Rocketship Galileo

Chapter 14 - NO CHANCE AT ALL!

"ARE YOU sure?," CARGRAVES demanded.

"Of course I'm sure!"

"It's probably Radio Paris," Ross suggested. "You don't know how far away it is."

Art looked indignant. "Suppose you sit down here and try your luck, Mr. de Forrest. It was close. It couldn't have been an earth station."

"Feed back?"

"Don't be silly!" He tried fiddling with his dials a bit more. "It's gone now."

"Just a minute," said Cargraves. "We've got to be sure about this. Art, can you get any sort of a transmitter rigged?"

"Not very easy, but yes, I can, too. The homing set is all set to go." The homing set was a low-power transmitter intended simply for communication between the Dog House and any member of the party outside in a suit.

"Gimme half a second to hook it up." It took more than half a second but shortly he was leaning toward the microphone, shouting, "Hello! Hello! Is there anybody there! Hello!"

"He must have been dreaming," Morrie said quietly to Cargraves. "There couldn't be anybody out there."

"Shut up," Art said over his shoulder and went back to calling, "Hello! Hello, hello."

His expression suddenly went blank, then he said sharply, "Speak English! Repeat!"

"What was it?" demanded Cargraves, Ross, and Art.

"Quiet... please!" Then, to the mike, "Yes, I hear you.

"Who is this? What? Say that again?... This is the Space Ship Galileo, Arthur Mueller transmitting. Hold on a minute."

Art flipped a switch on the front of the panel. "Now go ahead. Repeat who you are."

A heavy, bass voice came out of the transmitter: "This is Lunar Expedition Number One," the voice said. "Will you be pleased to wait one minute while I summon our leader?"

"Wait a minute," yelled Art. "Don't go away!" But the speaker did not answer.

Ross started whistling to himself. "Stop that whistling," Art demanded.

"Sorry," Ross paused, then added, "I suppose you know what this means?"

"Huh? I don't know what anything means!"

"It means that we are too late for the senior prizes. Somebody has beaten us to it."

"Huh? How do you figure that?"

"Well, it's not certain, but it's likely."

"I'll bet we landed first."

"We'll see. Listen!" It was the speaker again, this time a different voice, lighter in timbre, with a trace of Oxford accent. "Are you there? This is Captain James Brown of the First Lunar Expedition. Is this the Rocket Ship Galileo?"

Cargraves leaned over to the mike. "Rocket Ship Galileo, Captain Cargraves speaking. Where are you?"

"Some distance away, old chap. But don't worry. We are locating you. Keep sending, please."

"Let us know where we are in reference to you."

"Do not worry about that. We will come to you. Just remain where you are and keep sending."

"What is your lunar latitude and longitude?"

The voice seemed to hesitate, then went on, "We have you located now. We can exchange details later. Good-by."

Thereafter Art shouted "hello" until he was hoarse, but there was no answer. "Better stay on the air, Art," Cargraves decided. "Ross and I will go back to the ship. That's what they will see. I don't know, though. They might not show up for a week." He mused. "This presents a lot of new problems."

"Somebody ought to go to the ship," Morrie pointed out, "without waiting. They may be just coming in for a landing. They may show up any time."

"I don't think it was ship transmission," said Art, then turned back to his microphone.

Nevertheless it was decided that Cargraves and Ross would go back to the ship. They donned their suits and crawled through the air lock, and had no more than started down the steep and rocky slope when Ross saw the rocket.

He did not hear it, naturally, but he had glanced back to see if Cargraves was behind him. "Look!" he called into his helmet mike, and pointed.

The ship approached them from the west, flying low and rather slowly. The pilot was riding her on her jet, for the blast shot more downward than to the stern. "We had better hurry!" Ross shouted, and went bounding ahead.

But the rocket did not come in for a landing. It nosed down, forward jets driving hard against the fall, directly toward the Galileo. At an altitude of not more than five hundred feet the pilot kicked her around, belly first, and drove away on his tail jet.

Where the Galileo lay, there was a flash, an utterly silent explosion, and a cloud of dust which cleared rapidly away in the vacuum. The sound reached them through their feet, after a long time—it seemed to them.

The Galileo lay on her side, a great gaping hole in her plates. The wound stretched from shattered view port to midships.

Cargraves stood perfectly still, staring at the unbelievable. Ross found his voice first. "They gave us no chance," he said, shaking both fists at the sky. "No chance at all!"