Part 8

Palm-berry tea was a tasty beverage made from a dwarf Venusian swamp plant. It was a splendid sedative for “space nerves” and was always carried on long voyages. Under the harried circumstances of their blast-off, Rob had forgotten to have a supply of the tea put aboard.

“Where did you get this?” Rob asked, taking a glass.

“I knew it would come in handy, sir, when our stomachs got to knotting up,” Clay replied, “and so I got a box from the commissary just before coming aboard. Every crew has to have a cook, so I elected myself.”

What a change from the self-centered young fellow he had first met, Rob thought. It was amazing that Clay Gerard, who before must be first in everything, was now satisfied at being what he called a “cook.”

Clay distributed drinks to the rest of the crew. In a little while the epidemic of jitters had subsided almost completely.

The minutes dragged on as the Cetus X-500 sped toward the bright star Procyon and the malignancy it was believed to have cast into space. When the crew spotted little Pluto plodding his lonely way through the empty deeps, they knew they were at the edge of the solar system.

Another hour slipped by, and Lieutenant Swenson began lining up the target on the ground glass of his visi-screen table. The electroscope showed a high count, and the meters Rob and the radiation officer wore were also showing the mounting ray penetration from the “hot” weapons below the insulated flooring.

“Only a few minutes to go, Rob,” Lieutenant Swenson said, studying his screen. “Better check your bomb release.”

Rob checked and found it ready to go. His fingers itched to pull the lever. Sensing the approach of zero moment, the others drifted into the compartment. The robot pilot was driving the ship, and even Lieutenant Fox had come in. A dozen eyes pored silently over the screen table.

Rob could count every tick of his watch. As the final minutes slipped away, he withdrew from the circle and went over to the bomb release. His hand was clammy as it palmed the smooth metal lever.

“Steady, Rob,” Lieutenant Swenson spoke in a dramatic whisper. “A few minutes more—twelve—nine—”

The compartment was silent as a tomb except for the soft throb of the ship’s power plant. Rob’s eyes drifted out the side port, and the stars out there dazzled him.

“Three—two—one—_fire_!”

Rob’s hand shoved forward. A muted rumble came from the floor. The noise swelled to a full-bodied roar. Then there was a banshee-like scream, and Rob knew the first bomb had flung itself into space.

Lieutenant Swenson counted off five more seconds, and then Rob sent the second bomb on its way. This happened four more times, and each time Rob heard the final shriek as the missile cast itself into the vacuum. Rob didn’t hear the last bomb scream. His ears were ringing too much from the clamor of the previous ones.

When it was all over, the purr of the power plant began dissipating the throbbing ring in Rob’s ears. He felt a tremendous relief now that the job was done.

“How long before we’ll see the bursts?” he asked Lieutenant Swenson.

“Not for hours,” was the reply. “Don’t forget, the missiles have a long way to go even though they’re speeding fast as blazes.”

“Then we won’t know until then whether we’re successful?” Harry asked.

“That’s right,” the navigator said.

Rob checked the compartment cosmic-ray counter and his own pencil meter. “The radiation ought to start diminishing now that the load is gone,” he said.

He was mistaken, he discovered later, when the ship had been swung about on its gyros and was heading homeward. The radiation had begun increasing, in fact.

“I don’t understand it,” Rob said worriedly. “There’s nothing down below to make the radiation concentration rise. If this keeps up, we won’t last out the trip back.”

Minutes later, as the concentration continued to build up, Rob knew there had to be something down there that was giving off the dangerous emanations. There was no other explanation that he could think of.

“Bruce,” Rob said to the new mechanic, “can you check the bomb chamber without direct exposure?”

The mechanic nodded. “There’s an antiradiation compartment up forward with an insulated window where I can take a look at it.”

As Bruce left the room to check, Rob thought of something. “Did any of you hear the scream of that last bomb leaving the chamber?” he asked.

When no one said anything, he continued, “I think I’ve got the answer. That last bomb must have jammed and didn’t come out.”

His guess proved substantially correct. When Bruce returned, he reported that the heat of the bomb racing along its launching track had fused with part of the track so that both hung out of the bomb hatch and were being carried along with the ship.

“We’re lucky those bombs were made to go off only on contact with the powerful omega rays in the R-cloud,” Rob spoke grimly, “or we’d be somewhere up in the Milky Way by now! We’ve got to get that bomb away from the ship before its radiation kills us.”

“Dropping that bomb off isn’t going to be any sweet job,” Bruce commented. “But being the mechanic, it ought to fall to me.”

“Hold on,” Rob cut in. “It’s a job any of us can do. It’ll take more courage than skill to cut the track off with an oxygen torch. By fastening the torch on the end of one of our emergency insulated rods, the operator can work at a distance with less chance of radiation exposure.”

Lieutenant Swenson volunteered for the job, then Clay. Rob knew they had no time to wrangle over who was going to do it. Lieutenant Fox suggested drawing straws, and everyone agreed this was the fair method of deciding. Rob got six matches and broke one off shorter than the rest. Then he held them out for drawing. Bruce drew first and revealed a long one. Clay drew the next one and said simply, “You can stop drawing.”

Rob was confident Clay could handle the job all right, for use of the acetylene torch was emphasized in cadet training.

The youth was assisted into space gear, and the cutting torch was fastened to the end of the insulated rod. A crude shield was also fashioned from some of the insulation of the ship so as to further protect Clay from the bomb’s radiation. Even with all this, however, there was no small amount of risk. But Clay seemed happy to have drawn the job and went about his preparations lightheartedly.

“Whatever you do,” was Rob’s final warning, “don’t get the fire from your torch onto the bomb or none of us will live to tell about it.”

Clay left the ship through a side air lock, carrying his odd equipment and secured to the ship by a length of space chain so that he could not drift off into space. The eyes of the crew followed him through the port near the door as he crawled along the hull and downward toward the bomb rack. Then they lost sight of him.

As they turned from the port, Harry Goode stooped and picked up a match from the floor. “This is Clay’s match,” he said, holding it up. “I saw him drop it.”

It was a _long_ match.

“That tricky guy!” Rob muttered, with a wry grin. But what he really said in his mind was, “That _great_ guy!”

“He sure is anxious to make good,” Lieutenant Swenson said with admiration.

Bruce led them toward the bow of the ship where they could see Clay work on the damaged bomb hatch. They moved along a narrow aisle lined with throbbing turbines and finally down an aluminum catwalk, at the bottom of which was the doubly insulated inspection chamber containing a large observation window that looked out onto the skin of the craft.

The men crowded around the quartz port and watched Clay make his circuitous approach to the bomb hatch. Rob admired his skill in staying at the full taut length of his space chain so as to keep the maximum distance between himself and the “hot” chamber. Clay drifted like a feather in the weightless void, handling his equally light equipment with ease as he brought it into position.

Rob imagined the vacuum out there to be fairly crackling with radioactivity and potential death rays. Clay had known they were there too. Yet he had gone out willingly, risking his life.

Keeping his shield deftly in front of him, Clay lit his torch with his free hand, and the brilliant arc light burst like a nova on the eyes of the watchers. Clay next shoved the insulated rod, to which the torch was attached, toward the hatch. Slowly, cautiously, he moved the tool in closer. Only a short way below hung the gray cartridge that was the C-bomb, and the warped track that dipped out of the hatch and downward.

Without a tremor, Clay’s hand guided the burning instrument to within inches of the top of the bomb. Rob shuddered to think what fury could be unleashed should the torch drift too close to the bomb.

“That boy’s got what it takes,” Lieutenant Swenson murmured, his subdued voice sounding strangely loud in the deathly quiet. “He knows what’s at stake, but he’s not excited.”

Clay got the flame against the track which was the only thing holding the C-bomb to the ship. Then he began the slow, labored process of severing the tough titanium alloy. The intense heat of the oxygen-fed torch turned the metal red hot. Then another danger came into the picture.

“Can the heat from the track set off the bomb?” Harry put the danger into words.

“It could,” Rob replied grimly. “It probably won’t, but it could.”

During the suspenseful minutes that followed, Rob heard one sucking sound after another as those around him breathed irregularly. The hot touch of the men’s bodies against him betrayed their tension, their prayerful hopes.

“Easy does it, Clay,” Rob thought. “Just a little more, and the track will be cut through.”

The scarlet track and the blazing spot of the torch seemed to sear a hole right into Rob’s eyeballs. “How can Clay stand it this long himself?” he wondered. “His nerves must be of steel wire, his pupils of quartz lenses.”

“The track is cut through!” someone finally exclaimed exultantly.

Yet even with the worst part behind him, Clay didn’t get overconfident. As the bomb hung there weightless in space, Clay carefully withdrew the rod and the torch from its dangerous proximity to the bomb. Then he shook off the torch until it began drifting away from him, whence it would travel unchecked until it passed into the gravitation field of some celestial body. Next Clay gently brought the rod end against the bomb and shoved ever so lightly against it. Then it too began creeping away slowly into the black deeps, never to be seen again.

“Whew!” Bruce gasped, and Rob could sense the relief of tension in those around him.

Clay discarded the rod then but kept his shield in position as he made his way around the radioactive bomb hatch and back toward the air lock where he had left the ship.

“He has discarded his hot equipment,” Lieutenant Swenson said as Clay moved out of their field of vision. “Just like a natural-born spaceman—he didn’t forget a thing.”

When Clay had been helped into the ship with unnecessary care, each of his shipmates gave him an exuberant slap on the back and covered him with words of praise that fairly inundated him. Rob could see a grin a light year wide on the boy’s face and the trace of tears too as he realized he had been accepted as one of them again.

Lieutenant Swenson summed it all up when he said, “You’re an all right guy, Clay.”

Harry tore off Clay’s space suit, which was discarded, and began giving him all sorts of tests for radiation exposure. But Clay had protected himself well and was “clean.”

The invisible peril within the ship began slacking off steadily, and later Lieutenant Swenson announced that the moment of the first bomb’s strike was at hand. The six gathered about the lookout refractor telescope in the ship’s stern which had carefully been directed upon the determined spot of impact at their rear.

Rob was the first to see it through the prism eyepiece. Against the unchanging star patterns there was suddenly a brilliant flare like a ton of magnesium bursting into flame before his eyes. It blinded him for a moment with its radiance, even though there was a filter over the field lens.

“We hit it!” he breathed thankfully and turned away so that the others might see the succeeding strikes.

To make sure the destruction was complete, Lieutenant Swenson pored over the electroscope for a long time afterward and finally made a significant announcement. “Operation Big Boy is a success,” he said softly. “Not only has the cloud been broken up, but its remnants will pass far out of range of the solar system. Rob, you can radio the folk back home and give them the good news.”

Rob lost no time in getting to the set and pouring out the happy tidings to General Forester on Luna.

Later Rob learned of the repercussions: “The people in most quarters are stunned to know what could have happened to them,” the Space Command officer told him. “But all danger of panic is over. People are leaving the streets and going back to their homes and loved ones—and to church. It’s a grand victory, Rob, your greatest of all!”

“It’s not my victory, general,” Rob replied. “It belongs equally to the men with me—Fox, Swenson, Olney, Goode, and Gerard. They’re great guys, sir, all of them.” Rob had started to mention Mort among the names and inquired how he was.

“General Carmichael radioed that he has passed his crisis and is conscious,” was the gratifying answer. “The doctor says he’ll make it all right. Rob, Miss Gerard is anxious to talk to you and her brother.”

Rob couldn’t understand how Dulcie could still be on the job if she had committed the serious indiscretion of exposing the secret flight. This prompted Rob to ask the general about it. The chief officer replied that it hadn’t been Dulcie Gerard but a temporary substitute who had taken over for her. As a matter of fact, Dulcie had been very angry at her friend for what she had done.

Dulcie was allowed to talk to Rob, and the first thing she said was, “Can I speak to Clay?”

“He’s coming down the hall,” Rob told her.

“Tell me,” she said, “how did Clay do on his first assignment?”

Rob paused a moment, then replied, “Somebody lit the fuse under him like you said, Dulcie. He didn’t blow into little pieces, though. The explosion knocked the worst out of him but left behind something fine and unselfish.”

“I’m so glad I could cry!” the girl blurted.

“Here he is now,” Rob said. “I’ll let him tell you himself.”

Clay took the mike from Rob. Rob watched in admiration as Clay modestly told her the whole story, minimizing his own glory. Clay might be the last of the male Gerards, he thought, but he would certainly not be forgotten. As long as men had breath to speak, they would talk about the real hero of Operation Big Boy—and how he almost came to miss the trip altogether.

THE GHOST SHIP OF SPACE

Rock Merrill looked interestedly at the man who had introduced himself as Tony Kalmus. He had told the young former cadet that he had come all the way from Earth to see him.

“You flatter me,” Rock said.

“There’s more to it than that,” the man assured him. He was still fairly young, although his blond hair was balding on top. He shifted his heavyweight frame, that filled the chair snugly, but with deliberate slowness dug through the inner pockets of his blue jacket and brought out a folded piece of paper.

At that moment Shep Dubois came into the dormitory aboard the space service station that was 25,000 miles above Earth. Centrifugal force, provided by the rotation of the station, gave an artificial gravity so that its occupants could walk about normally.

“What’s up, Rock?” Shep asked.

“I don’t know,” Rock answered. “I just got a message over the wall speaker that this Mr. Kalmus had come to the station to see me.”

Rock introduced the two formally. Then Kalmus gave Rock the piece of folded paper. Rock opened it up. It was a photostatic copy of a torn blank scrap of paper. Rock studied it for a moment, his heart gradually increasing its beat as he unconsciously felt that he was on the verge of a big discovery. The ragged edges of the photographed scraps looked strangely familiar. Then suddenly the answer came to him in a rush that sent his blood throbbing hard through his temples.

“I can’t believe it!” he exclaimed. “It’s the missing scrap from the _Sagittarius_!”

“You mean that after twenty years it’s turned up?” Shep said in amazement. “Now you may be able to find the _Northern Cross_, Rock!”

“That’s the reason I’m here,” Kalmus said. “I’ll leave you the photostat to compare with your own scraps, Merrill, and then you’ll know I have the missing piece for certain.”

“If you do have it, Mr. Kalmus, I’ll be indebted to you forever,” Rock said enthusiastically. “Ever since I first wanted to be a spaceman it’s been my ambition to look for my dad’s lost ship. But how did you know where to find me?”

“I asked around. Your mother told me over the phone back on Earth that she was pretty sure you had the scraps with you and that you treasured them as if they were gold.”

“I do,” Rock admitted, staring out one of the oblong ports of the dorm at the salt-and-pepper background of interstellar space. “They’re the last link I have with my father. I never saw him.”

Kalmus got up. “When you’re convinced I’ve got what you want and you’re ready to listen to a proposition about locating your dad’s lost ship, just let me know. I’m in Room 38, Deck B, overhead.”

When Kalmus had gone, Rock went to his dresser and began searching a drawer. “The box with the scraps is in one of these.”

“I still find all this hard to believe!” Shep said. “And I don’t see how Kalmus could have gotten hold of the missing scraps. They were supposed to have been destroyed with the _Sagittarius_ except for the ones they salvaged for you.”

“I’m not worried about that now, Shep!” Rock told him. “The main thing is to fit the puzzle together and find the answer that I’ve wanted to know all my life—the location of the _Northern Cross_ and its treasure ore.”

Rock’s father, Victor Merrill, had been a space surgeon accompanying a research expedition to Venus before Rock was born. Mineralogy was Dr. Merrill’s hobby, and while on the planet he had come across a curious mineral in a cave. Returning to Earth, he’d had the sample analyzed. The mineral was alconite, a very scarce and valuable component of an alloy used in the construction of radioactivity shields. Told that a space-ship load of the light mineral could bring him a fortune, Dr. Merrill set out again for Venus with his own expedition, financed from his life savings, planning to build a satellite hospital with the proceeds of the venture.

Dr. Merrill’s ship, the _Northern Cross_, had landed on Venus, and a load of the mineral was stocked aboard the ship. But then disaster overtook the party, the first of many tragic events that were to follow. A landslide sealed off the mine, burying most of Dr. Merrill’s crew. The four remaining, including Dr. Merrill himself, blasted off for Earth, but not having enough experienced men to adequately run the vessel, the ship was wrecked by an explosion. An SOS was radioed to a freighter bound for Venus, the _Sagittarius_. The radio operator made a note of the _Northern Cross_’s position, but shortly afterward, the _Sagittarius_ itself, in a hurry to reach the stricken _Northern Cross_ and with a faulty radar set, collided with an emergency fuel buoy floating in space.

When later ships salvaged the wreck of the _Sagittarius_, scraps of the radio operator’s note were found, but not enough of it to establish the “fix” of the still missing _Northern Cross_. These scraps had later been turned over to Rock and held by him ever since. He had stubbornly clung to the fragments in the wild hope that some day he might obtain some other clue to the location of his father’s ship.

The last message from the radio operator of the _Northern Cross_ had reported that the ship had lost its power of navigation after falling into a perpetual orbit about Venus. Therefore Rock and his mother had known for years that Victor Merrill’s ghost ship had become a satellite of the planet Venus.

“Here it is, Shep!” Rock exclaimed, pulling a flat tin box out of his dresser drawer.

They eagerly took the box and the photostat over to a table. Rock unlocked the container and gently removed the scorched and yellowed fragment that had been pieced together with transparent tape. He fitted the section against the ragged edges of the full-size pattern.

“It fits!” Rock said.

Swiftly the coming events passed hopefully before his mind’s eye. He visualized a search for the _Northern Cross_, a search that might yet bring a fulfillment of Dr. Merrill’s unselfish dream.

“I wonder what Mr. Kalmus wants out of this?” Rock mused.

“A share of the treasure, I’d guess,” Shep replied.

“Of course we can’t be absolutely sure of finding the _Northern Cross_, even with the exact ‘fix,’” Rock said. “If it changed its flight path after sending the SOS, there’s not much hope. But if it held its same orbit, as Dad’s radio operator reported, we should be able to locate it.”

“What do you say we listen to Kalmus’ proposition?” Shep suggested.

“The sooner the better!” Rock agreed.

As they went down the corridor, they met Johnny Colfax.

“One of these days I’m going to tell those guys what they can do with their old job, especially that little worm, Mugger!” Johnny complained. “I’m tired of all this backbreaking stuff and his fussing at us all the time!”

“I think we’re all tired of it, Johnny,” Rock sympathized.

Johnny was one of seven of them who had accepted work on the servicing station after their washout from school. Since they knew they could never go into space in the smart livery of the Space Command, this seemed to be the next best thing. But the boys had soon tired of the glamour of being out in the deeps and the hard work, and most of them were ready to go meekly back home to Earth.

“Maybe before long,” Rock told his discouraged friend, “all of us will be able to tell the big boys where to head in.”

“What do you mean?” Johnny asked.

“Come along and see,” Shep invited.

Johnny made a wry face. “I’m not in the mood to see anything now. It’s the sack for me and ten solid hours of sleep!”

Rock and Shep looked for Kalmus’ room on Deck B. As they passed a long corridor port, they saw the busy outside activity of the servicing station. They saw big clumsy-looking astroliners and streamlined, needle-prowed “atmosphere” ships approaching and leaving the docks of the octagon satellite after repairs or refueling. Smaller ferry craft darted back and forth between the vessels like pilot fish in the company of great sharks.

The boys located Kalmus’ room and found him waiting for them as though he had known they would be along. There was another man present. He looked like a walking skeleton, with thick black brows and hands like hairy tarantulas. Kalmus said his name was Jack Judas and that he was a close friend.

“My scraps match your photostat, Mr. Kalmus,” Rock said. “What is your proposition?”

“I’ll get right to the point. We go on an expedition to look for the _Northern Cross_ and split the value of the cargo if we find it.”

Rock nodded. “That’s reasonable enough.”

“I can rent an old ship cheaply,” Kalmus went on. “Got a friend in the business over on Satellite 7, a space supply moon. He showed me just the thing for us, atomic drive and all, equipped to carry eleven men. I can dig up a crew too. How much money can you get to pay for your share?”

“That will take some figuring,” Rock said, “and I’ll have to talk over the proposition with the other fellows.”

“I told you I’d furnish the crew,” Kalmus said, with a trace of annoyance. “However, if you want to bring some of your buddies along, I guess that’s your business.”