Part 1
Expedition to Pluto
By Fletcher Pratt and Laurence Manning
Within the _Goddard's_ hurtling hull Captain "Steel-Wall" McCausland, hero of the space fleets, nursed his secret plan for an Earth reborn. Reuter the scientist cuddled his treacherous test-tubes. And Air Mate Longworth grappled an unseen horror that menaced a billion lives!
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Planet Stories Winter 1939. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
"_Now passing Phobos, the second moon of Mars. From this point to the orbit of Jupiter we are in the planetoid belt, the most dangerous portion of our voyage. This ship's armor of twenty-inch beryll-steel may be perfectly adequate to keep meteorites out, but let just one of those planetoids, little worlds, hit us and this broadcast would end right now. Here we are! Phobos at our left and down, if there is any up or down out here in empty space. It's a little red moon, cracked and seamed, all rock; it has no atmosphere and no weather. The rocks stand up, jagged and sharp. There she goes! Good-bye Phobos--we're making 9,250 miles an hour past Phobos, according to a message from Captain McCausland which has just been handed to me. The Captain doesn't look well this morning. He seems depressed and the difficulties of this expedition are weighing on him. That's all for today. This is 7-LOP, the interplanetary expedition ship_ Goddard, _on the exploring expedition to Pluto. Your reporter, Paulette de Vries speaking. Interplanetary time 0-six-0-0, May 24, 2432._"
The girl snapped the key of her microphone off and turned angrily to the young man who had tapped her on the shoulder. "What do you mean by interrupting my broadcast, Adam Longworth?"
The tall young man was frowning at her. "You know the crew listens in on these broadcasts, don't you?"
"Well, what am I supposed to do about that? Give three cheers?"
"Listen, Paulette. On an expedition as dangerous as this, is it right to let the crew know the Captain is feeling depressed or doubtful? I didn't mean to make you sign off, though."
"I signed off because I was through. Don't flatter yourself! Trouble with you is you try to run everybody's business. I thought you might have got over that in the ten years since I knew you in school, but you haven't. Trying to keep me out of the control room so I wouldn't hurt myself! Wake up, Mr. Longworth, this is 2432; you're still living back in the nineteen-hundreds when woman's place was in the home."
Longworth glanced at a bandage around the girl's left wrist. Paulette reddened.
"All right, I slipped and sprained my wrist. So what? So you have my things moved to another cabin, where I'll be more comfortable. You're an interfering old woman, Mr. Longworth. You're hopeless!"
Longworth reddened uncomfortably.
"Very well, Paulette, I'll stop interfering as you call it. But really, you ought to stop referring to the Captain in such a manner as to break down the morale of the expedition."
The girl glared at him. "I'll take orders about that kind of thing from Captain McCausland and nobody else. And I don't think the man I'm going to marry will censor what I have to say."
Adam Longworth's face set as he stood for a moment irresolute. Then, as Paulette said nothing more, he turned and left the cabin. Outside he paused, gazing down the long main corridor of the space ship toward the open fo'castle lock, where the crew lolled in the month-long idleness of space-voyaging. He frowned, strode off to find Captain McCausland.
* * * * *
Captain McCausland--"Old Steel-Wall" as he was known in the League of Planets Space Service--was poring over the course plotted on the chart table. The handsome, saturnine face and straight back were those of a youth; but he was forty-five and had twenty years of service behind him and had won the honor medals of three planets. He was so absorbed that he did not notice the Mate till Longworth touched his arm.
"Yes?" he said, turning round with a pair of dividers in his hand.
"It can wait sir, if you're busy."
McCausland looked at him out of cold, efficient eyes. "Speak up."
"It's the crew, sir. You know how these long runs are. Months with nothing to do, nothing to see."
There was a flicker around the Captain's mouth that might have been amusement. "Trouble?"
Adam looked startled. "Oh, no, nothing yet. I just wanted to head off trouble before it started, sir. You heard Miss de Vries broadcast just now?"
Captain McCausland nodded, and this time the smile of amusement was definitely present. "I think the word was 'depressed' wasn't it? And you're afraid it will throw the crew into a panic, and they'll turn the ship around on us and head for home. Is that it, Mr. Longworth?"
Adam, wishing he were anywhere but just there, and wilting visibly under the sarcastic gaze of the Captain, plunged desperately ahead. "Well, sir, I took the liberty of asking her not to do it again.... She said she was taking orders only from you ... that is ... I'm sorry, sir, I didn't know you were going to...."
"To be married, you mean? Well, why not?" He smiled again. "The ceremony will take place as soon as we come back from this expedition. That gives her a certain amount of privilege you understand." His face turned suddenly grave and his voice a trifle sharp. "Moreover, Miss de Vries is here as radio reporter for the Interplanetary broadcasting. I want you to understand, Mr. Mate, that I'll have no interference with her. Instead of chasing bugaboos, suppose you check the course through the planetoid belt. I'll leave you with it; that will give you something real to worry about for a change."
Adam stared hopelessly after his retreating back. Damnation! Everything had seemed to go wrong since the beginning of this voyage. The harder he tried to prove himself worthy of the appointment as second-in-command to "Old Steel-Wall" the worse things went. With a shrug he turned doggedly to the chart work.
Two hours later he stepped over to the chart-room port and gazed out into the velvet blue-black of space where the thousand suns of the Milky Way burned across the horizon. It was no use. He was going to have to make a fool of himself again.
But could he help it? Captain McCausland had certainly asked him to check the course through the planetoid belt. Perhaps he would forget now, and not ask about the checking operation. But if he did? Certainly Walter McCausland couldn't have been wrong. Yet the figures--? Adam studied his work sheet again, shaking his head.
"Finished the checking, Longworth?" The voice startled him so that he jumped.
"Yes, sir. Shall I take over the watch, sir?"
"Little early, aren't you? What do you think of the course, Mister?"
Adam hesitated.
"It seems ... likely to get us there, sir."
McCausland's eyes became points. "Are you by any chance evading my question? I'll repeat it. It was--what do you think of the course? What is your opinion?"
Adam gulped. Here it was.
"There seems to be a fault in it, sir. I'm sorry."
"Indeed?" The tone was sarcastic. "Elucidate, Mister Mate."
"It takes us up out of the plane of the ecliptic, then back again beyond the planetoid belt. That's very good, sir, and quite safe, but didn't you omit the fuel consumption factor? The course as plotted gives two shifts of forty-five degrees each, or half a complete stop, as far as fuel is concerned. It would cut down the amount of fuel available for exploration on Pluto to--well, here are the figures as I've worked them out. We'd have about enough for two or three landings. But if we went right through the danger belt of the planetoids as originally planned, we would save enough fuel to really explore the planet. We have to explore thoroughly if we're going to find beryllium there. It won't lie on the surface. Why, it's hardly worth going on at all if we can't do any more exploring than that.... That's my opinion, sir, and I didn't volunteer it, and I ask your pardon in advance."
* * * * *
The great space captain smiled easily. "No need to beg my pardon at all. At first glance one would think you had the right of it, but I just happen to have gone into the matter a little deeper. You understand the reasons behind this voyage? Well, suppose that after having been away for two years we come back right on schedule, but without a load of beryllium, without having found any trace of it. What will happen? The League of Planets simply orders out another expedition, better equipped, and we go down as having failed."
"But Captain! In two years there may not be enough light alloys left on the three planets to build another ship as big as this! The service to Mars will have to be stopped long before that. The lithium mines there can't operate unless the water supply from Venus is maintained."
"Well, what of it? Nobody likes to work in that Martian colony."
Adam caught his breath.
"But how are the atomic motors that do all the work going to operate without the lithium from Mars?"
"And what of that, even? It would be temporary. Just a few months or years till another expedition could be sent out. You take things too seriously. What is there to prove that some other method of armoring space-ships won't be found? Beryllium may not be necessary after all."
"Perhaps you're right." Adam was still skeptical. "But is it likely, sir? You've been on the space run so long you haven't kept up with chemistry. The armor against meteorites now is so thick that any metal but beryllium would double the weight of the vessel, and even with these seven million horsepower Buvier-Manleys we couldn't make the run from Venus to Mars. Why, sir, it would mean the end of the lithium mines, it would mean the end of atomic power, and we'd have to go back to the barbarism of the twentieth century, when they ran everything by electricity from waterfalls!"
Captain McCausland raised an athletic hand. "Spare me that, Mister Mate! I have heard it at approximately a hundred banquets before starting out on this expedition. Yes, we carry the fate of the world and all that. We have to find beryllium or else the Mars mines can't be run and the atomic motors stop. I could sing it in my sleep. But suppose we do take chances and get this ship wrecked. Won't the world have to go back to 'barbarous' electric power after all? For my part, I think some of those people in the twentieth century probably had a good time."
Adam was silent. There was something in the Captain's reasoning, he felt. Yet he, Adam Longworth, could not but feel that the issue was a desperately serious one for every inhabitant of the three worlds--Earth, Venus and Mars--belonging to the planetary league. The entire known supply of beryllium, the precious light, strong metal that was alone suitable for the armor of space ships, had been exhausted. All that remained was in the hulls of the few dozen ships carrying water from Venus to Mars, and from the arid deserts of Mars, bringing to Earth the equally precious lithium which was the only material with which atomic motors could be powered.
Every year, in spite of the best of care, one or two space ships would be wrecked--caught in the sun's gravitational field, or lost through some small error of navigation. Soon there would be no more space ships; and no more could be built. Each of the outer planets had been explored in turn--each but the last, the outermost and most distant; Pluto. They were on their way there now; if they could not make it--
"Very well, sir," he said aloud. "I see your point. Will you take over the controls at the change of course?"
"I'll take over now. Report in two hours.... One more thing, Longworth. You're young, damn young, to be first mate on this expedition. You know you were a last-minute choice, because of an accident to a much more experienced, and from what I've seen so far, a much better man. Make the most of your chance, but don't forget I'm captain here. I can't go into my reasons for everything I do. That's all, Mister Mate."
* * * * *
"_Hello, Earth! This is Paulette de Vries speaking, aboard 7-LOP, space-ship_ Goddard _. For the last two days we have been running along the first leg of the angle that will lift us over the dangerous belt of tiny planets thirty million miles beyond Mars. In a few minutes, the ship's motors will be started to turn our course again--straight for Pluto. I'm going to turn you over to the microphone in the motor compartment and let you listen as the seven-million-horse-power atomics take hold. Jake Burchall is in charge down there at the motors.... Ready, Jake? Take it away!
... "That's all, folks. We're on the new course, with the engines shut off, and we'll coast along for eight months at a speed of two miles a second, 120 miles a minute, 7,200 miles an hour toward Pluto. Nothing for anyone to do--a nice vacation for eight months. We're giving a costume ball, folks; it's all we can think of. It won't be much of a ball, though, as I'm the only woman aboard. I'm going to lend some of the space-men some of my dresses--" (CRASH!)_
"What was that, quick--!"
She got the answer, and went on.
"_It's all right, just one of the incidents of interplanetary navigation. Hit by a meteorite. Out here above the planetoid zone and close to Jupiter meteorites are more common. Here's Mr. Wayland, one of the junior officers, with a report. What's the damage, Mr. Wayland? It is! Folks back on Earth, we surely got it that time! The meteorite penetrated! Right through the twenty-inch beryll-steel armor of our hull into compartment eighteen. The whole wall of the hull is crushed in there, we've lost a few hundred cubic feet of air, but the doors are closed and our air supply is safe. Here's First Mate Longworth, just back from compartment eighteen. He says they'll leave the compartment as it is, and build a tunnel of thin metal through it to reach the five compartments toward the stern.
"Folks, can you imagine the shock of that meteorite? It's only a foot through and weighs five hundred pounds. If it had been one of the planetoids our whole hull would be crushed now. Captain McCausland turned our course to avoid the planetoid zone entirely and does that prove he was right? It does, and how! Well, folks, it's been a long day and an exciting one. This is 7-LOP, space-ship_ Goddard _, signing off. Paulette de Vries speaking. 0-nine-two-seven, May 27, 2432._"
* * * * *
Adam had returned from the damaged compartment in time to catch the close of the broadcast as he was stripping off the space suit in which he was making the examination. Dog-tired, he had just switched off the light preparatory to turning in when the light and buzzer flashed at the door.
"It's me, Jake," came a voice.
The First Mate switched on the light, and called: "Come in."
A small man, his face seamed by a thousand wrinkles, slipped through the door almost furtively and stood, twisting his hands in the audition helmet which enabled him to hear in the engine room above the noise of the motors.
"Didn't think you'd be in bed so soon, Mr. Adam," he apologized. "But you always was an early retirer. I remember when I had you on the training ship--he--he--he." He ended on a kind of nervous little giggle, and Adam looked at him sharply.
"Yes, I remember. I couldn't cork off for a minute without hearing someone pounding on the door and you yelling, 'It's Jake Burchall! Time to get up'" His face sobered. "You didn't come here to talk about old times, Jake. What's on your mind?"
"Well, you know how one thing and another gets around on a long run like this. I didn't know but maybe there was something I could help you about, sort of, he--he--he."
"Afraid not, Jake. Everything on hand is up to me. You can tell me one thing, though. I was just in from the Mars run when I found my name posted for this expedition, and I never did hear whose place I got as First Mate on this trip. Do you know who it was?"
"Didn't nobody tell you that? It was Blagovitch."
"Why, he's one of the most cautious men in the service! What happened to him?"
"Bruk his foot. He-he-he. There was some said he did it on purpose."
"But what could Old Steel-Wall--that is, why did the Captain pick him in the first place?"
"Well, Mr. Adam, there's a lot of things about this trip ain't the same as an ordinary run. I wonder myself sometimes. The Cap'n, he picks a course way out of the ecliptic to dodge planetoids he didn't stand one chance in a million of hitting anyhow; and he picks him a mighty cautious mate, and then he picks him a young mate when the other one can't go. What's he 'fraid of?"
"He's afraid of failing, that's all, Jake."
"He-he-he. Well, maybe I'm a old fool. I'd say it was more like he was 'fraid of succeeding."
* * * * *
"_Hello, Earth! This is your radio gal, Paulette de Vries, speaking from 7-LOP, space-ship_ Goddard _. Interplanetary time two-two-0-three, or just three seconds behind schedule for entering the atmosphere of Pluto. We're falling rapidly toward the planet. I can only see half of it, filling the entire horizon. The color is almost exactly that of a pearl in moonlight, white with blue lights and absolutely featureless. Sunlight out here is indescribably weak. Our spectroscope, handled by Professor Reuter, shows the atmosphere is high in fluorine, with traces of argon, and outside that a thin belt, a very thin belt of helium and hydrogen. I told you all that the other day. We have accurate temperature readings now, folks, and what they say is 200 degrees below zero, which is plenty chilly. You could drive a nail with a butter hammer at that temperature, folks, and it means we will have to do our exploring by diving, since the whole surface of the planet will be covered, perhaps miles deep, by liquid gases. Can't tell till we get there. Once we do get in, however, these talks will temporarily cease, folks. I'll be sorry, because I've enjoyed them, and I've enjoyed hearing from all of you back on Earth, so many million miles away. But I'll be back, and so will all the crew and its heroic captain. You may remember--Stand by! We're in the hydrogen layer now. It's misty, streaming past the ports, so I can hardly see anything. I must sign off now. This is 7-LOP, space-ship_ Goddard."
Adam Longworth crouched motionless. The muscles bulged along his arms, shoulder and neck quivered with tension, and perspiration stood in tickling beads on his skin. His eyes were fixed on the control panel before him; on either side was a quartermaster at a set of controls and behind the three stood Captain McCausland, calm and watchful.
Adam's hand moved rapidly and a quivering needle stood still on a dial.
"Three gravities insufficient."
The Captain's finger found a red button on the portable signal panel that made a three-inch medallion on the left breast of his uniform. Throughout the ship there was a flash of red lights; loudspeakers echoed his "Stand by for five gravities."
* * * * *
The quartermasters flung long levers; the motors boomed, braking the speed of the _Goddard's_ fall toward the surface. Captain McCausland slumped to the acceleration and recovered; the air-speed indicator crept toward the bottom of the dial, and had almost reached it, when a loudspeaker twanged nasally. "Visibility fifty feet, liquid surface. Forty feet--going down--afloat, sir."
Adam killed the motor with a plunge of his finger and his ears rang in the sudden stillness.
"Thank you, gentlemen," said the Captain. "Perfect landing, Mister Longworth. Relieve the navigation watch and report to the chart-room in ten minutes."
Adam saluted, said a few words to the quartermasters and went out with them to the fo'castle. The men off watch were just unstrapping themselves from their bunks. Jake Burchall stepped up.
"Do I take up the new watch, Mr. Adam?"
"Two hours from now. Look here, Jake, there's something I wish you'd do."
"Yes sir."
Adam lowered his voice.
"Did you hear the report? Fluorine all through this planet. Our ports are glass, and fluorine acts on glass. They're thick, of course, and have layers of plastic, but it will wear them through eventually. We've got to think of something to do about it, and I think I have the answer. Remember compartment eighteen? She'll be flooded. Suppose when you're posting that watch you get into a space suit and slide in there. Don't go outside, but cut loose some of the mica lining around the break. When you get it, you can make some mica sheets for the helmet view-ports of your space suit. Then get into compartment eighteen again, and try it out. I'm no chemical expert, but mica should insulate the view-ports on the helmet, and if it'll do that, it will insulate the view-ports of the whole ship. Report to me privately. I don't want to make a fool of myself if Professor Reuter already has some other scheme worked out."
Jake grinned in understanding.
"Yes sir. He-he-he. Hope he hasn't."
In the chart room, when Adam arrived, he found a small gathering. Perkins, the chemists, was there; so was Professor Reuter, the astronomical man, a couple of assistants, and Captain McCausland, looking extremely grave, thoughtful, but ruffled.
"Well, Longworth," he said. "You're just in time to order out the navigation watch and set the course back to Earth."
Adam was aghast. "Not really?"
"Ask these gentlemen." He indicated the scientists.
Professor Reuter cleared his throat, but it was Perkins who spoke. "At least we cannot remain here. The fluorine here will gradually, but certainly, cut through the glass in this ship."
* * * * *
Adam flushed. He burst out: "But you knew there was fluorine a month ago! Didn't anyone--?"
Captain McCausland raised his hand. "Please."
Professor Reuter explained. "To tell the truth there was some discussion at that time. I am afraid I must confess myself considerably at fault. Dr. Perkins at that time urged that the expedition return and install quartz ports on the _Goddard_. At that time I judged the temperature would be about what it is, minus 200, and at that figure fluorine would not be present in the liquid portion of the atmosphere, but would exist as a gas, and therefore would not make contact with our ports while diving."
"I warned you it would be in solution," remarked Dr. Perkins.
"Yes." Professor Reuter, a big man, with folds of fat hanging from his cheeks, pursed his lips and blew through them. "At the time, I must confess, I really must confess, that I failed to consider the fact that the enveloping upper atmosphere of the planet would cause the surface temperature to be lower than that in the atmosphere itself. As a result, it is just cold enough to hold a certain amount of fluorine in solution in this cold ocean--"
"And, in a nut-shell, we must turn back," said Adam. He appealed to Captain McCausland. "Isn't there anything aboard ship with which we could insulate the ports?" Scientists always made difficulties, he thought; an old space captain like McCausland would not be so hard to down.
"We can try putting divers in space suits with double-thickness glass in the ports. That would last a couple of hours at all events. I don't doubt but we could get volunteers in _this_ crew."
Reuter blew through his thick lips again. "Dangerous. As scientific head of the expedition I will permit nothing of the kind. Naturally, Captain, we are under your orders, but if you take such a step it will be without my authority."
McCausland made a gesture of hopelessness. "Have you any other ideas to suggest, Mister Longworth?"