Subs.p.a.ce Explorers.

by Doc Smith.

Chapter 1 CATASTROPHE.

At time zero minus nine minutes First Officer Carlyle Deston, Chief Electronicist of the starliner Procyon, sat attentively at his board. He was five feet eight inches tall and weighed one hundred sixty two pounds. just a little guy, as s.p.a.cemen go. Although narrow-waisted and, for his heft, broad-shouldered, he was built for speed and maneuverability, not to handle freight.

Watching a hundred lights and half that many instruments; listening to four telephone circuits, two with each ear; hands flashing to toggles and b.u.t.tons and k.n.o.bs; he was completely informed as to the instant-by-instant condition of everything in his department during countdown. Everything had been and still was in condition GO.

Nevertheless, he was bothered; bothered as he had never been bothered before in all his three years of subs.p.a.cing. He had always had hunches and they had always been right, but this one was utterly ridiculous. It wasn't the ship or the trip-nothing was yelling "DAN- GER!" into his mind-it was something down in the Middle that was pulling at him like a cat tractor and it didn't make sense. He never went down into pa.s.senger territory. He had no business there and flirting with vacskulled girls was not his dish.

So he fought his hunch down and concentrated on his job. Lift-off was uneventful; so was the climb out to a safe distance from Earth. At time zero minus two seconds Deston poised a fingertip over the red b.u.t.ton, but everything stayed in condition GO and immergence into subs.p.a.ce was perfectly normal. All the green lights except one went out; all the needles dropped to zero; all four phones went dead; all signals stopped. He plugged a jack into the socket under the remaining green light and said: "Procyon One to Control Six. Flight eight four nine. Subs.p.a.ce radio test number one. How do you read me, Control Six?"

"Control Six to Procyon One. I read you ten and zero. How do you read me, Procyon One?"

"Ten and zero. Out." The solitary green light went out and Deston unplugged.

Perfect signal and zero noise. That was that. From now until Emergence-unless some robot or computer called for help-he might as well be a pa.s.senger. He leaned back in his seat, lit a cigarette, and began really to study this wild hunch, that was getting worse all the time. It was all he could do to keep from calling his relief and going down there right then; but he couldn't and wouldn't do that. He was on until plus three hours. He couldn't possibly explain any such break as that would be, so he stuck it out.

At time zero plus one hundred seventy nine minutes his relief appeared. "All black, Babe?" the newcomer asked.

"As the pit, Eddie. Take over. You've picked out your girl-friend for the trip, I suppose?"

While taking the bucket seat, Eddie said, "Not yet. I got sidetracked watching Bobby Warner..."

A wave of psychic force hit Deston's mind hard enough almost to turn it inside out; but he clenched his teeth and held his pose.

... and after seeing her just walk across the lounge once, all the other women looked like a clime's worth of catmeat. Talk about poetry in motion!" Eddie rolled his eyes, made motions with his hands, and whistled expressively. "Oh, brother!"

"Okay, okay, don't blow a fuse," Deston said, in what he hoped was his usual tone and manner. "I know. You'll love her undyingly-all this trip, maybe."

"Huh? How dumb can you get? D'you think I'd even try to play footsie with Barbara Warner?"

"You play footsie with the pick of the pa.s.senger list, so who's Barbara Warner, to daunt Don Juan Eddie Thompson, the Tomcat of s.p.a.ce?"

"I thought you knew some of the facts of life, Babe. She's Warner's only child, is all. Warner of WarnOil; the biggest in all s.p.a.ce. Operates in every solar system known to man and never puts down a dry hole. All gushers that blow their rigs clear up into the stratosphere. Everybody wonders how come. The p.o.o.p is, his wife's an oil-witch, is why he lugs her around with him all the time. Why else would he?"

"Maybe be loves her. It happens, you know."

"Huh? After twenty-some years of her? Comet-gas! Anyway, would you have the sublime gall to make a pa.s.s at WarnOil's heiress, with more millions in her own sock than you've got dimes? If you ever made pa.s.ses, I mean." "Uh-uh. Negative. For sure."

"You nor me neither. But what a dish! Brother, what a lovely, luscious, toothsome dish!"

"Cheer up; you'll be raving about another one tomorrow," Deston said callously, turning away.

"I don't know... maybe; but even if I do, she won't be anything like her," Eddie mourned, to the closing door. Deston didn't go to his cabin; didn't take off his sidearm. He didn't even think of it; the .41 automatic at his hip was as much a part of his uniform as his pants.

Entering the lounge, he did not have to look around. She was playing contract, and as eves met caves and she rose to her feet a shock-wave went through him that made him feel as though every hair he had was standing straight on end.

She was about five feet four. Her hair was a startlingly brilliant artificial yellow; her eyes a deep, cool blue. She could have made the Miss Western Hemisphere finals.

Deston, however, did not notice any of these details then.

"Excuse me, please," she said to the other three at her table. "I must go now." She tossed her cards down onto the table and walked straight toward him; eyes still holding eyes.

He backed hastily out into the corridor, and as the door closed behind her they went naturally and wordlessly into each other's arms. Lips met lips in a kiss that lasted for a long time. It was not a pa.s.sionate embrace pa.s.sion would come later-it was as though each of them, after endless years of bootless, fruitless longing, had come at long last home.

"Come with me, dear, where we can talk," she said finally, eyeing with disfavor the half-dozen spectators; and, in her suite a few minutes later, Deston said: "So this is why I had to come down into pa.s.senger territory. You came aboard at exactly zero seven forty three."

"Uh-uh." She shook her head. "A few minutes before that; that was when I read your name on the board. First Officer, Carlyle Deston. It simply unraveled me; I came completely unzipped. It's wonderful that you're so strongly psychic, too."

"I don't know about that," he said, thoughtfully. "Psionics says that that the map is the territory, but all my training has been based on the axiom that it isn't. I've had hunches all my life, but the signal doesn't carry much information. Like hearing a siren while you're driving a ground-car. You know you have to pull over and stop, but that's all you know. It could be police, fire, ambulance-anything. Anybody with any psionic ability at all ought to do a lot better than that, I should think."

"Not necessarily. You don't want to believe it, so you've been fighting it, beating it down. So it has to force its way through whillions and skillions of ohms of resistance to get through to you at all. But I know you're very strongly psychic, or you wouldn't've come down here..."

she giggled suddenly "... and you'd've jumped clear out into subs.p.a.ce when a perfectly strange girl attacked you. So... aren't you going to ask me to marry you?"

"Of course I am." He blushed hotly. "Will you? Right now?"

"You can't without resigning, can you? They'd fire you?"

"What of it? I can get a good ground job." "But you wouldn't like a ground job!"

"What of that, too. A man grows up. Between you and any job in the universe there's no choice."

"I knew you'd say that, Cari." She hugged his elbow against her side. "I'd love to get married right now..." She paused.

"Except for what?" he asked.

"I thought at first I'd tell my parents first-they're aboard, you know-hut I won't. Shed scream and he'd roar and neither of them could make me change my mind, so we will do it right now."

He looked at her questioningly; she shrugged and went on, We aren't what you could call a happy family. She's been trying to make me marry an old goat of a prince and I finally told her to go roll her hoop-to get a divorce and marry the foul old beast herself. And he's been pushing me to marry an oil-man-to consolidate two empires-that it makes me sick at the stomach just to look at! Last week he insisted on it and I blew an atomic bomb. I'd keep on finding oil and stuff for him, I said, but..." She broke off as Deston stiffened involuntarily.

"Oil?" he asked, too quietly. "You're the oil-witch, then; not your mother. Besides having more megabucks in your own right than any..."

"Don't say it, dearest!" She seized both his hands in hers. "I know how you feel. I don't like to let you ruin your career, either, but nothing can come between us now that we've found each other. So I'll tell you this." Her eyes looked steadily into his. "If it bothers you that much I'll give every dollar I own to some foundation or other. I swear it."

He laughed shamefacedly as he took her into his arms. "That's knocking me for the well-known loop, sweetheart. I'll live with it and like it."

Then, to get away from that subject, he explored with knowing fingers the muscles of her arms and back. "You're trained down as fine as I am and it's my business to behow come?"

"I majored in Phys. Ed. and I love it. And I'm a New-martian, you know, so I teach a few courses..." "Newmartian? But I thought-aren't the headquarters of all the big outfits, including WarnOil, on Tellus?"

"In a way. Management, yes, but very little property. Everything possible is owned on Newmars and we Warners have always lived there. The tax situation, you know."

"I didn't know; taxes don't bother me much. But go ahead. You teach a few courses. In?"

"Oh, bars, trapeze, ground-and-lofty tumbling, acrobatics, aerialistics, highwire work, muscle-control, unarmed combat-all that sort of thing."

"Ouch! So if you ever happen accidentally to get mad at me you'll tie me up into a pretzel?"

She laughed. "A pleasant thought; but you know as well as I do that a good big man can take a good little one every time."

"But I'm not big. I'm just a little squirt."

"You outweigh me by forty pounds and I know just how good s.p.a.ce officers have to be. You're exactly the right size."

"For the first time in my life I'm beginning to think so." Laughing, he put his arm around her and led her up to a full-length mirror. "We're a mighty well-matched pair... I like us immensely... well, shall we go see the chaplain? Or should we look for a priest-or maybe a rabbi?" "We don't know each other very well, do we? But we'll have all the rest of our lives to learn unimportant details. The chaplain, please. Let's go."

They went; still talking. "You'll live with me in the suite, won't you?" she asked. "All the time you aren't on duty?"

I can't imagine anything else."

"Wonderful! Now I want to talk seriously for a minute. You'll never need a job, nor any of my money, either. Not ever. The thought of dowsing never even entered your mind, did it?"

"Dowsing? Oh, witching stuff. Of course not."

"Listen, darling. All the time I've been touching you I've been learning about you-and you've been learning about me."

"Yes but..."

"No buts, buster. You actually have tremendous powers; ever so much greater than mine. All I can do is feel oil, water, coal, and gas. I'm no good at all on metals couldn't feel gold if I were perched right on the ridgepole of Fort Knox. But if you'll stop fighting that terrific power of yours and really use it I'm positive that you can dowse anything you want to. Even uranium."

He didn't believe it, and the argument went on until they reached the chaplain's office. Then, of course, it was dropped automatically; and the next five days were deliciously, deliriously, ecstatically happy days for them both.

At the time of this chronicle starships were the safest means of transportation ever used by man; but there was, of course, an occasional accident. Worse than the accidents however-but fortunately much rarer-were the complete disappearances: starships from which no distress signal was ever received and of which no trace was ever found.

And on the Great Wheel of Fate the Procyon's number came up.

In the middle of the night Carlyle Deston came instantaneously awake-deep down in his mind a huge, terribly silent voice was roaring "DANGER! DANGER! DANGER!" He did not take time to think or to reason: he grabbed Barbara around the waist and leaped out of bed with her.

"Trouble, Bobby! Get into your suit-quick!" "But... but I've got to dress!"

"No time! Snap it up!" He stuffed her into her suit; leaped into his own. "Control!" he snapped into its microphone. "Disaster! Abandon Ship!"

The alarm bells clanged once; the big red lights flashed once; the sirens barely started to growl, then quit. The whole vast fabric of the ship shuddered as though it were being mauled by a thousand and impossibly gigantic hammers.

And out in the corridor: "Come on, girl, sprint!" He put his hand under her arm and urged her along.

She tried, but her best wasn't good. "I've never been checked out on sprinting in s.p.a.ce-suits, so you'd better..."

Everything went out. Lights, artificial gravity, air-circulation-everything.

"You've never been checked out on null-gee, either, so hang on and we'll travel."

"Where to?" she asked, hurtling through the air faster than she would have believed possible.

"Baby Two-Lifecraft Number Two, that is-my crash a.s.signment. Good thing I was down here with you-I don't think anybody'll make it from the Top. Next turn left, then right. I'll swim you."

At the lifecraft he kicked a lever and a port swung open-to reveal a blaze of light and a startled gray-haired man who, half-floating in air, was banging on to a fixture with both hands.

"What happened?" the man asked. "I didn't know whether..."

"Wrecked. Null-gee and high radiation. I'll have to put you in the safe for a while." Deston shoved the oldster into a small room, gave him a line, and turned to Barbara. "My tell-tale reads twenty-pink-so we've got a few minutes. Wrap a leg around that lever there and I'll see if I can find some pa.s.sengers and toss 'em to you. Or is null-gee getting to you too much?"

"I'm pretty gulpy, but I can take it."

"Good girl-you may have to take a lot of it."

The first five doors he tried were locked. The sixth was not; but the couple inside the room were very gruesomely dead. So was everyone else he could find until he came to a room in which a man in a s.p.a.ce-suit was floundering helplessly in the air. He glanced at his telltale. Thirty two. High red. Time to go.

In the lifecraft he closed the port, cut in the launcher, and slammed on a one-gravity drive away from the ship. Then he shucked Barbara out of her suit and shed his own. He unclamped a fire-extinguisher-like affair; opened the door of a tiny room. "In here!" He shut the door behind them. "Strip, quick!" He cradled the device and opened four valves.

Fast as he was, she was naked and ready for the gush of thick, creamy foam from the multiplex nozzle. "Oh, Dekon?" she asked. "I've read about it. I rub it in good, all over me?"

"That's right. Short for 'Decontaminant, Complete; Compound, Absorbent, and Chelating; Type DCQ.' It takes care of radiation, but speed is of the essence. All over you is right." He placed the foam-gun on the floor and went vigorously to work. "Eyes, too, yes. Everywhere. Just that. And swallow six gulps of it... that's it. I slap a gob of it over your nose and mouth and you inhale once-hard and deep. One good one's enough, but if it isn't a good one you die of lung cancer, so I'll have to knock you out and give it to you while you're unconscious, and that isn't good-complications. So make it good and deep?"

"Will do. Good and deep." She emptied her lungs.

He put a headlock on her and slapped the Dekon on.

She inhaled, hard and deep, and went into paroxysms of coughing. He held her in his arms until the worst of it was over; but she was still coughing hard when she pulled herself away from him.

"But-you? Lemme-help-you-quick!"

"No need, sweetheart. The old man won't need it-I got him into the safe in time-the other guy and I will work on each other. Lie down on the bunk there and take it easy for half an hour."

Forty minutes later, while all four were still cleaning up the messes of foam, the chattering sender stopped sending and the communicator came on. Since everything about a starship is designed to fail safe, they were of course in normal s.p.a.ce. On the screens many hundreds of stars blazed, in half the colors of the spectrum.

"Baby Three acknowledging," the speaker said. "Jones and four-deconned-who's calling and bow's your subs.p.a.ce communicator?"

"Baby Two, Deston and three. Mine's dead, too. Thank G.o.d, Here! With you to astrogate us maybe well make it. But how'd you get away? Not down from the Top, that's for sure."

Vision came on; a big, square-jawed, lean, tanned face appeared upon the screen. "We were in Baby Three already."

"Oh." Deston was quick on the uptake. "You, too?" "That's right. But the way the old man chewed you out, I knew he'd slap me in irons, so we hid out. We found three men before high red. I deconned Bun, then..." "Bun?" Barbara exclaimed. "Bernice Burns? How wonderful!"

"Bobby!" The face of a silver-haired beauty appeared beside Jones'. "Am I glad you got away too!"

"Just a sec," Deston said. "Data for rendezvous, Here... Hey! My watch stopped-so did the chron!"

"Here too," Jones said. "So I'll handle it on visual."