Part 3

"Adam Longworth, are you going to lecture me again?" she began, then her face broke into a smile. "Oh, I suppose you're right this time, though. The main reason was really to show Walter that I could do my own thinking, to be honest. And--thank you again."

She held out her hand in gratitude. It lay cool in his for a minute, returning the friendly pressure, and then she was gone.

"I think," said Captain McCausland, "that we can evade any more incidents with these animals of yours by having the digging parties work in an air-lock attached to the ship's entry lock. Diving suits won't be necessary in that case."

"Of course, sir, that would be safer. Won't it use up a good deal of fuel to move the ship for each separate dig, though, sir? We're very low on fuel. May I suggest we pump into storage the amount necessary to make the return voyage? Whatever is left over we can use for exploration from a special tank. When that tank's empty, we're through and we have to go."

"Good suggestion. Give orders accordingly, Mister Mate."

"What would you think of sampling parties, sir, say three well-armed men, chipping off the surface rock wherever they can find it?"

"Waste of time. Beryllium will have to be dug for."

"Where shall we dig, sir? Right here? I understand that beryllium would be closer to the surface near the planet's equator--if there is any."

"You understand? What gave you to understand anything of the kind? Are you the geologist? We'll dig right here. Professor Reuter has made a very exhaustive study of the question and he thinks the pole is much the likeliest spot."

Adam stared. "Professor Reuter! I thought he was an astronomer."

"Reuter is an eminent scientist--which is more than you'll ever be, Mister Mate. You have your work to attend to, and if you do it you'll have no time for doing mine or Professor Reuter's. Now detail an engine-room party to pump fuel for the return trip. Allow ten per cent margin for safety.... What are you staring at me like that for? Do you realize you are impudent! Allow ten per cent. Then report to me how much is left for exploration. Next watch, have the mechanics begin work on the digging lock. By the way--may I have my rocket pistol back?"

Adam remembered that he had handed the pistol to Jake Burchall and had seen it disappear in his capacious pocket. At another time he might have said as much; but in his new-born suspicion of the Captain he merely replied:

"Sorry, sir! Must have dropped it in that fight with the giant amoeba--"

He stopped. For just an instant there had flashed across Walter McCausland's face an expression of fierce, snarling hatred. Then a smooth mask seemed to be drawn across it, and the Captain's voice was serene. "Of course. If it turns up, return it to me. That's all."

* * * * *

"But Adam! That's absurd. What possible reason could he have for wishing to make the expedition fail?"

Paulette looked anxiously from Jake Burchall's face to Adam's and back as the three sat in the girl's cabin.

"I know," said Adam. "I don't understand myself, Paulette. Why, he's been a hero of mine ever since I was big enough to know what a space ship looked like! But--"

Jake's wrinkled visage contracted in a frown. "I don't know much about the rest, Miss, but I do know I could have navigated through that planetoid belt myself, and I'm only an engineer. But he certainly used up an awful lot of fuel jumping over it."

"Yes," Adam broke in excitedly, "and he knew there was fluorine in the atmosphere here, but he landed right into it without making any preparation to shutter the ports, though he knew very well fluorine eats into glass like water into sugar. Then he wants to turn back. Then he gives us an impossibly short time to shutter the ports and tries to call in the men and leave before they get it finished. I won't mention--"

The girl burst in on him. "Adam, you're frightfully unfair. There's a perfectly sensible explanation of everything you've mentioned." She held out one hand. "Really, you saved my life down there and I don't want you to think I'm ungrateful, but you're letting things get you. You mustn't think you're running the whole expedition."

Adam's face flushed. He swallowed twice as though about to speak, but before he could say anything, Jake Burchall slowly produced from his pocket the rocket-pistol and laid it on the table before the three.

"Look here, Miss," he said. "I don't want to say nothin', but when I got into my own bunk, I took one of the shells out of this thing. The others are in the magazine. Now I want you to look at this."

He snapped back the catch at the side of the pistol, and two atomic-power shells dropped out--the most powerful and terrible weapons yet invented by the scientists of three planets, ugly little things in their gleaming metal cases. Jake picked up one of them and handed it to Paulette, indicating a spot on the side of the shell with his finger-tip. The girl bent and gazed; there was a tiny pin-prick, a puncture entering the side of the shell.

"Do you see that little hole there?" said Jake. "Do you know what would happen when the trigger was pulled with that shell in the gun? Instead of firing the bullet toward the giant amoeba that hole means the whole force of the charge would have gone off in the gun itself. And that's the gun Captain McCausland gave Adam.... I'm sorry, Miss, I didn't mean to--hurt your feelings."

Paulette had collapsed suddenly across the table, her shoulders shaking with sobs, her face buried in her hands. "Go away, please go away," she cried, as Adam touched her shoulder.

* * * * *

_"Hello, Earth! This is Paulette deVries reporting progress aboard the_ Goddard _by recording for later broadcast. The first dig ended in a failure this morning. Fifty feet down, and Dr. Perkins reports the composition of the rock strata remarkably uniform in character, but no sign of beryllium in them, nor any formation that looks as though it might contain beryllium. We're on our way from the North Pole of Pluto to the South Pole, where Professor Reuter thinks we stand the best chance of finding the metal we need. Just reached the half way mark.... Hello, the motors have stopped! I'll find out what the reason is for you in just a minute. What's going on, Rossiter?... Hello, Earth! Our motors have stopped, the fuel in the special tank we had set aside far exploration purposes is exhausted. We seem to be somewhere near the equator of Pluto.... No, the fuel didn't run out, they've found a leak, a leak in the fuel tank. It's all right, folks, we've set aside enough fuel to ride home to Earth on, but we'll have to dig here instead of at the South Pole. I'm going to ask--"_

"Isn't it a curious coincidence, Mister Mate, that this leak should bring us down over the equator--just where you wanted to dig all along?" Captain McCausland's voice was biting.

"Yes, sir."

"Curious coincidence, too, wasn't it, that when those shutters were being put on the workmen's radiophones went out of order? Listen here, Mr. Mate, there have been too damned many coincidences around here to suit me. A few more and you're going to find yourself working in the engine room. That's all. Get out of here and get the digging lock rigged."

Adam saluted mechanically and left the cabin. He knew with sickening precision what the captain meant. Demotion to the engine room would mark him forever in the space service as an inefficient mate. He could never hope to obtain a command of his own, and throughout the rest of his life, wherever he went the record of it would follow him. Even now, the unfavorable report McCausland was sure to turn in when they returned to Earth would block his way to any higher command, any other rating. He felt sick at heart as he joined the group at the main lock, helmet in hand, as they were about to launch themselves into the green ocean below--six men, armed with the bomb-spears Jake Burchall had provided.

He was surprised to note that Paulette deVries was standing waiting with the others, helmet in hand and her face deathly pale.

"Paulette," he begged, "do you really think you should go? Remember what happened last time. Does McCausland--"

"He knows I'm going."

"All right. But keep with the men please. For my peace of mind if not for your own sake. All ready? Close lock!"

The green waters rose about them in the lock and they swung off. Adam's voice came clearly through the earphones of the party.

"Be careful everyone! This is a regular jungle of those chain-weeds."

Paulette's voice answered. "Look, Adam! Where I'm pointing. There's something different over there, little round things, dark red, with a few yellow ones."

"I see them, Paulette. I don't think.... Jake, I don't like this. Let's test that bottom and get back as soon as we can."

The men stooped and scraped in the silt with their metal tools, reporting results. "Not over six inches to rock here." "Eight inches here." "Just about as shallow here as before."

"Take a few samples, then. Make it as quick as you can. As soon as you get your samples move back, be ready to ascend to the main lock."

* * * * *

Adam could see nothing but the cloudy liquid around him, stirred to green milk as the sampling of the silt raised a murk around him. "Paulette," he called, "what's your compass reading?"

"Nineteen-O-thirty south. Sixty-three--seven, west."

"I can't see you. Move due east two long steps and stand still. I'll reach for you."

She complied and called out to him.

"What's your reading now?" he asked, and she thought his voice sounded strange as she replied, "Same south reading. Sixty-three--six, west."

"Jake! Where are you and what's your reading?"

"I'm right here, Mr. Adam. Can't see you? This silt doesn't seem to settle down. There's a current of some kind carrying it; I can just stand against it. My reading's eighteen-forty--forty-two south; sixty-two--fifteen west."

"Bjornsen, Rossiter! Report and extend hands. If you don't touch anyone, reach out with the safe ends of your bomb-spears and swing them in a circle till you do.... Ah, who's that who just touched me?"

"Rossiter, sir."

"That makes three of--"

The words were suddenly cut off by the shock of an explosion that nearly tore them from their feet and a heavier cloud of the milky silt came eddying past, fragments of chain-weed moving through it. Burchall's voice came through the earphones. "Attacked! New kind of animal! Eighteen-forty--twenty-one south. Twenty--thirty-two west!"

"Never mind the bearings!" cried Adam. "Rossiter, Paulette! Hang on to the ends of these spears, and take three steps with me, don't lose contact!"

The three leaped as one, then again and again, through the murk in which everything was invisible. As they touched bottom at the end of the last leap, Adam saw a long writhing arm, with a barbed tip at the end of it, swing past his helmet view-ports, caught a gasp from Jake through his earphones, and then felt Paulette at his side pull free from his gripping hand and reach up with the bomb-spear.

There was the shock of another explosion. Down he went, and saw something murky with whirling arms fly past the view-ports. Then Paulette's voice came through, clear and triumphant.

"I got rid of it, Adam, and here's Jake. He's all right, I guess."

"Everyone attention," said Adam, picking himself up. "Make toward the direction where that explosion came from. Then join hands and get back into the ship, quick!"

A few moments later, when the space suits had been put away, and the men were dispersing along the corridors to their cabins, Paulette touched Adam's arm.

"What was the idea of keeping asking for those compass bearings?" she said. "We found the main lock all right, didn't we?"

"Yes," replied Adam shortly, "thanks to your compass. And thanks to you, too, Jake's life was saved. But didn't you hear the reports from those others? Every one of those compasses was wrong, sometimes wrong by a whole degree, and every one was different."

"I don't understand," replied the girl. "Didn't you have the compasses checked before you started?"

"That's just the point. I did have them checked and adjusted. And Professor Reuter was the man who adjusted them. If you hadn't been with us--"

* * * * *

"_Hello, Earth! This is Paulette de Vries, speaking to you from Pluto. In about an hour or more we'll be through, one way or another. The digging has gone down to a depth of fifty feet, sheathed in its steel casing, and there's no sign of beryllium yet. We haven't enough fuel to try another dig. I've just been down in the well the men have sunk, looking it over. They're working at the bottom with the new atomic power diggers, that compress the material taken out of the well into a fused, rocklike substance with which the walls of the well itself are lined as they go down, making it safer the deeper they get. One strange thing about the digging so far is that the temperature has advanced sharply as we go down. The ocean from which we're working is two hundred below zero as you know. Down there they struck rock colder than any ice on Earth at the start and had to work in warm air supplied from the ship. Now the temperature has gone up at least a hundred degrees, and it's rising faster with every foot. Just a minute. People are hurrying past me, there's been some kind of an accident at the dig. I'll have the details for you...._"

The girl snapped off her key and hurried down the corridor to the open lock. Above her the loudspeaker system was booming: "All watches. Summon all watches. Second Mate Wayland report to Captain McCausland. Diggers have broken through into a cavern. Seven men have fallen. All watches."

Two or three men were standing at the edge of the air-lock, gazing down the spiral staircase that wound its way into the digging.

"Who's down there?" asked Paulette.

The man saluted. "First Mate Longworth," he replied. "Six men with him. We're trying communication by radio, but haven't got in touch with him yet."

An icy hand gripped tightly at Paulette's heart.

"Adam!" she cried and was surprised to discover there were tears in her eyes, as a touch fell on her shoulder, and she looked around to see the face of Captain Walter McCausland.

"What's the matter, my dear?" he asked.

"Your dear!" she half shrieked. "I'm not your dear, and I wouldn't marry you if you were the last man on Earth! You did this!"

The captain's mouth curled in a sneer. "So that's it, is it? He's persuaded you he can run you as well as the expedition. Well, I hope he can run things down where he is as well as he can everything else." He turned on his heel and walked away without another word.

* * * * *

It seemed useless to go any deeper, but Adam, driving the digging machines hard at the bottom of the excavation, was determined not to give up till he was called back. There would be no more excavations; there was no more fuel to take the _Goddard_ to another spot. The lights, led down from the ship, flared about them, the tongues of the atomic power rasps worked against the rocks with an annoying, grating sound, discharging their take of powdered rock into the machine that fused it, and worked slowly around the circular wall of the excavation behind them, plastering it with white-hot material that cooled rapidly into the smooth, stony cylinder that towered far above to join with the ship.

Suddenly, one of the diggers took on a new, high-pitched note. Adam turned; and as he turned felt himself slipping, clutched at something, and the next minute was sliding down, down, a long slant it seemed into total darkness. A weight gripped him around the chest; he rolled over, but his hands caught only loose stones, and when the slide came to a stop as abrupt as its beginning, he found himself lying on his back, the weight across his legs, looking up, far up toward where a speck of light from the ship seemed miles away.

He reached out one hand and touched something as smooth as though it were polished and gently warm. "Mr. Adam!" said a voice suddenly, and he recognized it as Jake's. "Are you all right, Mr. Adam?"

"I think so, but my legs are caught."

"I'll get you free in a minute. Anybody else?"

"I got hit in the belly," came a voice. "Where's Flack?"

The engineer was lifting something. "Can you get out there now, Mr. Adam? We'll be all right in a minute." Adam gave a heave, felt his entangled legs slide free and pulled himself onto a pile of debris just as a light glared on like a star from one of the other men.

"Are we all here? Where's Flack?" There was a counting of noses and a general feeling of bodies for bruises. Above them, where the wall of the cylinder stopped, they could make out that the sudden break through had carried them down some twenty feet. "Here he is. Just an arm sticking out. I'm afraid he's done for. Come here, everyone."

One of the digging machines was brought into play and they labored to get the prisoned man free, but as they cleared the broken stone and rubble from around his face, it became evident that the effort was useless. The eyes were glazed, the head hung limp. Adam stepped back against the wall of the cave-in around them, and as he did so his hand touched it. Once more he noticed it was both smooth and warm. He turned, and in the light of the atomic lamps now blazing across the top of the cave-in examined it. It was not only smooth and warm, but polished; and just over his head he could see where the rock stopped and metal began--a clean-fitted job, a manufactured wall!

"Jake!" he called excitedly, "bring that digging machine over here for a second. The one with the cutting head."

The little engineer turned, and bounded over in a couple of steps, digging machine in hand. "Why, that's a metal wall," he cried, and applied the head for a moment in a brief surge of power. The bit cut out an inch-deep circle of metal, dropping it on some of the rubble with a tinny clang. Jake bent to pick it up.

"It's light enough to be beryllium," he said, handing the disc to Adam, and turning back to the wall, drove his cutter into it with renewed energy.

"What are you doing?" demanded the mate, hefting the disc of metal.

"This wall sounds hollow. Here goes!" He had driven the machine deep in, and stepping back, pulled the handle marked "Split." There was a sudden rending clang; a crash and a six-foot section of the wall fell inwards. The two men stared into the hole it had left, heedless of the fact that the other members of the excavating crew were crowding up behind them.

They were looking into a low square room, perhaps twenty feet across. At the far side was a doorway, and in the doorway stood a man!

To be sure he was such a man as none of them had ever before seen. He was not over four and a half feet tall, yet with arms as long as an earthling's hanging down below his knees, tremendously broad shoulders, and a head that seemed permanently pushed forward and downward above them. Below that head the creature was wrapped from neck to toe in some shimmering blue material with a metallic luster, banded around the arms and legs with red metal.

As they gazed in astonishment, the man took two steps forward, his head bobbing on his neck at each step, opened his lips, and uttered "Wahwahroo!" in a voice thick with gutturals.

* * * * *

Adam glanced around at his own men, then once more at the Plutonian dwarf, whose face, as far as he could judge, bore an expression of intense interest rather than of fear or anger. The remark, he judged, would be a greeting.

"Wahwahroo!" he replied amiably, but the Plutonian continued to stare in a manner that indicated Adam's first lesson in this unknown tongue was far from a success.

"Stand by," he remarked to the crew. "I'm going in and try to talk to this bird. May be trouble." Catching the sides of the split in the wall, he jumped down in a small cascade of pebbles that rang on the floor below in a manner which assured him this also was metal.

"I don't understand what you're saying, old man," he remarked to the Plutonian, who had remained standing in the doorway, and touching a finger to lips and ears to emphasize the point. "I don't understand, but maybe you'll be able to get it from a picture."

From one of his pockets he produced a piece of paper, and with one of the new print-pencils that had just been developed, sketched rapidly at a crude drawing of a rocket-ship with little men issuing from beneath it into the waves of an ocean.

The Plutonian accepted it from his hand, looked at it with a puzzled expression, then returned it, nodding violently, but with an expression on his face that bespoke complete lack of comprehension.

"Mr. Adam!" It was Jake's voice from the door. "I'm sending the others back with Flack to get some weapons."

"All right. Just stay there to keep up communication, Jake," Adam called back. "I'm trying to get over the idea to this guy that we're civilized."

He stepped over to the wall of the room and with his print-pencil tapped on the metal "Ping!" then twice "Ping-Ping" and then three times, "Ping-Ping-Ping."

The Plutonian watched him attentively, grimaced with thick lips, and then catching Adam's eye, tapped with his foot, once, then twice, then three times in quick succession. Adam smiled approval; the Plutonian reached out, took the drawing again and studied it gravely for a moment, then pointed at one of the little figures, at Adam, and smiled.

Adam did his best to signify that the Plutonian had grasped the point. The dwarf held up one hand, palm out toward Adam, then turned to the door behind him. Adam watched without moving, and a frown spread across the Plutonian's face.

"I got it, Mr. Adam," called Jake from the rent in the wall, "all the signals are different here. He holds up his hand to stop you because he wants you to come along."

It might be. Adam took an experimental step toward the Plutonian, and saw the latter's face clear. They reached the door together, and Adam noticed it did not open on hinges, but slid. The Plutonian touched some kind of lever or contact in the frame, uttered something in his deep voice, and stood waiting. Beyond the door, Adam noticed, was another room, perfectly dark, but as the Plutonian stopped speaking, there was a rustle of feet within and a file of half a dozen dwarfs emerged, each an exact duplicate of the first as nearly as Adam could judge. They formed a circle, staring at Adam and at the torn wall with Jake gazing through. Each in turn stepped forward, examined Adam from head to foot and having emitted a few expressive grunts took his place in the circle again. All seemed friendly, but after the last one had looked over Adam, one of the Plutonians produced some kind of weapon with a hammer-like head and a handle set cross-wise, and waved the earth-man back toward the tear in the wall.

Adam looked around at Jake, saw that he had one of the digging machines in his hand, and decided that retreat toward this protection was the best policy. But it was not the Plutonian's intention to dismiss him, evidently. One of them, whose metallic armbands were more numerous than the rest, stepped forward, reached for Adam's print-pencil, and when Adam added to it his piece of paper, was busy for a moment.

* * * * *

On the paper, when he handed it to the earth-man, were seven groups of dots, one in the first, two in the second, three in the third, regularly up to seven dots in the seventh group.

The dwarf pointed to himself, then to the single dot; and followed by indicating each of the other six Plutonians, in turn with one of the lines of dots.

When this effort at communication had been executed, he pointed to the single dot again, then to Adam, and finally to the wall.

"What does he want?" asked Jake. "What's he trying to get at?"