Alan E. Nourse (15 page)

David
nodded. "I barely spotted it." Gingerly he stepped between the
strips, then across to the other side, and Tuck followed, his heart in his
throat.
A perfect booby trap for one who wasn't watching
closely for just such a thing.
On the other side they hesitated for a
moment; then David urged him on with a wave of a hand, and they hurried again
toward the opening, and stopped short, almost teetering on the drop that lay
before them. And they stood there and stared, peering dumbfounded at the
incredible thing they saw there before them in the gloom-It was not a vault,
nor a battle station, nor even a stockade.
It was a ship,
standing upright on its jets in a tall,
narrow crevice, with the open top camouflaged and sealed with gray plastic sheeting
that blended perfectly into the rock. A pale gray light filtered down from
above, and the huge ship stood like a ghost, tall and silent in the gloom-Tuck
stared at David, dumbfounded. "But—but a
ship!
But there's no place to
go
with a ship! They'd be hunted down, if it took a thousand years.
There's no place in the Solar System they
could hide—"
His
voice broke off with a gasp as the implication of his own words struck him.

There
was only one place where a ship would be beyond pursuit.
Completely
and utterly beyond pursuit.

There was only one conclusion possible. The
ship was a star-ship.

_{Chapter
14
Trapped}

jck
B
enedict
and David
Torm
stared at the ship in the
gloomy crevice, stared speechless at the long, slender form as the implication
sank in. And then they were both talking at once, forgetting where they were in
their amazement at the ship in the crevice before them. A thousand questions
roared through Tuck's brain, a thousand pressing questions, questions that came
out with incredible, staggering answers.

"But
where could they have
gotten
it? There's never been a
ship like this on Titan for anything except regular cargo runs—and how
could
it be a star-ship? How could it take five hundred people—
"

"I
don't know, but this is the plan—it must be." David stared up at the long,
slender, finger-like structure. "It must be the Earth ship that crashed.
That was a troopship—built to carry three or four hundred men—"

"But
that was lost clear around on the other side of the planet!"

"I
know. But the Security Patrol never found it, did they?"

"No—it was an impossible task. Titan is
almost half

as
big as Earth. What chance would a search
party have? The ship may have fallen into one of those gorges, and covered over
with frost so it was completely invisible from above."

David
Torm
nodded. "But everyone knew a ship had
crashed. There was no colony here then—but when the colonists first worked out
the plan, they
knew
there was a
ship—somewhere—"

"And
they must have found it." Tuck's voice was filled with awe. "They
must have torn it apart, bit by bit, hull plate by hull plate, tube by tube—and
brought it here."

David
jumped up, excitedly. "That's right! Just a few men, working in secret,
dragging all that metal clear around from the other side. And then they found
this crevice here to reassemble it—and it's taken them a hundred years."

Tuck
shook his head, still incredulous.
"And the
tunnel?"

"They
must have built it in secret, and then made up a story about a vein of
radioactives
to keep the other colonists—and the
Earthmen—away." He stared down the black hole where the jet tubes
disappeared, and the fins on which the ship rested.

"It
still doesn't add up!" Tuck burst out. "Where did they get an
interstellar drive for it? The greatest minds in the world have been working on
Earth for two hundred years to find a drive that would take a ship to the
stars. They've had laboratories, money, government support—and
they've never found it.
They say it's theoretically impossible."
He turned to David, his eyes wide. "How could the
colonists
have found something that all Earth's
technology couldn't find?"

David shrugged. "I
couldn't even guess."

"Well, I'll tell you one thing—
7
want to see those engines!"

"I don't know if we should go on board
her or not—" All of a sudden David was trembling. "I don't like this,
Tuck—I'm scared of what'll happen if they find us—"

"If the colonists have developed an
interstellar drive,
ifs
in that ship.
You can stay here if you want. I'm going
in." Tuck started up the ramp toward the dark port in the ship's side.
David hesitated,
then
started up after him.
"Look," he said, pointing upward at the scaffolding. "They're
still finishing the hull plates. They must have built it from the inside out.
And it looks almost finished—"

They stepped from the ramp into the ship, and
Tuck felt a thrill unlike anything he had ever experienced. Here was the
adventure he had dreamed of all his life; here was the ship that was built to
go to the stars, built to leave Earth and Earth's puny Solar System light-years
behind, built to speed straight as an arrow-where?
Alpha
Centaurus
?
Cygni
?
Arcturus
?
Here was the greatest frontier of all, the frontier that
had never been crossed—the frontier physicists on Earth had said
could never he crossed—

Because there was no drive for an
interstellar ship.
The weeks and months in transit between Earth and Mars or Venus or
Titan on fast Interplanetary Atomics were insignificant compared to the
years—the centuries —that would be required to travel with them to the stars.
Man's life was too short to make such a trip possible without an interstellar
drive.

And
yet, in the bowels of this strange secret ship-was the drive there?
Could the colonists, in their desperation, have discovered genius
in their midst, genius to solve the immense mathematical and technical impossibilities
of a space-warp, of faster-than-light mo-lion?
The boys made their way
along the narrow dark corridor of the ship, moving downward, still downward to
the rear of the ship. They passed a huge room, and stopped, peering through the
hatch at the tier upon tier of soft, curved mattresses, set at 45° angles from
the floor—the acceleration cots. This was the troop hold, the quarters that had
been built to carry the Security Patrol troops, over a century ago—how many
were there? The boys stopped, and counted the cots on the first row, and
counted the number of tiers.
Five hundred.
The ship
was to carry the entire colony. There was no doubt of it.

Then
in another room a bright light shone, and when they walked in, they (
ound
a sealed lock and an inner hatch. They moved curiously
into the lock, and sealed the door behind them, heard the automatic pumps whir,
until the inner hatchway sprang open, and they walked into a brilliant flare of
lights. It was a large room, lined with mercury vapor lamps and carbon arcs, a
room so damp and hot that their cold suits were drenched with water, and they
stood in little individual rainstorms, until they could peer through their
dripping helmets at the row upon row of green things, growing plants in huge
tanks. The hydroponic tanks— to provide growing food, to cleanse the great ship
of carbon dioxide and to replenish the feeble stores of oxygen the ship could
carry for five hundred people. They wiped the water from their suits in sheets,
and moved back through the lock. Out once again in the icy corridor the water
froze in solid sheets upon them, and tinkled and crashed to the floor as they
broke it off. But still they moved to the rear, on toward the wonderful
engines that lay in the bowels of the ship.

Tuck
knew the layout of the ship; he had explored the Earth ship in minute detail
during the passage out to Titan, and was familiar with what to expect of such
ships. But David had never before traveled on a rocket ship; his acquaintance
had been confined to a brief visit now and then, and he followed Tuck with open
mouth and wide eyes, finding amazement in every turn of the passageway,
excitement in every compartment. And when they opened the hatch that led to the
engine rooms and generators David could hardly believe that a single ship could
carry propelling engines so huge.

But
Tuck didn't wait for his friend. In an instant he was down among the
generators, examining the engines, moving swiftly from one great pile of
machinery to another, eyes growing wider, more incredulous by the minute. And
when David finally caught up with him, he found the Earth boy sitting stunned
on an auxiliary generator, staring about in bewilderment. "What's wrong,
boy? Are you sick?"

"Sick?
No—no. I'm—I'm fine. I—I just can't understand it—"

David glanced around nervously.
"Understand what?"

Tuck stared up at him,
hollow-eyed.
"The engines!"

"What's wrong with the
engines?"

"There's nothing wrong with them.
They're perfectly good, common, ordinary, everyday interplanetary atomics.
There isn't any interstellar drive on this
ship!"

David sat down heavily. "I thought not.
Because if there were, it would be easy for them to escape.
And my father thought it would be suicide for them—"

Tuck
nodded, speaking almost as if he were in an unbelievable dream. "It would
be suicide. They would have to make this ship a colony—a permanent colony,
drifting endlessly in space. They would have to take their bearings, and head
out into deep space until their power gave out—and then they would have to
drift. They would keep going, and they would reach their star—someday. But it
would take three hundred years." He looked up at David. "Do you
realize what that would mean? That would be
twelve generations
to live and die aboard this ship before it
reached its destination! And what might they find, even if they reached it? A
planet they could live on? Who knows? There might not be any planets in the
system they reached —or there might not be any oxygen, any food. They would
never know until they got there—and they might never even survive to reach
it—it would be almost hopeless to try and support five hundred people, and
their children, and their children's children, on a ship like this for three
hundred years."

David nodded. "But there
would be a chance."

"A
chance?
What kind of a chance?
A billion to one?"

"More
chance than staying here.
Because at least the colony would
be free."

Tuck
stared at the engines about them. "Do you think that they would actually
try it?"

David
nodded, very slowly.
"I
know my people," he
said. "Even a billion-to-one chance at freedom would be better, to them.
But only if there was no hope here."

"But
Cortell
is urging them into it now!"

"
Cortell
is a fool. He wants to lead, and he hates
Earth—more than anything else in his life, he hates Earth. He wants to stop the
mines, destroy Earth's power, no matter what the cost. And this is the way he
can do it."

They
sat in silence for a few minutes. Then Tuck said, "There's still time to
stop him. The ship isn't loaded completely; there is still the whole colony and
their clothes and supplies to load. We've still got a little time." He
started up the ladder to the corridor. "Come on—we can go out where we
came in. We can get the
Snooper
and
go get dad at the Earth ship. And then we can get your father, and they'll
have
to listen to reason." He stopped suddenly, cocking his ear.
"Listen! Do you hear something?"

David
listened, and his face went white. The sound was clear now, a thin, high
whistling note, with a strange throbbing undertone. "That's a pump,"
David whispered. "We'd better hurry!"

They rushed upward, reaching the port
completely out of breath. The whine was louder now, and the throbbing had
become a clearly distinguishable
pompom-pom
of
pumping pistons. They scanned the outside of the ship carefully,
then
slipped down the gangway, dousing their lights as they
went. Once back in the tunnel they walked slowly, flicking their lights briefly
every ten steps or so. "We'll have to dodge the
Murexide
,"
David whispered, "but it sounds like the pumps are nearby. That cave-in
must have been
vert
,
recent. It may have been the thing that was holding
Cortell
up all along."

"But
how would they get to this side of the cave-in to set the pumps in
motion?"

"They
must have tunneled around the cave-in. It would have taken them two or three
days, and that's about right—" He stopped short, and stepped gingerly
across the deadly gray strips in their path, then moved quickly along. They
reached the Y, and still saw no one, but the sound of the pumps was imminent
now. Carefully they crept along the wall, keeping the curve of the wall between
them and the pumps—and then, almost on top of them, they heard voices, and
froze against the wall—

"—still
think there's something fishy about it," a voice was shouting above the
pumps. "Don't have cave-ins like this just out of a clear blue sky.
Especially when we're ready to get going—"

"Come
on, get the bags in there and shut up," another voice snarled. "We
got enough to do without crying about everything."

"Yeah,
but why do they
gotta
make
us
do it?" There was a dull thump as another sandbag was slammed into
place. "Who do they think we are, anyway? And it couldn't be a little
break,
nothin
' like that. Oh, no.
Gotta
be four feet high—"

"All right, all right.
Stop whining! Did you bring the
sealer?"

There
were more sounds, interspersed with grunts, and a hiss of the sealer pump as
one of the men squirted the airtight plastic caulking over the sandbags. Tuck
poked David, eyes wide with alarm. "They're closing up the opening!"
he whispered hoarsely.

"I know it. Think I'm
blind?"

"But
the Snooper!
It's outside! How'll we get back?"

David waved him to silence. One of the men
was walking down the tunnel toward them. They shrank against the wall, hardly
daring to breathe—