“Yes, sir,” Babe said reluctantly.
“You realize the consequences of stowing away on a space ship, don’t you, Hogan?”
“Yes, sir,” Babe said.
“Remind your young friend of it, then, so that he will be prepared for what happens when the cable car gets back. The two of you will return immediately to the colony. That is all.”
There was a pall of silence for several seconds after the captain’s stern order. Jim could hear Babe’s tense breathing in the darkness.
“They finally caught us,” Jim murmured, “and you’ll have to pay for helping me.”
“I’d do it all over again, Jim,” Babe said firmly.
“You’re a real friend, Babe,” Jim told him.
Babe went out and explained to the tourists that they had to return at once to the space harbor. The stewards went back to the duplicate drivers’ quarters at the other end of the car, and Babe started the car out of the Haunted Tunnel.
As they drove back, both he and Babe gloomily silent, Jim was thinking that he had satisfied his lifelong ambition for a short while anyway. It had been great while it lasted.
After they passed Point Luna, a flock of albatrosses gathered around the car again. The birds’ curiosity made them bolder than usual, and some of them flew directly in front of the car. Jim heard sickening thumps as some of the careless birds were battered by the speeding car. Both he and Babe shook their heads regretfully.
Jim looked ahead where the space harbor was rapidly growing closer as they swept downhill. “Guess we’d better slow down, or we’ll go crashing into everything down there,” Babe said.
He shoved the lever to brake the car, but nothing happened.
“Something’s wrong!” Babe shouted hoarsely. “I can’t stop this thing!”
In his imagination Jim could see them tearing loose from the cable when they reached land and hurtling down into the space port. The destruction would be staggering.
“Something’s plugged up the forward rocket tube!” Babe exclaimed.
“One of the albatrosses must have been caught in it!” Jim burst out.
“It must be that!” Babe agreed. “There’s only one thing to do—get the bird out of there double quick!”
“How’re you going to do it?”
“Climb out the front of the car through the window!” Babe said, flinging up the pane in front of them. The hot air swept them back as though they had suddenly opened the door of a blast furnace.
“I can do it easier than you can,” Jim said. “I’m lighter and slenderer.” He was also thinking of the debt he owed Babe for helping him all this time.
“Nothing doing,” Babe retorted. “I’m the responsible one on this tour.”
Jim heard a battering at the door and saw some of their passengers trying to force themselves into the cabin. Babe opened the door a crack and pleaded with them for calmness. In those few seconds, Jim acted quickly.
First he shut off the forward jet completely. Then he began scrambling through the window out onto the front of the car. The wind cut him unmercifully. Projections across the front of the cable car gave him handholds, enabling him to crawl downward.
Suddenly the driving wind ripped Jim’s nose-piece away and left it dangling from his helmet. He automatically gulped in a mouthful of searing, oxygenless air. It tore at his lungs and gagged him suffocatingly. He held his breath, grateful for the underwater swimming he had done at the Oceanside Boys’ Home.
Jim stretched downward and reached the nozzle of the jet tube. He shoved his hand into it. The heat of the tube caused him to cry out in agony. Just as he was about to give up, his burned fingers felt something soft. Feathers. His hands plunged forward still deeper into the tube and closed around the mangled fowl. He tugged with all his might and finally withdrew the broken mass. His arm was beet red and paining fiercely.
He began the tortured climb back up into the car. His lungs were bursting for air. Every touch of his seared hand caused him to groan in pain. Just as he climbed free of the tube, a burst of red flame poured from the nozzle. With a shuddering jerk the car began slackening speed. Jim knew Babe had thrown on the jet’s full power as soon as Jim had cleared the tube.
When Jim reached the window, Babe leaned out and pulled him into the car. Jim sagged in the extra seat, staring dumbly at the nearing spaceport plateau.
“Will we make it?” he gasped, feeling the sharp braking force of the forward rocket.
“We’ll make it all right—thanks to you,” Jim heard Babe say. Then everything whirled before his eyes and he blacked out from lack of air and the strain of his grueling experience.
When Jim recovered consciousness, he was in the colony clinic. The arm he had thrust into the jet tube was bandaged stiffly, and there was cooling salve on his wind-burned face.
Babe was standing by the bedside. “You’ll be all right,” he said. “The doc said you’d be uncomfortable for a while, but your arm burn isn’t too serious.”
Jim saw the tall erect figure of Captain Coppard come over. “So you’re the stowaway who so cleverly avoided me during the voyage?” he said.
Jim swallowed, his throat raw. “Yes, sir.”
The officer’s gaze still held that characteristic penetrating stare. “Steward Hogan told me how you came to be aboard,” he said. “I was ready to toss both of you into the brig when I first found out about you. Then since I talked to you in the cable car, I’ve been reviewing your record while aboard theHercules. The other stewards tell me you did an extra fine job as a beginner without training. And of course there were these last things you did—risking your life to save one of the tourists from the unicorn and then preventing what could have been a terrible accident on the cable car. In a measure it changes things.”
“Yes, sir,” Jim murmured hopefully.
“Not that I condone breaking regulations!” the officer continued gruffly.
“Of course not, sir,” Jim said.
“You and Hogan had better thank your rockets that I’m in an expansive mood today,” the officer concluded. “Charges dismissed.” He then left the room. Babe and Jim were alone.
“You hear that, Babe?” Jim burst out. “He’s let us off!”
“Yeah, it sure surprised me!” Babe said. “I guess I misjudged the captain.”
“Mr. Bowers must have radioed the captain about me,” Jim mused. “That’s how he found out.”
Babe shook his head. “The captain found out on his own. He told me that Mr. Bowers wired him soon after blast-off that some urgent business had kept him from leaving on theHercules. He didn’t even have time to get his bags off.”
“And to think that was the main thing we were afraid of!” Jim said wryly. He looked up at his friend anxiously. “Babe, do you think the captain will let me go back to Earth as a steward?”
“I think the captain knows a good spaceman when he sees one,” Babe replied earnestly. “I don’t think you have anything to worry about, Jim—not from now on.”
byRichard M. Elam, Jr.Author of Teen-Age Science Fiction StoriesIllustrated by Frank E. Vaughn
Following along the lines of his very successful Teen-Age Science Fiction Stories, this popular author has prepared a new book of exciting stories embodying the very latest theories in interplanetary communications and space travel.
These thrilling tales recount the experiences of wide-awake, modern boys and girls who have the exceptional opportunity to venture into outer space.
Such stories as “The First Man Into Space,” “The Peril From Outer Space,” and “Mystery Eyes Over Earth” will take you into a new world, where the exciting adventures are based on sound predictions from present scientific knowledge.
Traveling in pressurized ships, dressed in special space suits, using oxygen tanks, the young travelers explore some of the heavenly bodies in super thrilling adventures requiring the utmost courage, fidelity and devotion to duty and to country.
GROSSET & DUNLAPPublishersNew York10, N. Y.
byRichard M. Elam, Jr.Illustrated by Charles H. Geer
The introduction by Captain Burr Leyson sets the pace for this exciting book of stories dealing with the newest theories of inter-planetary communication and the scientific advances that might make possible some of the adventures here described.
The author of these stories, Richard M. Elam, Jr. has been interested in science fiction since he was a boy and, although he has written hundreds of stories and articles, those included in this volume have never before appeared in book form. The author builds his science stories around a framework of established scientific fact and likely possibilities. In that way, the reader is stimulated beyond the limits of his scientific education by the thrilling entertainment of this exciting volume and is encouraged to probe further the mystery of the universe in his studies, experiments and imagination.
While some of these stories, such as, “What Time Is It,” are pure fantasy, most of them are based on actual scientific possibilities.
Grosset & DunlapPublishersNew York 10, N. Y.