The Mysterious Planet

CHAPTER 10 The Alien Trap

JAKES STOOD BESIDE BOB NOW, staring at the fake ship which had lured them there.

“Well, I’ll be…” It was the first indication Bob had had that these suits were all equipped with built-in radios, though he should have expected it.

“We’ll all be,” he agreed hotly. “This thing wasn’t just put here to improve the landscape.

They must have slipped in here with it pretty well ready and put it up while the moon was facing away from Outpost. But it was put here to be seen and to draw a sucker down. It’s a trap!”

Jakes muttered to himself. “Yeah,” he agreed finally. “And we’ve sprung it. Now I suppose the hunters are coming to hunt us up. We’d better get back to the Icarius fast! Of all the dopey ideas, coming out here for this.”

Juan shrugged. “It was your idea, Simon.”

“You mean it was yours,” Jakes told him angrily. “You didn’t yell it out in front of Smedley.

You waited until we were alone, and then told me. Naturally I figured you wanted to come for it, and I offered to take you.”

“You suggested it, though, Simon. I did, it is true, have the idea. But you were the first to put it into words.”

“We’re all guilty,” Bob said. He was completely disgusted with himself. Wallingford had told him that a smart man always looks suspiciously at strange objects and suspects they might be faked.

He knew this himself. But he’d come running here just to get out of the boredom at Outpost—and probably to be a hero, just as Jakes had done!

“We’re all guilty together, and we’d all better get out of here before they come,” he repeated.

Jakes and Juan started off, and Bob swung to follow them. He tried to hurry over the ground, but something seemed to hold him back. He pushed more strongly, and his feet slipped.

With a slow snap, he found himself back where he had been.

The fabric he had touched was more than soft—it was sticky! He’d let go of it, but it still stuck to his space mitten. He picked up a stone quickly and tried to scrape it off, but it seemed to be glued to the metal. “Jakes,” he called.

“I’m coming. I saw the whole thing,” Jakes said. “Did you have to grab that stuff?”

“No,” Bob admitted. “And if you can’t get it free, I’ll expect you and Juan to leave me here. It was my own blunder.”

Simon had also picked up a couple of rocks and was working, trying to free Bob without touching the stuff. “Aw, come off it. I guess I’d have to see what was underneath, too. Hey, this stuff is really stuck!”

He reached for a knife in the pocket of his suit, but Bob stopped him. “Don’t. The stuff doesn’t stick to rock, so it must grab metal, like the mitten here. You’re going to have to use that knife to cut off my sleeve.”

He was already working his arm out of the sleeve of the suit. His eyes swung up toward the empty space above, instinctively looking for alien ships, and his heart was beating more rapidly than it should. But he couldn’t let the others see that he was scared.

Jakes caught the sleeve at once, and gave it a quick, tight twist. “Hold it,” he told Juan. Then he began sawing at the tough fabric below it. He was sweating, too, and probably as scared as Bob, but his voice was steadier than usual, and his hands didn’t shake.

Finally, the sleeve was cut through. There was a slow leak through it, in spite of the twist, but the tank supply made up for that. Jakes yanked out a patch and adhesive, and doubled it over the cut, smearing it with the gooey adhesive. He waited for it to boil dry in the vacuum, and let go of the sleeve.

Probably it leaked a little now, but it would hold. Bob nodded his thanks, and Jakes shrugged, his face flushing. Then they swung about quickly toward the ship. But managing over the ground with one hand held against his side was worse than Bob had thought. He found that it ruined his balance. Simon watched for a second, and then moved to the other side, locking arms with him.

It seemed to take forever to get back to the Icarius, and probably did take them several minutes. The grapples on their shoes were already dulling a little, making progress more difficult.

Juan was already in when they reached the ship. Jakes shoved Bob toward the lock, and he didn’t argue. By custom, a man with an injury or a defective space suit got all consideration.

He moved through the lock as rapidly as he could and began tearing the suit off quickly. A minute later, Jakes came in, already unzipping. He leaped for the pilot’s seat, and then stopped.

“Bob, maybe you’re right. Maybe we should stop playing a lone hand. Get on the phone and call the Fleet.”

“They can’t get here any faster than we can get back,” Bob pointed out. “While we’re sitting here, we could just as well be heading back to Outpost.”

Juan shook his head. “No, Bob, I think Simon has himself a point. Look, we are a white ship and we are on white ground here—very hard to see. Also, on all sides are boulders almost as tall as we. In space, we could be found by radar, but here I think we might hide.”

“Besides, they probably expect a big Navy tug, and won’t even bother looking for us,” Jakes added.

In a way, their case made good sense. But Bob shook his head. “Call the Fleet if you want, Simon, but I won’t. We got ourselves into it by disobeying orders. Now it’s up to us to get out.”

“A good old Navy saying, I suppose,” Jakes sneered.

“It is,” Bob told him. “You can’t play both sides of the fence. You either follow the rules or go on your own. But in this case, it’s something else. If this trap was set here, it must have been because they wanted one of our Navy ships, just as we wanted theirs. We’d be playing right into their hands; even a cruiser would be worth a lot more to them than the Icarius. And besides, if the Navy came out for us, how many men would get killed in this trap?”

“You’re just scared to stay here. Afraid one of your black ships might come down for you,”

Jakes told him.

“Sure,” Bob admitted. “I’m plenty scared of that. But what are you afraid of—going out where they can see you?”

“Vote,” Juan suggested. The others nodded, and he went on. “Thumbs up, we go back.

Thumbs down, we stay here.”

Bob stuck his thumb up at once, and Simon hesitated. Then his own thumb went up. Juan shrugged and made no attempt to state his wishes. The decision was made and he’d go along with it.

Simon reached for the throttle again, but this time Bob stopped him. “You’re half right, though. We should notify the Fleet. If they saw us come here, they may have spotted what we were after and be getting ready to send out tugs, or some sort of ships. We’d better tell them it’s a fake, and let them know what they’re up against.”

Juan nodded quickly at that, and Jakes made no objections, though he obviously didn’t like the wasted time, now that they were about to head back. He handed over the microphone to Bob, and set the beam indicator toward Outpost. Bob sent in the standard distress warning signal, together with their identification.

Wallingford’s voice answered, cutting through the usual red tape. Obviously, the departure of the Icarius had not only been noticed, but had been followed up and brought to the top brass at once. He must have had a line open to Communications every minute.

“All right, Ensign, report.”

Bob had begun that as soon as he was acknowledged, since it took several seconds for the signal to travel to Outpost. He summed it up as quickly as possible.

Wallingford’s voice came back quickly. “Right. I’m recalling all ships that were headed for your mock-up ship. Consider yourselves under arrest, but get back here as quickly as you can. And good luck!”

Bob cut off, and suddenly noticed that Jakes wasn’t there. He turned to see Jakes getting into a suit, fumbling in his effort for haste.

“Darned towrope,” Simon said as he fought with the zipper. “Forgot to unhitch it. Without weight at the other end, it’d swing right into the rocks. Might wreck us.” He got the zipper closed, and reached for the helmet. “All ships recalled, we’re under arrest, and he wishes us good luck! Phooey!”

He was going through the lock a second later. They moved to the viewport to watch him come out and dash for the hitch that held the towline to the ship. Again, his fingers were clumsy with an attempt at speed. He stamped one foot, then had to catch himself quickly as he started to drift upward. Then he stopped, looked up at them, and grinned. Bob knew he was simply trying to force himself to relax. It seemed to work. This time, he unsnapped the line, and sprang back to the lock.

Bob moved forward to help him off with the suit, and they were ready to take off again. But a lot of time had been wasted since they’d discovered the trap. They were a fine bunch of heroes, Bob thought bitterly. They practically needed a nursemaid.

The radar screen snapped on, and Jakes reached for the throttle. Then he gasped and jerked his hand back. On the screen, three large pips showed up. Straining their eyes, the boys could just make out the black ships that were low on the horizon as the little moon revolved. They hung poised and waiting.

Juan shook his head. “They weren’t there before.”

“Then maybe they’ve just arrived,” Bob guessed, and hoped he was right. “In that case, if we can just wait without being seen until we’re on the other side of the moon, we might get away without being spotted. Besides, we can’t take off now. We’re pointing away from Outpost.

Those ships must be using this moon as a shield to keep them out of the spotting screens at Communications.”

The black shapes seemed to rise slowly, higher as the moon rotated, and then to begin sinking. Each second took longer than any second Bob had experienced, and his stomach was sick with the strain of waiting. But he forced himself to seem as cool as he could.

“Nice picture,” Simon broke the silence. “We probably get wiped out. If we don’t, we go back under arrest.”

“What will they do to us, in this being under arrest?” Juan asked.

Bob shook his head. “Nothing much. Don’t listen to Simon. When Wallingford told us to consider ourselves under arrest, but to get back as soon as we could, he was trying to pass on the word that we didn’t have to worry. We broke the rules, but we did keep Navy ships from spotting this and walking into a trap. So we’ll probably get a bawling out and be confined to quarters for a while.”

Bob hoped he was right, at least. But still he wasn’t entirely sure. The warning they’d radioed back would count in their favor, of course. But the Navy during wartime was different from the Navy he knew.

He glanced nervously at the screen, where the ships were almost gone from sight.

Apparently they hadn’t

moved. If the Icarius hadn’t been spotted, all might yet go off as it should. And it seemed the ships hadn’t seen them. The logical tune to strike would have been while they were turned away from Outpost.

Now the radar screen began to register the marker pip broadcast from the base. They were swinging around to face Outpost. Jakes fingered the controls nervously, but he knew it was still too soon. He licked his lips, and kept his eyes glued on the screen as the beacon pip crossed it slowly toward the center.

Juan seemed more nervous than Bob or Jakes, but he managed to smile and shrug in a pretense of courage. It was Simon who finally admitted the truth. “I’m scared silly.”

“Me too,” Bob admitted, glad for the chance to stop pretending. His throat was dry, and his breath ached from holding it in. Then, amazingly, the admission of his fright seemed to make him feel better.

“Dead center,” Jakes said suddenly. His fingers bit down on the throttle, and the Icarius seemed to jump into the air as if thrown from a catapult.

It was hard to see the screen, but Bob somehow kept his eyes focused on it. It showed nothing but the mark from the beacon. “Better overshoot than reverse too soon,” he suggested thickly.

Simon’s muffled grunt was mixed with blood roaring in Bob’s ears. “Yeah… yeah, I figured on that. If we get that far. Maybe we will.”

They were half a minute off the moon when the first of the pips hit the screen, just at the edge. Juan cried out at the same tune Bob saw them increase from one to three. The black ships were coming out from behind the moonlet, probably deciding to search it thoroughly.

Their course didn’t look as if they had spotted the little Icarius, though that seemed hard to believe.

“Maybe there’s time to drop back,” he gasped.

Jakes hit the switches, and snapped the Icarius over sharply, then cut on the throttle again.

But they’d built

up enough speed to keep drifting outward for some time before the Icarius began moving back toward the moon. There wouldn’t be time for them to land where they had been, even if the ships didn’t see the small blue flame of their exhaust, or spot them in some electronic device.

Only one thing was left to do, and that was to try to dart around to the side, and somehow get the moon between them again. Jakes was working the controls, his face covered with sweat. This close to a body even the size of the little moon was no place for comfortable navigation, and the three ships on the screen made it a lot harder. He was trying to keep his jets from blasting toward them as much as possible, to increase the chance of not being seen.

Even over the fear that gripped him, Bob felt a sudden thrill of admiration at the way Jakes handled the ship. He’d seen the crack pilots of the Fleet on fancy maneuvers, but he hadn’t seen stunting to equal what Jakes was going through. It would be a shame if it was all useless in the end. Shame? It’d be a lot more than that. Bob could remember the way the blue balls of lightning had exploded inside the ships of Wing Nine.

They seemed about to make it, though. The three pips were going down on the screen again, and the Icarius was reaching some sort of balance that didn’t take constant juggling with the steering jets. If the ships didn’t spot them for a few seconds more they might have a chance.

“Find me some kind of rough valley down there,” Simon gasped. “Just big enough to bury us in. I’ll set her down in anything, if you can spot a good cover.”

The little telescreen showed a wild jumble under them, but nothing in which they could hide.

Bob seemed to remember one big crevasse visible before they first landed and which would do, but he couldn’t spot it.

Then another grunt from Jakes snapped his eyes back to the radar screen. It was too late.

The black ships must have spotted them, since they were now heading straight toward the Icarius, though without the impossible speeds of which they were capable.

They didn’t need to rush. The three inside the little ship were sitting ducks for them.