The Mammoth Book of Golden Age SF (6 page)

It struck the river like a plummet. The waters enclosed it and it was gone. He looked at the spot where it had disappeared, half expecting it to spring back up into his hand. But it was gone. Gone for good!

He started dazedly back to the ship, moving in an unreal dream. Paradoxical that he had been able to get rid of it. It had dropped from his hand once, fallen short of the river once. The third time it had given up trying!

When he came up to the ship, Masters was standing at the stern, looking at the broken rocket jets. He turned, and saw Tony, water still dripping from his uniform. He fell back a step, face turned pallid.

Tony’s lips curled. “Who did it?”

“D-did what?”

“You know what I mean,” Tony bit out. He took three quick steps forward.

Masters saw that, and went reckless. Tony side-stepped him, brought his left arm around in a short arc. Masters went down cursing. Tony knelt, holding Masters down by the throat. He felt through his pockets, unearthed the key to the cuffs. Then he hauled Masters to his feet and shook him. Masters’ teeth clicked.

“Murderer!” Tony snapped, white with rage.

Masters broke loose. “I’d do it again,” he said wildly, and swung. He missed. Tony lashed out with the full power of his open palm, caught Masters on the side of the head. Masters went reeling back, slammed against the side of the ship. Tony glared at him, and then turned on his heel.

He met Laurette Overland coming down the stairs to the upper corridor.

“Lieutenant!” Her eyes danced with excitement. “I’ve been looking for you. Where in the world have you been?”

“Ask Masters.” He urged himself down the corridor, jaw set. She fell into step beside him, running to keep up with his long strides.

“You’re all wet!” she exclaimed. “Can’t you tell me what happened? Did you go swimming?”

“Involuntarily.” He kept on walking.

She grabbed his arm, and slowed him to a stop. An ominous glint replaced her excitement.

“What,” she said, “did you mean when you said I should ask Erle about it? Did he push you in? If he did, I’ll—” She was unable to speak.

Tony laughed humorlessly. “He admitted it. He stole my key to the handcuffs with the idea that it would be easier to free Braker and Yates that way after I was . . . uh . . . properly prepared to be a skeleton.”

Her head moved back and forth. “That’s horrible,” she said lowly. “Horrible.”

He held her eyes. “Perhaps I shouldn’t have told you about it,” he said, voice faintly acid. “He’s your fiancé, isn’t he?”

She nodded, imperceptibly, studying him through the half gloom. “Yes. But maybe I’ll change my mind, lieutenant. Maybe I will. But in the meantime, come along with me. Daddy’s discovered something wonderful.”

Professor Overland’s head was propped up. He had a pencil and paper on his pyramided legs.

“Oh. Lieutenant! Come in.” His face lighted. “Look here! Gravitons
can
thrust their way through to the future, giving the ship a thrust into the past. But only if it happened to enter the spherical type of etheric vacuum. This vacuum would be minus everything – electrons, photons, cosmic rays and so forth, except under unusual circumstances. At some one time, in either the past or future, there might be a stream of photons bridging the vacuum. Now, when gravitons are ejected into the past, they grab hold of light photons, and become ordinary negative electrons. Now say the photons are farther away in the past than they are in the future. The gravitons therefore follow the line of least resistance and hook up with photons of the future. The photons in this case were perhaps hundreds of millions of years away in the vacuum. In traveling that time-distance, the gravitons kicked the ship back for a proportionate number of years, burned up our machinery, and wrecked us on this suddenly appearing before-the-asteroid world.”

Laurette said brightly, “But that isn’t the important part, daddy.”

“I can find another of those etheric vacuums,” Overland went on, preoccupiedly, pointing out a series of equations. “Same type, same structure. But we have to go to the planet Earth in order to rebuild the reversed constraction machinery. We’ll find the materials we need there.” He glanced up. “But we have to get off this world before it cracks up, lieutenant.”

Tony started. “Before this world cracks up?”

“Certainly. Naturally. You can—” His heavy brows came down abruptly. “You didn’t know about that, did you? Hm-m-m.” He stroked his jaw, frowning. “You recall the crescent planet you and Masters saw? Well, he took some readings on that. It’s wonderful, son!” His eyes lighted. “It’s an ill wind that blows nobody good. Not only do we know now that the asteroid evolved from a broken-up planet, but we also know the manner in which that planet broke up. Collision with a heavy, smaller body.”

Tony paled. “You mean—” he said huskily. “Good heavens!” Sweat stood out on his forehead. “How soon will that happen?” he said ominously.

“Well, Erle has the figures. Something over eighteen or nineteen days. It’ll be a crack-up that’ll shake the sun. And we’ll be here to witness it.” He smiled wryly. “I’m more scientist than man, I guess. I never stop to think we might die in the crack-up, and furnish six skeletons instead of one.”

“There’ll be no skeletons,” Tony said, eyes narrowed. “For one thing, we can repair the ship, though we’ll have to work like mad. For another – I threw the ring into the river. It’s gone.”

Laurette seemed to pale. “I . . . I don’t see how that could be done,” she stammered. “You couldn’t get rid of it, not really – could you?”

“It’s gone,” Tony said stubbornly. “For good. And don’t forget it. There’ll be no skeleton. And you might try to impress that on Masters, so he doesn’t try to produce one,” he added significantly.

He left the room with a nod, a few seconds later stepped into the lounge. Braker and Yates turned around. Both were cuffed.

Tony took the key from his pocket and the cuffs fell away. In brief, pungent tones, then, he explained the situation, the main theme being that the ship had to be well away from the planet before the crack-up. Yates would go over the wiring system. Braker, Masters and Tony would work with oxyacetylene torches and hammers over the hole in the hull and the rocket jets.

Then he explained about the ring.

Yates ran a thin hand through his yellow hair.

“You don’t do it that easy,” he said in his soft, effortless voice. “There’s a skeleton up there, and it’s got Braker’s ring on its finger. It’s got to be accounted for, don’t it? It’s either me or you or Braker or the girl or her old man or Masters. There ain’t any use trying to avoid it, either.” His voice turned sullen. He looked at Braker, then at Tony. “Anyway, I’m keeping my back turned the right way so there won’t be any dirty work.”

Braker’s breath sounded. “Why, you dirty rat,” he stated. He took a step toward Yates. “You would think of that. And probably you’d try it on somebody else, too. Well, don’t go pulling it on me, understand.” He scowled. “And you better watch him, too, Crow. He’s pure poison – in case you got the idea we were friends.”

“Oh, cut it out,” Tony said wearily. He added, “If we get the ship in working order, there’s no reason why all six of us shouldn’t get off – alive.” He turned to the door, waved Braker and Yates after him. Yet he was sickeningly aware that
his
back was turned to men who admittedly had no conscience to speak of.

A week passed. The plain rang with sledgehammer strokes directed against the twisted tubes. Three were irreplaceable.

Tony, haggard, tired, unbelievably grimed from his last trip up the twisted, hopeless-looking main blast tube, was suddenly shocked into alertness by sounds of men’s voices raised in fury outside the ship. He ran for the open air lock, and urged himself toward the ship’s stern. Braker and Yates were tangling it.

“I’ll kill him!” Braker raged. He had a rock the size of his fist in his hand. He was attempting, apparently, to knock Jawbone Yates’ brains out. Erle Masters stood near, chewing nervously at his upper lip.

With an oath, Tony wrenched the rock from Braker’s hand, and hauled the man to his feet. Yates scrambled erect, whimpering, mouth bleeding.

Braker surged wildly toward him. “The dirty –!” he snarled. “Comes up behind me with an oxy torch!”

Yates shrilled, backing up, “That’s a lie!” He pointed a trembling hand at Braker. “It was
him
that was going to use the torch on
me!
”

“Shut up!” Tony bawled. He whirled on Masters. “You’ve got a nerve to stand there,” he snarled. “But then you
want
a skeleton! Damned if you’re going to get one! Which one did it?”

Masters stammered, “I didn’t see it! I . . . I was just—”

“The hell you say!” Tony whirled on the other two, transfixing them with cold eyes.

“Cut it out,” he said, lips barely moving. “Either you’re letting your nerves override you, or either one or both of you is blaming the other for a move he made himself. You might as well know the skeleton I saw was intact. What do you think a blow torch would do to a skeleton?” His lips curled.

Braker slowly picked up his torch with a poisonous glance at Yates. Yates as slowly picked his sledgehammer. He turned on Tony.

“You said the skeleton was intact?” Eagerness, not evident from his carefully sullen voice, was alive in his eyes.

Tony’s glance passed over the man’s broken, protruding jaw.

“The head,” he replied, “was in shadow.”

He winced. The passing of hope was a hard thing to watch, even in a man like Jawbone Yates.

He turned, releasing his breath in a long, tired sigh. What a man-sized job this was. Outwitting fate – negating what
had
happened!

Tony worked longer than he expected that day, tracing down the web of asbestos-covered rocket fuel conduits, marking breaks down on the chart. The sun sank slowly. Darkness swept over the plain, along with a rising wind. He turned on the lights, worked steadily on, haggard, nerves worn. Too much work to allow a slowing up. The invading planet rose each night a degree or more larger. Increasing tidal winds and rainstorms attested to a growing gravitational attraction.

He put an x-mark on the check – and then froze. A scream had gone blasting through the night.

Tony dropped pencil and chart, went flying up the ramp to the upper corridor. He received the full impact of Masters’ second scream. Masters had left his room, was running up the corridor, clad in pajamas. There was a knife sticking out of his shoulder.

Tony, gripped with horror, impelled himself after the man, caught up with him as he plunged face downward. He dropped to one knee, staring at a heavy meat knife that had been plunged clear through the neck muscles on Masters’ left shoulder, clearly a bid for a heart stroke.

Masters turned on his side. He babbled, face alive with horror. Tony rose, went with the full power of his legs toward the lounge.

A figure showed, running ahead of him. He caught up with it, whipped his arm around the man’s neck.

“You!”

Yates squirmed tigerishly. He turned, broke loose, face alive with fury. Tony’s open palm lashed out, caught Yates full on the face. Yates staggered and fell. He raised himself to one elbow.

“Why’d you do it?” Tony rasped, standing over him.

Yates’ face was livid. “Because I’d rather live than anything else I can think of!” His booted foot lashed out. Tony leaped back. Yates rose. Tony brought his bunched fist up from his knees with all the ferocity he felt. Yates literally rose an inch off the floor, sagged, and sopped to the floor.

Tony picked him up in one arm, and flung him bodily into the lounge.

Braker rose from his sleeping position on a cushioned bench, blinking.

Tony said cuttingly, “Your pal ran a knife through Masters shoulder.”

“Huh?” Braker was on his feet. “Kill him?” In the half-light his eyes glowed.

“You’d be glad if he did!”

Braker looked at Yates. Then, slowly, “Listen, copper. Don’t make the mistake of putting me in the same class with a rat like Yates. I don’t knife people in the back. But if Masters was dead, I’d be glad of it. It might solve a problem that’s bothering the rest of us. What you going to do with him?”

“I already did it. But tell Yates he better watch out for Masters, now.”

Braker grunted scornfully. “Huh. Masters’ll crack up and down his yellow back.”

Tony left.

Laurette and Overland were taking care of Masters in his room. The wound was clean, hardly bleeding.

Overland, somewhat pale, was hanging onto the door. “It’s not serious, honey,” he said, as her fingers nimbly wound bandages.

“Not serious?” She turned stricken eyes up to Tony. “Look at him. And Daddy says it’s not serious!”

Tony winced. Masters lay face down on the bed, babbling hysterically to himself, his eyes preternaturally wide. His skin was a pasty white, and horror had etched flabby lines around his lips.

“Knifed me,” he gasped. “Kniffed me. I was sleeping, that was the trouble. But I heard him—” He heaved convulsively, and buried his face in his pillow.

Laurette finished her job, face pale.