Wanderers of Time

INTRODUCTION

Even those too young to remember the Belford affair can scarcely fail to have heard of it, if only through the legend of Captain Belford's treasure hidden somewhere on the Moon. There can be few boys who have not read how Belford and a companion overpowered their police guard in the car that was taking them to prison nearly 60 years ago. And how, dressed in the uniforms of their captors, they bluffed the authorities at an airport and stole a racing rocket-ship from under the official noses.

Everyone who has heard the tale must have wondered what happened to the two who vanished from human knowledge in that ship, as well as about the treasure said to be on the Moon.

Now comes Captain Fearon's explanation. It was he who was the other man in that exploit. For reasons which will be obvious, he withheld publication until after his death, though the account which follows was dictated by him to our representative some six years ago. We have checked much of the story and are fully satisfied that Captain Fearon was actually that same Fearon associated with Captain Belford.

The account which follows was signed and sworn by him, and the original is still in our possession.

Chapter One ON PASSAGE TO JUPITER

It all happened a long time ago. I'm eighty-three now: I was twenty-five then. But, although a lot of things get forgotten, Belford and I seem to have been remembered—though the funny thing is that we're remembered all wrong.

It's queer to live and hear yourself grow into a legend, getting a bit different and a bit more untrue all the time. And I've got a mind to clear things up a bit before I die. If only it stops people going to the Moon and making fools of themselves over the 'Belford Treasure' it'll be something.

The world was different when I first went to space—mind you, I'm not saying it was better or worse but, looking back on it, it seems to have been a whole lot simpler.

I was twenty-four when I got a berth as Second Officer under Captain Belford on the old Dido. And right now I'll tell you there wasn't a better man sailing the system; whatever they said about him afterwards. They didn't know him, most of 'em; I did. And when you've been a year in a space-ship with a man there's not much you don't know about him. What happened to him was just a bit of bad luck, such as might have happened to any man on the same job.

He was a big man, such as you don't often find in spaceships; well over six foot, big shouldered, strong as a couple of the rest of us; but he was worth his extra weight, every ounce of it, and in spite of it he could move as fast and sure as a cat. He'd a record as clean as a baby's. If he hadn't he'd not have been there because it cost the Company a pretty penny getting space-suits and suchlike specially made for him.

The Company was the R.R.R.; gone long ago now but in those days it meant something—Red Ribbon Rocketlines— and the Dido was a queer old tub that wouldn't even get a spaceworthiness certificate nowadays. She wasn't on the regular lines, never had been. She was built as a salvage ship, and handy for the job she was. In those days nearly all the regular rocket lines ran salvage ships. It was a profitable sideline, not only for getting your own ships out of trouble, but because there were plenty of wrecks drifting about. Ships weren't safe the way they are now. All manner of things could happen to them and, apart from the danger to liners, it wasn't sense to leave valuable ships and cargoes hanging around out there if there was any way of getting them back.

Of course, there wasn't the organisation about it that there is today. That didn't happen till the Dutch got their salvage and towing service fixed—funny, isn't it, how they developed the best space tugs, just as they did the best sea-going tugs?— but there was a lot of work done, a Central Salvage Register Office and all that. Trouble was rivalry between the lines. If we'd only co-operated then, maybe the Dutchmen would never have got a look in.

Well. I was telling you about the old Dido. I don't know why she was called Dido 'cept that the line named all its ships after women and would have them end in 'o,' which made the choice pretty narrow when you come to think of it—perhaps that's why they went out of business a few years later; couldn't find any more women ending in 'o,' so couldn't have any more ships. Anyway, she was a forty-eight tube ship, less than half the size of a modern Dutch tug, carrying eleven of us all told, well found and, for those days, not too tricky to handle. At least Captain Belford could handle her as well as they manage nowadays with all their modern improvements.

The First Officer was a man called Sinderton. He was a silent sort of chap but good at his job. The crew of eight were all experienced men—there was no room for greenhorns on a salvage ship.

The trip when the trouble occurred started as usual. We took off from the Caledonian Rocket Yard and called in at the Moon to refuel, the same way the tugs do nowadays—a tug, you know, still can't carry enough fuel to get her away from Earth and do her job in space without replenishing somewhere.

When that was done we set out on a course which paralleled but lay to one side of the traffic lane to Jupiter—or rather to the moons of Jupiter, for no one had at that time made a successful landing on the giant himself.

Life on a salvage ship consisted, and probably still does, of spells of complete inaction and rushes of exacting work with no telling how long each is likely to last. It was one of the harder things to get used to and one of the main reasons why a seasoned crew was necessary.

This time we began placidly enough. For over two weeks (Earth-time) we coasted along with the rocket tubes shut off; just being on hand if anyone should need us. But it seemed that nobody did. At regular intervals we would call up all our ships on the Company's lightband wave and ask how things were, and all of them would give us an okay. We began to wish something would happen—and when it did we should wish we had been left in peace. That's the way of it. But just at present nobody was burning out tubes, developing air leaks, getting holed by meteorites or doing any of the hundred and one inconvenient things they so often did do.

It was not until the sixteenth reckoned day that we got a message which started our tubes roaring again and sent us scurrying across space. The liner Sappho, homeward bound from Ganymede with a cargo of high-yield pitchblende had sighted a presumed derelict. It was a good, clear direction, giving the positioning of the derelict at the time and her speed and direction, with confidence. We acknowledged, altered course and started up in a few minutes.

Time meant a lot on such jobs. We had got to reach the derelict before anyone else spotted her. The ruling was that salvage rights could be claimed by the first ship to establish contact with the wreck. Immediately that was done, the office back on Earth was informed, the claim was then checked and registered, and an announcement of its validity broadcast. The principle seemed fair enough, though more than once two or even three salvage ships informed of the chance at more or less the same time had pelted across space, half-killing their crews with acceleration in their efforts to make the claim. On this occasion there was no one else in on it so far as we knew, but it was always risky to waste time.

Two days later, close on the position we had calculated the wreck to have reached, we were decelerating as violently as we had speeded up. Captain Belford was at the controls while the First Officer and I were swivelling telescopes from one point of light to another, desperately searching the star-pricked blackness for the one little gleam which was a rocket-ship. Of course, that was no way to find her, but there was just the several-millions-to-one chance that we might catch a glimpse of her: it is said to have been done once or twice.

Belford called Sinderton away from his telescope and handed over the controls to him. While we were still decelerating he set up the sensitive screens ready for use when we should come to a stop. On the screens, as you probably know, moving bodies trace lines of light and though all the bodies in the heavens are moving, those which are closest appear to travel fastest. In our position there could be nothing nearer than the derelict—except the unlikely presence of a second derelict—so that it was necessary for us to scan each section of space for the fastest moving line of light. If we could find it among the rest—no easy task in itself—we should have found the ship. Well, we did: it took us a good twelve hours of screen studying before we located her, but that wasn't bad. It might easily have taken three days or more. I've known it do that.

Chapter Two WRECK OF A TREASURE SHIP

As soon as we'd made certain of the derelict we turned and steadied the Dido on her side tubes, then one brief burst on the main propeller tubes was enough to send us sliding in her direction. As we closed, another short burst on the forward rockets brought us to rest within a couple of hundred yards of her. (When I say 'brought us to rest' I use the term figuratively, of course, to mean that we and she were travelling in the same direction at the same speed.)

Captain Belford picked up his telephone and spoke to two men already wearing space-suits and waiting in the air-lock.

'All right. Let 'em go,' he said.

We watched from the windows as the men heaved out an electro-magnet. We couldn't see the men, of course, but we saw the magnet float out slowly and deliberately with its leads and cable looping behind it in slow-motion. A few seconds later another followed it. The Captain waited, hands on two rheostats, until they were over half-way to the wreck.

'Make connection and stand by,' he told the radio operator, then he turned the knob.

It's a fascinating thing to watch coupling-magnets come to life, so to speak. One moment they are drifting idly along, the next they appear to awake and suddenly discover a purpose. They veer a little and surge gently forward towards the nearest mass of metal while the looping lines which hold them gradually straighten out. The Captain gave them a minute's power to pull them towards the derelict, and then shut off and waited. As the first magnet made gentle contact with the hull he switched on again and it glued itself to the metal side. A moment later the second magnet gripped.

'Make the claim,' he told the operator.

Two space-suited figures left our ship, pulling themselves along the magnet cables to the other at great speed. The Captain took up a micro-wave headset and listened. One of the men in space-suits reached the wreck and pushed himself off the magnet so that he floated round to her bow.

'Excelsis,' said the Captain suddenly. 'Tell the Register Office.'

'Aye, aye, sir,' acknowledged the operator.

'Haul in,' ordered the Captain, putting down the microwave set.

A small motor began to whirr and the cables between the two ships started to tighten.

'Cut,' said Captain Belford as we started to drift together.

We waited while the two ships slowly approached one another.

It began to be possible to get a better idea of the Excelsis's size. The proportion of our space-suited men against her had told us she was big, but we did not fully realise how big until we came closer alongside. She'd have made ten of the old Dido.

'Excelsis, that'll be a Three Star ship,' murmured the Captain. 'I seem to remember something about her, but I can't recall it at the moment.'

'Third of three sister ships on the Three Star service, sir,' said the First Officer. 'Supposed to be the last word in safety in their day. She and the Isis were both lost. The other, the Artemis, was broken up several years ago. I'm afraid I can't remember anything else offhand. It'll be in the book, sir.'

'Never mind, we'll know soon enough.'

A minute or two later the operator announced:

'Claim of Captain Belford of the Dido, to salvage of Excelsis, Captain Whitter, registered and approved subject to confirmation. Work may proceed. Excelsis, 250 tubes, lost in space 12 years ago, homeward bound from Ganymede. Reported serious damage to propeller tubes. Unnavigable. Search vessels unable to find her. 60 passengers. 20 officers and crew, mixed cargo. Gold, patchatal oil, tillfer fibre, ganywood, 3 bags of mail. Property of Plume Line, successors to Three Star Line, yards at Lough Swilly, Ireland.'

The Captain looked half-elated, half-dubious as he listened to the radio operator's message. If the cargo mentioned was in any quantity it looked as if we should net something like a record salvage payment—if we could get it home.

'Gold,' he muttered, 'and ganywood. The two heaviest things they could find. There's some sense in ganywood, at least it's useful. But gold, what's the good of that? You can't use it for anything.'

'Except money.' I said.

He looked at me contemptuously.

'Nobody's used gold as money for God knows how long. You never see it except in jewellery. It's pretty near useless, and yet they're forever digging it out of mines all over the system. And what for? Just to take it to Earth and bury it somewhere where no one ever sees it. Then they all look bright and pleased and say their credit's gone up. Damned nonsense, I call it. Trying to get gold from one planet to another has cost more lives and money than anything else in spacework.'

'And yet,' said I, 'if everybody wants it, that means it has a value.'

'Fictitious value,' he snorted.

'Fictitious or not, it'll mean a lot to you and to us if we get it back all right,' I said.

'Maybe, but I still say it's not worth the fuss they make about it. It might as well be lying about out there,'—he pointed to the starry blackness beyond the window—'just floating around in space as locked up in a vault on Earth. If I had my way that's where it would be, and a lot of good space sailors who are going to lose their lives handling it would keep them. There's some heavy stuff you've got to handle, but it's not gold.'

All the time he was talking the two ships were slowly coming together. I was paying more attention to them than I was to the Captain. The 'gold menace' was one of his hobby-horses. I'd heard it all before and a lot more. And however he felt about it the fact remained that he'd do his damnedest to get it safely to Earth and we should all be rewarded for assisting him.

As the two ships gently touched he resumed his official manner.

'Mr. Fearon, you will attend to the grappling and conduct a preliminary survey of the ship, please.'

'Aye, aye, sir,' I said.

I had put on my space-suit in readiness. It did not take long to add the helmet and with two of the crew I passed out of the air-lock.

We three, with the help of the two men already on the Excelsis, manoeuvred with cables until we had brought the two locks conveniently close, and then made fast. I reported over the micro-wave, there came a gentle flare from the Dido's stern tubes, and as the two ships started to move we turned our attention to examining our capture.

I find that Worldsmen often find it difficult to grasp space conditions, so it may help if I explain a little.

It must be understood that a derelict in space is never stationary. Very often she is travelling at a considerable speed and quite possibly in an altogether different direction from the one the salvage ship intends her to take. The first thing to be done after making fast is therefore to ease her gently on to the right course, for it is easy to see that as long as she is allowed to continue on her own, time which cannot be made up is being wasted.

It is a ticklish bit of work this, for, however strong your steel coupling hawsers, the strain must come on them gradually and not too intensely at any time. Set on the right course the tug begins to apply a cautious acceleration, perhaps of not more than a few feet per second, if a big ship is in tow. This means time is being saved, but causes no inconvenience to men working on the derelict. In space there is no subjective difference between travelling at seven miles a second or at one mile an hour; acceleration is what you feel and an increase of a few feet per second is negligible in practice.

The only risk is of a man losing his hold and being left behind, and that is slight; for one thing he should be using a life-line, but even if he is not, the recoil from a shot or two with a hand pistol should easily enable him to catch up.

When we saw the rockets start, all five of us clipped lifelines to our belts and began our preliminary survey, reporting back on the micro-wave as we went.

It was clear enough pretty quickly what had happened. Something had struck the Excelsis's tail, carrying away three quarters of her tubes and mangling the rest. The stern was just a mess but the rest of her seemed intact. I heard the Captain grunt as I reported, and though he made no comment I knew what he was thinking.

It was going to be a nasty business. It is better, far, far better to find a derelict which has been finished off quickly. When a meteorite has knocked away part of the habitable quarters, or when it has gone right through and the air has rushed out, you know it was all over quickly. Death is never too good to look at, though if it's sudden it's usually pretty clean. But when the living quarters are undamaged and the people in them have had to wait and see death come slowly, you'll find that some pretty horrible things have happened before the end. I could tell you some things—but I shan't: I don't care to think of them even now.

'Have to cut into her?' the Captain asked.

'Yes, sir.'

'All right. I'll put the stuff out.'

Cutting into a ship is a tedious business. First you attach a large metal cup to the side and weld it on all round the edges and it looks as if the ship had developed a boil. Then a man gets into the cup by a small door in the top of it.

A cutter is handed in after him. He shuts the door from his side, for it's made to resist outward and not inward pressure, and gets to work with the cutter. The object of the cup is, of course, to prevent the escape of any air.

First, the man cuts away a circle of the outer hull, making a hole large enough for him to crawl through. If he is satisfied that the inner hull is intact, he re-opens the door of the cup and gets rid of the circle he has cut by pushing it outside. Then, after shutting the door again, he turns his attention to the inner hull. He trains his cutter steadily on a single point and watches carefully.

This is the part of the job which needs most judgment. The moment the area under the flame of his cutter begins to bulge, he switches off. His object is to let the air come as gently as possible into the evacuated space between the inner and outer hulls. If he lets it come with a rush he may have an extremely unpleasant time of it. More than that, if it so happens that the welding-on of the cup was imperfect, he and it may be shot off into space and the air from the wreck irretrievably lost.

Therefore, he makes the smallest hole he can and keeps a careful watch on his pressure gauge as the air comes through. Not until the needle has ceased to move can he go any further. When that has happened, however, and the pressure in his cup ceases to rise, he cuts a circle through the inner hull as he did through the outer, and at last he is able to get into the ship. Straightaway he reports and makes his way to the air-lock. There he gets ready to operate the lever which opens the outer door.

It would, of course, be much simpler if someone could devise a satisfactory method of opening the outer door from outside, but for several reasons—the main one being the superheating of outer shell in an atmosphere—no reliable mechanism has yet been made.

Chapter Three SALVAGE IN SPACE

With the Excelsis, it took several hours' work before the cutter-in was able to report that we could come aboard. 'All right. Open up,' Captain Belford directed. The rest of us who had retired on board the Dido to wait looked at him expectantly. He chose the boarding party and we hurried into our suits. While we dressed he talked to the man on the other ship.

'How is it?'

'Pretty grim, sir.'

We were all wearing micro-wave sets in preparation for the job, and we could follow both sides of the conversation.

'Air pressure?' asked the Captain.

'Thirteen point seven pounds, sir. Seems to have held it perfectly. Releasing it into the double hull seems just about to account for the drop from normal.'

'Breathable?'

'Pretty bad, sir, by the look of things. I didn't risk trying.'

'Don't then. Got the lock open yet?'

'Yes, sir.'

'All right. We're coming now.'

From our own lock we pushed off and floated across to the open door of the other. We took little with us but welding arcs and some batteries to start up the air purifiers.

I'm not going to tell you what the Excelsis was like inside; it's not decent to try. All I'll say is that some of the passengers and crew had contrived to last a pretty long time. I felt pretty green and wondered if I was going to be sick. I had to take a hold on myself: being sick in a space-suit's a dangerous as well as an unpleasant business.

I was detailed, with the help of one of the hands, to weld up the recently made cut and to pump the air back from between the hulls. I think both of us were pretty glad to leave the clearing up operations to the rest.

Since space travel began it has been the practice to leave its victims out in space. And in my opinion it is a good thing, too. Certainly it could be no consolation to relatives to see the poor things which have to be thrust out of a wreck's air-lock to drift slowly astern. And that's another reason for keeping up some acceleration while salvage work is going on. If you don't, you can't lose those bodies. They just keep on drifting round, gravitating gradually to the mass of the ship. It's bad for the nerves to see dead men floating past the windows all the time.

When we'd finished our welding and pumping we found that the rest were nearly through with the nastiest part of the job.

The man in charge of the disposal squad was reporting tonelessly to the Captain who had been conducting a detailed examination of cargo and stores.

Thirty complete bodies, sir. Seventeen of those identified. Here's the list of them, sir.'

Captain Belford held out his hand and took it slowly. No one spoke for a minute or more. Only thirty complete bodies —and there had been eighty passengers and crew....

The Captain carefully put the list away in a pocket. Then he stepped over to a window and stood a moment looking at a thousand suns flaring in their bed of black. I felt he was trying to see them in all their pitilessness as the men on the Excelsis had seen them. His space-suit made a grotesque giant of him. Then with a scarcely audible sigh, he began to recite the prayer for those who have died in space.

The clearing up of the Excelsis was regular routine work. Only two of her fuel tanks had leaked, and the first thing we did was to fill our own from those which hadn't leaked—it's axiomatic to fill your tanks when you can in space. You never know when you are going to need just that extra bit of power.

There was a little food, just a few unopened tins of biscuits. The poor devils had made the food last longer than the water, for those tanks were dry to the last drop. The gold was intact in the strong room; we checked it over. The ganywood was still safely clamped down in the hold. One of the drums of patchatal oil had been broken open—we reckoned some poor thirst-crazy chap had tried to drink it. The rest were intact, and so were the bales of tillfer fibre.

The personal belongings we left in the cabins where we found them, just fastening any loose things down for safety. When we got the ship in, someone would go through them with the passenger list and return them to the next of kin.

All that is the lighter part of salvage work. A bit depressing, of course, but easy because once the air purifiers have got going you can dispense with space-suits.

Next came the outside work, and the first thing was to get a wide mesh net round the part of the ship we were going to work on. You can't cling on to the polished hull and you must have something to give you purchase when you're handling tools, so the answer is the net. You can climb about on it and hook yourself into it when necessary. When we'd got that fixed we began fixing ringbolts in the side.

It's a tedious job, but it has to be done and it has to be done well. There's only one way of easing the fall of a derelict or a ship out of control—that is by use of parachutes. And the attachment of parachutes is going to depend in the last stage upon the firm fixing of those ring-bolts. The strength of the parachutes' fabric, the braking effect of their area, the tensile strength of their steel hawsers; all that can be worked out mathematically on paper, but the fixing of the bolts is different; it must be trusted to the skill, care and conscientious workmanship of the men doing the job. There must be no botching or covering up of bad work. Luckily, it's a job that seldom has to be hurried.

The Excelsis was a big ship. To make as sure of her as possible we were going to attach every parachute we carried and that meant a lot of work. Nevertheless we had more than three-quarters of the bolts in place before we began to decelerate. That meant we'd plenty of time, for our rate of deceleration was the same as our acceleration and would therefore take longer. We had to lose, you see, not only the speed we had worked up, but also the speed the wreck was travelling when we found her, in order to ease her close to Earth at as slow a rate as possible. It meant several weeks of slowing up.

It's no good my being too technical, but I must give you some idea of the ticklish job it is to land a wreck successfully. There are a hundred things which can go wrong. Dozens of calculations to make, and a slip in any of them is likely to mean failure.

The first stage is to attain a state of equilibrium between the Earth and the Moon where one is stationary—again I speak relatively as one must do in space, actually one is moving round the Earth, but at a constant distance from it. There the final preparations for descent are made.

The salvage ship again refills her fuel tanks and any surplus fuel from the derelict is jettisoned for safety. Much wreckage has already been cut away in the first clearing up, now the empty fuel tanks are cut out and set adrift with an impulse in the direction of the Moon. The hulk is made as light as possible for it is intended to drop her in the sea and it is hoped that she may float. We had little hope of the Excelsis floating, seeing the weight of gold and ganywood she carried, but on general principles we saw to it that she was as light as she could be.

Then the ship is sealed up, the main coupling hawsers which have bound the two together are cast off leaving only the magnets and their hawsers as links, and the parachutes are made fast to the ring-bolts. The practical work for the crew is finished; the rest depends upon the captain's calculations and his consequent manoeuvres. He and the first officer get down to figuring and checking one another's results.

This is no light work. The captain knows the approximate spot where he intends to drop the derelict and he has got to get her into such a position that she will fall there or thereabouts. He knows the load his magnets will hold and that, with his estimated weight of his salvage, tells him how much pull and steerage effect he will be able to exert. He must work out the balancing of forces—the pull of the Moon, of the Sun, of the Earth, and the rotation of the spot he aims at, relatively to the Moon. Everything which can be used to slow or shorten the final descent must be employed. Finally, he must find out by radio as much as he can about weather conditions on Earth and make allowance for them at the last possible moment.

In general, we were feeling that we were near the end of a profitable and not too onerous piece of work. From the salvagers' point of view the Excelsis was as straightforward a job as one could hope for, except for the heavy cargo. It simplifies tasks a great deal when the air has been held; you don't have to build new pieces of double wall or fit automatically-closing valves to take in air as she drops.

Seeing that the Plume Line yards were in North Ireland, Captain Belford aimed to drop her a bit out in the Atlantic and make it a short tow by sea. He informed the Salvage Register Office that he was aiming at the neighbourhood of 51° North by 12° West and received their approval. He and the First Officer verified the chronometer's reading and went ahead with the calculations. They checked and re-checked one another's figures with care before they announced to us the exact minute of action.

With some eight hours to go before that time came we all turned in for a while.

Chapter Four FALL OF THE EXCELSIS

Half an hour before we were due to start, Captain Belford had already fastened himself into his chair and was firing short bursts on the side tubes to obtain the right inclination. We all strapped on our safety-belts and waited, watching the minute-hand on the chronometer.

On the correct second the Dido began to throb gently as her tubes fired. We felt a slight tug a moment later as the hawsers on the magnets took up. We moved gradually Earthward. Behind us came the Excelsis, started on her long last fall.

The First Officer and I were making continuous observations, reporting our angles and distances to the Captain. He verified them on a table he had drawn up and pinned on a board in front of him, correcting the slightest deviation from his planned time-course by a short burst on one or another of the bunches of rocket tubes.

This manoeuvre, known technically as a 'linked fall,' would go on for a long time yet. It should last, in fact, until we were within four or five thousand miles of the Earth's surface when we would cast off and look to our landing while the Excelsis fell free.

But all the first part was a time of constant watch and correction. We were falling together, but the Dido's was no dead fall. All the time she was moving laterally, now this way and now that, tugging and altering the course of the larger vessel, trimming her to hit a calculated spot on the surface of Earth which grew all the time larger and nearer. As delicate a job as any there is. for the disabled ship must be urged to one side or another with the utmost nicety and precision; there must be no jerks or sudden bursts of power which might detach the magnets from her hull. Their hold was the limiting factor of our power over her, but used by an expert it was enough.

The radio operator looked up quickly and reported.

'North-westerly wind rising rapidly to gale force, west of Ireland, sir,' he said.

Captain Belford, hunched in front of his chart, grunted.

'Tell them I'll try to compensate.' He altered the position of some of his controls, muttering more to himself than us: 'Gale, and they gave it as twenty-four hours fair prospect. I suppose they'll learn something about weather, one day.'

He steered the Dido round to the other side of the Excelsis and in that moment the thing, which was to spoil the rest of his life, happened.

He fired on his tail rockets and I say it now, again, as I said it in evidence before, no man could have handled them with better judgment. There was no jerk. I was looking out of the window directly facing the Excelsis and I saw the magnet float away from her side. To this day I cannot say why—it may be that the cable kinked and broke, that there was a short somewhere; I can't tell, but I know that that magnet was loose before our cable to the other magnet drew taut.

Instinctively and instantaneously I shouted a warning, but it came too late. Captain Belford's judgment had been based on the hold of two magnets. Before he had time to reach the controls the second magnet had pulled off and came skimming towards us as though the wire rope which held it had been elastic.

I had never known the Captain to lose his head, and he kept it now. A burst on the side tubes jumped us out of the way, so that the heavy magnet just missed us and went past with its 200 yards of cable looping behind it.

'Cast off,' he ordered.

A man leaned over and pulled a switch. An automatic jaw severed the cable and the magnet sped away into space with the rope curling like a slowly moving snake behind it.

It was a nasty half-minute. That second magnet had sprung back at us with a force which might have holed us if it had hit: at best, we should have got some nasty dents. With that danger past we looked again at the Excelsis.

The distance between us had widened and she was falling free. I saw Captain Belford frown, but there was only one possible decision. Even had it been possible to close with her we should not have time to manoeuvre her after the delay of recoupling. The course he took, and to my mind the only useful course, was to check our own fall and to hope for the best as far as she was concerned. There was nothing to be gained by running the risk of losing both ships.

He made up his mind in a few seconds. First, he cut free the other magnet, then a touch of the side tubes turned our stern to Earth, and the main rockets began to fire. It felt as if strong brakes had suddenly been applied. The Excelsis with her unopened parachutes tied about her in bundles, seemed to shoot down from our level towards the growing Earth beneath. She dwindled to a silver shell, a shining bullet, a point of light and then suddenly was gone.

The Captain spoke to the radio operator.

'Inform the Salvage Register Office that the Excelsis has been lost and is now in free fall. Confirm that her intended descent was to be at 51° North, 12° West and that it is not possible at this distance to predict her degree of deviation.

'Get the weather report from the Caledonian Yard and tell them that we are coming in.'

And that's the plain truth about the Excelsis. That and nothing more. A simple accident and not a Machiavellian scheme. Things like that are bound to happen from time to time, and they may happen to anyone. Sometimes no harm is done, at others the wreck may be lost altogether, and then the captain of the salvage ship will have to account for all his actions before the regular official board of inquiry. There is no doubt that had such a routine investigation taken place Captain Belford would have been exonerated from all blame by a body of men as conversant with the hazards of space as he himself. Instead, he was called upon to face fantastic accusations thrown at him by men who were grossly ignorant of the possibilities and impossibilities of spacemanship.

The first hint of the trouble occurred about an hour after we had landed.

We were in the Yard clubroom drinking a welcome whisky while officials went over the Dido. It was always a tedious wait. Before we could get the all-clear and be allowed to go our ways, the Excise men had to search the ship for dutiable goods, the police for prohibited articles, and the Company's officers had to check up on equipment, stores, fuel and so on.

We were glad enough to be back, but we didn't talk a lot. The main question for all of us was whether we should see any return for our work on the Excelsis, or whether she was utterly lost and our salvage money with her. The Captain, with the weight of responsibility upon him, stared gloomily into his glass most of the time, and, except when it needed refilling, seldom opened his mouth to speak.

We had been there close on a couple of hours and were beginning to feel that our clearance papers were about due when the door opened and the head of the Caledonian Rocket Yard Police came in. We all looked at him hopefully. Inspector Macraig was as popular with spacemen as any policeman was likely to be. He was a man of integrity, a stickler for the spirit of the law, but no fusser about its letter. He'd done spacework himself and he knew how it felt. This time, however, he did not give us his usual cheery greeting. He was frowning slightly and there was a troubled look in his eyes. He nodded abstractedly to the rest of us and made his way straight to Captain Belford. At his expression, the Captain checked his natural invitation to a drink and waited.

'William Belford, Wilfred Sinderton, James Fearon,' he said, 'it is my duty to place you under arrest.'

No one spoke for a moment. My own first reaction, and the First Officer's too, he told me afterwards, was to wonder which of us on the Dido had been smuggling or running dope—and how it had been done, for on that trip we had called nowhere but at the Moon, and there's precious little chance of getting hold of prohibited drugs or anything else there.

The Captain looked stunned for a moment, then he rose to his feet, overtopping the inspector by a good nine inches.

'And the charge?' he asked.

'Criminal negligence,' said the Inspector quietly.

His expression changed as he looked into the Captain's incredulous face.

'I'm sorry, Belford. Direct 'phone orders from London.'

'Negligence of what?' the Captain demanded.

'They didn't say. No details were given officially.'

'But unofficially?'

'Well, information has just been received here that the Excelsis came down somewhere in Germany and blew half a town to hell.'

We all stared at him.

'But that's impossible,' I broke in.

'Absurd,' said Sinderton. 'Why I supervised the cutting away of her tanks myself. There wasn't an ounce of explosive on her.'

We both looked at the Captain.

'There's a mistake somewhere,' he said. 'I made an inspection of the ship with Mr. Sinderton and Mr. Fearon. All fuel that had not been taken on to the Dido was jettisoned.'

The Inspector looked unhappy.

'I know you, and I know that there must be a mistake. But my orders were clear. I am to send you to London under arrest as soon as possible. I'm sorry.'

'It's not your fault. Macraig, of course. There's some official muddle somewhere. The sooner we can get to London and clear it up, the better for everyone. When can we start?'

'At once, I imagine. I told them to get a rocket-'plane ready. It ought to be waiting by now.'

'All right.' The Captain tipped down the last of his whisky. 'Let's go,' he added, and led the way purposefully to the door.

Chapter Five DISASTER EXTRAORDINARY

We could not tell what had happened to cause the misunderstanding, but all of us suspected mere exaggeration. It was possible that the ship had disintegrated as it hit: in that case hurried reports might easily have represented a severe impact as an explosion. There would be no difficulty, we thought, in clearing ourselves of an explosion charge; every man of the Dido's company would testify that the wreck had been cleared out of fuel to the last ounce. There might be a charge of inefficiency in fixing the cables, but we all had good records for workmanship and every incentive to bring the Excelsis down safely if we could.

We made the trip to London less in a state of worry than of irritation at misrepresentation.

An official police-car was waiting for us on King's Cross landing-roof and in it we were carried swiftly to Scotland Yard. Inside the building we were conducted without delay to the office of the Deputy Assitant Commissioner of the Special Branch. We did not know which he was at first, for three men apparently of equal rank awaited us. The manner in which they received us was curious, it seemed an odd blend of formality and sympathy. Certainly, it did not suggest that they considered us to be criminally negligent.

First, we received the customary warning. They wished to question us, but we were legally within our rights in refusing to answer.

Captain Belford waved that aside. He had a clear conscience and was willing to give all the help he could. He was sure he could say the same for his two officers. We agreed and settled down to answer a series of questions.

Were we sure all the explosive had been jettisoned? Might there not have been some other kind of explosive concealed among the tillfer fibre or in the stacked ganywood? How many ringbolts and parachutes had we attached? Just how had we come to lose the Excelsis? How much gold was there on board of her?

The men knew their job. Their questions were apposite and exhaustive. It went on for quite a time. We answered all we could and they seemed satisfied with our replies.

The Captain told them all they asked and kept to the point. Not until they appeared to have finished did he put a question of his own.

'Can't you tell us something about it?' he said. 'We've only heard that the Excelsis fell and did damage somewhere in Germany.'

For answer one of the interrogators picked up a newspaper which had recently been brought in and handed it to him. The First Officer and I got up and read it over his shoulder. The headline was right across the page:

'ROCKET SHIP WRECKS TOWN'

There followed a short but lurid account. It needed only half an eye to see that it had been hurriedly written up from very scanty information.

We learned that the disaster had occurred in Pfaffheim, Würtemburg, shortly before 12.30 p.m. (11.30 a.m. G.M.T.). A series of colossal explosions had occurred, rocking the whole town, shattering a number of buildings and causing the collapse of many more. So great had been the detonation that it had startled citizens in Stuttgart, 40 miles away. No figures of the dead and injured were yet available, but it was feared that they would run into thousands. The loss of life might have been greater but for the fact that most workers had left the factories for their mid-day meal.

Numerous witnesses had testified to seeing a rocket ship un-braked by any parachutes falling rapidly into the town immediately before the explosions occurred. Inquiries at the Salvage Register Office revealed that only one ship was known to be approaching Earth in a free fall, the Excelsis. It was unlikely, in the extreme, that there could be another.

We read the sketchy and unsatisfactory account rapidly. I don't think any of us doubted for a moment that it was the Excelsis. The Central Office would have been sure to know of another ship in a similar condition, for it is in every salvage ship's interest to register her claim to a wreck as soon as possible. But, for all that, we did not clearly understand the account.

'A series of explosions?' asked the Captain, looking up at the three officials. 'What do they mean by that? If there had been explosives on her she'd have gone up in one mighty bang.'

'Where is Pfaffheim?' asked Sinderton, before the others could answer. 'I thought I knew Würtemburg fairly well, but I've never heard of the place.'

'Our own official notification from Germany speaks of one explosion not a series,' said the man who had given us the newspaper. 'As for Pfaffheim―.' He reached for a gazetteer, found the right page and pushed it across the desk.

He watched us with raised eyebrows as we read:

Pfaffheim: Village, Würtemburg, river Jagar, 30 miles S.E, Stuttgart, pop. 2,100. Agricultural.

'There seem,' I said, 'to be some differences of opinion here. One explosion, not a series, 30 miles from Stuttgart, not 40, thousands of casualties in a population of 2,100, among factory workers in an agricultural district.'

I looked at the date on the gazetteer. It was current all right.

'Well?' I asked.

Our leading questioner shrugged his shoulders.

'It appears certain enough that the Excelsis fell there and that one or more explosions followed. Further than that, well, I frankly don't understand at present. There is more than the usual first report inaccuracy, but we ought to be able to clear it up before long.

'You gentlemen will have to appear before a magistrate, of course, but I think you may safely assume that there will be no difficulty about bail.'

He was quite right about that. There was a special and expeditious handling of our charge, and we were able to return to our families that evening. Sinderton went home, I know, with the same feeling as I did: that a day or two would see the whole mistaken business satisfactorily explained. But Captain Belford—well, perhaps he had a naturally more suspicious mind than we had, or it may have been some kind of premonition.

So far, the public had no interest in the affair. The reports were, of course, in all the evening papers, but even in those days nobody paid serious attention to an evening paper's headlines. So it can be said that the Belford affair, as it came to be known, really started the next day, with such introductions as:

'TREASURE SHIP WIPES OUT TOWN'

'GOLD ROCKET DESTROYS THOUSANDS'

'DEATH SHIP DROPS IN CITY'

The last was particularly effective on the contents bills; it left it to the readers to find out that the city referred to was not the City of London.

I bought several papers and read them carefully without learning much. They were all on much the same lines as yesterday's report. Pfaffheim was still taken to be a town of several thousands of working-class inhabitants, though a single explosion, not a series, was now reported. All reports still bore an appearance of being written up from meagre information. Nevertheless, in spite of its slender knowledge, The Radiogram seized the opportunity for improving the occasion with a leader in which it demanded a public inquiry and more than hinted at inefficiency and carelessness in the handling of salvage.

I read it through. It was in its usual vituperative style. I could not take it very seriously, and I did not suppose anyone else would. Who was going to believe that rather than open a few fuel-cocks we were going to run the risk of almost certainly losing our salvage money? Fuel is valuable, of course, but apart from anything else it must be obvious to everyone that the extra weight of full tanks would inevitably have torn the Excelsis free from her cables and crashed her.

I was still skimming the various accounts when the telephone rang and a voice told me that the D.A.C. of the Special Branch would be pleased to see me if I would step along about 12 o'clock. There are several ways of being invited to Scotland Yard. This one was perfectly amiable.

Captain Belford and Sinderton were already there when I was shown in. The D.A.C. and his secretary were the only others this time. The three were bending over a photograph on the desk. The D.A.C. pointed to it, and I looked more closely.

It showed a rocket-ship lying on her side. In the foreground and far into the background was a scene of desolation and utter destruction. Here and there were deep craters; the only vestiges of buildings were piles of bricks and rubble. The vista suggested a vast, dreary rubbish dump.

The angle at which the picture was taken showed that one side at least of the ship had been badly gashed and battered. Nevertheless, to those as well acquainted with her as we were, it was not difficult to recognise the old Excelsis.

While I was still looking at it, the Captain straightened up.

'What does this mean?' he asked the D.A.C.

The policeman took a cigarette and pushed across the box.

'As far as we can see it means quite a lot. I'm not sure how much yet, but I shall be surprised if it doesn't spell trouble of some kind.'

He offered us chairs.

'Perhaps the best aspect of it,' he went on, 'is that it will clear you gentlemen of the charge of negligence. It's perfectly obvious that if the Excelsis had been in fuel when she hit there wouldn't be a plate or a rivet of her to be found—but here she is, only a bit battered. No, it may be more serious than that.'

'Well, what did happen? Let's have it,' said the Captain.

The D.A.C. was not to be hurried.

'Since you were here we've been in touch with the Secret Service and learned quite a few interesting things. The chief one is that Pfaffheim ceased to be an agricultural village about two years ago. What you've done is to drop your Excelsis right into the centre of a new thriving and extremely hush-hush centre of explosives manufacture. As a result, you've achieved the destruction of five or six factories, wiped out an unknown number of storage depots, and utterly wrecked innumerable buildings. Furthermore, you have caused the sudden departure to Valhalla of several high officials, dozens of skilled chemists, to say nothing of between three and four thousand employees. That is what happened. And I may add that the authorities over there are very annoyed about it.'

He paused. 'They're even more annoyed that the report of the disaster got out. They moved fast, but not quite fast enough. It was too big a thing for even their censorship to hold in. News of a series of explosions was half across the world before they put out their official version of one explosion, and a British Agent had got this picture before they were reorganised enough to stop him.

'According to his report, the Excelsis landed right on top of one of the largest subterranean stores. He doesn't know the type of explosive stored there, but apparently it went off on concussion. Someone told him that so immense was the force of the explosion that the ship was blown into the air again and landed a full hundred yards to the side of its first hit. No one can say quite how that set off the rest, of course, but there seem to have been eight or ten major explosions, if not more.'

We were all a bit stunned. Our own satisfaction at being cleared from suspicion of neglect was rather damped down by the scale of the catastrophe.

'The Foreign Office,' the policeman went on, 'is inclined to link it up with reports that they've found a method of stabilising liquid oxygen bombs—which means very cheap production of explosives. They think that the stabilising may require several processes and the Excelsis concussed and set off some which were in an intermediate stage. The detonation of these might then conceivably have... .'

But we were in no mood for theoretical consideration of causes. Our own position was by now uppermost in our minds again. Captain Belford asked what all three of us wanted to know when he said:

'I suppose this means that the charge against us will be dropped?'

The other broke off and switched his attention to this side of the affair.

'You will have to attend the hearing, I'm afraid. But it will only be a matter of a few minutes. The police will inform the magistrate that in the light of further information they do not wish to proceed. That will dispose of the police side. The formal Government inquiry into the loss of the Excelsis is a different matter; that will take place in the usual course.'

It was a relief to all of us to hear that. It is a funny thing that for most men the whitest conscience is no protection from some apprehension in the presence of the police.

Chapter Six CRIMINALS OF SPACE

We three had lunch together and went our ways with the feeling that it had all blown over quite satisfactorily for us. The prospect of a formal inquiry did not worry us: after all, that follows in three out of every four cases of salvage. For me the feeling lasted until 7 o'clock when I read in a late evening edition that Captain William Belford had been arrested at his house at Highgate.

I found the news in the stop-press after I had read the rest of the paper. They had, it appeared, now discovered that Pfaffheim was not an agricultural village, but they cautiously refrained from saying just what it was. However, I noticed that some emphasis was laid on the series of explosions in contrast to the official report. I only happened to notice the sentence in the stop-press by accident; two minutes later I was on the 'phone to Scotland Yard, I gave my name and they put me through to the D.A.C. at once.

'What's this about arresting the Captain?' I demanded. 'Have they repeated yesterday's news or something?'

'No. It's right enough,' he told me. 'We've been looking for you, too. Where are you?'

'What's it about?' I asked cautiously.

'It's about murder and attempted murder. You didn't go home this afternoon did you?'

'No. I'm just on my way there now.'

'Well, change your mind. I want you round here as soon as you can manage it.'

'But...

'No buts. This is serious. I'll tell you when you come.'

I hesitated.

'All right. In about ten minutes,' I told him.

'Glad you saw that news,' he said, as I entered. 'We hoped you would. Didn't know how else to get at you before you went home.'

'But you said this morning....' I began.

'Oh, this morning. That's different. Let me tell you this. If you'd gone home you'd most likely not be alive now. Captain Belford was shot at and wounded in front of his house about half-past three. Mr. Sinderton was murdered on his own doorstep about the same time. It's ten to one they were ready for you, too.'

'Sinderton dead?' I said, incredulously.

'With five bullets. The Captain had only a flesh wound in the arm. luckily.'

I just gaped at him.

'But I don't understand. Who... ? What... ? What do you mean, ready for me?'

'I mean that your two friends were the subjects of deliberate attacks—And I'm pretty sure you would have been, too, if they'd known where to find you.'

'But I don't understand,' I said again. 'Who do you mean by "they?" Who on earth would want to shoot me?'

'Might it not be some friends or—er—associates of the people at Pfaffheim?' he suggested.

I pulled myself together and considered. I couldn't see it.

'Quite unlikely, I should say,' I returned, pretty calmly. 'What on earth would be the good of that? What would be the point of shooting us on account of an accident? It's not sensible.'

'I don't know,' he said slowly. 'But can you think of any other reason why there should be attempts on them both?'

'I can't think of any reason at all. What you suggest certainly isn't a reason,' I told him.

'Possibly you're right. We shall see. At any rate, I shall be glad if you will make arrangements to stay away from home for a night or two until it is cleared up.'

I argued with him a bit. I couldn't see any reason why I was in danger, but he was persuasive. Without actually putting it into words, he somehow suggested that there was a lot at the back of the business. By the time he got through I had an uneasy feeling that any corner might hide a gunman waiting for me. It's not a nice sensation. In the end I agreed to stay, though not without a sense that I was scared of a shadow.

Either the Secret Service had released their photograph or some enterprising journalist had contrived to smuggle out another, for there was the picture of the damaged Excelsis, among the debris she was supposed to have caused, large in every paper, and on the front page of most. It made it clear to everyone that the ship had not blown up. Furthermore, the later editions ran a translation from German papers. Realising that their censorship had broken down, they were shouting their heads off with another theory.

The whole thing, we learned, was an infamous plot. Jewish influence, combining behind the Jewish Captain Belford, had aimed a blow at the defences of the Reich; the first blow in the covert war which World Jewry was opening against Germany: the blood of two thousand five hundred German martyrs was on their heads. Investigations by the Gestapo had revealed that Captain Belford and his officers had been bribed to the extent of £250,000 to drop the Excelsis on the defenceless town of Pfaffheim and to make it appear an accident. It was no accident. It was a bolt fired at Germany and German defence. The two thousand five hundred Aryan Germans who had been its victims had fallen for the Fatherland as truly as any soldier in the field. They would be avenged. The people of the Third Reich demanded that the murderers be surrendered to German justice.

The well-known technique of 'the big lie' was at work again. I had been given quarters with the Captain and we read the stuff through together, marvelling that anyone should find it worth printing.

'But I'm not a Jew,' said the Captain, bewilderedly.

'What do you think that matters?' I said. 'You're accused of an anti-Nazi plot, so you must be a Jew.'

'And how the hell do they think I did it? Don't they know that even under the best conditions you can't be sure within fifty miles either side where a derelict will fall?'

'Of course they know. But does the public? After all don't we spend a deuce of a lot of time trying to convince them of the accuracy and dependability of the Rocket Service?'

'Two-fifty thousand. H'm. It'd almost have been worth trying,' muttered the Captain.

The D.A.C.. accompanied by the Assistant Commissioner himself, came to visit us.

'Well,' he said, as his eye fell on the papers. 'They're out for your blood, aren't they? We've already had a demand from the Embassy for your extradition.'

'I'll sue them for libel.' said the Captain.

'In a German court?' asked the Assistant Commissioner, with a smile.

'But this stuff's all rot. They must know that,' I protested.

'Of course they do. But they're out to get you one way or another, aren't they?' he pointed to the sling which held the Captain's arm. 'The question is why?'

'It's absurd. A state doesn't revenge itself like that on individuals for what it knows must have been a pure accident,' I told him.

'Quite. I agree. So there must be another reason, mustn't there?'

'But what?'

'Have you forgotten the Excelsis's cargo? There was gold, they're very short of that.'

The Captain gave a snort. He showed signs of launching himself on one of his customary attacks on gold, but thought better of it.

'And there was ganywood—nearly as valuable. And there was a lot of tillfer fibre—how about that?'

It was an aspect which had not struck me before. Tillfer fibre under treatment produces Etherium, the lightest known gas; we used to use it in the wings of 'planes to give added lift, among other things. Since tillfer grows only on Ganymede and in limited quantities there, and also because there was an Anglo-American trade protectorate in force there, the Germans couldn't get it. It was one of the raw materials they felt sore about. Hard on them, of course, but how much would they have let us have if it had been their trade protectorate? That's an easy answer.

'So what?' I asked.

'I don't know. But suppose, just suppose, they would only hand over that cargo on condition you were turned over to them.'

'Would that do them any good?'

They could claim for their own people's benefit to have dealt with plotters as they should be dealt with.'

'Fantastic. Who's going to believe that?' the Captain asked.

The Assistant Commissioner shrugged his shoulders.

'Quite a lot of people if it's shouted loudly enough. The same kind of thing has worked often before. It's wonderful what they take.' He ruminated a few moments. 'They made a mess of 1914. They came a cropper in 1940. And now they're working up for it again. You know, when I look at them, I know just how Henry the Second must have seen Thomas à Becket.'

But the A.C. was wrong. Public indignation over the demand worked up quickly, and, as ever, concentrated in groups on various aspects: against the presumptuous belief that the handing over of British subjects to a foreign court could be tolerated for a moment: against the existence of any plot: against the feasibility of such an arrangement. The calmest partisans suggested that there should be a trial for the purpose of clearing us, but that it should be held in England where a sense of justice and not the good of the state could be relied on to produce a verdict.

The next day the situation was inflamed. Reports of the murder of Sinderton and the attempt on Captain Belford were published. We learned that the Embassy was still pressing for our extradition on the ground that we had, in dropping the derelict from no charted territory, committed an act of piracy which placed us beyond the protection of our government.

A news message from Germany went one better. The Excelsis, it said, carried no cargo. She was an empty hulk. This, they claimed, was substantiated by a member of the crew who had confessed that we had stopped at the Moon and hidden the cargo there before coming on to Earth.

The Captain and I gasped over this latest piece of effrontery. They had gone one better than the A.C.'s prophecy: they wanted both us and the cargo.

Well, maybe their own people believed that about the cargo, but it didn't go down too well over here at first. It takes civilised people quite a while to appreciate 'the big lie' technique.

It was queer, too, why we should bother to drop an empty hulk when it might have been full of explosives as they had previously claimed. But they didn't seem to bother about little points like that. It was years later that some journalist dug up the story of the treasure on the Moon and people began wondering about it.

At the time, the whole thing seemed to us to be just farcical. However, when the Assistant Commissioner came to see us once more it turned out to be not so humorous after all.

'They want you over there,' he said. 'You realise what that means. Execution. And more. Before you are condemned they'll have a confession out of you by some means that you stole the Excelsis's cargo and hid it on the Moon. They'll brand you as both pirates and criminals.

'We, naturally, have no wish to surrender you. But, and it is a big but, according to international law their claim is perfectly good. A person accused of engineering a crime in free space is eligible for trial in the country of the plaintiff.'

That was a facer. Naturally, until that moment, we had neither of us given serious consideration to the German claim.

'It puts us in an awkward position,' he went on, for all the world as if it didn't put us in a jam. 'It boils down to this. Either we must hand you over and connive at what we know to be injustice, or else we must commit a flagrant breach of international law.

'We have, I repeat, no wish to do the former. Yet, in our position can we do the latter?

'The Government is very worried over you two. You see, you have a political aspect, too, now. Foreign relations are none too easy; it's no time to flout international agreements. On the other hand, the party majority at home is none too stable. Any big popular outcry will almost certainly result in their losing the next election: and handing you over would raise an almighty shindy.'

I felt that if we were to be political counters it was extremely lucky that we had the feeling of the people with us.

'As I, and several who are much more influential than I, see it,' he went on, 'there is one remedy, and one only. You two are going to have to disappear.'

'Disappear?'

'Make an escape—preferably a spectacular escape—from custody.'

'I don't like that,' said the Captain. 'I'm a man with a clean record. I've done nothing I'm ashamed of. I ought to have a chance to clear myself.'

'Of course, you don't like it. Nor do we. But you'd like still less being made to sign a false confession.'

'Let them try to make me.'

'I'd rather not,' said the Assistant Commissioner. There was a lot of unpleasant suggestion in his voice. It took quite a time to din a full realisation of the position into the Captain, he was so satisfied with the clearness of his own innocence. It was an hour before we could get him to see the thing in the round, so to speak.

Then there was a lot to arrange. False names, and passports. A method by which his wife could also disappear and join him. Money to be banked for us under our new names. But we got it all fixed at last, with the Captain still looking a bit bewildered as if his sense of values had been turned upside down.

Well, that's about where truth ends and legend begins, and as everyone knows the legends, I need not repeat them here.

It seems a pity in a way to spoil a daring and exciting exploit this way, but, as you see, with the whole thing beautifully stage-managed and all guns loaded with blanks it wasn't really too difficult. We just shot off into the blue.

I kept my new name for some years until the whole thing had blown over and when I changed it back no one thought of identifying me with the escaped Fearon. Belford's name had become too well known, so he had to stick to his new one for the rest of his life.

My hope is that this account will at last put a stop to these perpetual treasure hunts to the Moon. Several lives and a lot of money have been thrown away on them. Once and for all, then; Captain Belford's treasure does not exist. It never did.