To the Galactic Rim: The John Grimes Saga (45 page)

Grimes felt his prominent ears turning hot and scarlet. He snapped into full wakefulness. He said firmly, “That will do, Spooky. You’ve jogged my memory sufficiently. And if any of you gentlemen think I’m going to order a free wine issue, you’re mistaken. We’ll use plain water, just enough to make a sort of mud, thoroughly mixed, and then we’ll dry it out. No, we’ll not use heat, not inside the ship. Too risky. But the vacuum chamber should do the job quite well . . .”

“And then?” asked Beadle, becoming interested in spite of himself.

“Then we crush it into grains.”

“Won’t that be risky?”

“Yes. But we’ll have a plastic bowl fitted to the food mixer, and the Chief can make some strong, plastic paddles. As long as we avoid the use of metal we should be safe enough.”

They made a small batch of powder by the method that Grimes had outlined. Slovotny fitted a remote control switch to the food mixer in the galley, and they all retired from that compartment while the cake was being crushed and stirred. The bowlful of black, granular matter looked harmless enough—but a small portion of it transferred to a saucer—and taken well away from the larger amount remaining in the bowl—burned with a satisfying
whoof!
when ignited.

“We’re in business!” gloated Grimes. “
Adder
Pyrotechnics, Unlimited!”

They were in business, and while Grimes, Beadle and von Tannenbaum manufactured a large supply of gunpowder Slovotny and Vitelli set about converting a half-dozen large plastic bottles into rocket casings. They were made of thermoplastic, so it was easy enough to shape them as required, with throat and nozzle. To ensure that they would retain the shape after firing they were bound about with heavy insulating tape. After this was finished, there was a rocket launcher to make—a tube of the correct diameter, with a blast shield and with the essential parts of a projectile pistol as the firing mechanism.

Then all hands joined forces in filling the rockets. Tubes of stiff paper, soaked in a saturated solution of saltpeter and allowed to dry, were inserted into the casing and centered as accurately as possible. The powder was poured around them, and well tamped home.

While this was being done Spooky Deane—who, until now, had played no part in the proceedings—made a suggestion. “Forgive me for butting in, Captain, but I remember—with
your
memory—the models and pictures that the Instructor showed the class. Those old chemical rockets had sticks or vanes to make them fly straight . . .”

For a moment this had Grimes worried. Then he laughed. “Those rockets, Spooky, were used in the atmosphere. Sticks or vanes would be utterly useless in a vacuum.” But he couldn’t help wondering if vanes set actually in the exhaust would help to keep the missiles on a straight trajectory. But unless he used metal there was no suitable material aboard the ship—and metal was out.

* * *

Grimes went outside, with von Tannenbaum, to do the actual firing. They stood there on the curved shell plating, held in place by the magnetic soles of their boots. Each of them, too, was secured by lifelines. Neither needed to be told that to every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. The backblast of the home-made rockets would be liable to sweep them from their footing.

Grimes held the clumsy bazooka while the Navigator loaded it, then he raised it slowly. A cartwheel sight had been etched into the transparent shield. Even though the weapon had no weight in Free Fall it still had inertia, and it was clumsy. By the time that he had the target, gleaming brightly in the beam
of Adder’s
searchlight, in the center of the cartwheel, he was sweating copiously. He said into his helmet microphone, “Captain to
Adder
. I am about to open fire.”

“
Adder
to Captain. Acknowledged,” came Beadle’s voice in reply.

Grimes’s right thumb found the firing stud of the pistol. He recoiled involuntarily from the wash of the orange flame that swept over the blast shield—and then he was torn from his hold on the hull plating, slammed back to the full extent of the lifeline. He lost his grip on the rocket launcher, but it was secured to his body by stout, fireproof cords. Somehow he managed to keep his attention on the fiery flight of the rocket. It missed the target, but by a very little. To judge by the straight wake of it, it had not been deflected by any sort of repulsor field.

“It throws high . . .” commented Grimes.

He pulled himself back along the line to exactly where he had been standing before. Von Tannenbaum inserted another missile into the tube. This time, when he aimed, Grimes intended to bring the target to just above the center of the cartwheel. But there was more delay; the blast shield was befogged by smoke. Luckily this eventuality had been foreseen, and von Tannenbaum cleaned it off with a soft rag.

Grimes aimed, and fired.

Again the blast caught him—but this time he hung in an untidy tangle facing the wrong way, looking at nothingness. He heard somebody inside the ship say, “It’s blown up!”

What had blown up?

Hastily Grimes got himself turned around. The mysterious globe was still there, but between it and
Adder
was an expanding cloud of smoke, a scatter of fragments, luminous in the searchlight’s glare. So perhaps the nonmetallic missiles weren’t going to work after all—or perhaps this missile would have blown up by itself, anyhow.

The third rocket was loaded into the bazooka. For the third time Grimes fired—and actually managed to stay on his feet. Straight and true streaked the missile. It hit, and exploded in an orange flare, a cloud of white smoke which slowly dissipated.

“Is there any damage?” asked Grimes at last. He could see none with his unaided vision, but those on the control room had powerful binoculars at hand.

“No,” replied Beadle at last. “It doesn’t seem to be scratched.”

“Then stand by to let the Pilot and myself back into the ship. We have to decide what we do next.”

What they did next was a matter of tailoring rather than engineering.
Adder
carried a couple of what were called “skin-divers’ suits.” These were, essentially, elasticized leotards, skin-tight but porous, maintaining the necessary pressure on the body without the need for cumbersome armor. They were ideal for working in or outside the ship, allowing absolute freedom of movement—but very few spacemen liked them. A man feels that he should be armored, well armored, against an absolutely hostile environment. Too, the conventional spacesuit has built-in facilities for the excretion of body wastes, has its little tank of water and its drinking tube, has its container of food and stimulant pellets. (Grimes, of course, always maintained that the ideal suit should make provision for the pipe smoker . . .) A conventional spacesuit is, in fact, a spaceship in miniature.

Now these two suits had to be modified. The radio transceivers, with their metallic parts, were removed from the helmets. Plastic air bottles were substituted for the original metal ones. Jointures and seals between helmet and shoulder pieces were removed, and replaced by plastic.

While this was going on Beadle asked, “Who are you sending, Captain?”

“I’m
sending
nobody, Number One. I shall be going myself, and if any one of you gentlemen cares to volunteer . . . No, not you. You’re second in command. You must stay with the ship.”

Surprisingly it was Deane who stepped forward. “I’ll come with you, Captain.”

“
You,
Spooky?” asked Grimes, not unkindly.

The telepath flushed. “I . . . I feel that I should. That . . . That
thing
out there is awakening. It was as though that rocket was a knock on the door . . .”

“Why didn’t you tell us?”

“I . . . I wasn’t sure. But the feeling’s getting stronger. There’s something there. Some sort of intelligence.”

“Can’t you get in touch with it?”

“I’ve been trying. But it’s too vague, too weak. And I’ve the feeling that there has to be actual contact. Physical contact, I mean.”

“Mphm.”

“In any case, Captain, you
need
me with you.”

“Why, Spooky?”

Deane jerked his head towards the watch on Grimes’s wrist. “We’ll not be allowed to take any metal with us. How shall we know when we’ve been away long enough, that we have to get back before our air runs out?”

“How shall we know if you’re along?”

“Easy. Somebody will have to sit with Fido, and clock watch all the time, really concentrating on it. At that short range Fido will pick up the thoughts even of a non-telepath quite clearly. I shall remain
en rapport
with Fido, of course.”

“Mphm,” grunted Grimes. Yes, he admitted to himself, the idea had its merits. He wondered whom he should tell off for the clock-watching detail. All spacemen except psionic radio officers hate the organic amplifiers, the so-called “dogs’ brains in aspic,” the obscenely naked masses of canine thinking apparatus floating in their spherical containers of circulating nutrient fluid.

Slovotny liked dogs. He’d be best for the job.

Slovotny was far from enthusiastic, but was told firmly that communications are communications, no matter how performed.

The Inertial Drive was restarted to make it easier for Grimes and Deane to get into their suits. Each, stripped to brief, supporting underwear, lay supine on his spread-out garment. Carefully they wriggled their hands into the tight-fitting gloves—the gloves that became tighter still once the fabric was in contact with the skin. They worked their feet into the bootees, aided by Beadle and von Tannenbaum, acting as dressers. Then, slowly and carefully, the First Lieutenant and the Navigator drew the fabric up and over arms and legs and bodies, smoothing it, pressing out the least wrinkle, trying to maintain an even, all-over pressure. To complete the job the seams were welded. Grimes wondered, as he had wondered before, what would happen if that fantastic adhesive came unstuck when the wearer of the suit was cavorting around in hard vacuum. It hadn’t happened yet—as far as he knew—but there is always a first time.

“She’ll do,” said Beadle at last.

“She’d better do,” said Grimes. He added, “If you’re after promotion, Number One, there are less suspect ways of going about it.”

Beadle looked hurt.

Grimes got to his feet, scowling. If one is engaged upon what might be a perilous enterprise armor is so much more appropriate than long underwear. He said, “All right. Shut down inertial drive as soon as we’ve got our helmets on. Then we’ll be on our way.”

They were on their way.

Each man carried, slung to his belt, a supply of little rockets—Roman candles, rather—insulated cardboard cylinders with friction fuses. They had flares, too, the chemical composition of such making them combustible even in a vacuum.

The Roman candles functioned quite efficiently, driving them across the gap between ship and sphere. Grimes handled himself well, Deane not so well. It was awkward having no suit radio; it was impossible to give the telepath any instructions. At the finish Grimes came in to a perfect landing, using a retro blast at the exact split second. Deane came in hard and clumsily. There was no air to transmit the
clang,
but Grimes felt the vibration all along and through his body.

He touched helmets. “Are you all right, Spooky?”

“Just . . .winded, Captain.”

Grimes leading, the two men crawled over the surface of the sphere, the adhesive pads on gloves, knees, elbows and feet functioning quite well—rather too well, in fact. But it was essential that they maintain contact with the smooth metal. Close inspection confirmed distant observation. The 100-foot-diameter globe was utterly devoid of protuberances. The markings—they were no letters or numerals known to the Earthmen—could have been painted on, but Grimes decided that they were probably something along the lines of an integrated circuit. He stopped crawling, carefully made contact with his helmet and the seamless, rivetless plating. He listened. Yes, there was the faintest humming noise. Machinery?

He beckoned Deane to him, touched helmets. He said, “There’s something working inside this thing, Spooky.”

“I know, Captain. And there’s something alive in there. A machine intelligence, I think. It’s aware of us.”

“How much time have we?”

Deane was silent for a few seconds, reaching out with his mind to his psionic amplifier aboard
Adder.
“Two hours and forty-five minutes.”

“Good. If we could only find a way to get into this oversized beach ball . . .”

Deane jerked his head away from Grimes’s. He was pointing with a rigid right arm. Grimes turned and looked. Coming into view in the glare of the searchlight, as the ball rotated, was a round hole, an aperture that expanded as they watched it. Then they were in shadow, but they crawled towards the opening. When they were in the light again they were almost on top of it. They touched helmets again. “Will you come into my parlor . . . ?” whispered Grimes.

“I . . . I feel that it’s safe . . .” Deane told him.

“Good. Then we’ll carry on. Is that an airlock, I wonder? There’s only one way to find out . . .”

It was not an airlock. It was a doorway into cavernous blackness, in which loomed great, vague shapes, dimly visible in the reflected beam of
Adder’s
searchlight—then invisible as this hemisphere of the little, artificial world was swept into night. Grimes was falling; his gloves could get no grip on the smooth, slippery rim of the hole. He was falling, and cried out in alarm as something brushed against him. But it was only Deane. The telepath clutched him in an embrace that, had Deane been of the opposite sex, might have been enjoyable.

“Keep your paws off me, Spooky!” ordered Grimes irritably. Yet he, too, was afraid of the dark, was suffering the primordial fear. The door through which they had entered must be closed now, otherwise they would be getting some illumination from
Adder’s
searchlight. The dense blackness was stifling. Grimes fumbled at his belt, trying to find a flare by touch. The use of one of the little rockets in this confined space could be disastrous. But there had to be light. Grimes was not a religious man, otherwise he would have prayed for it.