Rob went back to join the others. When he told them the unfavorable news about Mort, a gloomy silence settled over the compartment. Mort had been well liked, having quickly become a friend to all except Clay Gerard.
“I checked the hold when the smoke lifted,” Lieutenant Swenson said, breaking the oppressive stillness. “Mort’s torch must have touched off latent gases in the chamber. There’s some charred machinery down there but no real damage from the explosion. Fox said the ship’s moving all right again.”
Clay seemed ashamed to gather here with the others. He was lingering in the corridor looking out the port. Rob had begun to feel sorry for the young fellow whose quarrel with Mort had led to such tragic results. Rob went out to join him.
“Nearly time to take to landing couches,” Rob remarked as he saw the curved, mistbound world that was Titan.
“Yes, sir,” Clay answered, without spirit.
“Did you hear me tell the others about Mort’s condition?” Rob asked.
Clay barely nodded. “If he dies, I will be the one who killed him.”
“It’s not your fault that he was hurt,” Rob soothed. “He knew what he was getting into when he went down into the hold with the torch.”
“But if we hadn’t fought he could have prevented the blowout,” Clay argued. “I heard him say it.”
“If there’s to be any blame for the accident, it’ll rest with the inspection team back on Luna which should have found the weakened temper of the chamber. They have stress gauges to detect such things, and they should have found it, particularly on a ship whose mission is so important.”
Clay smiled wanly. “I know you’re just trying to make me feel better, lieutenant. The truth of the matter is that I’m everything Lieutenant Swenson said I am. I know now what sort of unselfish records he said you’d made. It was just like the one Mort made when he went down into the hold, knowing the risk he was taking.”
“I think, given time, you’ll make a good spaceman,” Rob said.
Clay’s unhappy face studied the approaching world outside for several moments in silence until there came the pilot’s report of altitude and Rob knew it was time to strap down. Lieutenant Fox switched in the robot pilot that would make the landing and joined his companions on the row of degravity couches in another compartment. All buckled the plastic belts across their bodies and yielded themselves to the discomfort of swiftly cutting speed.
As soon as the ship landed, Rob unbuckled and, with Harry Goode, hurried to the compartment where Mort had been placed. Harry took the injured man’s pulse and told Rob that it was weak.
“We’ll get him to the infirmary immediately,” Rob said and went to the radio nook just off the pilot’s nest. He put through a call to the Space Command headquarters.
“General Carmichael speaking,” came a firm, booming voice over the amplifier. “Come in, X-500.”
“This is Lieutenant Allison, sir,” Rob spoke. “We’ve had an accident aboard and a man has been badly hurt. Will you send out a stretcher for him?”
“Certainly,” came the reply. “What was the man’s duty?”
“Mechanic 101, sir,” Rob answered.
“We’ve got a replacement for him,” the general said. “While we’re on the subject of bad news, Allison, I’ll give you mine.”
“What’s that, sir?” Rob asked anxiously.
“Just that the people of Earth are closer than ever to panic stage,” said General Carmichael. “A switchboard operator on Luna half guessed our secret and when she telephoned someone on Earth the operators back there picked up the message. You won’t have much time for layover here, Allison. You’ll have to be off almost immediately so that we can report success of Operation Big Boy as soon as possible.”
Rob suddenly went cold with dread and disappointment. Dulcie Gerard, whom he had considered one of the squarest persons he had ever met, had suddenly destroyed his faith in her completely. It made Rob wonder if making themselves unpopular wasn’t a confirmed Gerard trait.
Some minutes later, Rob and his crewmates solemnly followed the stretcher bearers out of the ship. Through the plastic airtight case Rob could see the still-as-death figure of the burr-headed mechanic who had risked his life for his friends. The party trooped across the ice slick that lay between the X-500 and Space Command headquarters on Titan.
General Carmichael met the group inside the air lock of the headquarters. His small, sharp eyes looked out from under thick gray brows at the identically dressed men before him, streams of condensed vapor rolling off their glossy suits.
Rob pulled off his helmet and advanced. “I’m Allison, sir,” he said, offering his hand.
The wiry general shook hands briskly. “Glad to meet you, Allison.” He frowned. “We’ve got a lot to do, so we may as well get started.”
General Carmichael led them into his private office.
“Your mechanic replacement will be over shortly,” the officer told them when they were seated. “His name is Olney. A good man. You’re lucky he was available. We’re kind of shorthanded here and really can’t spare anyone. None of us on the project thought your crew would have to be replaced at this final stage, but of course accidents can’t be avoided.”
Rob glanced over at Clay Gerard. Rob thought he detected a flicker of hope in the youth’s eyes. Rob pondered deeply, wondering if he should go ahead with the replacement of Clay as he had said he would do. But it wouldn’t be easy to explain Clay to General Carmichael. Giving the appearance to Rob of being a strict old-timer, the chief officer did not look to be too understanding a person on a matter such as this. Then too, he had said he simply had no other men to spare.
And yet Rob knew he must consider his other crewmen. If Clay were unreliable, what right had he to risk their lives just to give a mixed-up young fellow another chance? Rob didn’t know what to do, so he looked to his friends for advice. He resolved to act on their judgment, since they were older men. Rob caught Lieutenant Swenson’s eye. To his wordless inquiry, the navigator-radiation officer nodded. Lieutenant Fox did the same. The silent vote had given the impetuous Clay Gerard another chance, and for some reason Rob was glad that it had come out this way. Clay, who had been watching the other raptly, knew he had been reinstated, and he smiled his gratitude.
General Carmichael handed each of them pencil-like tubes which he told them they would wear in their upper blouse pockets at all times during the flight.
“These instruments record cosmic-ray radiation,” the general said. “As you know, a concentration of these rays will cause agonizing death. You will be the first crew ever to carry C-bombs on a mission because fortunately we’ve never had to use them before.”
Less than an hour and a half later, the Cetus X-500 was ready to go. General Carmichael replaced the charts given Rob by General Forester with ones carrying figures for the accelerated moment of departure.
Rob considered Bruce Olney a capable fill-in for the valiant Mort Haines, if looks were any criterion. He was a slender, straw blond, with intelligent eyes. He wore a miniature good-luck horse-shoe charm around his neck.
A report from the infirmary showed that Mort Haines was still in serious condition. Rob saw Clay Gerard wince as he heard the news. Clay had been an exceedingly quiet individual since the accident to the mechanic, a different person entirely. His blatant self-confidence had been whittled down strikingly to a brooding reserve.
When the crew of the X-500 was already in the ship and about to blast off, General Carmichael spoke his final disturbing speech over their radio, “I’ve just had another report from General Forester. The people are mobbing the White House demanding to know what it is that threatens their lives. The President doesn’t believe he can hold them off much longer.” The general’s tone became grimmer and more emotional as he concluded. “Operation Big Boy has got to be a success, Allison. There’s no two ways about it. I want the next message you send to give the good news that we will immediately broadcast throughout the system. Good luck and God be with you.”
The six of them stared at one another soberly as the final words were spoken. The full enormity of their duty seemed to have struck them just now for the first time. Rob choked down the lump that pressed up into his throat. He took a full breath, readying himself, then gave his first command.
“Blast-off couches,” he spoke quietly. “Prepare for launching.”
When the roaring thunder of the blast-off was behind them and the rocket ship was grasping for the stars, Clay unbuckled his straps and turned to Rob.
“I don’t believe Dulcie spread that report about our project, lieutenant,” he said. “She wouldn’t lose her head. Not her. She’s the calmest one in the family. Besides, she’s a—a—”
“A Gerard?” Rob supplied, smiling faintly.
Clay flushed. “I guess I haven’t really changed, have I?” he said bleakly.
Rob’s brows furrowed. “I’d like to believe she didn’t do it too. But she’s the switchboard operator on Luna. She was on when we left. Who else could it have been?”
“There still must have been someone else,” Clay persisted. “I know my sister too well. She would have known what would happen if she had spoken openly.”
After setting the ship on course and under full rocket thrust, Rob and Lieutenant Swenson took time to study the elaborate firing mechanism in the navigator’s compartment that would send the bombs on their way a few hours from now. The electroscope which gave the reading on the R-cloud was located nearby. The gauge had shown consistent increase ever since the blast-off from Titan, indicating that they were drawing closer to the cosmic menace all the time.
Within the next half hour tension had grown nearly to fever pitch, and yet there was still some time before the crucial zero hour. Rob found himself pacing restlessly about the navigation compartment. Lieutenant Swenson was rattling keys in his pocket, and Rob guessed that the others must also be similarly tightened up.
Clay’s grinning face appeared at the door of the navigator’s cabin. The young cadet looked as calm as if he were on nothing more than a sight-seeing tour. He carried a tray on which sealed containers filled with lavender drinks were held by magnetism.
“How about some palm-berry tea, gentlemen?” he said, setting the tray down on a magnetic table.
Lieutenant Swenson smiled at the youth whom he had tongue-lashed on the previous flight. “You’re a lifesaver, Clay,” he said, picking up a container and beginning to suck on the connected straw.
Palm-berry tea was a tasty beverage made from a dwarf Venusian swamp plant. It was a splendid sedative for “space nerves” and was always carried on long voyages. Under the harried circumstances of their blast-off, Rob had forgotten to have a supply of the tea put aboard.
“Where did you get this?” Rob asked, taking a glass.
“I knew it would come in handy, sir, when our stomachs got to knotting up,” Clay replied, “and so I got a box from the commissary just before coming aboard. Every crew has to have a cook, so I elected myself.”
What a change from the self-centered young fellow he had first met, Rob thought. It was amazing that Clay Gerard, who before must be first in everything, was now satisfied at being what he called a “cook.”
Clay distributed drinks to the rest of the crew. In a little while the epidemic of jitters had subsided almost completely.
The minutes dragged on as the Cetus X-500 sped toward the bright star Procyon and the malignancy it was believed to have cast into space. When the crew spotted little Pluto plodding his lonely way through the empty deeps, they knew they were at the edge of the solar system.
Another hour slipped by, and Lieutenant Swenson began lining up the target on the ground glass of his visi-screen table. The electroscope showed a high count, and the meters Rob and the radiation officer wore were also showing the mounting ray penetration from the “hot” weapons below the insulated flooring.
“Only a few minutes to go, Rob,” Lieutenant Swenson said, studying his screen. “Better check your bomb release.”
Rob checked and found it ready to go. His fingers itched to pull the lever. Sensing the approach of zero moment, the others drifted into the compartment. The robot pilot was driving the ship, and even Lieutenant Fox had come in. A dozen eyes pored silently over the screen table.
Rob could count every tick of his watch. As the final minutes slipped away, he withdrew from the circle and went over to the bomb release. His hand was clammy as it palmed the smooth metal lever.
“Steady, Rob,” Lieutenant Swenson spoke in a dramatic whisper. “A few minutes more—twelve—nine—”
The compartment was silent as a tomb except for the soft throb of the ship’s power plant. Rob’s eyes drifted out the side port, and the stars out there dazzled him.
“Three—two—one—fire!”
Rob’s hand shoved forward. A muted rumble came from the floor. The noise swelled to a full-bodied roar. Then there was a banshee-like scream, and Rob knew the first bomb had flung itself into space.
Lieutenant Swenson counted off five more seconds, and then Rob sent the second bomb on its way. This happened four more times, and each time Rob heard the final shriek as the missile cast itself into the vacuum. Rob didn’t hear the last bomb scream. His ears were ringing too much from the clamor of the previous ones.
When it was all over, the purr of the power plant began dissipating the throbbing ring in Rob’s ears. He felt a tremendous relief now that the job was done.
“How long before we’ll see the bursts?” he asked Lieutenant Swenson.
“Not for hours,” was the reply. “Don’t forget, the missiles have a long way to go even though they’re speeding fast as blazes.”
“Then we won’t know until then whether we’re successful?” Harry asked.
“That’s right,” the navigator said.
Rob checked the compartment cosmic-ray counter and his own pencil meter. “The radiation ought to start diminishing now that the load is gone,” he said.
He was mistaken, he discovered later, when the ship had been swung about on its gyros and was heading homeward. The radiation had begun increasing, in fact.
“I don’t understand it,” Rob said worriedly. “There’s nothing down below to make the radiation concentration rise. If this keeps up, we won’t last out the trip back.”
Minutes later, as the concentration continued to build up, Rob knew there had to be something down there that was giving off the dangerous emanations. There was no other explanation that he could think of.
“Bruce,” Rob said to the new mechanic, “can you check the bomb chamber without direct exposure?”
The mechanic nodded. “There’s an antiradiation compartment up forward with an insulated window where I can take a look at it.”
As Bruce left the room to check, Rob thought of something. “Did any of you hear the scream of that last bomb leaving the chamber?” he asked.
When no one said anything, he continued, “I think I’ve got the answer. That last bomb must have jammed and didn’t come out.”
His guess proved substantially correct. When Bruce returned, he reported that the heat of the bomb racing along its launching track had fused with part of the track so that both hung out of the bomb hatch and were being carried along with the ship.
“We’re lucky those bombs were made to go off only on contact with the powerful omega rays in the R-cloud,” Rob spoke grimly, “or we’d be somewhere up in the Milky Way by now! We’ve got to get that bomb away from the ship before its radiation kills us.”
“Dropping that bomb off isn’t going to be any sweet job,” Bruce commented. “But being the mechanic, it ought to fall to me.”
“Hold on,” Rob cut in. “It’s a job any of us can do. It’ll take more courage than skill to cut the track off with an oxygen torch. By fastening the torch on the end of one of our emergency insulated rods, the operator can work at a distance with less chance of radiation exposure.”
Lieutenant Swenson volunteered for the job, then Clay. Rob knew they had no time to wrangle over who was going to do it. Lieutenant Fox suggested drawing straws, and everyone agreed this was the fair method of deciding. Rob got six matches and broke one off shorter than the rest. Then he held them out for drawing. Bruce drew first and revealed a long one. Clay drew the next one and said simply, “You can stop drawing.”
Rob was confident Clay could handle the job all right, for use of the acetylene torch was emphasized in cadet training.
The youth was assisted into space gear, and the cutting torch was fastened to the end of the insulated rod. A crude shield was also fashioned from some of the insulation of the ship so as to further protect Clay from the bomb’s radiation. Even with all this, however, there was no small amount of risk. But Clay seemed happy to have drawn the job and went about his preparations lightheartedly.
“Whatever you do,” was Rob’s final warning, “don’t get the fire from your torch onto the bomb or none of us will live to tell about it.”
Clay left the ship through a side air lock, carrying his odd equipment and secured to the ship by a length of space chain so that he could not drift off into space. The eyes of the crew followed him through the port near the door as he crawled along the hull and downward toward the bomb rack. Then they lost sight of him.
As they turned from the port, Harry Goode stooped and picked up a match from the floor. “This is Clay’s match,” he said, holding it up. “I saw him drop it.”
It was alongmatch.
“That tricky guy!” Rob muttered, with a wry grin. But what he really said in his mind was, “Thatgreatguy!”
“He sure is anxious to make good,” Lieutenant Swenson said with admiration.
Bruce led them toward the bow of the ship where they could see Clay work on the damaged bomb hatch. They moved along a narrow aisle lined with throbbing turbines and finally down an aluminum catwalk, at the bottom of which was the doubly insulated inspection chamber containing a large observation window that looked out onto the skin of the craft.
The men crowded around the quartz port and watched Clay make his circuitous approach to the bomb hatch. Rob admired his skill in staying at the full taut length of his space chain so as to keep the maximum distance between himself and the “hot” chamber. Clay drifted like a feather in the weightless void, handling his equally light equipment with ease as he brought it into position.
Rob imagined the vacuum out there to be fairly crackling with radioactivity and potential death rays. Clay had known they were there too. Yet he had gone out willingly, risking his life.
Clay’s hand guided the burning instrument to within inches of the top of the bomb.
Clay’s hand guided the burning instrument to within inches of the top of the bomb.
Keeping his shield deftly in front of him, Clay lit his torch with his free hand, and the brilliant arc light burst like a nova on the eyes of the watchers. Clay next shoved the insulated rod, to which the torch was attached, toward the hatch. Slowly, cautiously, he moved the tool in closer. Only a short way below hung the gray cartridge that was the C-bomb, and the warped track that dipped out of the hatch and downward.
Without a tremor, Clay’s hand guided the burning instrument to within inches of the top of the bomb. Rob shuddered to think what fury could be unleashed should the torch drift too close to the bomb.
“That boy’s got what it takes,” Lieutenant Swenson murmured, his subdued voice sounding strangely loud in the deathly quiet. “He knows what’s at stake, but he’s not excited.”
Clay got the flame against the track which was the only thing holding the C-bomb to the ship. Then he began the slow, labored process of severing the tough titanium alloy. The intense heat of the oxygen-fed torch turned the metal red hot. Then another danger came into the picture.
“Can the heat from the track set off the bomb?” Harry put the danger into words.
“It could,” Rob replied grimly. “It probably won’t, but it could.”
During the suspenseful minutes that followed, Rob heard one sucking sound after another as those around him breathed irregularly. The hot touch of the men’s bodies against him betrayed their tension, their prayerful hopes.
“Easy does it, Clay,” Rob thought. “Just a little more, and the track will be cut through.”
The scarlet track and the blazing spot of the torch seemed to sear a hole right into Rob’s eyeballs. “How can Clay stand it this long himself?” he wondered. “His nerves must be of steel wire, his pupils of quartz lenses.”
“The track is cut through!” someone finally exclaimed exultantly.
Yet even with the worst part behind him, Clay didn’t get overconfident. As the bomb hung there weightless in space, Clay carefully withdrew the rod and the torch from its dangerous proximity to the bomb. Then he shook off the torch until it began drifting away from him, whence it would travel unchecked until it passed into the gravitation field of some celestial body. Next Clay gently brought the rod end against the bomb and shoved ever so lightly against it. Then it too began creeping away slowly into the black deeps, never to be seen again.
“Whew!” Bruce gasped, and Rob could sense the relief of tension in those around him.
Clay discarded the rod then but kept his shield in position as he made his way around the radioactive bomb hatch and back toward the air lock where he had left the ship.
“He has discarded his hot equipment,” Lieutenant Swenson said as Clay moved out of their field of vision. “Just like a natural-born spaceman—he didn’t forget a thing.”
When Clay had been helped into the ship with unnecessary care, each of his shipmates gave him an exuberant slap on the back and covered him with words of praise that fairly inundated him. Rob could see a grin a light year wide on the boy’s face and the trace of tears too as he realized he had been accepted as one of them again.
Lieutenant Swenson summed it all up when he said, “You’re an all right guy, Clay.”
Harry tore off Clay’s space suit, which was discarded, and began giving him all sorts of tests for radiation exposure. But Clay had protected himself well and was “clean.”
The invisible peril within the ship began slacking off steadily, and later Lieutenant Swenson announced that the moment of the first bomb’s strike was at hand. The six gathered about the lookout refractor telescope in the ship’s stern which had carefully been directed upon the determined spot of impact at their rear.
Rob was the first to see it through the prism eyepiece. Against the unchanging star patterns there was suddenly a brilliant flare like a ton of magnesium bursting into flame before his eyes. It blinded him for a moment with its radiance, even though there was a filter over the field lens.
“We hit it!” he breathed thankfully and turned away so that the others might see the succeeding strikes.
To make sure the destruction was complete, Lieutenant Swenson pored over the electroscope for a long time afterward and finally made a significant announcement. “Operation Big Boy is a success,” he said softly. “Not only has the cloud been broken up, but its remnants will pass far out of range of the solar system. Rob, you can radio the folk back home and give them the good news.”
Rob lost no time in getting to the set and pouring out the happy tidings to General Forester on Luna.
Later Rob learned of the repercussions: “The people in most quarters are stunned to know what could have happened to them,” the Space Command officer told him. “But all danger of panic is over. People are leaving the streets and going back to their homes and loved ones—and to church. It’s a grand victory, Rob, your greatest of all!”
“It’s not my victory, general,” Rob replied. “It belongs equally to the men with me—Fox, Swenson, Olney, Goode, and Gerard. They’re great guys, sir, all of them.” Rob had started to mention Mort among the names and inquired how he was.
“General Carmichael radioed that he has passed his crisis and is conscious,” was the gratifying answer. “The doctor says he’ll make it all right. Rob, Miss Gerard is anxious to talk to you and her brother.”
Rob couldn’t understand how Dulcie could still be on the job if she had committed the serious indiscretion of exposing the secret flight. This prompted Rob to ask the general about it. The chief officer replied that it hadn’t been Dulcie Gerard but a temporary substitute who had taken over for her. As a matter of fact, Dulcie had been very angry at her friend for what she had done.
Dulcie was allowed to talk to Rob, and the first thing she said was, “Can I speak to Clay?”
“He’s coming down the hall,” Rob told her.
“Tell me,” she said, “how did Clay do on his first assignment?”
Rob paused a moment, then replied, “Somebody lit the fuse under him like you said, Dulcie. He didn’t blow into little pieces, though. The explosion knocked the worst out of him but left behind something fine and unselfish.”
“I’m so glad I could cry!” the girl blurted.
“Here he is now,” Rob said. “I’ll let him tell you himself.”
Clay took the mike from Rob. Rob watched in admiration as Clay modestly told her the whole story, minimizing his own glory. Clay might be the last of the male Gerards, he thought, but he would certainly not be forgotten. As long as men had breath to speak, they would talk about the real hero of Operation Big Boy—and how he almost came to miss the trip altogether.
Rock Merrill looked interestedly at the man who had introduced himself as Tony Kalmus. He had told the young former cadet that he had come all the way from Earth to see him.
“You flatter me,” Rock said.
“There’s more to it than that,” the man assured him. He was still fairly young, although his blond hair was balding on top. He shifted his heavyweight frame, that filled the chair snugly, but with deliberate slowness dug through the inner pockets of his blue jacket and brought out a folded piece of paper.
At that moment Shep Dubois came into the dormitory aboard the space service station that was 25,000 miles above Earth. Centrifugal force, provided by the rotation of the station, gave an artificial gravity so that its occupants could walk about normally.
“What’s up, Rock?” Shep asked.
“I don’t know,” Rock answered. “I just got a message over the wall speaker that this Mr. Kalmus had come to the station to see me.”
Rock introduced the two formally. Then Kalmus gave Rock the piece of folded paper. Rock opened it up. It was a photostatic copy of a torn blank scrap of paper. Rock studied it for a moment, his heart gradually increasing its beat as he unconsciously felt that he was on the verge of a big discovery. The ragged edges of the photographed scraps looked strangely familiar. Then suddenly the answer came to him in a rush that sent his blood throbbing hard through his temples.
“I can’t believe it!” he exclaimed. “It’s the missing scrap from theSagittarius!”
“You mean that after twenty years it’s turned up?” Shep said in amazement. “Now you may be able to find theNorthern Cross, Rock!”
“That’s the reason I’m here,” Kalmus said. “I’ll leave you the photostat to compare with your own scraps, Merrill, and then you’ll know I have the missing piece for certain.”
“If you do have it, Mr. Kalmus, I’ll be indebted to you forever,” Rock said enthusiastically. “Ever since I first wanted to be a spaceman it’s been my ambition to look for my dad’s lost ship. But how did you know where to find me?”
“I asked around. Your mother told me over the phone back on Earth that she was pretty sure you had the scraps with you and that you treasured them as if they were gold.”
“I do,” Rock admitted, staring out one of the oblong ports of the dorm at the salt-and-pepper background of interstellar space. “They’re the last link I have with my father. I never saw him.”
Kalmus got up. “When you’re convinced I’ve got what you want and you’re ready to listen to a proposition about locating your dad’s lost ship, just let me know. I’m in Room 38, Deck B, overhead.”
When Kalmus had gone, Rock went to his dresser and began searching a drawer. “The box with the scraps is in one of these.”
“I still find all this hard to believe!” Shep said. “And I don’t see how Kalmus could have gotten hold of the missing scraps. They were supposed to have been destroyed with theSagittariusexcept for the ones they salvaged for you.”
“I’m not worried about that now, Shep!” Rock told him. “The main thing is to fit the puzzle together and find the answer that I’ve wanted to know all my life—the location of theNorthern Crossand its treasure ore.”
Rock’s father, Victor Merrill, had been a space surgeon accompanying a research expedition to Venus before Rock was born. Mineralogy was Dr. Merrill’s hobby, and while on the planet he had come across a curious mineral in a cave. Returning to Earth, he’d had the sample analyzed. The mineral was alconite, a very scarce and valuable component of an alloy used in the construction of radioactivity shields. Told that a space-ship load of the light mineral could bring him a fortune, Dr. Merrill set out again for Venus with his own expedition, financed from his life savings, planning to build a satellite hospital with the proceeds of the venture.
Dr. Merrill’s ship, theNorthern Cross, had landed on Venus, and a load of the mineral was stocked aboard the ship. But then disaster overtook the party, the first of many tragic events that were to follow. A landslide sealed off the mine, burying most of Dr. Merrill’s crew. The four remaining, including Dr. Merrill himself, blasted off for Earth, but not having enough experienced men to adequately run the vessel, the ship was wrecked by an explosion. An SOS was radioed to a freighter bound for Venus, theSagittarius. The radio operator made a note of theNorthern Cross’s position, but shortly afterward, theSagittariusitself, in a hurry to reach the strickenNorthern Crossand with a faulty radar set, collided with an emergency fuel buoy floating in space.
When later ships salvaged the wreck of theSagittarius, scraps of the radio operator’s note were found, but not enough of it to establish the “fix” of the still missingNorthern Cross. These scraps had later been turned over to Rock and held by him ever since. He had stubbornly clung to the fragments in the wild hope that some day he might obtain some other clue to the location of his father’s ship.
The last message from the radio operator of theNorthern Crosshad reported that the ship had lost its power of navigation after falling into a perpetual orbit about Venus. Therefore Rock and his mother had known for years that Victor Merrill’s ghost ship had become a satellite of the planet Venus.
“Here it is, Shep!” Rock exclaimed, pulling a flat tin box out of his dresser drawer.
They eagerly took the box and the photostat over to a table. Rock unlocked the container and gently removed the scorched and yellowed fragment that had been pieced together with transparent tape. He fitted the section against the ragged edges of the full-size pattern.
“It fits!” Rock said.
Swiftly the coming events passed hopefully before his mind’s eye. He visualized a search for theNorthern Cross, a search that might yet bring a fulfillment of Dr. Merrill’s unselfish dream.
“I wonder what Mr. Kalmus wants out of this?” Rock mused.
“A share of the treasure, I’d guess,” Shep replied.
“Of course we can’t be absolutely sure of finding theNorthern Cross, even with the exact ‘fix,’” Rock said. “If it changed its flight path after sending the SOS, there’s not much hope. But if it held its same orbit, as Dad’s radio operator reported, we should be able to locate it.”
“What do you say we listen to Kalmus’ proposition?” Shep suggested.
“The sooner the better!” Rock agreed.
As they went down the corridor, they met Johnny Colfax.
“One of these days I’m going to tell those guys what they can do with their old job, especially that little worm, Mugger!” Johnny complained. “I’m tired of all this backbreaking stuff and his fussing at us all the time!”
“I think we’re all tired of it, Johnny,” Rock sympathized.
Johnny was one of seven of them who had accepted work on the servicing station after their washout from school. Since they knew they could never go into space in the smart livery of the Space Command, this seemed to be the next best thing. But the boys had soon tired of the glamour of being out in the deeps and the hard work, and most of them were ready to go meekly back home to Earth.
“Maybe before long,” Rock told his discouraged friend, “all of us will be able to tell the big boys where to head in.”
“What do you mean?” Johnny asked.
“Come along and see,” Shep invited.
Johnny made a wry face. “I’m not in the mood to see anything now. It’s the sack for me and ten solid hours of sleep!”
Rock and Shep looked for Kalmus’ room on Deck B. As they passed a long corridor port, they saw the busy outside activity of the servicing station. They saw big clumsy-looking astroliners and streamlined, needle-prowed “atmosphere” ships approaching and leaving the docks of the octagon satellite after repairs or refueling. Smaller ferry craft darted back and forth between the vessels like pilot fish in the company of great sharks.
The boys located Kalmus’ room and found him waiting for them as though he had known they would be along. There was another man present. He looked like a walking skeleton, with thick black brows and hands like hairy tarantulas. Kalmus said his name was Jack Judas and that he was a close friend.
“My scraps match your photostat, Mr. Kalmus,” Rock said. “What is your proposition?”
“I’ll get right to the point. We go on an expedition to look for theNorthern Crossand split the value of the cargo if we find it.”
Rock nodded. “That’s reasonable enough.”
“I can rent an old ship cheaply,” Kalmus went on. “Got a friend in the business over on Satellite 7, a space supply moon. He showed me just the thing for us, atomic drive and all, equipped to carry eleven men. I can dig up a crew too. How much money can you get to pay for your share?”
“That will take some figuring,” Rock said, “and I’ll have to talk over the proposition with the other fellows.”
“I told you I’d furnish the crew,” Kalmus said, with a trace of annoyance. “However, if you want to bring some of your buddies along, I guess that’s your business.”
“We’ve been together all through Academy training,” Rock told him, “and that’s too long a time to split up now.”
Rock was able to get all his six friends together to talk over the plan, even rousing a complaining Johnny Colfax out of his brief sleep. All were in favor of making the voyage.
“I’ll split my share equally among us,” Rock said.
“Nix on that, Rock,” tall, wiry Hugh Blankenship objected. “It’s your dad’s ship and we know about his dream to build a satellite hospital. Besides, you’re the one who’s been holding the clue to its location all these years.”
All of them nodded.
“We can talk that over later,” Rock answered. “Now we’ve got to decide how we’re going to split expenses with Kalmus.”
The boys had accumulated tidy sums while working at the space station. Even Rock had a fair amount of savings despite the fact that he sent much of his monthly check home to his mother. Space pay was high, and the boys had had no place to spend their money. But of course it cost a lot of money to take a ship out into space. The boys figured that the best they could do would not be quite enough. Rock told them that he had an idea Kalmus would advance them some on their share. It was likely that he wouldn’t have come this far without being sure the trip could be financed.
Rock next told them about Kalmus wanting to furnish most of the crew.
“If all of us go,” said little Sparky Finn, with the bristly hair, “then Kalmus will have to limit the men he wants to take. It’s a simple matter of arithmetic—seven of us and four of them.”
“I’ll tell him that,” Rock agreed. “We all go or none of us goes. I’ll insist on it.”
“Do you reckon we can trust Kalmus?” Ed Somerton asked.
“He looks all right to me,” Shep said, “although of course you can’t trust first impressions sometimes.”
“He looks all right to me too,” Rock agreed. “But just the same, while we’re waiting to get the ship outfitted, I think I’ll check his references at central identification headquarters on Earth.”
Just as they were going to break up, there came a sharp rap on the dormitory door. Before the visitor could be invited in, he flung the door open and strode inside.
Rock flared at this invasion of their privacy, especially when the newcomer proved to be a person disliked by all of them. He was Carl Mugger, their immediate supervisor. Behind his back he was known as “Yap” because of his shrewish tongue.
“What have we got here—a tea party?” he blurted.
“No, a private discussion,” Rock answered evenly, trying to control his temper.
“Three of you are supposed to be on duty,” Mugger went on. “You fellows think you’re on a vacation or something?”
“We were only doing routine work in the solar mirror relay.” Hugh spoke for Ed, Leo Avery, and himself, who were the three Mugger had been talking about. “We’ve only been here a few minutes.”
“What do you think would happen to the station if I took off any time I wanted to?” he demanded, drawing his short body up to its full height.
Getting no reply, Mugger ranted on. “I’ve stood just about all I’m going to from you guys! The next time one of you goofs off I’m going to have you sent back so fast Earthward your heads will buzz!”
He glared at each of them in turn.
Shep stepped forward, a full half head taller than the little man, his face reddening from the fury mounting in him. “I don’t know about the others, Mr. Mugger, but I’m fed up with this station and you too!”
Mugger’s jaw muscles twitched and his eyes flashed. “Do all of you feel this way?” he snapped.
The others hesitated. It wouldn’t be the smartest thing to cut oneself off from his job 25,000 miles above Earth and with no other work in sight, but neither could a fellow let his buddy stand alone in something on which all of them were in sympathy. Rock made the first move.