Part 1

SPACE-LINER X-87

By RAY CUMMINGS

The X-87 was a red shambles. It roared the starways, a renegade Venusian at the controls, a swaggering Martian plotting the space-course. And in an alumite cage, deep below-decks, lay Penelle, crack Shadow Squadman--holding the fate of three worlds in his manacled hands.

[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Planet Stories Summer 1940. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

I am sure that none of you have had the real details of the tragic voyage of last year, which was officially designated as Earth-Moon Flight 9. The diplomacy of Interplanetary relations is ticklish at best. Earth diplomats especially seem afraid of their own shadows if there is any chance of annoying the governments of Venus or Mars, so that by Earth censorship most of the details of that ill-fated voyage of the _X-87_ were either distorted, or wholly suppressed. But the revolution at Grebhar is over now. If those Venus Revolutionists--helped perhaps by Martian money and supplies--had been successful, they would have been patriots. They lost, so they are traitors, and I can say what I like.

My name is Fred Penelle. I'm a Shadow Squadman, working in Great-New York and vicinity. Ordinarily I deal with the tracking of comparatively petty criminals. Being plunged into this affair of Interplanetary piracy which threatened to involve three worlds, Heaven knows was startling to me. I had never before even been on any flight into the starways. But I did my best.

My part in the thing began that August evening when an audiphoned call came to my home. It was my superior, Peter Jamison, summoning me to City Night-Desk 6.

"I've a job for you," he said. "Get here in a hurry, Fred." The audiphone grid showed his televised face; I had never seen it so grim.

I live at the outskirts of Great-New York, in northern Westchester. I caught an overhead monorail; then one of the high-speed, sixth level rolling sidewalks and in half an hour was at the S.S. Building, in mid-Manhattan. We S.S. men work in pairs. My partner, as it happened, was ill.

"You'll have to go in on this alone," Jamison told me. "And you haven't much time, Fred. The _X-87_ sails at Trinight."

"_X-87?_" I murmured. "What's that got to do with me?"

Jamison's fat little figure was slumped at his desk, almost hidden by the banks of instruments before him. Then he sat up abruptly, pushed a lever and the insulating screens slid along the doors and windows to protect us from any possible electric eavesdropping.

"I can't tell you much," he said with lowered voice. "This comes from the Department of Interplanetary Affairs. The _X-87_ launches at Trinight tonight, for the Moon. They want me to have a man on it. An observer." Jamison's face went even grimmer, and he lowered his voice still further. "Just what they know, or suspect, they didn't tell even me. But there's something queer going on--something we ought to know about. Quite evidently there's some plot brewing against the Blake Irite Corporation. They even hinted that it concerned perhaps both Venus and Mars--"

* * * * *

You all know the general history of the Moon, of course; but still it will do no harm to sketch it here. It was scarcely twenty years ago when Georg Blake established the first permanent Moon Colony, erecting the first practical glassite air-domes under which one might live and work on the airless, barren surface of our satellite. Two years later, it was the same Georg Blake who discovered the rich irite deposits on the towering slopes of Mt. Archimedes. The Blake Irite Corporation employs twenty thousand workers now.

"Mars and Venus have no irite," Jamison was saying. "They import it from us, for their inferior imitations of our gravity plates. And, combined with the T-catalyst, it runs our modern atomic engines and charges our newest long-range atomic guns. The Governments of Mars and Venus are building imitations of those engines. You know about that, Fred?"

I nodded. I had heard quite a bit, of course, about the mysterious T-catalyst. It is made only here on Earth--a guarded secret of the Anglo-American Federation, developed by our Government chemists in Great-London. Our War Department uses it for guns, of course. But its use is forbidden elsewhere, save for commercial purposes. Venus and Mars have been under strict guarantee, regarding its use. We have supplied them from time to time with limited quantities, for commercial purposes only.

"Do not misunderstand me. I have no possible desire to anger the present legal Governments of the Martian Union, nor the Venus Free State, and thus project myself--just one unimportant Earth-citizen--into a storm of Interplanetary complications. I am not even hinting that Mars or Venus have ever broken, or ever would break, their guarantees by using the T-catalyst for weapons of war. But in Grebhar, a very sizable revolution against the Venus Free State had broken out. That is something very different. A bandit Government. Bandit army--under guarantees to no one."

"What's all this got to do with me, and the _X-87_?" I suggested.

Jamison flung a swift look around his shadowed, dimly tube-lit office, as though he feared that someone might be lurking here. "The Blake Irite Corporation, on the Moon, needs the T-catalyst for a thousand things," he said slowly. "The engines of their air-renewers throughout that huge network of domes. The engines of their mining equipment--"

"You mean it's being stolen from them?"

Jamison shrugged. "Maybe." He paused, and then he drew me toward him. "Anyway, the _X-87_, on this Voyage 9 tonight, is taking the largest supply of T-catalyst to the Moon which has ever been transported." Jamison smiled wryly. "You and I, Fred, are among the very few people who know of it. The _X-87_ is not being unduly guarded. That in itself would look suspicious. Every possible precaution has been taken to keep the thing a secret. But there have been queer things happen. Perhaps only coincidences--"

"Such as what?"

"Well, Georg Blake died, quite mysteriously, a few days ago--"

"Murdered?"

Again Jamison shrugged. "The whole thing was censored. I don't know any more about it than you do. He has a son and daughter--young Blake, still under twenty--and Nina, his young daughter, who is only sixteen. The management of the entire Moon industry devolves now upon them."

I could envisage Interplanetary spies on the Moon--and with the forceful Georg Blake now out of the way, a raid upon that supply of the T-catalyst--

"Little Nina is going back to the Moon this voyage to take control of the company," Jamison was adding. "Her father died--was murdered if you like--here in Great-New York. And to make it still more mysterious, young Blake--the girl's brother--seems to have vanished. There is only Nina--"

Queer indeed. And even worse, Jamison now told me that several members of the _X-87's_ crew were ill, and one or two had recently died, so that she was starting on her flight tonight with at least five new men....

* * * * *

The little space-ship was to sail at 3 a.m. I had my luggage aboard an hour ahead; and at quarter of three I was loitering on the tube-lit stage watching the passengers bidding good-bye to their friends and then going up the long incline to where the _X-87_ was cradled forty feet overhead. An S.S. Man, without too much equipment, can hide it all pretty comfortably. Most of my small apparatus was tucked into capacious pockets. And with my square-cut jacket buttoned over my weapon belt, I imagine I looked like any ordinary citizen. I was booked as a mathematics clerk, going to the Moon to take a position in the bookkeeping department of the Blake Company. I'm smallish, and dark--and not too handsome, my friends tell me. Just an unobtrusive fellow whom nobody would particularly notice. I certainly hoped now that that would prove to be so.

"How many passengers this voyage?" I asked young Len Smith, who was standing here on the landing shed beside me. He was a slim, handsome fellow, the _X-87's_ radio-helio operator, ornate and exceedingly dapper in his stiff white-and-gold uniform.

"Damned if I know. Fifteen or twenty maybe. Usually are about that many."

A big seven-foot Martian stopped near us, directing the attendants who were carrying his luggage. "Who's that?" I murmured to Len Smith.

Dr. Frye, the _X-87's_ surgeon--a weazened little fellow with a grim, saturnine face and scraggly iron-gray hair--had joined us. He answered me.

"Set Mokk, he calls himself."

"Going to the Moon, for what?" I persisted.

Dr. Frye shrugged. "Passengers aren't required to give their family history. Set Mokk is a wealthy man in Ferrok-Shahn, I understand. An enthusiastic Interplanetary traveler--"

Len, the young helio operator, diverted my attention. "Have a look," he murmured. "There comes Nina Blake. If she isn't a little beauty I'm a sub-cellar track-sweeper."

Now I'm not much for girls, but I don't mind stating thus publicly that Nina Blake struck me then as the most strikingly beautiful girl of any world whom I had ever seen.

As she came past, I saw that four stalwart attendants of the _X-87_ were carrying a long oblong box; one of her pieces of luggage. Quite obviously she was particularly concerned over it; she followed it closely, and signaled the men to precede her with it up the incline.

I got away from Len Smith and Dr. Frye and was up the incline close after Nina Blake. I saw the squat, square-rigged figure of Capt. Mackensie come forward to greet the girl, his most distinguished passenger. Instantly she spoke to the men carrying the oblong box, and they set it on end beside her on the desk; and at her gesture, they moved away.

* * * * *

Nobody noticed me as I got up to that box and stood in its shadow. I had no particular motive, save perhaps my instinct as an S.S. Man to probe anything that puzzles me. And suddenly I heard Nina say softly:

"No. I'm not--too frightened, Captain. I'll be quite all right."

That stiffened me. But a far greater shock came almost instantly afterward. The girl was whispering now to Mackensie, their voices too low for me to hear. She was leaning partly against the upright box, and I saw her slim white hand furtively roving it, one of her fingers pressing what might have been a hidden lever. The sleek, polished side of the box was close to my head--and abruptly, from within it, I seemed to hear a faint muffled, ticking sound! A mechanism in the huge box which the girl's furtive hand had started! It was a slow, rhythmic tick, and a faint swishing.

"Oh, you, Penelle. Come here--I want you to meet Miss Blake."

Captain Mackensie had noticed me, and his gesture brought me to join them. For a moment we stood in a group as I was introduced. Nina's hand had darted to the box again, perhaps to stop the ticking.

"Your first flight, Penelle?" Mackensie was saying. His voice was booming, hearty, loud enough to carry to any of the passengers and crew who were near us here on the dim side-deck. Jamison had told me that of everyone on the _X-87_, only Captain Mackensie would be aware of my true identity and purpose. I caught his significant glance now as he shot it at me from under his heavy gray-black brows. And then abruptly he stepped nearer to me.

"Never talk secretly to me," he murmured. "No insulation here. You take care of Miss Blake. Say nothing--keep your eyes wide. When we get to the Moon--"

I stiffened, went cold, with my heart suddenly pounding. My hand darted out, gripped the captain's arm. "Wait!" I murmured.

On my chest, underneath my shirt, a flat, round little detector-grid was abruptly glowing warm against my flesh. An interference current was overcharging its low-pressure wires so that they were heating and burning me. An eavesdropping current! No one save a Government criminal-tracker may legally use an eavesdropping ray. But there was one here, listening to us now!

I murmured it to Mackensie; turned and darted away. A dim door oval was nearby. I went through it, into a narrow, tube-lit corridor of the ship's superstructure. Momentarily no one was here; there was just the dim, vaulted little arcade, gleaming pallidly silver from its fittings and trim of alumite with rows of cabin doorways on each side. The name-plates glowed with the names of the occupants for this voyage. All the doors were closed; a few faint voices from passengers in the cabins were vaguely audible.

* * * * *

At a cross-corridor I stopped. Was someone here able to watch me? From my shirt I drew out the little detector-grid. It was cooling now, but still its direction needle was swaying. The source of the current seemed ahead of me in this cross corridor. How far, I could not say--the distance gauge-point was swiftly dropping to zero. The eavesdropping current had been snapped off. Wherever he was, this listener knew now that we were aware of him.

On my padded, felt-soled shoes I dashed ahead to where the corridor widened into a tiny smoking lounge.

"Oh, you Penelle? What's the matter? Can't you find your cubby?"

It was Dr. Frye, the ship's surgeon. Fortunately, he did not see the Banning heat-flash gun in my hand. He was sprawled here in a chair, smoking. His thin face grinned up at me. "Ask the purser your location," he added. His gesture waved me toward the purser's tiny office-cubby down the opposite corridor.

"Thanks," I agreed.

The purser's cubby was unoccupied. I passed it, came to the stern end where the superstructure stopped and the side decks converged into a triangle of open deck under the dome at the pointed stern. There were a few passengers lounging around and deckhands moving at their tasks of uncradling the vessel which now was ready to take off. Over at a glassite bull's-eye window in the side pressure-wall, the big Martian, Set Mokk, was standing, gazing at the people on the lower stage.

And suddenly, from the shadow of a cargo-shifter near at hand, a blob of figure detached itself and moved away. In a moment the deck-light gleamed on it; a member of the crew--squat, bent, misshapen gargoyle shape; a hideous Earth-man hunchback, with dangling gorilla-like arms that swayed as he walked. Then I saw his face; ghastly countenance, lumped with disease, a mouth that seemed to leer and eyes with puckered rims--eyes that seemed to glare at me with impish malevolence as he shambled past me and vanished around the other side deck.

In a few minutes more, with a blast of sirens, the little _X-87_ trembled, lifted nose first from its cradle and was away, slanting up into the night. The lights of the giant city dropped beneath us. I stood at one of the side bull's-eyes watching them as they dwindled into a blob, merged with other lights of other cities along the coast.

I had been up into the stratosphere many times, of course, but this was to be my first flight into Interplanetary Space. I could envisage our gleaming silver vessel now, tiny little cylinder with pointed ends, alumite keel-bottom and the great rounded glassite dome on top, as we slid so swiftly up out of the atmosphere. A little world now to ourselves.

The little vessel pounded and quivered with the vibrations of its disintegrating atomic rocket-streams at the stern. Then as we slid into the upper reaches of the stratosphere, the rocket engines were silenced; the gravity-plates were de-insulated, set with Earth-repulsion as we swung toward the gleaming half-moon ahead and over our bow.

The ship was vibrationless now. All movement seemed detached from us. Alone in Space we seemed hovering, poised.

The voyage of doom had begun.

* * * * *

"Apparently you have not suffered from the miserable pressure sickness," Ollog Torio said. "Or have you, Set Mokk?"

"I have not. We Martians are made of sterner stuff. Is that not so, Dr. Frye?"

"Well," the saturnine little surgeon said, "well, for you, yes, Set Mokk. But Martians are humans, like anybody else. I have seen them in distress, upon occasion, when the pressure changes too fast, coming out of the atmosphere."

Four of us were sitting on the triangle of the _X-87's_ bow deck--the towering, swaggering Martian Set Mokk, slumped in his chair, wrapped in his great cloak with his hairy brown legs like huge pillars of strength crossed beneath it, revealed by its flair; the weazened, morose-looking Dr. Frye, and Ollog Torio. I had just met this Venusian. Like most of them from our sister planet, Torio was slender, graceful, with the characteristic finely chiseled features, grayish skin and heavy black brows. He seemed a man of perhaps forty. Romantic in dress and bearing. His hair was sleek and black, with gray streaks in it. His pointed face, accentuated by a pointed, waxed beard, was pallid. His robe was white and purple, with a white ruff at his slender throat. He was, I understood, a wealthy man, a retired capitalist from Grebhar.

It was now, by the established ship-time, what might be termed mid-evening. The passengers had had two meals, and a normal time of sleep. They were dispersed about the little vessel, gathered in groups, gazing with a natural awe through the side bull's-eyes at the wonders of the great dome of the Heavens, spread now around us.

My first trip into Space. It would be out of place here for me to describe that queer, awed, detached feeling everyone gets, especially at his first view of the vast blackness of Interstellar Space with its blazing white stars. Behind us, the Earth hung, a great dull red ball, blurred and mottled with cloud-banks. The stern deck triangle gleamed dull-red. But up here in the bow the Moon hung round and white. We were still in the cone of the Earth's shadow. The moonlight here drenched the deck like liquid silver.

In romance, moonlight shimmers and sparkles to inspire a lover's smile. But the reality of the Moon is cold, bleak and desolate. Even without a telescope now, I could see the etched heights of the great lunar mountains. Archimedes, Copernicus and Kepler lay in full sunlight. The heights glared; the depths of the barren, empty seas were black pools of inky shadow. The great Mare Imbrium was solid, mysterious darkness.

I had been awed by the wonders of Space. But the feeling was past now, engulfed by the sense of disaster which more than ever was upon me. The Earth-light on our rear deck seemed to symbolize it. Red--as though already that deck were bathed in blood. I found myself shuddering. Somewhere on board--I had no idea where--a treasure of the precious T-catalyst was hidden. Had that fact leaked out? Why was the beautiful little Nina Blake so flooded with secret terror? What was the huge coffin-like trunk, which sounded like a time-bomb? The box, I knew, had been placed in her sleeping cubby.... And back in the S.S. Building my superior, Jamison, had said something which damnably now hung in my memory: "You keep your eyes and ears open, Fred. Things are not likely to be what they seem, on that voyage."

Accursed ineptitude of Earth's Interplanetary Relations Board, that would let a condition such as this come to pass! I felt wholly alone here, coping with God knows what. "Things are not likely to be what they seem." I found myself tensely suspicious of everything, of everybody. This swaggering Martian, Set Mokk--he was sitting now, gazing at me as though appraisingly, his lips twitching in a half-smile of sardonic humour. This Ollog Torio--was he what he seemed, just a wealthy traveler? Even little Dr. Frye, the Ship's Surgeon--I could not forget that when I had tried to nab that eavesdropper, it was Dr. Frye, gazing at me from his seat alone in the ship's smoking lounge, whom I had encountered.

* * * * *

"So you are going to the Moon to work for the Blake Company?" the Venus man was saying. He spoke English with only a trace of the prim, precise Venus accent.

"Yes," I agreed. "Mathematics clerk. It will be a novel experience for me, on the moon--"

"Quite," Set Mokk said out of his reverie. "Quite novel."

Did they really think I was a mathematics clerk? Someone here on board suspected me; that eavesdropper had turned his ray upon me quickly enough when I had stood talking to Captain Mackensie....

"You're having bad times in Grebhar," little Dr. Frye said presently to Torio. "How is the revolution going? We hear so little by helio--and most of it censored by your Venus Free State."

The slim Torio shrugged. "The fighting was in the mountains only, when I was there. I think those rebels will not make out too well."

"Rebels," I said. "If they lose, they will be traitors, worthy of death. But if they win, I expect you'll call them patriots?"

That made the hulking Martian laugh. "Human behavior is practical, never idealistic. The original right or wrong will be forgotten. It is only results that count."

"I pay little attention to it," Torio said blandly. "Venus should be for love, for romance. I have no stomach for killing."

"Speaking of romance," Dr. Frye interjected. "Here comes our Earth version of it."

We were all on our feet as the small, black and white clad, trousered figure of Nina Blake emerged from the end corridor of the superstructure. She hesitated; then took a seat among us. Her cloak was off; the moonlight and starlight bathed her with its silver. Was the terror still upon her? I could not at first tell. She was quiet, composed. We men were all smoking little white arrant cylinders. She told us smilingly to continue. But as she stretched herself in the cushioned chair, between me and Torio, it seemed that the flash of her gaze upon me carried relief--as though in me she had her only protector here on the ship.

"The little Earth-lady is very gracious," Torio commented with Venus smoothness as he lighted one of the cylinders. "I have always maintained that in the lush forests of Venus are the only really beautiful women in the Universe. I shall have to revise that now, Miss Blake."

She flushed a little under the boldness of his gaze. And he laughed. "That makes you even more beautiful. 'Flinging back a million starglints, the depths of Space remind me of Thine eyes,'" he quoted.

I am only an S.S. Man. Far be it from me now, so publicly to write what might cause Miss Nina Blake any offense. I try to state only what happened. There is no one, I feel sure, who could sit beside her and not be stirred by her beauty in that drenching moonlight. But to Torio, pretty speeches came with a laugh. Instinctive. It annoyed me. I might as well admit it.

For a time our little group chatted. Then, one by one, the men wandered away. Was it that one of them wanted to observe Nina and me alone? I could not help the thought as I leaned toward her.

"Easy now. Quiet!" And then I said aloud, "That Venus man makes very pretty speeches, Miss Blake. To us of Earth, they do not come so naturally."

Her startled gaze at my warning relaxed into a laugh--a laugh like silver glints of moonlight on a mountain stream.

"No woman can pretend that she dislikes them."

"No. I suppose not." I guess I was really pretty earnest; unsmiling; breathless. I was making conversation with the feeling that someone was watching us trying to lip-read perhaps, not daring to use a ray. But my talk was more than acting; I really meant it.

"A Venus man needn't think he has a monopoly on pretty speeches," I added.

"Inspired by the moonlight?"

"And you," I replied, smiling at her.

Adorable little dimples showed in her cheeks as she grinned at me. "Thank you, sir." Then she leaned closer. "You tell the Captain--Torio and Mokk--in the corridor a while ago--"

"Easy! Cover your mouth. You heard them?"