Glen Hartzell was stunned to see his friend go spinning down the incline and follow the supply case toward the open door. Automatically, Glen stretched his lean body full length trying to grasp Skip’s space suit before he escaped. But his momentum sent him skidding down the slope and the next thing he knew he was out in space, too.
A week ago Glen wouldn’t have cared whether he faced death or not. He and Skip had just made the scorned fraternity of “Wockies,” washed-out cadets. His failure had cut like a knife. He had wanted to pilot ships through the depths of space more than anything else in the world. Instead, he and Skip had been assigned to ground crews on Mars. That, at least, had been their destination until Skip’s elbow unexpectedly made them castaways in space.
Glen’s first thought was directed to Skip, who looked like a toy balloon as he drifted through the vacuum. “Skip!” he called over his space suit radio. “Do you hear me, Skip?”
“Yeah, Glen,” Skip’s reply was scarcely more than a squeak.
Glen looked down and ahead where a massive rock some ten miles in diameter hung in the starry emptiness. “If we can make Phobos, we may be all right.”
“We’re done for,” Skip groaned.
“We’re not!” Glen’s wits were sharpened by the danger. “We’re lined up pretty well with Phobos. She doesn’t have any gravity to speak of and we may be able to land on her.”
“We won’t make Phobos,” Skip argued. “We’ll either run into Mars’ gravity field and crash on its surface or float through space until our air runs out.”
“Shut up, Skip!” Glen’s tone was sharp. “Listen to me. See if you can pick up a little speed by kicking out behind with your feet and hands. If you can catch up with the supply case, hang on.”
Skip didn’t reply but Glen saw his arms and legs begin to move. Glen worked his own. It was a grueling effort, but Glen found that he was able to increase his speed much in the manner of a space ship’s thrust. By the time Glen touched Skip’s suit, both of them were sucking freely of their precious oxygen.
“What’s the idea?” Skip asked as his gloved hand clutched the strap of the supply case and Glen held onto him.
“We’ll use the case as a buffer to break our fall,” Glen explained. “Remember, it’s covered with foam rubber so that it won’t shatter when it hits.”
The two had been preparing to drop the emergency supply case on Mars at the time of the accident. Glen was glad now that they’d donned space suits.
Glen saw that the space ship was now only a tiny needle against the red disk of Mars. He and Skip had probably not even been missed by the crew. When they did find out, they wouldn’t know where to look for the boys.
Phobos was a jagged, frightening giant below, but Glen held nothing but love for it. Their speed had increased slightly, but it did not look as if they would hit the ground dangerously fast.
Glen felt Skip’s muscles tense for the landing.
“Steady, fellow!” Glen breathed.
He felt a rough jar in the pit of his stomach. Glen bounced off Skip’s back as though he were rubber. He spread out his arms to ease his fall, then was surprised to find his body settling down to rest as lightly as a leaf.
Glen felt a prickly chill in his cheeks. “We’ve got practically no weight at all!” he breathed. Skip had almost drifted off into space again, but Glen grabbed his leg and pulled him back.
“It’s a crazy world, isn’t it?” Skip searched the rocky landscape that sloped down from them on both sides. It was weird to be on a globe so tiny you were conscious of its roundness.
Glenn nodded. “We’vereallygot to keep both feet on the ground!”
“What if they don’t find us, Glen?” Skip asked. “What then?”
“I don’t know, Skip,” Glen sighed. “Let’s see what’s in the supply case.”
Glen was able to crawl better than he could walk over to the supply case. Skip followed. Glen pressed a button on the case and the top sprang up.
“Whew! There’s not much that isn’t included!” Skip said. “Spare oxygen tanks, a bubble tent outfit, food capsules, water maker, first-aid, flares, books, electronic stove-heater.”
“Let’s put up the bubble tent,” Glen said. “It’ll help save our heat.”
As he had learned in cadet training, he removed a cylinder from the outfit and pulled a lever. It popped open and a plastic bubble began growing out of it. The bubble, which was slightly oblong and transparent, enlarged to about seven feet, then detached itself from the cartridge airtight. After it had hardened for several minutes, Glen took an electric saw from the kit and cut a small door in the side. They made hinges from self-sealing plastic strips.
They used the foam rubber from around the case for flooring, then put the supplies inside the bubble. They turned on the heater and then turned off the heat units in their suits.
“How long do you figure our supplies can last, Glen?” Skip asked.
“They’re supposed to last two people ten days,” Glen replied. “Don’t you remember that question on our exam?”
“Don’t remind me!” Skip said. “I’m tired of hearing about the cadet corps.”
“I know,” Glen said bitterly.
“How could they flunk us on one question?” Skip asked. “It wasn’t fair.”
“I agree with you,” Glen answered, “but the fact remains that we’ve got to take it.”
Skip chuckled grimly. “You talk as if we have a lifetime ahead of us. We don’t know whether we’ve gottomorrow.”
“Which reminds me, we’d better send off some flares to let somebody know where we are.” Glen picked up some of the rocket flares and “drifted” out of the bubble tent. He set up a flare on its tripod legs, pointed it at Mars’ ruddy face and pulled on the release catch. But it wouldn’t move.
“It’s jammed!” Glen tried another rocket and got the same result. Then another, and another. They were all useless, all the catches warped, possibly from having been kept too near a heat source in the ship.
“How are we going to signal Mars now?” Skip asked.
“Anything we toss out will be drawn to the planet by its gravitation,” Glen was thinking out loud.
“How about throwing out some of the extra supplies we have?” Skip proposed. “We can attach a note.”
“It’s a million-to-one shot they’d be found. Don’t you realize that only a fraction of Mars has colonists? No, I’m afraid we’d wait here until doomsday if we had to count on that.”
“But what else is there to do?” Skip’s eyes were round with dread.
Glen fought down his own sudden despair. “It looks as though we’ll have to get to Mars on our own, Skip.”
“Now you’re crazy! We’d be smashed to pieces!”
“Not the way I’m thinking.” A plan was forming in Glen’s mind, as he scrambled into the bubble tent and came out with one of their engineering books. Skip watched in amazement as Glen began working math problems in the dirt with a piece of stone.
After a while, Glen said, “I think it’ll work, Skip. Want to take a chance?”
“I’d like to know what it is first.”
“We can use the chute from the supply case and attach it to the bubble,” Glen explained. “Then we can ride in the bubble to Mars.”
“It sounds fantastic!”
“I’ve figured it every way I know,” Glen said. “At least, it’s better than sitting here and hoping we’ll accidentally be found. Shall we try it?”
Skip shrugged. “If it’s our only chance. But I hope you’ve figured all the angles!”
“We’d better get started right away,” Glen advised. “We may need all our air tanks if we have to do some walking when we land.”
They set to work fastening the lines of the chute around and under the plastic bubble. They used more of the plastic strips to secure the lines tightly. The chute was still folded, since the vacuum on Phobos had failed to trip the automatic release. The boys decided to carry only a minimum of supplies to make their weight as light as possible. When they were ready to go, they climbed into the bubble and Glen shoved them off with one foot outside the door. Then he closed the door.
“How long will it take us to get there?” Skip asked.
“I’ve figured on about a hundred hours,” Glen answered. “That should put us close to Mars City, figuring on Mars’ rotation. But if it doesn’t, we should be able to reach some research settlement.”
They moved slowly at first. Glen hoped for only enough speed to carry them into Mars’ gravity pull. As they approached the red planet, their speed would increase and that worried Glen. If they whacked into Mars’ air blanket too fast, the chute might be ripped from the bubble.
To while away the many hours, the boys dozed and took turns reading the one novel they had brought along. Their legs soon became cramped and sore, and they would have given a good deal to have been able to stretch or walk about.
On the third day, the boys could see the canals criss-crossing in a tangled network on the ruddy globe of Mars. On the fourth day, just as Glen had figured, the glassite domes of Mars City began to show through the violet haze of atmosphere. Glen wondered how fast they were going. There was no way to tell because their insulation kept them from feeling the rush of air.
“Cross your fingers, Skip,” Glen warned. “Our chute should open in the next few minutes.”
The seconds appeared to last hours as they waited, and Glen suffered a torture of suspense. What if the chute did not open? In that case, they would end up in fragments on Mars’ red earth. Or what if the force of the air should jerk the chute off the bubble?
Even as Glen worried, he felt a sharp drag and was tumbled over on Skip.
“Look! The chute’s open!” Skip pointed overhead.
Some minutes later, the red ground rushed up at them like an enfolding blanket. Their final problem faced them now. If they landed safely, they would have conquered space in a way no spaceman had ever done before.
Glen’s muscles drew tight and his heart thumped rapidly as the last few hundred feet melted away. He wanted to close his eyes during these final seconds but he forced himself to watch the rising ground so that he could brace himself at the moment of contact. He was glad they had the foam rubber cushion beneath them.
Glen counted off the last few feet. “A hundred—fifty—twenty—!”
As they struck, Glen was thrown against the ceiling of the bubble. Plastic clattered against plastic as the bubble rolled over on the ground many times before stopping. Glen straightened himself out. He was shaken up but he was unhurt. He looked across at Skip.
“We made it,” Glen said, but his voice shook, as if he wasn’t yet able to believe it. He tore off the door seals, shoved out the door. Then they got out and stretched their legs. Looking at the domes of Mars City in the distance, Glen asked, “Ready to start walking?”
“After being cooped up like a chicken, I’m willing to walk all over Mars. Let’s go.” Skip’s natural good humor had returned.
Less than an hour later, an astonished captain at the Mars City spaceport heard the boys’ strange story.
“Your courage and ingenuity have been incredible!” the captain said when they had finished. “I can’t believe that you two are Wockies. If you weren’t flunked for reasons of scholarship, I’m sure you’ll be reinstated.”
“We weren’t flunked for that reason, sir,” Skip said.
“For what reason then?” the captain asked.
Glen smiled wryly as he replied, “We were flunked, sir, because we failed the test to determine whether we could bear up in an emergency or not!”
It was an unusual setting for baseball. Instead of a blue sky, there was the darkness of space and the brilliance of stars overhead. The light of Earth flooded the scene, and surrounding the oversized diamond were the walls of Copernicus crater, over fifty miles across.
On the mound, Bill Cherry was pitching practice balls to his catcher, Ollie Taylor. Only underhand throwing was allowed in baseball on the Moon, for the ball was exceedingly fast in the light gravity and airlessness. Bill, in snug-fitting space gear, was standing farther than the regulation ninety feet from the plate. This was because of the pitcher’s advantage over the batter in Lunar ball.
Bill wound up and threw. The ball shot like a bullet into Ollie’s double-padded mitt.
“Thatta boy, Bill!” Ollie’s voice came over Bill’s space suit radio. “If you’re this sharp when we meet the Comets this afternoon, we’re bound to win our first championship!”
“That’s enough practice, fellows!” Coach Lippert called, coming out of the dugout. “No use giving our best before the game!”
It was thebiggame for the team from Plato, which was tied with the league leaders in this last game of the season. Plato was the farthest colony on the Moon and was named for the big crater in which it was located. Copernicus colony, the baseball leader, had won the championship every year since the school league had been formed. As a prize, the champions were always given a free rocket trip to Earth.
The Plato Rocketeers were homesick for their mother planet. One of them, little Pete Irby, had never set foot there. He had been born on the Moon.
“It must be wonderful to go around without even a space suit on like they do on Earth!” Pete said wistfully to Bill.
“Don’t worry, Pete,” Bill said confidently. “I have a feeling that this is our year and that we’re all going to Earth.”
“I sure hope you’re right,” Pete replied, with great feeling. “I can’t wait to see the great national parks and rivers and all the other wonderful things there!”
At game time the grandstand was filled and some people were standing. It was the largest crowd ever to see a ball game on the Moon. Much of the crowd was made up of hopeful parents from the Plato colony who had come seven hundred miles by rocket plane to see their boys play.
The champion Copernicus Comets ran out onto the field in big bouncing strides. For on the Moon a person was capable of jumping and running in great leaps because of the low gravity, only one-sixth of Earth’s.
The Plato Rocketeers were the visiting team would bat first. When the outfielders had taken their positions, they were tiny forms far out in the distance with nothing but gray wilderness behind them for a backstop. There were eleven men in Moon baseball because of this greater outfield range. Two extra fielders played behind the shortstop and second baseman and were called “short fielders.”
Bill noticed a wheel chair below the railing of the grandstand. His mother and dad had brought his crippled younger brother Skippy to see the game! Bill had known his parents were going to rocket over from Plato in time for the game, but they had not said Skippy would come along. Bill gave Skippy a wave and his little brother waved back.
The lead-off batter for the Rocketeers walked to the plate swinging a bat, padded to keep it from hitting the ball too hard and far. The Comets’ ace pitcher, Carl Cadman, hurled three fast strikes over almost before the batter had gotten a good foothold. Carl struck out the next batter as well and then forced little Pete Irby to loft a high infield fly for the third out.
“Let’s get ’em, Bill!” Ollie said excitedly as the Rocketeers took the field.
“We’ll sure try,” Bill promised his catcher.
Bill took the mound. With his space gloves he massaged rosin into the baseball. After getting the signal from Ollie, Bill swung his arm down and around. The batter swung sharply, driving the ball toward third. The baseman made a dive for the ball, but he missed it. His body seemed to glide in slow motion in the light gravity.
Bill walked the next batter, making two on and none out. Jack Brenna, the Comets’ heaviest hitter, was up. Bill got two strikes on him and then Jack took a better toehold. As Bill saw bat and ball connect solidly on the next pitch, his heart fell.
The ball arched like a comet across the dark sky. The left fielder took a dozen giant steps after the ball but then gave up. The ball seemed to be going for miles. It was a home run.
The Comets did not score anymore that inning, but the damage seemed to be already done. The champions were leading 3-0.
Bill was first up for the Rocketeers. As he went to the plate swinging a bat, his eye caught Skippy’s wheel chair, and he saw his game little brother waving encouragement. It made him want to try even harder to put his team out in front. Bill knew he would have to do it with his hitting, since he had failed as a pitcher.
But Bill got no closer to a hit than a long foul into the stands. Then he struck out. The two teammates following him also failed to get on base.
The game moved along with no more scoring for the next five innings. It was still 3-0.
In the last of the seventh inning the Plato Rocketeers had more trouble. The first Comet batter topped the ball slowly to Pete at shortstop, who tried too hard to make the play. The ball rolled between his legs and the runner went all the way to second.
Pete was so busy grumbling about his last error that he muffed the next play too. He jumped ten feet into the air trying to reach the high, bounding ball, but he misjudged it and it went on past. The runner on second loped down to third in long strides. Bill called time in order to give Pete a chance to settle down.
“We’ll never win this game!” Pete groaned. “Why don’t you fellows say I’m not any good—like you’re thinking!”
“Stop talking like that!” Bill told him over his suit radio. “You’re thinking too much about going to Earth, Pete. You’re tryingtoohard!”
“I’ll try to do better,” Pete promised.
The next batter drove a high fly to center, sending the runner in from third and making the score 4-0. Bill walked the player following, but then he was lucky enough to strike out the hard-hitting Jack Brenna.
The next Comet drove a hard liner to Pete. Pete scrambled for the ball, but once again he muffed it and it went on into the outfield. The shortfielder recovered it quickly but threw wide to third, sending the runner into the plate with the Comets’ fifth run.
When Bill looked at Pete, the little fellow had thrown his big fielder’s glove into the air and was beginning to walk broken-heartedly off the diamond.
“Pete!” Bill heard Coach Lippert call sharply over his suit radio as he ran onto the field. “Get back to your position, son! I don’t like a quitter on my team.”
Players and coach huddled in the infield. They looked like a gathering of teddy bears in the space suits. Bill could see tears of bitterness inside Pete’s plastic helmet.
“Fellows,” the coach said, “what did we come seven hundred miles across the Moon to do?”
“To play ball,” someone answered, “—and win.”
“All right, then. What do you say we start doing it? Pete, I’m going to send you to left field where you used to play. Dan, in left field, will take your place at shortstop.”
The Rocketeers retired the side without further scoring. Then as though to prove that the pep talk had helped, the team came up with three big runs of their own!
Pitching with all his skill, Bill was able to set down the Comets in order. It was now the top half of the ninth inning, the last chance for Plato to win the game. They were still behind 5-3, and the two-run lead seemed as big as the Milky Way to Bill.
Dan started it off by walloping a double down the right field line. Pete followed with a single that bounced high over the right shortfielder’s head. The fielder behind him took the ball and threw quickly to his catcher to keep Dan from scoring off third. But then the Rocketeers’ luck seemed to have run out as the next two players struck out.
“It’s all up to you, Bill,” the coach told his pitcher as Bill selected his favorite bat.
“I’ll be swinging, coach,” Bill said determinedly.
He looked toward the stands as he walked to the plate. Skippy was waving encouragement again.
“This one is for you, Skippy,” Bill murmured, stepping up to the plate.
Carl tried to make him swing on two bad pitches.
“Careful,” Bill warned himself. “There are two outs—only one more left to us in the whole game!”
The next ball was just the one Bill wanted. He swung with all his might. He saw the ball rise and lose itself in the white dust of starlight overhead. And then he was off!
Loping past second, he saw the left fielder still bounding like a rabbit after the ball. The coach slowed him up on third base.
“Take it easy, Bill,” he said with a happy grin. “That ball is on the dark side of the Moon by now!”
Bill could see the Plato rooters waving their arms wildly in glee, and his radio picked up their loud cheers. As he crossed the plate with the leading run, he waved to Skippy who was almost out of his wheel chair in his excitement over his big brother’s tingling homer.
The score: Plato 6, Copernicus 5. The game was far from over, though. The Comets still had their last turn at bat.
Bill got the first player to raise a high infield pop-up. In the Moon’s light gravity it seemed as if the ball would never come down. But it finally did, and Dan took it for the first out.
Bill walked the next Comet, to put one on and with one out. The following batter forced the runner at second, making it two out and giving Bill a much more confident feeling.
But then up to the plate walked Jack Brenna!
Bill swallowed hard and began to sweat inside his space suit. He failed to get the ball over the plate on the first two pitches. Jack swung on the next pitch and sent a hard foul ball behind third base.
“Must be careful,” Bill thought. “A homer with the man on base will win the game for the Comets.”
Bill came though with a fast ball. Jack met it squarely and as the ball towered high over the infield, Jack felt all quivery and weak. He turned his head regretfully and saw the ball rising high and far against the midnight black of space. He saw little Pete Irby galloping away from the diamond as fast as he could go.
“Get it, Pete!” Bill pleaded under his breath. “Please get it!”
Everybody in the stands was on his feet. This was the play that would decide the game—and the championship.
Pete finally made a last second leap that brought him twenty feet off the ground. Bill could hardly see ball and glove meet. But they did meet and Pete had done the impossible!
They had won!
The Rocketeers whirled the coach and Bill easily up on their shoulders, because of the light Lunar weight. Then they began parading happily around the diamond to celebrate their very first championship. When Pete had made the long trip in from the outfield, he too was carried around on his teammates’ shoulders.
“That was a swell catch, Pete!” Bill called out to the little fellow. “You sure saved the day for us!”
“You know what, Bill?” Pete said, grinning. “If I’d missed that ball I would have kept on running—yep, right into space! I was determined to make that trip to Earth one way or another!”
Hugh Davone and Link Malloy sat at the wall desk of the space ship compartment poring over their albums of interplanetary postage stamps. The atom-poweredPrincess of Mars, cargo and passenger liner, was only a few hours out on its Earth-to-Mars run.
“It makes me nervous thinking of the thousands of dollars’ worth of stamps we’re carrying in the wall safe,” Link said. “I don’t think I’m going to enjoy this trip.”
“Take it easy, Link,” Hugh replied, with a lighthearted grin. “There are Space Guardsmen aboard ship to protect us.”
The fellows were on their annual vacation from the Space Cadet Corps. Since cadets in training could ride any space ship free, the two were escorting a valuable shipment of Mr. Davone’s interplanetary stamps to another dealer opening up shop in Mars City.
“I’m worrying about that white-haired old character your dad said asked suspicious questions at his shop the other day,” Link said. “Seems funny that he is making the trip to Mars the same time we are.”
“Probably only a coincidence,” Hugh answered. “There’s only one flight a month to Mars, you know.”
“There are unscrupulous dealers who would give anything to lay their hands on our shipment,” Link went on. “This deal means an awful lot to your dad’s stamp business, Hugh. If we should bungle the job, he certainly would lose a lot.”
“Sure he would,” Hugh agreed, then he added, “but we aren’t going to bungle it.”
This seemed to satisfy Link and a smile of confidence deepened the corners of his broad, friendly mouth.
Hugh picked up a stamp with his tongs. “I came across this duplicate from the Venus pictorial issue. It’s the six-dollar blue of the Valley of Mists. Have you got it?”
Link leaned over. “No! What have you been doing, Hugh, holding out on me? How about some of my 2027 Lunar commems in trade?”
They worked out an exchange. The Lunar stamps were curious specimens, imperforate and circular. They depicted the Lunar hemisphere which faces Earth. The single-stamp issue had been distributed on the fiftieth anniversary of man’s first landing on the moon and was much in demand.
Suddenly there was a knock on the outer door of the compartment.
Hugh got up and went to the door. As he walked, his magnetic-sole shoes rasped against the metallic floor like a knife being honed. He opened the door.
A man with the face and build of a leprechaun looked at Hugh. His pale but alert blue eyes peered steadily into Hugh’s. Hugh also began to wonder why this customer at Davone’s Philatelic Shop should be making the voyage to Mars with them.
“Yes, sir?” Hugh asked.
“May I come in?” the man asked. “My name is Oscar Benasco.”
Hugh hesitated, thinking about the valuable cargo, then he replied reluctantly, “Yes.”
“Your father certainly has a fine shop, Hugh Davone,” the elderly man said brightly as he entered. “However, I was disappointed to find out that he had packed up some of his choicest space items and was selling them to Mr. Elfs, a dealer on Mars.”
“You know quite a lot, Mr. Benasco,” Link remarked coolly.
“Yes, I pride myself on my shrewdness,” Mr. Benasco replied in a modest manner. His roving eyes came to rest on the boys’ albums. “I see you two have collections of your own.”
“Nothing very valuable,” Hugh replied. “But we enjoy our stamps just the same.”
“Ah, yes,” Benasco said. His eyes brightened with eagerness and he placed the tips of his outspread fingers together. “Speaking of valuable items—those you are taking to Mars—no doubt you keep them in your compartment safe. I wonder if you might show them to me?”
“I’m sorry, Mr. Benasco,” Hugh said, “but I promised my dad I wouldn’t take the stamps out to show anyone until they were safely in the hands of Mr. Elfs on Mars.”
Benasco looked completely crestfallen. His rounded shoulders slumped and the most pained expression covered his face. “Surely just a look—” he pleaded.
“If you are going to Mars, as you must be,” Hugh went on, “you’ll be able to see them all in Mr. Elfs’s shop, and you can talk to him about any stamps you might want to buy.”
“Then that’s your final answer?” Mr. Benasco asked, his disappointment giving way to annoyance.
“I’m afraid it must be,” Hugh told him. “I’m sorry.”
“You’ve disappointed me sorely, young man,” Mr. Benasco retorted. “Good day to you.”
He turned briskly and clattered out the door. As he left, Hugh caught sight of the handle of an old type miniature rocket pistol protruding from his coat pocket.
“Did you see that pistol?” Link asked, in surprise. “It’s a wonder he didn’t hold us up for the stamps right here and now! But I guess he was afraid to risk it.”
“For a moment I almost felt sorry for him and was about to give in,” Hugh admitted. “Now I’m glad I didn’t.”
In the days that followed, Hugh and Link saw little of Mr. Benasco except in the dining room.
One morning, near the end of the flight, Hugh and Link were standing in front of their compartment port looking out. The orange-red globe of Mars was so dominant that it seemed to press back the surrounding stars and nebulae to near obscurity.
“Only a few more days and our shipment will be safely in the hands of Mr. Elfs in Mars City,” Hugh said. “Then Mr. Benasco will be Mr. Elfs’s worry.”
“That will be just dandy as far as I’m concerned,” Link replied earnestly.
By this year of 2031, space mail service had increased to such proportions that it had opened up a brand new field of stamp specialization for the philatelist. It was for this reason that Mr. Elfs was attempting a stamp hobby business in Mars City. Mr. Davone’s portfolios of both low and high values was to provide him with the bulk of his opening merchandise.
Even the most remote colonies of the Solar System, including the farthest on Triton, Neptune, had their own postage by now. The lone Triton bi-color, picturing Valhalla Peak, tallest mountain yet discovered in the System, was one of the most wanted by collectors.
Suddenly the chimes for lunch were heard over the compartment intercom.
Entering the dining room, Hugh and Link saw Benasco in his usual place at the end of the table near the door. They took their seats and Link smiled at his plate. “Cubed beef, Hugh.”
Hugh grinned. “You can’t say they don’t aim to please on thePrincess of Mars.”
But the fellows did not get to finish their cubed roast, nor did anyone else at the table.
A shock hit the ship like an unheralded thunderbolt. Hugh had the crazy feeling of being in a nightmare. After the deafening report, he felt his lap belt snap, and then he was hoisted out of his chair as though in the vortex of a whirlwind. The table tore loose from the floor fittings. Hugh bounced into a coffee urn and it nearly stunned him. Groans of distress from those around him filled his ears.
“What has happened?” Hugh thought dazedly.
The ship’s disaster siren pealed along the corridors of thePrincess of Mars. Medical men with stretchers came running and officers snapped out brisk orders. Hugh groped anxiously through the melee for Link. He struggled over twisted chair tubing and found his friend helping those who were hurt.
“We’ve got work to do,” Link told him.
Hugh rolled up his sleeves. He was still giddy. “I’m ready,” he said.
It was reported later that there were no fatalities, but there were enough injured persons to keep the infirmary staff busy for awhile.
Hugh and Link, working side by side with the medical men, had not seen anything of Benasco since the accident. The ship’s engineers revealed that a meteorite had caused the disaster. It had struck fairly close to the compartment occupied by Hugh and Link. Hugh shuddered to think what it would have been like to have been tossed about in their room like a pea in a whistle. Such would have been his and Link’s fate had the strike occurred half an hour earlier.
The cadets had not yet had the opportunity to check their quarters for damage. When the physician in charge finally freed them with thanks for their help, Hugh thought about the stamps for the first time since the unnerving incident.
“Link,” he said urgently, “we’ve got to get back and check on those stamps! This has been a perfect set up for Benasco and his scheme!”
“Right behind you,” Link said as they hurried from the infirmary.
Along the way, the two found warped walls and doors that had been flung open. Luckily all the occupants in the worst-hit area had been in the dining room at the terrible moment, or there surely would have been fatalities.
Reaching their compartment, Hugh and Link found that the door had been forced open by the explosion.
Hugh hurried over to the wall safe. He felt a chill of dread race through him. The vault door also was open and the chamber was empty.
“They’re gone!” Hugh said hoarsely. “All of Dad’s stamps are gone!”
Hugh slumped remorsefully on his cot, taut fingers combing through his hair. “Dad wanted to have the stamps insured,” he said bitterly, “but I was trying to save him money. The insurance fee was enormous, and on top of that he would have had to pay the fare both to and from Mars for the agents who would carry the shipment. How I wish they had done it now!”
“If Benasco has the stamps, we may still be able to recover them,” Link said. “Let’s go see him.”
Hugh got up, his face set, his palm shaped into a fist. “If Benascoisthe one, I’ll personally—oh, never mind! Come on!”
They moved down corridor “E,” which was away from the center of the damage. This was the hall where they knew Benasco’s room was located. Scarcely anybody was in the section at present. Those who resided in the nearby rooms were either helping out in the emergency, or they were idly watching the beginning of repairs. The outside meteor bumper and the inner buffer bulkheads had kept the destruction to a minimum. By automatically sealing themselves off from the rest of the ship at the moment of impact, the protective bulkheads had kept the ship from being decompressed.
Hugh and Link found their suspect’s door closed. Hugh walked up to it and tried the knob.
The door opened under Hugh’s push, but the compartment was vacant.
“He’s gone,” Link said.
“He must be somewhere close by,” Hugh returned impatiently. “We haven’t passed him on the way, so he must be farther down the corridor.”
“Maybe he’s looking for a place to hide the portfolios until we land,” Link suggested. “He knows we’ll suspect him of taking them.”
Hugh nodded. “Let’s go.”
As the two moved ahead down the quiet passageway, Link spoke in a tense voice, “Do you think we’re right trying to tackle that little guy alone? We’re each bigger than he is, but he’s got a pistol and we haven’t.”
“We’ll be careful,” Hugh promised.
There were a number of storerooms lining the corridor. The cadets checked one after another. The rooms were shrouded in tomblike silence and full of dark hiding places. But the search revealed no sign of Benasco or the missing portfolios.
“He seems to have disappeared right into the air,” Link said discouragingly. “Hugh, I hate to say it, but something tells me we aren’t going to see either Benasco or those stamps again.”
They were approaching the door of an outer-ship repair room. Hugh knew that a ladder in this room led directly up to the outside hull of the ship.
“You’re probably thinking along the same lines that I am, Link,” Hugh replied gravely. “It may be farfetched, but a person as shrewd as Mr. Benasco makes out to be might have cooked up a pretty clever plan. He may have had a portable transmitter hidden somewhere so that he could contact another party outside the ship.”
“I get it!” Link said. “He might have radioed this crony in a space taxi to meet him on the outer skin. Then they could both take off with the loot and either land on Mars or on one of the moons!”
As Link spoke, Hugh was staring through the plastic window of the room. A wall hid much of the interior from view. Suddenly he saw the very man they were seeking cross the room and disappear beyond the corner of the concealing wall.
Link caught a glimpse of him too. “Hey!” he burst out. “Wasn’t thathim?”
“It sure was,” Hugh replied, feeling better now. “He probably just entered the room from another door along the next side corridor.”
Hugh gently turned the knob and the door swung open soundlessly. “We’ll slip in softly,” he whispered. “Then we can try to take him by surprise around the corner up ahead. We’ll have to watch our step because he’s probably desperate and will have his pistol ready for use.”
“He deserves to get twenty years for a theft like this,” Link whispered fiercely. “How did he ever expect to get away with it?”
“Hewon’tget away with it,” Hugh whispered confidently. “Right now he’s probably getting into a space suit so he can pop through the outer hatch and join his confederate outside.”
They had reached the corner on tiptoe. Hugh, in the lead, peered carefully around the corner. He gaped in surprise at what he saw:
Benasco was seated on the floor like a child with a new scrapbook, and he was chattering away ecstatically to himself!
“My, oh, my, what a splendid group!” he was saying. “There’s atete bechepair of old 1989 Space Stations I’ve always wanted! And look at this one—a full sheet of Europa triangles! Oscar Benasco will have the most splendid collection of space stamps in all the Solar System!”