Part 5

Then I dashed for the instrument cubby. A little explosive time-bomb.... I found one; and hurried with it into the control turret, where I placed it against the mechanisms of the Erentz current--that huge electronic stream which circulated throughout all the double-shelled plates of the vessel to absorb the inner pressure. Ten minutes? Would that give us time enough?

Nina was in the pressure suit when in a minute more I reached the upper room.

"Good enough, Nina. Now, the helmet! Your brother Jim is outside--safe."

My heart leaped with triumph at her gasp of joy. "Oh, Fred--"

"Come on, hurry."

We were garbed, ready and through the outer porte in another minute or two. My hand clung to Nina's metal shoulder.

"Careful, there's no gravity. Don't shove yourself off."

We were like two crawling flies on the smooth outer surface of the pressure dome. Still there was no alarm. We got part way down the side. Young Blake, in the poised little volplane farther down, saw us. I waved my arm, and he shoved his tiny craft off. Like a log in water it floated out twenty feet or so, turned and came drifting diagonally back.

"We'll dive for it," I murmured. "He'll pick us up."

* * * * *

I did not see the emerging figure, here beside us in the starlight; I did not even know that there was a tiny pressure porte here on the side deck at one of the bull's-eyes. But suddenly a panel slid wide. Upon a rush of air, a huge bloated figure came out; struck against me, with its arms gripping me.

Mokk! I could see his heavy, snarling face through the visor pane. His body and mine, as we gripped each other, toppled off into emptiness. Amazing, weightless combat. The whole Universe was turning over as we floated out, kicking, flailing, floundering. He was trying to reach the knife at his belt. He got it, but somehow my mailed fist was able to strike it away. It went floating off. The thing to me was a weird chaos. I tried to kick away, but he clung, his great hands with metal fingers gouging at the fabric of my suit to rip it. Once, his hand clapped to my shoulder. With sudden audiphone contact I heard his rasping voice:

"The end of you, Earth-man."

But, thank God, it wasn't. Abruptly, by some fortunate chance I was able to snatch my knife from its belt-sheath. It ripped into Mokk's fabric. I was aware of a little flash of deranged electricity; his suit deflated. Ghastly human explosion--every tiny cell of his body bursting with its inner pressure. The rush of released, dissipating expanding air from his suit sprayed bursting gore upon me. Gore, and the noisome pink-white foam which had been his flesh.

I shoved the ghastly thing away; saw myself now seemingly upon my back, grotesquely struggling to turn erect with the _X-87_ hanging diagonally some twenty feet away. Nina was still clinging to its side, with the volplane gliding near her. She dove, and Blake hauled her aboard. And then he shoved to me; gripped me at last.

"All right," I gasped. "Good enough, Jim--you sit here with Nina--"

At the bow of our fragile little craft, I set the gravity plates for an intensification of Earth's attraction. I set them to the fullest of their power. For a moment we slowly turned over, with all the Heavens, the Moon, Earth and the little _X-87_ in a dizzying swing. Then we steadied, with the Earth ahead of us.

Clinging, I shoved myself back in the canoe-like volplane, to Nina and Blake. Touched them. "We're starting. See the ship?"

The little vessel, close behind and above us, was slowly receding.

"But they'll discover us!" young Blake murmured. "They have telescopes--they'll discover us--and the _X-87_ can catch us easily."

"Maybe," I muttered. "Maybe not--"

* * * * *

Then it came!

It was a weird, soundless explosion. We saw a jagged little series of flashes as the Erentz current burst out. Then, with a puff of light, soundlessly the vessel flew apart ... a million fragments of bursting ship and bursting human bodies. All about us was the glistening, starlit shimmer of them, like a fountain spray of pyrotechnic beauty. Then there was just emptiness of Interplanetary Space where the ship had been. But a cloud of shimmering particles hung there, like myriad specks of stardust to mark where a tiny world had exploded. After a time their little gravity drew them together into a loose ball of shattered Matter hanging balanced by the myriad Celestial forces. Some of the larger pieces were starting around it, little satellites with the inertia of their velocity balancing the gravity of the central mass. A new tiny System, here in the vast Heavens. It drifted off, finding its new orbit--drifted as we dropped away from it until at last it was only a shining speck among the billions of giant worlds. And then we could no longer see it.

* * * * *

I have little to add. You all know the details of our long but safe descent, with the Interplanetary patrol picking us up before we reached the stratosphere. And now, as a postscript, I may say that Miss Nina Blake has allowed me to announce that very presently she will be applying for the publication of her marriage. And she will name Frederick Penelle, of the Great-New York Shadow Squad.

Earth-Moon Flight 9 certainly was not star-crossed, for me.