The Mysterious Planet

CHAPTER 9 Flotsam of Space

CAPTURE OF A SHIP of the enemy might change the whole picture of the war. Earth scientists couldn’t produce the miracles that the Planet X race had, but, once having a ship in their hands, they probably could find out how the machinery worked. Then they would be ahead of the other side, since they’d have their own science, plus that of the aliens—which might prove a great deal more than either had alone.

It would take time, of course; even if they unraveled the secrets quickly, it would require tremendous effort and expense to start the new production and reach an effective level. But there might be ways of stalling for time, and of letting the aliens win hollow victories by carefully planned retreats.

Furthermore, the total population of the Solar Federation was over nineteen billion, which must be more manpower than any single planet could boast. And the total amount of minerals and wealth of resources was bound to be greater than Planet X could have.

Given an equal break on weapons, the Federation would win. And this looked like the break.

Bob wasted no more time on words. He went to the telephone, and began dialing headquarters. If he could get his father on the phone and have him reach Wallingford…

Jakes grabbed the phone from his hand. “You aren’t going to call in the Navy, are you, Bob? Hey, what’s wrong with you?”

“What else? This is military business, Si—and they’re set up to handle it. I want Dad to get this moving, before any time is wasted.”

“That’s just it—there’ll be a lot of wasted tune. They’ll have to check and recheck—and by now, the ship’s probably turned on the other side of the rock. Then they’ll have to screen men for good secrecy risks. Heck, by the time all the red tape is done with, the hull could be back here with scientists working on it.”

“How? Somebody has to go and bring it in,” Bob pointed out.

Jakes nodded quickly. “Sure—we do. We can be there and haul it back in a couple of hours or so. Land it on the other side, where they’re working on that improved proton gun; the scientists there can get right to work on it. We’d be back before the Admiral even made up his mind.”

“And what will we use to haul it?”

It was Juan who answered this time. “There is Simon’s ship, the Icarius. It is fast and strong enough to haul from that little world.”

“And we could be off Outpost before they even knew we were leaving,” Jakes added quickly. “Then, when we had it in tow and were almost back, we could radio our reason for leaving. They’d beef about our going, but they could see what we had from the ground, and they’d be plenty glad to let us land at the right place. We’d use a tight beam, and nobody around here would even know about it, if you’re worrying about secrecy.”

Bob was tempted. He knew that the proper thing was to turn it over to the authorities, but there was just enough truth in what Jakes was saying to make him hesitate. In handling a large Fleet, the commanding officers did have to run through a lot of red tape for even a simple mission; they couldn’t just call in a man and tell him to go and get such and such.

Numerous different tiny factors would come up, without the observance of which discipline, logistics, morale and everything else would vanish. Red tape was actually designed to make such matters automatic and hence speed them up; but it took tune, in any event.

Besides, after the monotony of the past weeks, the idea was beginning to appeal to him.

“Suppose Planet X is looking for their ship,” Simon went on. “Heck, they won’t want it to fall into our hands. And they may know it wasn’t destroyed. Maybe it sent out a distress signal.

So either they are trying to find it or are on their way. We can be there in an hour on top-drive; the Icarius will pull better than twelve gravities if we crowd her. But nobody’d be off the ground officially by then.”

Juan added his ideas. “And if they see a little ship near by, what do they think? Some little scout, he means nothing. Now if a tug goes out, and they see him, they think he is looking for something to bring back— and that may be their own ship. So they cut him up, after they find where he is going. Obviously, it is much safer to take a tiny ship, like the Icarius.”

“And suppose they locate the Icarius while it’s towing back their ship?”

Jakes shrugged. “There’s always some risk. There’s just less this way.”

Bob considered it. The Icarius was fitted with four of the acceleration seats, and would store four space suits. Juan was small for one of the standard ones, but he could use it for a while.

And in taking off from as light a world as the tiny moon, there would be no major problem; the little ship had power enough, if they handled her gently.

“Do you carry the regular drills, hooks and tow cable for emergency salvage?” he asked Jakes. The other nodded.

It would be a little rugged when they got the prize over Outpost, but by then a tug could be sent up to help. And if they could come close with it, they could even get an air cover from the ships there while they landed. The only risk would be in signaling the ground. They’d see the black ship…

No, that wasn’t true. They’d spot the light-painted little Icarius first, and wouldn’t see the black ship against the jet of space until their attention was called to it. A group of scientists out by themselves, away from the main base, would be less likely to fire on them than to listen, anyhow.

“I know enough of the high-priority landing code to get us down all right, I think,” Bob admitted. “That looks like the big trouble. Anyhow, if we’re spotted taking off, they may train their scopes on us. Then they’ll see what we’re up to, and may even be ready to help us down.”

“See, it’s better than I thought,” Jakes crowed. “Hey, Bob, I’m glad we waited for you. I was all set to take off, but Juan wanted you along. Let’s go.”

Bob flashed a quick look of gratitude at the smaller boy. He should have guessed that Jakes hadn’t thought of coming to him.

There was nothing which they had to take along, since it would be a short trip, but he picked up his knife and radio on the way out. He’d retuned it to a private band assigned to his father, and it might be handy, in case they wanted to communicate even more privately than beamed general call stuff would permit. He slipped it into his ear and followed them.

It was only a few feet through the tunnel from their dome to the old field where the Icarius was parked. Nobody questioned them, since this wasn’t reserved territory. Jakes headed for the little ship, grumbling as he saw it had been moved closer to the concrete wall that was the base of the plastic dome. He ran around it, and then nodded.

“It’ll be touchy getting her up against that, but I can do it.”

Bob took his word for it. Simon’d had another smaller ship before the Icarius, and had been in constant trouble for his wild stunting, but he could make a small rocket do tricks. He wasn’t as sound as a Navy pilot, but he could probably get out of tighter places.

They piled in and closed the lock. Jakes checked over the supplies and nodded his satisfaction. Then he reached for the controls and pulled them back to a comfortable position from the acceleration chair. Bob glanced up through the viewport, and let out a sudden exclamation.

“The dome! You can’t get them to open it for you.”

“Don’t have to,” Jakes said confidently.

The dome was a double plastic shell here. In taking off, a motor snapped the lower dome section open while a ship went through, then closed it. The second dome then opened and closed behind the ship. A little air was lost that way each tune, which had to be mined down on frozen Triton, Neptune’s biggest and closest moon. But it was all right for a small amount of traffic, and permitted easy unloading of ships within the air-filled dome. The Navy, naturally, found it simpler to land in the vacuum and take the men off in suits.

“You can’t crack the dome,” Bob protested. “You’d kill half the people inside.”

“Wait,” Jakes told him. He glanced at his watch, then across the field, where an officer’s gig was being filled with fuel. “I figured on that. Jergens goes out to the science base every day on some job. I noticed him before from the repair shop. He’ll be taking off in ten minutes.”

It was less than that when flame blossomed from the jets of the jig and it began to rise upward. Above, the inner dome began to snap open.

Bob groaned, trying to estimate a speed that would let them escape the closing of the domes without hitting the jib. But Jakes apparently was one of the so-called “natural” flyers.

He’d done well in the Academy until they demanded he use instruments. He depended mostly on the feel and what he could see. Now he hit the throttle quickly, cutting on the side rockets to throw the Icarius sharply away from the near-by wall.

It was a crazy way to take off, but it worked. They sank back into the seats while the ship jerked upward. Simon hit the braking rockets in the nose, slowing it just before it touched the gig. Then he gunned it forward again. The closing outer dome must have missed them by inches, but his judgment had proved sound enough.

“See what they kicked out of the Academy!” he boasted. Then his face sobered. “Don’t say it, Bob. I just can’t take routine and discipline. Ten years getting my father to let me go in—and two years getting kicked out in spite of his pull! But I might have stuck it out if all the other guys hadn’t hated me for my money. Could I help it if I had private tutors? And don’t answer that Cut off the radio, will you?”

A red light was flashing in the panel before Bob and he cut it quickly. There wasn’t much chance they’d be fired on from the ground. The trouble would come when word was sent out and they weren’t allowed to land anywhere, except at a military prison for unauthorized departure from a closed port.

“Dad said you might get back in the Academy in a couple more years,” Bob told him. Simon swung his face part way around in the mask that held back the cushioning liquid. “That is, if you stuck to rules awhile first.”

“Aw. Rules! Like rotting down there and putting this venture through red tape, eh?” Simon’s face had grown sour again, and he turned back to his piloting, cutting on the top power of the rockets. It brought a groan from Juan, and the strain told on the other two, but he didn’t let up. “Who wants the blamed Academy, anyhow. I’m too old for that stuff.”

He was flying by the seat of his pants again, now, and Bob began to wonder how well he had estimated where the little moonlet would be. But he seemed to know what he was doing. He flipped the little Icarius over a while later, and began decelerating. It was about the sweetest-handling ship Bob had ever seen; at what it had probably cost, it should have been.

Then the rear screen showed the little hunk of rock coming toward them, right in the cross hairs. It was a feat of navigation that would have made Hoeck blink in surprise. They began slowing down and matching the orbital speed of the moon, which was spinning fairly rapidly on its axis. As they came down, something rose over its steep horizon, and Juan pointed.

Without question, it was the hull of a black ship from Planet X.

“No place beside it to land,” Simon grumbled. “Guess we’ll have to set down up ahead of it.

Tow cable will reach, though.”

He kicked the Icarius around with the steering rockets, and kept coming down without apparent change in deceleration. A high-gravity landing was always dangerous, but he seemed not to know it. Then he flipped the throttle off. They were down, and Bob had hardly felt the contact.

“Sweet,” he commented.

“I always make ‘em sweet,” Jakes answered. “I told you, I’m good with a ship. I was going to use this for a racing entry until Planet X came along. Here, you’ll find suits in that locker.”

Bob began helping Juan into one of them. The smaller boy had trouble with the adjustable straps, and Bob realized he’d probably never really seen a Navy suit before. Then Bob began slipping into another. Jakes was already in his, and was pulling out the heavy drill and towing equipment required to be carried to give aid to a ship in distress, or for seeking aid oneself. The cable was obviously the best grade of silicone fabric, and would stand strain in the cold of space without trouble.

The lock showed the only disadvantage of a smaller ship. It was barely big enough for one to leave at a time, and had to be pumped out carefully after each use. They killed several minutes getting through it.

Juan came out last. “No sign of ships in the radar screen,” he reported. “No black ships are following us.”

It didn’t mean too much, since searchers could have been on the other side of the little moon, but it was some comfort. The three began to advance carefully over the jagged surface. Here they were so light that a normal step would have bounced them up a hundred feet into space, and have wasted a good many minutes before they floated down. They had switched the suit shoe-soles to automatic grapples, but it still took a good deal of care to travel over the surface of little worlds like this.

They came around a huge, rough boulder finally. Jakes stopped to run the towline carefully along where it would not snag, and then joined the others.

The nose of the black ship lay fifty feet away. It was smaller than the others they had seen, hardly more than three hundred feet in length. But it was an impressive sight here. Bob stirred uneasily as he remembered that there might be living beings still aboard. Then he breathed easier as he saw that it must have struck the surface a terrific blow, since it seemed to have been driven into the rock.

Something looked wrong, though. He moved forward cautiously, and stopped.

The hull hadn’t been driven into the ground. It was cut off sharply, just below the center, as if someone had taken a giant cleaver and sliced the ship down one side.

A few feet more, and he knew they had been tricked.

It was no ship, but a mere mock-up. Someone had put it here deliberately, and tried to make it look like a Planet X ship. But it wasn’t even built of metal.

It was a thin frame of light metal that rested on the ground. Over that, fabric had been stretched tightly. Bob’s hand tore at it, throwing it up out of the way, and he stood looking into what might have been a huge tent.

But it was from Planet X, without much question. The fabric was completely soft, though the temperature must have been near absolute zero. Nobody in the Solar Federation had learned to make stuff like that yet.