“I feel that way,” he said boldly, and the others backed him up.
“You fellows are through!” Mugger said coldly. “You may as well get your things together and be ready to take the next ferry ship going Earthward!” He turned and went out.
Shep’s natural color was beginning to return. A look of penitence came over his thoughtful face. “I’m sorry, fellows. I—I just couldn’t help it.”
“It was bound to happen, Shep,” Rock consoled him. “But it does sort of throw us in with Kalmus in a hurry, and it means we can’t afford to talk up to him quite as strongly as we might have otherwise.”
“He doesn’t have to know we’ve been fired,” Leo said.
“Let’s hope he doesn’t,” Rock answered with some concern. “Otherwise he’ll set his own terms, and we’ll just have to take them. Remember, we don’t even have enough money to pay our share of the expenses, either.”
Rock and Shep went to see Kalmus immediately. Jack Judas was present, as well as another man. He was squatty and sturdily built, with hair as black as the Coalsack. Kalmus introduced him as Ben Spooner.
Rock outlined the terms he and his friends had drawn up. Kalmus listened to them thoughtfully and impassively.
“I could bring some experienced men if you’d let me have my way,” Kalmus said when Rock was through. “You fellows are pretty young, and on top of that you are washouts.”
“We didn’t wash out until the finals,” Ed told him. “We still learned a lot about piloting and navigation in our training.”
“Yeah,” Leo agreed, “you don’t have to worry about us getting the ship there and back.”
When Kalmus saw how determined all the fellows were to go, he shrugged. “I guess you know what you can do,” he said. “You’ll have to take care of most of the running of the ship. I’ll have with me Ben, Jack, and Mumbly. That will make a crew of eleven, the ship’s capacity.”
“Then we’re agreed on that,” Rock said.
“Judas knows a little about piloting and can help out if necessary,” Kalmus went on. “He’s got a brother who’s first mate on a space freighter and has flighted with him a few times. Pegg and Spooner and I were steward’s helpers on a few space flights some years back. When can you fellows be ready to go?”
“The sooner the better,” Rock answered.
“In a few hours?”
Rock straightened in surprise. They could hardly make their plans in that short time.
“I’m in a hurry to get started,” Kalmus said. “You fellows turn over to me all the money you can get together, and we can settle for the rest when we get back. I wouldn’t even hold you up for this but the dock fee and license have to be paid in cash before we leave.”
“Hey, wait a minute!” Rock protested, with a laugh. “I think you’re underestimating the work we’ve got to do. We’ll have to make a trip back to Earth and get the ship and supplies lined up first. That alone will take much more than a few hours! It’s twenty-five million miles to Venus at the closest approach.”
“I’ve checked on Venus with the chief astronomer on the observatory satellite,” Kalmus declared, “and we’re in the best position if we start as soon as possible. I’ve also taken care of everything else, and I’m still ready to leave in a few hours.”
Rock shook his head as if he still could not believe this. “You realize there’s a chance we might not find theNorthern Cross, don’t you?” Rock warned.
Kalmus’ face grew taut. “I guess that’s the chance that all of us will have to take.”
He headed for the door. “Come with me, please.”
He led them down the long companionways to Hangar 7 on the outer rim of the station. Supplies were being loaded here through the station air lock into a globular nonatmospheric ship that was anchored by its magnetic grapples to the side of the station.
Tony Kalmus waved his hand at the activity and smiled at the surprised faces of Rock and Shep. “There’s our ship,” he told them. “Meet theDog Star, fellows. She’s all ready to go treasure hunting!”
The little space shipDog Starwas on its way into deep space with its crew of eleven. The ex-cadets had sent messages home telling of their departure. But Kalmus had been in such a hurry to leave that they did not even have time to wait for replies. Nor had Rock had time to check on Kalmus’ references back on Earth.
Rock could appreciate the need for haste, however. Unless they left when they did, Venus would have moved out of its most favorable position, and it would have required much more expenditure of fuel to overtake her later.
It would be several weeks before theDog Starapproached the misty planet and—it was hoped—the twenty-year orbit of the ghost shipNorthern Cross.
“Well, we’re on our way, fellows,” Rock remarked to his young friends who were gathered with him in the navigation room looking out one of the ports. “I wonder what the stars have in store for us?”
“Maybe we should have brought along an astrologer,” Hugh said with a chuckle.
“I have more faith in our own abilities, Hugh,” Rock said. “The Cadet Board doesn’t think we’ve got what it takes to be spacemen. We can prove them either right or wrong. It’s strictly up to us.”
Now that the detailed task of getting the ship underway was over, the time seemed ripe for the pooling of information that would give the travelers the exact location of theNorthern Cross.
Kalmus and his three companions joined Rock’s party in the navigation room, Kalmus having brought along his own precious scrap from the record of theSagittarius.
With the ship on autopilot, its course having been computed on the electronic brain, the eleven gathered around the navigator’s table on which were laid out sky charts and the important bits of paper.
The men and youths were able to stand about in this manner because of magnetically charged shoes which clung to the floor. Without them, the travelers would have hung weightless in the zero-gravity. The atomic power rockets had already cut their thrust after reaching required velocity, and the ship was now in free flight.
Rock fitted the torn fragments together on a white sheet of paper as Kalmus, breathing hard, leaned over his shoulder. Rock tore off some transparent tape and carefully stuck the whole together.
The radio operator’s record listed certain numbers and letters that had their counterpart on the sky map. Rock traced the “fix” on a large detailed map of Venus and its environs, his finger finally stopping on one significant spot.
“This is where theSagittariushad last contact with theNorthern Cross,” Rock said with suppressed excitement. “The radio man said theN.C.was already in free fall around Venus.” He traced an imaginary path around the planet with his finger. “This orbit is our destination.”
“The ship will be somewhere along there, providing it didn’t slow down afterward and fall into Venus,” Shep pointed out.
“True enough,” Rock agreed. “We’ll know the answer in a few weeks.”
Kalmus told the boys how he had come into possession of his scrap with the priceless information. He said that his friend in the space salvage business who had rented them theDog Starhad had on hand some of the things from the destroyedSagittarius. One day he had found the yellowed bits in with some bulkhead parts. He mentioned this to Kalmus, who looked up the old newspaper accounts of the double disaster and prevailed upon his friend to give him the valuable scraps. Then he had made his plans for recovering theNorthern Cross.
Rock was elected chief navigator and leader of his group. Kalmus, of course, was already head of his own group.
TheDog Star’s direction known now, Rock sat at the keyboard of the electronic brain and “typed” out the corrected ship’s path. The complicated math problem was solved quickly, and the answer tape was then fed into the automatic pilot. Only minor corrections of the controls for direction would have to be made by hand until the ship reached its destination.
In the space days that followed, the two groups kept pretty much to themselves. Even eating and sleeping were carried on in separate quarters. Since this was a voyage for mutual gain only, all preferred such an arrangement. Kalmus and his friends prepared their meals in the galley at a set time, and the boys took a later meal hour.
One day when the boys were reading and playing quiet games in the lounge to pass the long hours, they heard a commotion from Kalmus’ part of the ship. Rock got up from the game of chess he was playing with Shep and went to the door. Kalmus was approaching briskly down the corridor, his big frame making his hard-soled shoes thump loudly against the floor.
“What’s wrong?” Rock asked him.
“A meteor tore through the ship just a few feet from Mumbly,” Kalmus replied. “Mumbly was so scared when he heard it that he nearly jumped out of his skin! He left the floor and floated clear up to the ceiling! We had to pull him down!”
Rock and some of the other fellows went to investigate.
The room pressure was still up, but Mumbly Pegg, the near-victim, was pale clear up to his disordered shock of red hair. Kalmus’ stoop-shouldered friend kept mumbling how close he had come to being killed, a mannerism that had gained him his nickname. He talked incessantly to himself, neither getting a reply from anyone nor expecting any.
Rock found holes in opposite sides of the room where the meteorite had hurtled through. The holes were only about pea-sized and were scorched around the edges. The automatic sealing compound would keep the air in the ship from leaking out temporarily, but a permanent repair would have to be made.
“The hull’s got to be soldered from the outside,” Rock told Kalmus. “Some of the boys and I will go outside and take care of it.”
Shep and Johnny offered to go with Rock, and the three put on pressure suits. Then they took up their firing equipment and prepared to enter the air-lock tunnel leading outside.
Before unscrewing the hatch, Rock took in hand one of the safety mooring lines that was fastened to the edge of the hatch.
“These safety lines aren’t the best I’ve ever seen,” Rock commented, as he observed some worn places in the nylon. “Kalmus must have had these given to him.”
“Maybe he wants to get rid of us,” Shep said, half-seriously.
The boys hooked the safety lines to their suits, then climbed out the circular hatch into raw space itself. They still wore magnetic shoes to counteract their weightlessness and enable them to walk.
The boys took one moment to feast their eyes on the brilliant fields of star dust that surrounded them like a great dome.
Spellbound by all the vastness, Rock was comforted by the solid feel of the big round globe beneath their feet. He looked at the long narrow stem that jutted out the back of the sphere and held the smaller shielded ball of the screened-off atomic power plant. The engines were still idle; they would be until it was time to spin the ship around and blast away forward to slow the ship down a few weeks from now.
“Look at Earth over there at ‘7 o’clock,’” Shep said. “It’s just like a fuzzy, unripe peach!”
“Kind of makes you homesick, doesn’t it?” Rock said a little wistfully.
They went over to one of the meteorite holes and knelt down.
The bright fire leaped like a hot bar from Rock’s cutting torch, reddening the metal of the hull almost immediately.
“How long is this going to take?” Johnny asked worriedly. “I want to get back inside. I don’t trust these dilapidated safety lines!”
“I’m beginning to regret I brought you fellows along on this thing,” Rock said thoughtfully. “Kalmus got me so excited about the expedition that I guess I didn’t really consider the risk we were taking by venturing into space on our own. There are so many things that could go wrong.”
“We didn’t have to come,” Shep encouraged him. “Frankly, I’d have gone anywhere just to get away from the station. I’ve been miserable ever since we flunked out. Just a few trick questions and—WHAM—there were three years gone to waste!”
“Maybe they won’t be wasted if our reward is the finding of theNorthern Cross,” Rock pointed out.
He found that he could work better by taking his feet off the hull and “hanging” face down over it, with Shep holding on to his safety line to prevent the blast of the torch from driving him outward. Johnny was busy holding the flux in position.
Suddenly the force of the blast caused Rock’s worn safety line to snap and sent him hurtling outward from the hull of theDog Star!
Rock heard his own name blasting into his ears as the anguished voice of Shep called to him. Then he saw his friend leap upward with clutching futile hands. Shep’s body jerked to the end of his own line, and then the reaction sent him slamming back onto the hull.
As Rock, still numb with shock, sped farther outward, he heard the frantic calls of Shep and Johnny trail off as their radio power faded. Finally no sound reached his ears, and the oppressive silence of lonely space closed in on him. It had all happened with such suddenness that he could scarcely realize it had happened at all.
Hopelessness had already begun to get a hold on him before he began to think of how he might save himself. Perhaps it was something he had learned in cadet training that made him calm himself and think reasonably.
His stiff fingers still clutched the cutting torch that had rocketed him from theDog Star. Why not use it the same way to get back? Although still streaking out laterally from the ship, he was under influence of the ship’s motion and was traveling just as fast beside it.
Rock carefully judged his direction and blasted with the tool in the opposite direction. He felt the deceleration of his outbound speed as the firestream braked him. Presently the rocket reaction stopped him and he began going back toward the ship.
Rock used the cutting torch for a brake to slow his return onto the skin of the hull. Shep and Johnny clattered over to him and pulled him in to safety. Rock could see relief spreading over their faces.
“Thank goodness you’re safe, Rock!” Shep said. “You nearly gave us heart failure! You sure kept your head!”
If he hadn’t, Rock told himself grimly, he would not be here this minute. A spaceman had to keep his head at all times. His cadet training had impressed that on him.
The days and weeks that followed passed uneventfully, if not exactly excitingly. There was so little to do, such a monotony of scene.
A few thousand miles from the Venus orbit, Rock fed directions for a gyroscope turn into the automatic pilot, and the rockets began spouting bursts of flame to check theDog Star’s headlong rush. All aboard were forced to take to shock couches for the first time to lessen the pain on their bodies.
Had time not been a factor, Rock could have decelerated slowly with no strain. This had been the manner of their acceleration from the station. But Rock had realized that Kalmus would become impatient later and so had figured the flight for rapid deceleration and consequently much saving of time.
Kalmus and his men took the deceleration shock in different ways. Since all the couches were in the same room, Rock could study their reactions. Jack Judas and Kalmus made no outward signs of discomfort, but Spooner and Pegg groaned continually.
Although not exactly enjoying himself either, Rock, like his young friends, had been taught to take this, and through a certain pride would give no outcries. The lessening speed constricted the blood vessels in his eyes, blurring his vision, but Rock kept studying the reflecting prism over his cot to take his mind off the strain. And his hand did not drift far from the emergency controls should something go wrong.
The prism brought the outside view right into the ship. Venus dominated the scene, like a giant snowball glittering with a light of its own. Rock could see the impenetrable clouds, chiefly of carbon dioxide, swirling and crawling over the surface of the planet like a tide. The invisible lands below were a hothouse of wind-swept desert and barren stretches. There were only a few isolated research settlements down there where brave scientists probed the hot soil for strange new things.
When theDog Starslowed, the travelers were able to leave their couches.
Rock consulted the charts and got a reading of their position from Ed, who was at the navigation instruments.
“Here we are,” Rock said, indicating a spot on one of the maps. “At Point X we’ll match orbits with theNorthern Cross, then we’ll accelerate a little so that we’re bound to overtake her eventually—that is, if she’s still in her original flight orbit.”
“She’sgotto be there!” Kalmus cried a little frantically. “I’ve poured a fortune into this thing.”
“I’ve got as much interest in this as you have, Tony,” Rock told him evenly. “We’re no expert Spacemen, but I’m pretty sure we’re going right so far.”
The travelers began watching the radarscope for first signs of the ghost ship. But no “blips” showed on the screen. Later, every crewman was assigned a watch at the ’scope. This was intended to keep a man continually on duty.
When the ship moved in exposure to the sun, the ports had to be shielded with filter screens. An outside movable reflector blind, highly polished and operated automatically by a thermostat, reflected away much of the heat and light.
Despite its dangerous aspects, the sun was a magnificent object. Its white-hot surface was eye-searing bright and showed dark islands of sunspot activity, any one of which could swallow Earth. Its edges threw out mountainous red tides that lapped outward many thousands of miles into the black deeps. It was a sight that brought a lump of awe into one’s throat.
When he was on duty at the ’scope, Rock used the ship’s small refracting telescope to see the little yellow disc of Mercury, dwarfed like a pinhead beside a grapefruit, against the sun. It reminded Rock of a small dog taunting a larger one, daring it to attack, yet forever skipping nimbly out of the way with its agile speed.
The hours of search drew into a full space day, then another, with no sign of the ghost ship. Even if theDog Starhad been off course a few hundred miles, a ship as large as theNorthern Crosscould not have slipped by unnoticed.
Finally Rock had to make a gloomy announcement. “In another hour we’ll have made a complete revolution of Venus,” he told all ten of them who were gathered around. “If we don’t come across theNorthern Crossby then, it means she’s not in her orbit. She’s either crashed on Venus or has gone out into space. We’ve been accelerating faster than an object in free fall around Venus. She couldn’t have outrun us.”
Kalmus’ big palm slapped the table. “I won’t stand for being licked, Rock! I’ve built my hopes so high on this thing!” His pale eyes glared restlessly and there was a red suffusion over his face.
Rock reminded him, “The matter isn’t in our hands. We’ve done all we can do.”
Kalmus lapsed into nervous silence as the minutes ticked off. He haunted the radarscope most of the time and even tried to look for the ship with the refractor, a tedious job. He was in a constant fidget, alternately pacing and putting his eye to the instrument.
Now only fifteen minutes remained. There was still no sign of the ghost ship. Rock also was beginning to feel a growing despondency. Up until now he had not considered the consequences of failure. Now it shocked him to do so. He and his friends would be indebted to Kalmus for years to come for their share in the venture. They would either have to slave at the space station again, and eat humble crow, or try to find other jobs back on Earth.
But this wasn’t all of the story. A failure would close off for all time the hope that had lived in him ever since he had known of his father’s disappearance. He would have to resign himself to the thought that his father and his ship would speed along with its lifeless cargo to the ends of the universe seemingly, never to be recovered. And worse, Merrill Memorial Hospital would remain only a shattered dream that might have been.
Then there was the reaction of the unpredictable Kalmus to be considered. Would he turn on them?
Five minutes to go. No ship in sight. Nothing but star dust and more star dust and the smoldering light of Sol, like a mocking beacon.
Finally Rock had to say bitterly, “Time’s up. I’m afraid we’re licked. There’s no sign of theNorthern Cross.”
“We’ve got to find that ship!” Kalmus cried. “I’ll search for it if it takes a hundred years!”
“It won’t do any good to search without knowing where to look,” Rock reminded him.
“It won’t hurt to try anyhow,” Kalmus proposed. “We might be lucky. I’ve sunk too much in this expedition to turn back now!”
“We still intend to pay up our share of the costs, Tony,” Rock assured him. “You needn’t worry about that part of it.”
“Finding the ship means as much to you as it does to me—or so you said, Rock,” Kalmus went on stubbornly. “Why are you giving up so easily?”
“Of course it means a lot to me, but I’m not going against terrific odds. It would be crazy.” Suddenly Rock thought of something and turned to Sparky Finn. “Sparky, are you absolutely certain you figured out that navigational problem correctly? Yours was the trickiest of all.”
“I went over it twice, Rock,” Sparky replied solemnly.
“Better look at it again,” Rock proposed. “There’s a possibility we might have botched up our figures somehow. If your calculation is right, we’ll all recheck ours.”
Sparky’s math proved to be correct. Then each of the boys went over his own figures again. Halfway through his, Hugh caught an error in his work.
“Take me for a numbskull!” he burst out. “Look what I did! No wonder I flunked out in cadet school!”
“We are too far out from Venus,” Rock told Kalmus. “We’ve got to go in closer to the planet.”
TheDog Starswung into its new orbit. Kalmus became enthusiastic again, and Rock felt that they would meet with success this time, but if they didn’t, there was nothing more to do but admit defeat.
It was Johnny Colfax who first spotted an interesting “blip” on the radarscope screen two space days later. Half the eleven-man crew was asleep, but Johnny’s shouts brought everyone running into the main control room.
“Look, Rock, I think I’ve found it!”
Rock set the telescope in synchronization with the radar set. Then he put his eye to the telescope eyepiece and turned the hairline focus adjustment. Yes, it was really a cigar-shaped craft, man-made, just about the general shape theNorthern Crosswas supposed to be. It was a streamlined ship built to slide through the atmosphere of Venus.
Rock judged it to be a few hundred miles away. “It seems to be theNorthern Cross,” he announced.
“Let me see that thing!” Kalmus blurted and pushed up to the telescope. “There’s our dream ship!” he purred, like a miser over his gold sacks. “I can almost see a dollar sign on that baby!”
A few gentle manual corrections later brought theDog Staralongside the ghost ship. The smaller ship’s crew clustered at the broad port. Only a few thousand yards away, the ship was a giant thing, gray and meteor-scarred from the years that it had wheeled about in space, alternately feeling the torrid heat of the naked sun and the bitter cold when the sun was eclipsed behind the big planet.
As Rock stared, his heart beat faster. Here was the graveyard of his valiant father and his crew who had battled nature for a share of her wealth and had lost. Rock felt a mixture of feelings—of repulsion and of being drawn to the scene. He was attracted by thoughts of the treasure ore that might fulfill his father’s dream of a satellite hospital, but he was repelled by thoughts of what he might find in that space tomb.
Although circling the planet Venus at high velocity, both ships were as if stationary in space and in relation to each other. Rock, Shep, Hugh, Kalmus, and Judas suited up in preparation to going outside and across to the other ship.
With an extended safety line securing himself to the exit door of theDog Star, Rock was the first to launch himself into the gulf between the ships. He carried a length of electrical cable which he would attach by magnetic force to the side of theNorthern Cross. Then his companions could hook onto the cable with their own safety lines and cross the gulf without risk of drifting off. They had done some repair work on the unsafe lines that had given them trouble before. They felt more secure with them now.
After the cable was set up, Shep pushed off from the doorstep of theDog Star, and his momentum carried him through the vacuum toward Rock on the other side, his safety line slipping along the cable for security. Behind Shep, the others followed.
Shep had brought two cutting torches for opening the door seams of theNorthern Cross. He handed one to Rock and they both set to work, the brilliant flare of their tools lighting the blackness like twin novae. The sun was on the other side of the space ship, leaving this shadow side in absolute darkness.
Finally the door was cut all around. All that it appeared to need now was a good strong push. Rock and Shep tried it together, a little gingerly perhaps as they realized their weightlessness, and hence, helplessness. The door hung stubbornly in place. When Kalmus saw their ineffective efforts, he lifted his big booted feet and boldly slammed them hard against the door. The door section caved inward, but the reaction sent Kalmus scooting backward.
Kalmus gave a terrified yell as he went drifting all the way back to the other ship. Not knowing how to navigate in weightlessness, he barged into the wall of theDog Starwith such force that it caused him to bounce back across the gulf again. His safety line kept him from being in any danger of caroming off into space.
Hugh, holding on to the ship, caught Kalmus’ body as it came back to them. The big fellow was moaning from fright, and the boys got secret enjoyment out of Kalmus’ comical and harmless experience.
Then Rock sobered quickly as he faced the grim task that was to follow. He sighed heavily and stepped through the opening into the air-lock tunnel of the ghost ship, followed by the others. His shoes clung to the floor, indicating that the magnetic floor current was still going after twenty years. Leaving the air lock, Rock and his companions found themselves in a lounge. Everything was in neat order, just as if it had been set to rights only today.
“It’s in excellent preservation!” Rock marveled. “The reflector blinds must have kept the temperature in here pretty even through all the years.”
They found other parts of the ship also in neat order. Rock had been told by his mother that his father had been a very orderly man. As yet there was no sign of what had made the vessel a ghost ship.
Rock dreaded every new room they entered. Which one would reveal to him the skeletons of the ghost crew—one of them his father’s, a father he had never seen?
The searchers carried Geiger counters as a check on stray radioactivity from the atomic engines. But so far the only clicks the meters gave off were apparently from the ever-present cosmic rays out in space.
Since no bodies had yet been found, it was supposed that the four crewmen were together in one place. The searchers had entered theNorthern Crossnear the rear and had been working their way forward. Rock guessed that the bodies must be in the main control room.
In the galley, remains of a meal were still inside sealed plates. The bits were rock hard. An examination of wall pressure gauges showed that the entire ship was open to the vacuum of space.
“Where is the ore?” Kalmus growled. “I don’t like the looks of this!”
The search party moved down ghostly corridors that hadn’t felt the thump of space boots for two decades. Just before reaching the main control room, Rock came to a door-marked, “Stores.”
“This may be it!” he said hopefully and opened the door.
No one needed to tell anyone else that this was the goal they had been looking for. It was a vast, oblong cell, its metal bins piled nearly to the ceiling with gray lumps of rock. The rest of the room was crowded with mining equipment. However, the bigger stuff had evidently been left on Venus.
Kalmus gave a shout and flung himself into one of the bins. He fondled the stones, bathing himself in the wealth. “I’m rich! I’m rich!” he kept saying.
Rock turned away disgustedly, his young friends following. For some reason he almost wished their mission had been a failure. Sharing this treasure that his father had died to accumulate for unselfish motives made Rock feel sick for a moment.
“Want to go into the pilot’s room, Rock,” Shep asked in gentle consideration, “or shall we just pass it up?”
“No, Shep, I’ve got to see if Dad is in there,” Rock answered.
Leaving Kalmus and Judas to play in their wealth, the three youths left the room and moved farther down the corridor to the main control room, the door to which bulged outward. It took considerable ramming to force it open.
The disorder of the compartment was in shocking contrast to the neatness of the rest of theNorthern Cross. Plastic seats were warped, and it looked as if a giant with a padded sledge hammer had gone about recklessly putting dents in the lightweight metal of the walls. An emergency air lock stood wide open, revealing the stars, its door hanging by one hinge. It was on the side away from theDog Star. The huge console that housed the instruments and gauges also showed great depressions, and nearly all the glass dial covers were shattered.
“What do you think happened in here, Rock?” Shep asked.
“It looks like a high-pressure build-up of gas,” Rock answered. “Probably in the ventilating system. When the pressure got too high, either the air lock was the first to give way or somebody opened it in desperation. I imagine all the men were trapped in here and couldn’t get the door open.”
There were no bodies in the room. All four had evidently been swept through the air lock by the rapidly escaping gas. Rock’s companions could read the truth as easily as he had done himself, and they were considerate enough to remain silent. Rock stared about him for several moments. This was so unexpected, not finding his father. He didn’t quite know how to take it.
The boys went out to join the others. Kalmus and Judas were chattering over their success, already making plans for the future.
Kalmus was not concerned whether Rock had found his father or not. “Let’s hurry up and get this stuff loaded on theDog Star,” was the first thing he said.
“Sure,” Rock said absently.
As they went aft again, Rock’s mind was full of what they had seen. He was rather disappointed in the way he felt. He had thought he would be jumping in elation when they found the alconite ore. Instead, he was almost sorry. It seemed like a violation of his father’s honor to share his property with these men of greed.
The shock of not finding his father’s body continued to disturb him. He had hoped to take it back and give it a decent burial. Yet, as he thought further, perhaps this was the way his dad would have wanted it, because he was first and last a spaceman. Also, his widow would not have to relive the pain of his loss again. Yes, it probably was best this way.
The five of them crossed over on the cable again and made preparations for transferring the ore to theDog Star. They would carry it over in regular space transfer crates secured to the cable. An empty crate would be shoved across the gulf, filled up in theNorthern Cross, and then sent back over to be emptied of its contents.
The crew was split into two parties, five remaining aboard theDog Starto unload and the other six going over to theNorthern Crossto load the treasure aboard the crates.
The work began and moved along smoothly, but it was going to be a drawn-out operation, if not a rigorous one. Carrying the containers of ore down the corridors of theNorthern Crosswas a simple matter since they were perfectly weightless and so had only to be guided along by the touch of a hand.
The hours dragged along slowly as load after load was drifted down the corridors of the ghost ship and pushed across the vacuum to theDog Star. The storage bins of the smaller ship bulged higher and higher with the valuable mineral.
As the transference neared completion, Rock took Shep aside, near one of the ports of theNorthern Cross. Then he began speaking very softly so that none of Kalmus’ men working in the ship could pick up the conversation by helmet radio.
“We’re nearly through, Shep,” he whispered, “and you know what that means for Kalmus.”
“It means he’s got what he came for and that he should be satisfied,” Shep finished.
“To me it’s more than that,” Rock continued. “It means that he doesn’t need any ex-cadets anymore. You heard him say that Judas could run the ship.”
Rock could barely see the frown on Shep’s face through the filtered facepiece of his helmet. “What are you getting at, Rock?”
“The fewer men who return to port with the treasure ore, the fewer there will be to share the profits,” Rock said, his radio-altered voice carrying a sinister inflection.
“You mean you think that Kalmus is going to ditch us?” Shep asked in a fierce whisper. “Right out here in the middle of space?”
“I’m not saying I believe that definitely,” Rock corrected, “but I do think we should start being on our guard for any funny moves Kalmus might make. You’ve seen yourself how greedy he is.”
“What, exactly, do you think we should do?” Shep asked.
“I think that you, Johnny, Hugh, and myself should go on over to theDog Starright now and tell Kalmus that we believe the ship has got as much ore as she should carry. That will prevent his stranding us over here. If he wants to, let him come over and get the rest of the ore himself.”
“Since we’re making wild guesses,” Shep said, “maybe Kalmus has other plans for dealing with us, such as making us prisoners on theDog Staras we head back.”
“That’s possible too,” Rock agreed, “but he would need weapons for that, since we outnumber them. I took a quick look through their things before we left port to make sure he and his men had no weapons, and I don’t think they brought any along.”
“Maybe we’re being unfair with the guy, suspecting him at all,” Shep said.
As the words left his lips, he happened to glance out the port and saw Ben Spooner, who had been working on theNorthern Cross, thrust out across the gulf empty-handed.
“Hey, look!” Shep cried. “Ben’s in a big hurry and he’s not carrying a crate across!” He seized Rock’s space suit. “Now there goes Judas right behind him and he’s empty-handed too!”
Rock felt his heart take a dive. “Shep, they must be going to do exactly what I feared!” He sprang into action. “Come on, we’ve got to get Hugh and Johnny!”
“They can’t maroon us in space!” Shep said, furious, as he tagged along behind Rock down the corridor. “It’s the same as murder!”
“They’re not even waiting to carry the rest of the ore across!” Rock said. “As soon as we find the fellows, we’ll get over to theDog Starright away!”
Sparky, Ed, and Leo were already in the other ship. Rock and Shep quickly rounded up Johnny and Hugh and the four of them hustled toward the air lock, bumping into crates in their hurry. As they reached it, Johnny pointed out the open doorway.
“Look, Sparky’s coming over!” he said.
“Maybe he’s found out what’s going on,” Hugh spoke.
They gave Sparky a hand into the ship.
“What’s up, Sparky?” Rock asked.
“Jack Judas told me you wanted help in finishing up over here and for me to come over,” Sparky replied.
“We didn’t send for you,” Rock told Sparky. “It must be a trick to get the most of us over here. Come on, you guys! We’ll go over and have a show-down with Kalmus right away!”
But before they could launch themselves, Kalmus had already begun his act of treachery.
“Look what those crooks are doing!” Shep exclaimed.
The boys could hardly believe what they saw. It was more like a bad dream. The cable had jerked away from the side of theNorthern Crossas its magnetic attraction was broken. Then the five saw Kalmus lean out and pull it into theDog Star.
“We’re too late!” Rock groaned.
The ex-cadets shouted in frustration and anger at the cold-blooded act. Over their suit radios, they warned their former partners of the consequences of abandoning men in space. But even as they yelled themselves hoarse, Rock knew it wasn’t going to do any good. Kalmus had simply gotten the jump on them, something that had probably been planned at the very beginning of the voyage.
The outer door of theDog Starclosed. A feeling of utter desperation took possession of Rock. Here they were, five of them, marooned on a ghost ship in space, without any foreseeable chance of returning alive to Earth.
An hour had passed since the five ex-cadets had been cut off from the mother ship. TheDog Starhad blasted off and was now out of sight. Rock guessed that Kalmus and his rebel crew had compelled Leo and Ed to assist Jack Judas in running the ship.
During this time, the castaways had been taking stock of their situation. Any hopes of sending an SOS were virtually gone. The radio antenna had been badly damaged at its base when loosened by the bulging wall. The radio’s present range could not be over a few thousand miles.
However, things did not look nearly so dark now as they had earlier. The boys found air tanks that would sustain them for quite a while, if not indefinitely. Upon refilling their suits with the aged gas, they found it breathable but carrying a metallic odor.
There was a fair abundance of irradiated food such as all space craft carried. By receiving special treatment in an electronic oven, such food could be preserved for years. Although hard and rather tasteless, the present supply would at least keep them alive. The water-making machine was still in good order, and a drink from it was as fresh as if just drawn from a spring.
However satisfactory these three main essentials were, though, they would all run out some day. That meant that theNorthern Crosswould have to move out of her stagnant orbit if there was any chance for survival.
Rock was hopefully expectant that the ship would run again. Save for temperature changes, there had been no weather erosion to damage the craft and its fittings. Since the ship’s electrical power came from sunlight and the big solar mirror had continued to gather light over all these years, the electric system worked, and the batteries were still charged. A long-range inspection of the atomic-engine unit showed no radiation leakage. The unit had been shut down ever since the accident to theNorthern Cross; the boys found the hafnium safety rods plunged well home into the atomic pile to prevent chain reaction. The automatic oil and grease feeds in the ship’s motors had given out by now, and many bearings were squeaky dry, so they replenished these.
The boys were now in the pilot’s room ready to try out the ship under its own power. The console had pretty well resisted the crush of air pressure that had caused the explosion, for the gauges were working. But of course working gauges did not necessarily mean working jets. The boys had made minor repairs in the main control room. They had reconciled themselves to living inside space suits for the rest of the way home since theNorthern Crosswas open to the vacuum of space, and the air lock was too badly damaged to close again.