Rocketship Galileo

Chapter 18 - TOO LITTLE TIME

CARGRAVES WAS WIDE ENOUGH awake to swear by the time Ross swabbed germicide on the cut in his hair line. "Hold still, Doc I-"

"I am holding still. Take it easy."

They brought him up to date as they bandaged him. "The stinker thinks he's put one over on us," Ross finished. "He thinks we can't run this boat without somebody to show us."

"He may be perfectly right," Cargraves admitted. "So far it's got us stumped. We'll see. Throw him in the hold, and we'll have another look. Morrie, you did right not to let him be shot."

"I didn't think you would want him killed until you had squeezed him dry."

Cargraves gave him an odd smile. "That wasn't your only reason, was it?

"Well—shucks !" Morrie seemed almost embarrassed. "I didn't want to just shoot him down after he dropped the gun. That's a Nazi trick."

Cargraves nodded approvingly. "That's right. That's one of the reasons they think we are soft. But we'll have a little surprise for him." He got up, went over, and stirred von Hartwick with his toe. "Listen to me, you. If possible, I am going to take you back to earth to stand trial... If not, we'll try you here."

Von Hartwick lifted his eyebrows. "For making war on you? How delightfully American!"

"No, not for making war. There isn't any war, and there hasn't been any war. The Third Reich disappeared forever in the spring of 1945 and today there is peace between Germany and the United States, no matter how many pipsqueak gangsters may still be hiding out. No, you phony superman, you are going to be tried for the murder of your accomplice—that poor dupe lying over there." He turned away. "Chuck him in the hold, boys. Come on, Ross."

Three hours later Cargraves was quite willing to admit that von Hartwick was correct when he said that the operation of the Wotan could not be figured out by a stranger. There were strange controls on the arms of the piloting seats which certainly had to be the flight controls, but no matter what they twisted, turned or moved, nothing happened. And the drive itself was sealed away behind a bulkhead which, from the sound it gave off when pounded, was inches thick.

Cargraves doubted whether he could cut through even with a steel-cutting flame. He was very reluctant to attempt to do so in any case; an effort to solve the mysteries of the ship by such surgery might, as likely as not, result in disabling the ship beyond any hope of repairing it.

There should be an operation manual somewhere. They all searched for it. They opened anything that would open, crawled under anything that could be crawled under, lifted everything that would move. There was no control manual in the ship.

The search disclosed something else. There was no food in the ship. This latter point was becoming important.

"That's enough, sports," he announced when he was certain that further search would be useless. "We'll try their barracks next. We'll find it. Not to mention food. You come with me, Morrie, and pick out some groceries."

"Me too!" Art shouted. "I'll get some pictures. The moon people! Oh, boy!"

Cargraves wished regretfully that he were still young enough for it to be impossible to stay worried. "Well, all right," he agreed, "but where is your camera?"

Art's face fell. "It's in the Dog House," he admitted.

"I guess the pictures will have to wait. But come along; there is more electronic equipment down there than you can run and jump over. Maybe raising earth by radio will turn out to be easy."

"Why don't we all go?" Ross wanted to know. "I found the ruins, but I haven't had a chance to look at them."

"Sorry, Ross; but you've got to stay behind and stand guard over Stinky. He might know more about this ship than he admits. I would hate to come up that staircase and find the ship missing. Stand guard over him. Tell him that if he moves a muscle you'll slug him. And mean it."

"Okay. I hope he does move. How long will you be gone?"

"If we can't find it in two hours we'll come back."

Cargraves searched the officers' room first, as it seemed the most likely place. He did not find it, but he did find that some of the Nazis appeared to have some peculiar and unpleasant tastes in books and pictures. The barrack room he took next. It was as depressing a place as it had been earlier, but he was prepared for it. Art he had assigned to the radio and radar room and Morrie to the other spaces; there seemed to be no reason for any one but himself to have to touch the bloating corpses.

He drew a blank in the barrack room. Coming out, he heard Art's voice in his phones. "Hey, Uncle, look what I've found!"

"What is it?," he said, and Morrie's voice cut in at once.

"Found the manual, Art?"

"No, but look!" They converged in the central hail. ‘It' was a Graflex camera, complete with flash gun. "There is a complete darkroom off the radio room. I found it there. How about it, Uncle? Pictures?"

"Well, all right. Morrie, you go along—it may be your only chance to see the ruins. Thirty minutes. Don't go very far, don't bust your necks, don't take any chances, and be back on time, or I'll be after you with a Flit gun." He watched them go regretfully, more than a little tempted to play hookey himself. If he had not been consumed with the urgency of his present responsibilities—But he was. He forced himself to resume the dreary search.

It was all to no good. If there was an instruction manual in existence he had to admit that he did not know how to find it. But he was still searching when the boys returned.

He glanced at his watch. "Forty minutes," he said. "That's more prompt than I thought you would be; I expected to have to go look for you. What did you find? Get any good pictures?"

"Pictures? Did we get pictures! Wait till you see!"

"I never saw anything like it, Doc," Morrie stated impressively. "The place is a city. It goes down and down. Great big arched halls, hundreds of feet across, corridors running every which way, rooms, balconies—I can't begin to describe it."

"Then don't try. Write up full notes on what you saw as soon as we get back."

"Doc, this thing's tremendous!"

"I realize it. But it's so big I'm not even going to try to comprehend it, not yet. We've got our work cut out for us just to get out of here alive. Art, what did you find in the radio room? Anything you can use to raise earth?"

"Well, Uncle, that's hard to say, but the stuff doesn't look promising."

"Are you sure? We know that they were in communication—at least according to our nasty-nice boy friend."

Art shook his head. "I thought you said they received from earth. I found their equipment for that but I couldn't test it out because I couldn't get the earphones inside my suit. But I don't see how they could send to earth."

"Why not? They need two-way transmission."

"Maybe they need it but they can't afford to use it. Look, Uncle, they can beam towards the moon from their base on earth—that's all right; nobody gets it but them. But if the Nazis on this end try to beam back, they can't select some exact spot on earth. At that distance the beam would fan out until it covered too much territory—it would be like a broadcast."

"Oh!" said Cargraves, "I begin to see. Chalk up one for yourself, Art; I should have thought of that. No matter what sort of a code they used, if people started picking up radio from the direction of the moon, the cat would be out of the bag."

"That's what I thought, anyhow."

"I think you're dead right. I'm disappointed; I was beginning to pin my hopes on getting a message across." He shrugged. "Well, one thing at a time. Morrie, have you picked out the supplies you want to take up?"

"All lined up." They followed him into the kitchen space and found he had stacked three piles of tin cans in quantities to make three good-sized loads. As they were filling their arms Morrie said. "How many men were there here, Doc?"

"I counted forty-seven bodies not counting the one von Hartwick shot. Why?"

"Well, I noticed something funny. I've sort of acquired an eye for estimating rations since I've been running the mess. There isn't food enough here to keep that many men running two weeks. Does that mean what I think it means?"

"Hunnh... Look, Morrie, I think you've hit on something important. That's why von Hartwick is so cocky. It isn't just whistling in the dark. He actually expects to be rescued."

"What do you mean, Uncle?" Art wanted to know.

"He is expecting a supply ship, almost any time."

Art whistled. "He thinks we'll be caught by surprise!"

"And we would have been. But we won't be now." He put down his load of groceries. "Come along."

"Where?"

"I just remembered something." In digging through the officers' quarters he had come across many documents, books, manuals, records, and papers of many sorts. He had scanned them very briefly, making certain only that no one of them contained anything which would give a clue to the operation of the Wotan.

One of them was the day book or journal of the task-force commander. Among other things it had given the location of the Nazi base on earth; Cargraves had marked it as something he wanted to study later. Now he decided to do it at once.

It was long. It covered a period of nearly three months with Teutonic thoroughness. He read rapidly, with Art reading over his shoulder. Morrie stood around impatiently and finally pointed out that the time was approaching when they had promised Ross to return.

"Go ahead," Cargraves said absently. "Take a load of food. Get a meal started." He read on.

There was a roster of the party. He found von Hartwick listed as executive officer. He noted that as an indication that the Nazi was lying when he claimed not to understand the piloting of the Wotan. Not proof, but a strong indication. But falsehood was all that he expected of the creature.

He was beginning to find what he was looking for. Supply trips had been made each month. If the schedule was maintained- and the state of supplies certainly indicated it -the next ship should be along in six or seven days.

But the most important fact he was not sure of until he had finished the journal: there was more than one big rocket in their possession; the Wotan was not about to leave to get supplies; she would not leave, if the schedule had been followed, until the supply ship landed. Then she would be taken back empty and the other ship would be unloaded. By such an arrangement the party on the moon was never left without a means of escape—or, at least, that was the reason he read into the account.

There were just two and only two Nazi moon rockets—the Wotan and the Thor. The Thor was due in a week, as nearly as he could make out, which meant that she would leave her home base in about five days. The transit times for each trip had been logged in; forty-six hours plus for the earthmoon jump was the way the record read.

Fast time! he thought.

If the Thor ever took off, it might be too late for good intentions, too late for warnings. The Nazis were certainly aware that the techniques of space flight were now an open secret; there was reference after reference to the Galileo including a last entry noting that she had been located. They would certainly strike at the earliest possible moment.

He could see in his mind's eye the row upon row of A-bomb guided-missiles in a near-by cavern. He could see them striking the defenseless cities of earth.

No time to rig a powerful transmitter. No time for anything but drastic measures.

Not time enough, he was afraid!