CHAPTER IV
Fugitives from Earth
"What time is it?" asked Nora Powell.
Dr. Bryant looked up from the black-and-white-squared table over which he and his companion were bent, engrossed in one of mankind's most ancient pastimes.
"Er—I beg your pardon, my dear? What did you say?"
"I asked," repeated Nora, "what time it is?"
"Oh—time? Almost four o'clock."
"Time," growled Flick Muldoon, from the other end of the balcony, "he was getting back."
"Gary, you mean?" Dr. Boris Anjers, having placed his opponent destructivelyen prise, leaned back in his chair. "Have patience, my boy. These things take time, you know, and it is a difficult mission upon which our young friend has gone."
"It's all right for you and Doc Bryant. You've got a chess game to occupy your minds. Me, I got little pink and green meemies running up and down my corpuscles. I'm going to take a walk. Want to come along, Nora?"
Nora Powell said, "No, thanks, Flick. I'll wait here for him." Then, as the restless young cameraman stalked from the piazza and the two graybeards returned to their game, she wandered disconsolately to the far end of the balcony, for perhaps the dozenth time in the hour gazed out over the most heartbreaking beauty of the scene before and below her.
This eyrie from which she looked was a modest but charmingpensionin Geneva, a rustic famed for its beautiful surroundings and delightful old-world charm. To the south lay the valley of the Arve; beyond this the gray and barren rock of the Petit Salève rose like a wall, it, in turn, overtopped by the distant, imperial slopes of Mont Blanc. The sky was the bright and unbelievable blue of mountain country. From the vale below echoed the mellow lilt of a shepherd's yodeling.
Here, after hasty preparation, had the five comrades-in-adventure established residence until Gary Lane could convince the World Council, which gathered in this traditionally neutral nation, of the urgency of their demands ... and receive from this all-supreme body that terrestrial secret which was vital to the furtherment of their aims.[3]
Here had they cooled their heels for very nearly a fortnight while Gary wormed and forced and argued his way through hordes of underlings to finally reach the ear of those Councillors who alone could grant his request. Such an interview had finally been achieved, and today was the fateful appointment.
Alone, a few short hours ago, Lane had set forth to the Council Hall, laden with Muldoon's photographs, his own and Dr. Bryant's mathematical analyses, and all other documents necessary to prove his claims. Now his companions, placidly or nervously as their individual natures determined, awaited his return.
As to what sort of exhibition she herself was making, Nora Powell could not say. If she was not so openly impatient as Flick Muldoon, neither was she complacently attentive like the two older scientists. She was, she thought with sudden whimsy, much like one of those ancient volcanic peaks so gloriously sharp-limned on the horizon before her: surfacely cool, but inwardly and secretly aflame with constrained eruptive fires which might at any moment burst their bonds.
The afternoon was pleasantly cool, but standing there alone on the balcony her cheeks were suddenly warm to the touch as she caught herself wondering what would be Gary Lane's reaction were he to realize how startlingly accurate was this analogy. During these last weeks, their past differences forgotten, she and the young physicist had fallen into a pleasant and easycamaraderie. Formalities had been swept away in the urgency of the moment, and on everything they worked together like lifelong friends.
But that, thought Nora with a thin stirring of rebelliousness, was just the trouble. That which within her had developed toward Gary Lane could not so easily be dismissed with the loose and meaningless term "friendship." It was something else, something deeper, stronger, more tremulously chaotic ... like the subdued inner strivings of those pleasantly placid mountains.
Did he, she wondered with a strained and baffled curiosity, feel that, too? Or was he always too much the scientist to be just a plain man looking upon her ... seeing her ... not as a friend, but as a woman?
The sound of crisp, firm footsteps spelled an end to her thinking. She whirled to the doorway.
"Gary! You're back!"
Then her heart chilled within her at the look on his face. Never had she seen Gary Lane like this. His features were hard as if they had been cast in a mold, then frozen. His lips were whitely set, his eyes twin glittering flints of anger.
"Yes," he said harshly, "I'm back. It's all over. We're done. Finished. Washed up."
Dr. Bryant rose from his chair swiftly. "What do you mean, Gary? The Council didn't—?"
"Oh, didn't they?" Lane's bark was a mirthless shard of laughter. "They turned me down cold. Said our conclusions were erroneous, my theory a fantastic figment of the imagination. The fools! The everlasting damned fools! Don't they realize they're condemning a universe to oblivion?"
Dr. Anjers patted the younger man's shoulder soothingly, his bright cherubic face soberly consoling.
"I'm sorry, my boy. But I warned you it would be difficult. Men see no farther than the ends of their noses."
"Maybe not," grated Gary, "but theyhear... oh, God, how theyhear! That's what killed our chances. Somehow or other they got a rumor of what was in the wind. They had been warned in advance of who I was and what I wanted; when I started explaining, showing my photographs, they just sat back and smirked at me with that 'Yes, yes, we know all about it; isn't it a pity that one so young should be deranged?' look on their smug, complacent faces."
"Heardof it?" cried Nora. "But how could they have heard of it?"
Lane shook his head doggedly. "That's what I've been asking myself ever since I left the Council Hall. To the best of my knowledge, not a living soul knows our secret except us five."
"And," reminded Dr. Anjers, "one other."
"One other?"
"The marauder in the observatory."
Lane was silent for a moment. Then he nodded. "That's right. I'd almost forgotten.Theirambassador. It's his diabolic hand again. It must be. Lord, if we had only caught him that day. If we only had some idea who hewas—"
The door opened again, and Flick Muldoon burst in jubilantly. "Great howling snakes, folks, look who I found wandering around down on the streets like a roaming comet! That old star-shooting son-of-a-gun himself—Oh, golly, Gary! You're back! What'd they say, pal? Do we get the ship? Is everything set?"
"Not set," corrected Gary. "Settled!" And told him what he had told the others.
Muldoon's ruddy face fell. "Well, I'll be damned!" he whispered. "And to think Earth's government set them dumb lunks up in power to rule mankind's affairs! What are we going to do now? We can't give up just because—"
"I think," suggested Nora, "the first thing you'd better do, Flick, is introduce your friend. This must all seem rather mysterious and awkward to him."
"Oh, my golly!" gulped Flick. "I almost forgot. I'm sorry, Hugh. Doc, you remember Hugh Warren, don't you?"
"Warren?" Dr. Bryant's gaze turned querulously toward the tall, fair, smiling young man in the doorway. The newcomer was dressed in the respected gold-trimmed blue of the Solar Space Patrol. His even features were tanned to a cinnamon hue by long exposure to the raw, unshielded radiations of the void. The old scientist's eyes lighted with belated recognition. "Not young Hugh Warren who used to study Celestial Astrogation at the Observatory?"
The spaceman grinned, stepping forward to wring the older man's hand with phalange-crushing enthusiasm.
"The same, Dr. Bryant," he chuckled. "I've never forgotten those courses in Silly Ass. Most fun I've ever had ... and I've had plenty since that. Lord—" He made the rounds, ending beside Gary Lane, about whose shoulders he threw an arm in warm, masculine affection—"Lord, it's good to see you earth-lubbers again! You haven't changed a bit, Gary. You look a little more sober and settled down. But, then, they tell me marriage does that to a guy...."
"Marriage?" echoed Lane blankly.
"Why—why, yes. Isn't this young lady—?"
"No. This is Miss Powell, my assistant. And the gentleman beside Dr. Bryant is Dr. Boris Anjers. Dr. Anjers, Lieutenant Warren."
Dr. Anjers said politely, "It is always a pleasure to meet friends of my friends. But hasn't Dr. Lane made a small mistake? If my poor eyesight does not deceive me, your markings are not those of a space lieutenant—"
Warren grinned. "That's right. S'prise, folks! The Council up and made me a Captain, on account of me and my boys were lucky enough to salvage a smashed liner out of the Bog.[4]That's why I'm here in Geneva. Waiting to take command of my new ship, the sweetest, smoothest, little whipper-dipper of a cruiser you ever laid eyes on. Boy, is it ever a honey! All the latest equipment—"
"Cruiser!" said Lane bitterly. "They've got lots of cruisers for routine work, but they won't even spare one old broken down jalopy for—"
Hugh Warren looked puzzled. "For what? What's the gripe, chum? You look like you'd just found a bug in a raspberry."
"It's worse than that," said Gary. And he told Warren the whole story briefly, beginning with the lunar expedition and ending with the recital of his recent interview.
As Lane spoke, the young spaceman's smile faded slowly, the laughter-born crinkles in the corners of his eyes disappeared. And Nora Powell, watching this transition, realized that beneath the surface vivacity of this newcomer there lay a core of steel, flame-hardened in the crucible of action.
When Gary finished Warren did not speak. Instead, he jammed hamlike hands deep into his trousers pockets, stalked to the far end of the balcony, and there with head lowered, shoulders hunched, his back to the others of the group, stared for long minutes unseeingly out over the distant panorama. At length he turned, his eyes gravely querulous.
"Gary ... you're sure of what you've been telling me?"
"I only wish," said Gary bitterly, "there were some possibility of error."
"What doyousay, Dr. Bryant?"
"There is only one thingtosay. Gary is right; completely right. We have seen the pictures, checked and rechecked our calculations a hundred times. There is no doubt but that the time approaches, and it all too soon, when Earth's sun and its entire swarm of tributary planets will exceed the critical dwindling point and flame into sudden oblivion."
"And—and knowing these things, the Council wouldn't give you a ship, Gary?"
"They just laughed at me. Said the whole theory was ridiculous."
"Lord!" said Captain Hugh Warren, "What fools we mortals be! Of course, Gary, I can see their point ... to a certain extent. Itdoessound mad, your idea of visiting three only half-friendly planets and asking each of them to open-handedly donate its most cherished military secret. But it's the only way...."
His hands came from his pockets in a swift, decisive motion.
"Yes, it's the only way. How soon can you be ready to leave?"
"How—soon?"
"There's no time for fiddle-faddle. If we're going to do anything, we've got to do it now before anything leaks, or anyone can get suspicious."
"We?" echoed Dr. Bryant bleakly.
"Of course!" Hugh Warren brushed the older man's dubiety aside with brusque and characteristic impatience. "You don't think I'm going to stand on the sidelines and let this adventure romp along withoutme, do you? And besides, I'm just what the doctor ordered: the answer to your problem. You need a ship and a crew, don't you? And a pilot? Well, I've got the first and the second. And I'm the last myself."
Nora Powell burst forth impetuously, "But—but, Captain Warren, we can't let you do that. You're a military man. You'd be court-martialed on charges of desertion—"
"If," grunted Warren, "they caught us. Yes. But I'm not figuring on anybody catching theLiberty. She's the sweetest little ether-pusher that ever came off a cradle. And as for court-martial—" He shrugged—"we'll worry about that if and when we get back. According to Gary, if something isn't done—and done quick—there won'tbeany court-martials to try traitors.
"And—" He grinned—"I'd rather be a dead felon than a live loyalist."
Thus, in a manner far different from that which the comrades had planned, was the matter arranged. Swiftly, but as inconspicuously as possible, the conspirators made their preparations, gathered their belongings together, and transported them to the Geneva rocketdrome, which, fortunately, lay directly adjacent to the private cradle-field of the Solar Space Patrol headquarters.
Amidst the hurly-burly and confusion of this place it was a simple matter for Captain Hugh Warren to delegate two members of his crew to slip to the larger drome and there, unnoticed in the bedlam of blasting explosions, milling throngs, and tearful goodbyes, move the pile of luggage from one drome to the other.
By nightfall the exchange had been completed; the plan was in readiness. There came to thepensiona small, gnarled figure bearing a mountainous bundle. This, when unwrapped, proved to be sufficient of the familiar sky blue SSP uniform clothing to disguise every member of the party. The bearer, a man who identified himself as, "'Awkins, sir—'Erby 'Awkins, stooard o' the blinkin'Liberty, that's me, sir!" gravely transmitted Captain Warren's instructions as to entering the SSP rocketdrome.
"Just walk on past the sentry without sayin' nothin', folks," he advised. "I'll give the password for the crew of us. Actin' like you had maybe a drop too many might be a bit of an 'elp, but it don't matter much. The sentries will be expectin' us, and won't think a thing of it."
"Expecting us?" repeated Nora. "Five strangers, including a woman?"
'Erby 'Awkins grinned impishly. "Beggin' your poddon, miss, but when you get them volly-oominus blues wrapped about your own pretty self—meanin' no impertinence—it'd take a sharp-eyed sentry to tell whether you was male or female, old or young. And there's no call for them to be suspicious. Cap'n, he give five men all night leave, he did, and told them not to bother comin' back. But he reported to the Captain of the Guards that he was expectin' five of his crew to report back to headquarters at eleven o'clock. That's the hour when we'll enter the gates."
Gary said soberly, "We understand, Hawkins. I see Captain Warren has already told you what we are planning to do."
And Hawkins replied with quiet dignity, "He didn't tell me nawthin', sir; not a blinkin' word. And if Idoes'ave my suspicions, well, wot matter? Cap'n Warren's our skipper, sir. What he decides is good enough for me and the rest of the crew."
So at eleven o'clock that night, as the long black spires of the circling mountains rose to merge with the thicker black of a clouded, moonless sky, five slightly tipsy figures lurched with shambling feet to the sacrosanct portal of the Solar Space Patrol rocketdrome.
Lane did what must be done—and did it swiftly.
Lane did what must be done—and did it swiftly.
Lane did what must be done—and did it swiftly.
As Hawkins had promised, they passed the gate unchallenged, the little purser volunteering the password for all of them. And as they left the gate behind, young Dr. Lane breathed a deep sigh of relief. The one hazardous point of their effort now lay behind them. Five hundred yards away lay the ship upon whose flaming jets they soon would thrust voidward on a quest of magnificent daring.
The gate crashed to behind them, and the sentry's amused drawl advised, "All right, lads, hop along back to your ship and sleep it off before your skipper finds out—Wait a minute! What's the matter there?"
His voice lifted in sharp query, and beside Gary, Nora Powell gasped in swift alarm; her right hand sought and gripped his arm in a clutch of panic fright. For, awkwardly, in the darkness, one of their party had slipped and fallen. And as he sprawled on the rough, uneven ground, he cried in a loud and decidedly unsailorlike voice, "Oh, goodness gracious! How perfectly stupid of me!"
It was the rotund little scientist, Dr. Anjers!