Spillthrough.

by Daniel F. Galouye.

[Sidenote: Ships switching from hyper to normal s.p.a.ce had to do it in a micro-second--if the crews were to live. But it would take Brad suicidal minutes!]

Like the sibilant, labored breathing of a dying monster, the tortured ship wailed its death sobs as it floundered in deep hyperstellar s.p.a.ce.

_Clank-sss, clank-sss_, went the battered safety valve of the pile cooling system.

_BOOM ... boom ... BOOM ... boom._ A severed and dangling piston rod crashed in monotonous rhythm against a deck beam as the rest of the auxiliary compression unit strained to satisfy its function.

An off-beat ba.s.s viol strum added its depressive note to the symphony of destruction's aftermath--_throom-throom ... throom-throom_. It was the persistent expansion of plate metal reacting to heat from a ruptured tube jacket.

Forward, in the control compartment of the cargo craft, the sounds were muted. But the intervening bulkheads did not lessen their portent.

Brad Conally ran a hand over the stubbles on his cheek and swayed forward in the bucket-type seat, his head falling to rest against the control column.

Somewhere aft the ship groaned and metal sc.r.a.ped against metal with a sickening rending sound.

There was a lurch and Brad was jerked to one side, his head ramming against the inclination control. The ventral jet came to life in unexpected protest and fired once.

His hand shot out instinctively to return the loose, displaced lever to neutral. But the force of the single burst had already taken effect and the lower part of his stomach tied itself in a knot.

Centrifugal force reeled him to the fringe of consciousness. He struggled to reach the dorsal-ventral firing lever, praying that the linkage was not severed and the mechanism was still operative. His hand found the lever and jerked. The dorsal jet came to life with a roar. He jockeyed the control back and forth across neutral position. The two jets fired alternately. The sickening, end-over-end gyration became gentler.

The ship steadied itself again into immobility. But a snap sounded from back aft. It was followed by a grating noise that crescendoed and culminated in a terrific crash. His ears popped. A _clang_ reverberated, evidence of an automatic airlock sealing off another punctured section of the vessel.

Shrugging fatigue from his body, he looked up at the panel. The ma.s.someter showed a decrease of six tons. The explanation was simple, Brad laughed dryly: A good one-quarter of his load of crated inter-calc audio retention banks had rammed through the hull and floated into s.p.a.ce.

He glanced at the scope. The twenty odd crates, some of them taking up an orbital relationship with the vessel, were blips on the screen.

Twisting the ma.s.someter section selector, he read off the figures. Hold One showed full cargo of inter-calc equipment. Hold Two, with its thirty bins of hemat.i.te, was intact. The third cargo compartment, containing more crated inter-calc units, was the damaged one. The ma.s.someter reading for that hold accounted for the missing weight.

"How're you doing, Brad?" the receiver rasped feebly. He recoiled at the unexpected sound.

"She's still in one piece, Jim," he shouted to compensate for the strength the signal would lose in traveling the distance to the fleeing lifecraft. "Have you cleared through your second hyperjump yet?"

"Getting ready to go into the third. There won't be any more communicating after that ... not with this short-range gear and your faulty transmitter. Find out the trouble yet?"

Brad ignored the question. "How long, Jim?" His voice was eager. "How long before you get to port?"

"Three jumps in one day. Seven more to go. That figures out to a little over two more days. I'm making better time than we expected with this peanut. Allow two more days for the slow tows to return.... Still think it'll hold together?"

Brad was silent.

"Brad," Jim's voice went into low gear. "I've still got enough juice to come back and pick you up. After all, one ship and one load of cargo ... it's just not worth it."

Brad listened to the ominous convulsions of the ship for a moment. "Your orders are to continue to Vega IV. I'm sticking."

"But, skipper! Dammit! There's always the chance of spilling through into normal! That's a torturous way to go!"

Brad's lips brushed roughly against the bulkhead mike. "If I fall through it's just me, isn't it?"

Although the sound level was too low, he knew there was a sigh on the other end. "Okay," the speaker whispered. "If I can't convince you...."

Brad leaned against the bulkhead and shivered. He'd have to see whether he couldn't get more output from the heat converter--if he could chance going past the leaking pile again. Or _was_ it the cold that was causing him to tremble?--If he entered normal s.p.a.ce at less than minimum breakthrough speed.... He didn't complete the distasteful mental picture.

He thought of his only functioning hyperdrive tube. Its gauge showed a power level that was only high enough to boost the craft back onto the hypers.p.a.ce level when it started to conform with the normal tendency to fall through. How many times the tube could be counted on to repeat the performance he couldn't guess. It might be painful if he should let the drop gain too much momentum before correcting--human beings were built to cross the barrier in nothing longer than a micro-second. But, he resolved, he would worry about that when the time came.

"Why don't you let it go, Brad?" the voice leaped through the grating again.

Brad started. He thought Jim had cut the communication.

"You know the score. If we swing this we can get all of West Cl.u.s.ter Supplies' work. We'll need an extra ship--several of them. But with the contract we'll be able to borrow as much as we want."

Jim laughed. "At least I'm glad there's a rational, mercenary motive. For a while I thought you were going through with that go-down-with-the-ship routine."

Boom ... _Boom_ ... BOOM. The loose rod pounded with suddenly increasing fury.

He lunged through the hatch. At least the compression unit was forward of the faulty pile. And, while he did the job which automatic regulators had abandoned, he would not have to keep track of his time of exposure to hard radiation.

"Calling s.p.a.ce Ship Fleury. Repeat: Calling s.p.a.ce Ship Fleury.... Answer please."

Brad jerked his head off the panel ledge. Hot coffee from a container that his limp hand half-gripped sloshed over the brim and spilled on the deck. He turned a haggard, puzzled face to the bulkhead speaker.

It had flooded the compartment with sound--live, vibrant sound. The signal had been loud and clear. Not weak. Not like the one from Jim's lifecraft two jumps away.

"This is the SS Fleury!" he shouted, stumbling forward eagerly and gripping the gooseneck of the mike. "Come in!"

"Fleury from SS Cl.u.s.ter Queen.... Answering your SOS."

His hopes suddenly vanished. "Is that Altman? What are you doing on this run?"

"Yeah, Conally. This is Altman. Freeholding to Vega.... What's your trouble? Anything serious?"

Altman had come in to unload at Arcturus II s.p.a.ceport while the Fleury was still docked, Brad recalled. The huge ship had been berthed next to his.

"Main drive jacket blown out in the engine compartment," Brad said hoa.r.s.ely. "It happened at the end of the eighth jump. We're about a half-notch into hyper--just barely off the border."

"That's tough." There was little consolation in the tone. "Got any pa.s.sengers?"

"No. None this trip. I'm solo now. My engineer's gone off in the craft."