Part 2

Pell's head throbbed in rhythm to the shriek of the overworked converter. He goaded his tired eyes to pierce the pain haze that filmed them. The acceleration was more than 600 miles per second. His bones had lead for marrow; each of his joints was a separate discord in a cacophony of pains that tortured him. Bending his will with a great effort, he cut the converter to one G.

Instantly the body-smashing weight lifted from him. For several moments he did not try to move. His heart raced madly as the pressure was removed from it. Pell breathed deeply and looked at the girl. She was slumped forward in the shock chair but even as he looked at her, she began to stir. In spite of himself, Pell felt a twinge of respect for her.

He busied himself with the Thelmard Distorter Field. This would enable the craft to drop into extra-dimensional space, so to speak, by wrapping or folding space about itself. Working rapidly, Pell shot an orbit in the celestial globe, computed it, and jotted some figures down on a pad.

He looked over his shoulder at the girl. "We'll have to fall free for a moment to go into hyper-space, so brace yourself."

He cut the converter entirely and his stomach reacted like that of a diver with the bends. It almost literally tied itself in knots. The girl moaned in pain and grasped the sides of the shock chair. Pell's jaw hardened as he wound up the Thelmard Generator to build up the field about the ship. The familiar stars danced and flickered; then disappeared. He sighed and stepped up the converter to one G acceleration.

He arose from his chair wearily and shrugged from his heavy suit. Addressing the girl behind him, he said, "We won't be needing these things for awhile. You had better go back to the waist and look at Heintz."

Pell turned and looked at her. She was watching him curiously. Her face was strained and lines were etched deeply about her mouth. Her eyes were no longer cold; they were very tired.

"You're a strange man, Pell," she said at length. "I am sorry about ... about that business of awhile ago."

Pell smiled. "I am sorry, too, Gret."

For the first time since he had known her, Gret Helmuth smiled. It was a warm smile and it did strange things to Pell. Before she could reply to his peace offering, his arms were around her and he kissed her. She seemed to respond instinctively for a moment, then pushed him away.

She laughed and said cynically, "That was a rather obvious development, wasn't it?" She disappeared down the narrow passage-way to the waist.

Pell savored the memory of her lips for a moment, then grimaced to himself. She was right, of course.

He exhaled a cloud of smoke and watched its tendrils stream around the control panel and fluff against the plastine observation shield. He tried not to look at the blackness outside because it hurt his eyes. Men had been known to go mad from looking too long at the alien strangeness of this extra-dimensional space which was not for human eyes. Its very nothingness seemed to twist at one's mind.

He glanced at his instruments, then at the celestial navigation globe. In normal space the ship had traveled some four and one-third light years. But in hyper-space it had moved very little during the two hours it had been under the Thelmard.

He turned to Gret. "We've arrived--at least that's what this thing says." He patted the globe. "How's Heintz?"

"Okay now. I gave him some more amytal."

"Umm. That's dangerous stuff--be careful," Pell said. "We're going to fall free again--watch it!"

He cut the converter and deftly cranked up the detectors to full sensitivity. Then he held his breath as he cut the Thelmard and dropped out of hyper-space for an instant. He jumped in spite of himself as all hell broke loose. The detector alarm clamored deafeningly and its red light blinked feverishly.

Throwing up the Thelmard again, Pell turned to the girl and mopped his brow. "I don't think they caught us on their own detectors, but we almost dropped out in their laps." He grinned.

"We now have a first class, double-barreled problem on our hands. This bucket has momentum amounting to about 600 miles per second. We've got to get rid of that. But if we do it too soon the DIC boys will be able to match our speed. And if we do it too late, we'll make quite a puddle on Centaura.

"Naturally," he went on, "they've concentrated most of their strength at zenith and nadir. So we'll drop out of hyper-space in the elliptic and try to fall in free from there. They won't be able to detect us for quite a while and they won't be able to match our 600 miles per second in time to catch us. But I'm afraid we'll have to run the gauntlet of DIC cruisers already in position."

He glanced at her. Excitement burned two red spots high on her cheeks.

III

Sixty-five million miles out beyond the huge red ball of Centauri VI the small space ship suddenly dropped into normal space. It pitched drunkenly, every separate member of its construction squealing in protest. Pell realized they were all too close to mass, but it couldn't be helped.

At 600 miles per second the ship hurtled toward Centaura, steadily eating up the distance. He cut the converter and every other power source in the ship except the detector sensitives which he fastened to his wrists. On DIC radar the little Mark III would be a black speck, unnoticeable against the huge disc of Centauri VI, and the backlash of enemy radiation detectors combined with their Heisenberg Factors ruled that method out unless their ships were within a range of 500,000 miles.

The pale glow of the Alpha Centauri sun shed a dim illumination about the control room. Pell turned to Gret and grinned recklessly at her. "You'll have to put up with 72 hours of this--then the fun begins."

The slight motion of his head propelled his weightless body out of the shock chair in which he had been sprawled. He instinctively extended his arm to stop his upward motion and touched Gret's hand. He pulled it slightly and she rose gently from the chair and into his arms.

There was warmth in her lips, but even more in her kisses.

The detector sensitives fastened to Pell's wrists had been twinging more frequently and more painfully. They were less than five million miles from their goal--only three hours from the blue-green disc that blossomed and expanded even as they watched it in the screen.

"Better put on your shock suit, Gret. We've come as far as it is safe--we've got to decelerate now," he said.

Grunting with annoyance, he tried to shrug himself into the weightless garment which slithered about in his grasp. He flipped on the suit's power and sighed with satisfaction at the gentle kneading of the massagers. He clipped his liquid-cushioned eye-stops in place and squeezed into his seat, putting on the helmet.

"Ready now, Pell," Gret's voice came out over the inter-com.

Pell grunted and began to wind up the converter. Somewhere deep in the ship's bowels it began to sing up the scale as the starter electros were clutched in. His detector began to clack and clatter busily as its relays responded to the impact of DIC radar which converged on the ship. Pell smiled mirthlessly as he fed full converter thrust to the braking jets and waited expectantly for the detector to give him the alarm.

It did so--soon.

The red warning lights flickered and the alarm clamored intermittently up and down the scale. They had his position and orbit now.

The minutes of waiting piled up with agonizing slowness. Pell turned down the sensitives of the detector. Its constant shrilling assaulted his ear-drums painfully. Steadily he fed braking thrust to the forward jets until the needle stood at a body-battering 19 G's. He turned up the oxygen flow in his helmet with a flexing of his cheek muscles. His backbone felt as if it were in imminent danger of being forced through his body and blackness hung just off the edges of his vision.

Somewhere out there in that star-studded blackness was the enemy. The main body was not in detector range yet, but it was there, nevertheless. Jockeying into position, warming up their blasters, swinging turrets to hair-line accuracy and waiting ... waiting....

His detector clattered determinedly now. Pell glanced at it. A brief smile flitted over his hard, tensed features. At least two were out of range.

Experimentally he flicked his blaster switch and was pleased with the deadly cones of blue radiance which flickered from the gun snouts.

_There! And there!_ Converging above and below the nose of his ship were swarms of deadly little two-man Mark IX's. Dimly he could make out in the detector screen the deadly blue lattice-work of blaster beams that awaited him.

Under this pressure his mind worked like a machine with the speed of light, analyzing, rejecting, planning, replanning.... As they blew up in size with fantastic speed on the screen, Pell acted like lightning. In a blurring motion he cut the converter, fell free for an instant, wound up the converter to the aft jets and thrust up--up, and suddenly out of range.

But the enemy had anticipated his move. As he eased the thrust from the aft jets, two points of light twinkled and blossomed in the duration of a single heart-beat into his screen. A pair of DIC fighters! And they had him like a cold pigeon!

* * * * *

For one brief instant Pell was paralyzed and that was long enough for the enemy. The whistling _whoosh_ of air escaping through a rent in the hull died away as the automatic self-sealers went into action, but it gave vivid testimony of the enemy's aim.

Reacting like a coiled spring, Pell jabbed his blaster switch, catching one of the DIC fighters squarely in his sights. It seemed to fall to pieces in the midst of the minor nova of its own disintegration. The second enemy fighter flashed past like a bullet, but not before Pell chewed off half its aft jets with his blasters.

For a moment he was in the clear. Quickly he examined the function dials; found to his dismay that his aft jets were nothing more than slag now, with all the tube connections severed.

"What ... what happened?" Gret gasped.

"We've been in a fight, baby, and we got a black eye," Pell cracked. "But don't worry--I'll set this can down in spite of those missing jets."

He bent over his instruments again, a furrow slowly forming between his brows. That fight had taken time--too much valuable time. He had just two hours to decelerate from the tremendous velocity of the ship to the comparative slow velocity of Centauri V.

Discarding the last of his caution, he crammed all the braking thrust possible on the ancient converter. Up--up went the gravity needle; up past the red line at 23 G's; up past a heart-wracking 27 G's; up to an inconceivable thirty gravities where it quivered sluggishly.

Pell's body weighed over two and a half tons! His eyes weighed five pounds each and thrust agonizingly against their liquid cushion transparent stops. The converter screamed its super-sonic thunder, setting the separate members of the ship's body to vibrating madly. Every moment was red-hazed agony of an eon's duration; every second a year of exquisite pain.

The blue-green disc of Centauri V expanded visibly in the screen. Even through the observation shield Pell could make out its crescent. The brake jets were doing their work--but it would be a near thing--a very near thing. Pell prayed that there would be no more fighters; aside from the fact that he couldn't maneuver, he could still less afford to lose the time.

When the ball of Centaura puffed over all the screen and its edges were no longer visible, Pell broadcast the prearranged signal of recognition to the planet-mounted blaster batteries below. Scrambled almost beyond analysis and recognition, the acknowledging signal came back.

Suddenly Pell realized that Centaura's curvature had ballooned to flatness and on the heels of that realization came the whispering, high-pitched wail of a ship travelling at high velocity in thin atmosphere. Rapidly the wail became an ear-shattering, sustained screech and the small warning lights of the hull thermometers began to glow redly.

Nose _outward_, rather than pointed _down_, Pell continued to brake the ship with all forward thrust, depending upon the planet's attraction to prevent him from hurtling off into space on a tangent and into the jaws of the DIC fleet.

Pell never remembered how many times he blacked out, nor how many revolutions of the planet he made. Shaking the ever encroaching blackness from the borders of his vision, Pell had a fleeting memory of a heavily-forested mountain flashing by beneath, followed by a fertile plateau, a river, then mountains rising ahead.

Streaking over these with a cushion of fire thrust before it, the ship hurtled at a visibly slower pace down a rocky gorge with jagged mountains on each side. Then, decelerated almost to a stop, the battered space ship seemed to poise for an instant, then turned over gently and gouged a deep furrow in the soft ground. For perhaps 400 yards it smashed through low timber and came to a halt at the brink of a small stream where the scream of rending metal finally died away.

The last thing Pell remembered was cutting out the converter.

IV

Pell was first conscious of time--a duration between the recurring sequence of pain jags. Gradually the pain left him to be transformed into a dull ache which encompassed his whole body. Every separate nerve end seemed to shoot subtle, rapid messages to his cortex, announcing that they were not feeling well.

He opened his eyes; blinked them several times to shake the web of blackness from them. He tried to move. Pure, unadulterated anguish backlashed at him. With a mighty effort he concentrated his will on the task of overcoming the surging wash of pain.

He rose unsteadily to his feet, gritting his teeth as agony swelled his head. The ship was a crumpled mass of smoking wreckage. Pell noticed dully through one of the shattered ports that it had scorched the area in which it lay and its path through the low timber was charred and black.

Suddenly he realized it was hot inside the shock suit--very hot. He stooped over Gret and picked her up. He tried the air-lock in the waist; it was jammed shut. But further aft he found a gaping rent in the ship's metal skin. Gently he lowered her still form through it.

He returned to the waist and unharnessed Heintz from the shock chair. Pell realized that the fat man was too ponderous for him to lift; hence he dragged him awkwardly to the rent in the ship and stuffed him through unceremoniously. Stopping only to pick up the kit of medical supplies, Pell followed.

He stripped off his shock suit and looked at Gret anxiously. He took off her helmet and saw that her face was very pale. Gingerly he pulled her out of the heavy suit and felt in the medical kit for a stimulant. Her gold-blonde hair fell across his arm lightly as he administered the hypo. A touch of color began to come into her cheeks beneath the tan and she breathed more easily.

He turned to Heintz and wrestled for a minute or two with his huge body, trying to extricate it from the suit. The fat man's body sagged lifelessly as if his joints were made of jelly. Cursing under his breath, Pell upended him and dragged off the bulky garment.

Reaching for his wrist, Pell found his pulse with some difficulty. Heintz still lived, but the accelerated shallow pumping of his heart indicated that something would have to be done in a hurry. Hastily Pell jabbed his arm with a hypo and watched Heintz anxiously until he felt his pulse pick up with greater strength.

Sudden reaction hit Pell and he sat down heavily. For the first time he noticed their surroundings. The crushed wreck of the little space ship was poised on the brink of a small stream and faintly Pell heard it tumbling over rapids in the distance. The stream disappeared around a small rise in ground and to the right and left at a distance of perhaps five miles, Pell could make out rocky escarpments of a mighty range of mountains clearly defined in the light of the late afternoon sun. The air had a distinct chill in it and Pell was on the point of returning to the ship to try to salvage some garments when he heard Gret Helmuth gasp. He bent over her as her eyes opened.

"Pell ... did we make it?" she asked painfully.

He smoothed the hair from her face tenderly and grinned. "Yeah, we made it. But there isn't much left of the ship."

She tried to rise from her prone position and half succeeded when she fell back with a moan.

* * * * *

Pell laughed and said, "I wouldn't try that so soon, Gret. Better let the corpuscles splash around before you do it again."

He made as if to rise, touching her hand. Instinctively it tightened on his and he settled beside her again. The Centauri sky was a deep cobalt blue and the wind was keen and bracing. He felt in his jumper pocket for a couple of cigarettes and his atomic lighter. The novelty's vicious looking, hazy blue flame made Gret jump in spite of herself and Pell grinned.

At length the girl spoke. "Pell, I don't like the idea of waiting around here. I mean ... well, I have a feeling that something is wrong."

Pell glanced at her. It was plain to see that she was worried and uncertain; he could almost feel it as a tangible thing.

"How do you mean?" he asked her.

"Well ... for one thing, these hills. We're somewhere in the Cheon Range and there were remnants of DIC mercenaries dug in here when I left. They were holding out in an abandoned blaster tower around here somewhere. If they should happen to be in the neighborhood--" She shrugged.

Pell felt a distinct chill settle down the base of his spine. "If your Insurgents are worth their U-235, they've tracked us on their radar. They should be here any minute," he said reassuringly.

He rose and clambered into the ship through the rent in its side in order to salvage some outer garments because the air was becoming colder. When he returned from the ship to the place where Gret lay, he noticed that she was trembling--and not from the cold.

"What's the matter, baby?" he asked, concerned.

She tried to smile at him. "We outlanders are a queer bunch, Pell. We ... we hear things. There are men--many men down the valley and they are fighting. Both groups want to capture this ship." She shrugged her shoulders helplessly. "But--"

A memory of long-dead hackles rose along the back of Pell's neck. Shadows were growing longer and in the west he could see Alpha Centauri poised over the rocky rim of the mountain, ready to plunge beneath.

* * * * *

Suddenly he heard it. Far down the valley carved in the living rocks by the small stream came the sound of firing. And it was moving closer. He looked at Gret who had scrambled to her feet; evidently she had 'heard' this long before him. Silently he handed her the huge automatic pistol which he had taken from her in the ship and tightened his hand on the butt of the tiny blaster which he had taken from the body of the DIC assassin whom she had killed that first night.

Breathing hard, they dragged Heintz to the lee of their ship to shelter him from the fire. Then they waited. In the waning glow of the last of the sunlight the woods off to the right took on an ominous appearance. They could hear the sound of shooting quite plainly now, interspersed with faint shouting. It carried well in the air which had become bitterly cold. Pell strained his eyes in the direction of the firing and for an instant he fancied he could see flashes. But which side was which?

Suddenly Gret grabbed at his arm and motioned violently behind them on the other side of the wrecked ship. Pell swore softly and crawled swiftly around the slag heap of the aft jets, blaster in hand. Dimly he could make out figures hurrying toward the ship in the cover of the trees.

"Stop!" he called.

A bomb exploding among them could have had no greater effect. They began to run helter-skelter for the ship, the weapons in their hands leaping into life. The ragged hack and roar of their machine-guns and pistols momentarily stunned Pell, but, recovering, he let loose with his blaster. Its cone of blue radiance was bright in the gathering dusk and Pell knew he had given up his position immediately, but he had no choice. The running figures seemed to falter and fall in heaps--then his blaster failed! Rapidly he checked it and found to his dismay that the tiny thing needed recharging.

All at once the attackers were on top of him--and behind him! The thunderous bark of Gret's automatic was suddenly stilled and on the heels of that knowledge, Pell was dealt a staggering blow on the head from behind.

Rough hands dragged him to his feet and dimly he realized he was surrounded by a group of ragged, heavily-armed men. They looked at him curiously, fingering their weapons uneasily. Finally a large man with gimlet eyes came up to the group. He had an air of authority and the men fell back with deference.

The large man looked at him closely and smiled. "Pell! I might have known they'd have hired you. What did you bring us, Pell?"

Pell reeled. This man was Raul Gutridge, the man who had crushed him out of business for the DIC. As a reward, DIC gave him what was thought to be a soft job, that of commander of the colonial garrison on Centaura.

Before he could answer, however, the large man had turned on his heel and was surveying the demolished ship. "Wrecking ships as usual, I see," he remarked with mock pleasantry. "No wonder your license was revoked."

Pell realized one thing and only that. He must keep Gutridge out of the ship! He could not let him find the U-235. Because with it, Gutridge, in spite of his few numbers, could mop up the planet in only a few days. The big man had ruined him once before; he must not be allowed to triumph again.

"Times are tough for unlicensed space pilots on Earth," Pell began casually. "You've got to work to eat. So I took the job of running these two through the blockade."

"What two?" Gutridge asked, seeing only Gret.

Pell cursed himself. He had blundered again. Silently he indicated the fat man sprawled under the ship.

Gutridge walked over to the recumbent Heintz and kicked him a couple of times, but without succeeding in arousing him. Then he looked up at Pell again.

"Still can't lie worth a damn, can you, Pell?" he observed. "I trust you will pardon me while I look in the ship?"

Pell watched helplessly as he entered the ship. If only the Insurgents would arrive in time!

When Gutridge came out, Pell knew he had discovered the secret. He moved slowly, as if in a dream. For once his narrow gimlet eyes were wide as he looked dazedly at his men. Then he pulled himself up and turned to Pell solemnly. All he said was one word, but it shattered all meaning and all reality for Pell.

That word was, "Thanks!"

* * * * *

The sound of firing from downstream was much clearer and louder now. Gutridge looked over his shoulder with a trace of anxiety and nodded to one of his men. "Callen," he ordered, "take my guests back to the tower and entertain them until I return. You'll have to carry this one--but it won't be for nothing. I have something special in store for them."

Pell and Gret were yanked roughly away from their ship, while four men labored heavily with the vast bulk of the fat man. After winding along an obscure path in the woods, they emerged to find a steep cliff facing them. The tortuous path rose sharply up its side.

"Hell!" one of the mercenaries panted. "Callen, we ought to chuck this elephant over the cliff."

"Keep luggin' him," Callen directed. "The chief said he had a treat for 'em." He laughed unpleasantly.