratory man, so I'm not sure that was the real reason. It sounds logical, however.
"Mr. Correy, I think we shall break out our field equipment and give all men not on watch an opportunity to sleep out in the fresh air," I said. "Will you give the orders, please?"
"Yes, sir. Mr. Hendricks will stand the eight to twelve watch as usual?"
I nodded.
"Mr. Kincaide will relieve him at midnight, and you will take over at four."
"Very well, sir." Correy turned to give the orders, and in a few minutes an orderly array of shelter tents made a single street in front of the fat, dully-gleaming side of the Ertak. Our tents were at the head of this short company street, three of them in a little row.
After the evening meal, cooked over open fires, with the smoke of the very resinous wood we had collected hanging comfortably in the still air, the men gave themselves up to boisterous, noisy games, which, I confess, I should have liked very much to participate in. They raced and tumbled around the two big fires like schoolboys on a lark. Only those who have spent most of their days in the metal belly of a space ship know the sheer joy of utter physical freedom.
Correy, Kincaide and I sat before our tents and watched them, chatting about this and that—I have long since forgotten what. But I shall never forget what occurred just before the watch changed that night. Nor will any man of the Ertak's crew.
t was just
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