Invaders of Space

CHAPTER TWO

HE came back to consciousness very gradually. At the beginning it was a dreamy and wholly tranquil sensation. He was aware that he existed, but he had the feeling of a disembodied spirit. His mind worked, but nothing came through his senses for it to work on. He was awake, but without sensory impressions to orient his thoughts. They were confused; not mixed, but dreamlike. He thought with extraordinary vividness but without direction. His mind seemed to go from one thing to another without sequence or purpose. There were flashing pictures, which were memories presenting themselves without arrangement. He smelled things. He saw things. He heard things - all of them totally irrelevant and meaningless. But a part of his mind observed his state. The feeling was like dreaming while knowing that one dreamed.

He vaguely resented the feeling, and he began to oppose it. The ability of his mind to contemplate itself and judge itself - exclusively a talent of the human race - directed the struggle. Horn battled to get his tranquil but kaleidoscopic thoughts under control. He had no distinct purpose, at first. He did not feel that he had a body. He had no immediate experience of possessing arms or legs or eyes or lips. He was a mind in emptiness, and his awareness raced crazily, at first ignoring the struggle of his will to subdue it.

Then he heard something. It was a peculiar jerking pause in a noise he hadn't noticed before. It was as if the noise had almost stopped. But it didn't. It caught and went on again. And then Horn was abruptly and totally awake. He had a body, and cold chills ran down the spine of it. He knew what had happened to him. Part of it he remembered, but the rest he could guess with no trace of uncertainty.

He was in absolute darkness, with the buzzing moan of a failing Riccardo space drive in his ears. He lay upon bales and boxes very indifferently arranged. Something sharp prodded the middle of his back. It would be the corner of a box. There were smells in the air. They were absolutely distinctive. There was the smell of grease and dirt and metal and paint, of shipping cases and wrappings, of things gone putrid and now dried to the point where they were nearly but not quite odourless. And the air had a dead smell. It was tanned air.

The remains of pins-and-needles pricklings were fading away in his legs and arms. He heard, again, the noise whose interruption had wakened him. It was an obsolete space-drive engine in the process of wearing out.

This was the cargo hold of a spaceship. Nowhere else in all the galaxy would there be such abysmal blackness and such a mixture of odours with dead, uncirculated, unfreshened air. He was struggling to rise from among cargo parcels dumped anyhow in the hold. He had been laid on them after being knocked out with a stun pistol in the spaceport gatehouse. The guards there had been either unconscious or dead. He did not remember being brought here, but he knew he'd been abducted, and he knew by what men from what ship. He also knew the ship was in space, with its drive in a condition to make any man's flesh crawl.

No, he hadn't been abducted. He'd been shanghaied. A man has been shanghaied when he's been kidnapped to be made to work, against his will and at tasks he does not choose. He'd been shanghaied to patch the probably unpatchable engines of the space tramp Theban.

And the Theban was in space. It wasn't conceivable that the grid had lifted it off, so the tramp had taken off on emergency lift - possible only to Riccardo engines in spacecraft larger than a spaceboat - and now was somewhere beyond the Formalhaut solar system. The chances of a blown drive had been great. The skipper of the Theban had risked destruction to get off the ground with such engines.

Horn was in a very nasty fix. His captors had broken a whole group of laws; they couldn't put him ashore without exposing themselves to drastic prison terms. In fact, since it was known that the Theban had done what had been done, the ship itself couldn't land anywhere that the news of its irregular behaviour had reached. The patrol was very, very strict about such matters. And besides all that, the ship's engines were in an appalling state. If they blew past cobbling, Horn would die with his abductors when the air gave out.

And Ginny was on the way to Formalhaut to marry him. She'd arrive and find him gone.

He got up, and was dizzy for moments. But then the last prickling traces of the stun pistol's effect went away and he ground his teeth in the blackness. He began to crawl over the bales and boxes of unidentified cargo. The darkness was absolute. The dreary, nerve-racking noise of the wearing-out Riccardo drive came from all sides. Other ship noises came from the fabric of the ship.

Horn crawled, feeling his way, until he came to a metal plate which was the loading hatch in the side of the hold. He began to fumble purposefully to circumnavigate the enclosure which was his prison. He came to a corner and found a door, but it was dogged shut. He pressed his ear against it. It would be impossible to open it from this side, but it opened into the working parts of the ship.

He began to crawl over boxes and bales again, shaking those that could be moved. He found a box in which things shifted with the shaking. He broke the box open. It contained small heavy objects which he identified - guessing - as synthetic-sapphire-lined bearings for some sort of machinery. They'd be worth hundreds of credits apiece because of the beautiful precision of their manufacture. But to Horn they only had the value of being small heavy objects.

He dragged the box to a suitable position, and reassured himself of the position of the door. He sent a small five-pound piece of precision-made equipment crashing against it. It made a most satisfying impact. It echoed and re-echoed through the hold. It would definitely be hearable anywhere on the ship.

A second valuable bearing smashed furiously into the door. Synthetic-sapphire-lined bearings are tough. That, plus their precision, is where their value lies. But to be pitched like a fast baseball into a steel door is an unfair test of toughness. Horn threw another, and another, and another. Each time the noise was like that of an explosion. It was at least as loud as the impact of a sledge-hammer. It would have been noticeable even in a bulk cargo monster of a spaceship. In a ship the size of this, nobody could ignore it.

He had the box practically emptied, so he crawled forward in the blackness and gathered up an armful of the missiles to use over again. He began to throw them once more. Crash! Crash! Crash! Crash!

Someone rapped sharply on the other side of the door. Horn ceased his bombardment. A voice snapped, "What the hell's going on?"

"I want to get out of here," rasped Horn.

A pause; then: "Who the hell are you?" The voice seemed to force a pretence of fury. "A stowaway, eh?"

There was the sound of the door being undogged. The catch loosened. The door opened. The red-headed mate whom Horn had last seen in the spaceport control office appeared. He kicked aside the smashed bearings with a great show of rage.

"Stowaway, eh?" he repeated in a fine tone of menace. "And you want out of here, eh? We'll take care of you!"

Horn had reserved a missile. The light coming through the opened door was not strong, but he could see well enough. There were other figures in the passage outside. He let the five- pound bearing go. If it had hit the mate on the head it would have killed him. If he were hit on the chest, it would have broken his ribs. But it landed in the pit of the mate's stomach, and he folded neatly in the middle and went down, unable even to gasp.

Before the men in the passage could realize what had happened, Horn had pounced on the almost-unconscious mate and found a weapon. It was possibly the same stun pistol that had been used on him. For short ranges, though, a stun pistol is as effective as a blaster, and not nearly as messy.

Horn stood up, the weapon in his hand.

"Back up!" he barked. "I'm talking to your skipper! Move back! Keep ahead of me!"

He marched to the door and through it. The men in the passage had to move fast to keep out of his way. But it was wise to keep them busy thinking about what he might do to them, instead of letting them have time to think of what they could do to him. And besides, there were the engines. No spaceman could ignore the noise they made. It was enough and of just the right kind to provide a full supply of cold chills for the spines of everybody on board the ship.

He swore at the men, crowding them on before him. A steel ladder leading upwards was obviously part of the route to the ship's control room. The retreating, backing men parted and went past it.

"Stay below here!" rasped Horn. "You saw what happened to the mate!"

He went up the ladder with a convincing air of being a man thirsting to get at somebody up above. He went up a level and found himself in the crew's quarters. The next level up would be the galley, the messroom, and the food stores. He saw the galley and the counter where the standard coffee-at-all-hours was served. There was no ship anywhere in the galaxy on which coffee was not available at any time to anybody who wanted it. It was a tradition of space.

The ship's cook was in the galley, gazing at him with open mouth. Horn ignored the man and raced up another companion ladder. Here was the air bank and the air system. The engines' abnormal noise was louder here. The air freshener ran quietly. Horn raced up another ladder still. This was the driveroom, the engineroom of the ship. Horn took a quick, shrewd look about him. The Riccardo drive units were ten times the size of modern engines. They were obviously ancient and remarkably patched.

Horn saw the engineer, a small, scared, wizened man wearing a cap such as liner officers wear. But the gold braid was greenish, and no other part of his attire matched even such shabby elegance. He looked at Horn with a startled air compounded of astonishment and fright. He needed a shave. He looked as if he had long since lost his pride as well as his competence. Horn guessed instantly that he was one of those pathetic survivors of their own usefulness who can be found clinging desperately to jobs they've lost the ability to fill.

Then Horn reached the control room level of the tramp ship. He went briskly in, his weapon out of sight. The skipper of the Theban whirled and stared at him.

Horn said, "I've been trying to figure out how you're going to handle the mess you're in, Captain. It looks like a pretty bad fix. What are your plans for getting out of it?"

The Theban's skipper heaved himself up and out of his chair. He stared almost unbelievingly at Horn, who did not act as a man just awakened from kidnapping should act. He opened his mouth, but Horn forestalled him.

"I passed through the engineroom," said Horn in a matter-of-fact tone, "and it's a sight to make angels weep. This ship needs a new drive entirely. It's likely to blow on you at any instant. What the devil makes you take chances like this?"

"What - what -" The skipper roared. "Who the hell are you? Where'd you come from? If you're a stowaway -"

"Who the hell are you?" asked Horn distastefully. "The skipper of this junkheap, of course. But what else. You know who I am."

The skipper frowned at Horn. It was practically a grimace, and from a man four inches taller and forty pounds heavier it should have been daunting.

"My name's Larsen," he growled. "And if you're a stowaway, you go out an air lock!"

"But I'm not a stowaway," said Horn irritably, "and you know it as well as I do. Talk sense, man! How do you expect to get out of the fix you're in?"

The droning, buzzing noise of engines that should be shut down and overhauled was interrupted. For half a second the noise stopped. It was like a hiccough in the middle of a groan. Then the unpleasant buzzing went on once more. Horn shook his head. He hated to think of engines, even antiquated ones, being worked past the point where they needed attention. It seemed like cruelty.

The Theban's skipper swallowed suddenly. Then he swore. Horn said evenly, "Your engineer's sitting by the engines, waiting for them to crack up. When those little jumps happen, he's been catching the loss-of-cycle hitches. He gets them going again before they can ruin themselves. But he can't keep it up indefinitely!"

Larsen raged, "You go help him! Fix 'em! Get 'em so we can count on 'em!"

"Why?" asked Horn. He made his meaning clear. "What do I get out of it?"

Larsen glowered. He moved slowly and menacingly towards Horn.

"I'm going to knock you around," he announced ferociously, "until you wish you hadn't asked that! And then you'll get at those engines. And you'll fix 'em, because if you don't you go out an air lock. I've put men out of air locks before now. You'll just be the next one!"

Horn looked at him speculatively. He didn't retreat. He didn't cringe. His whole air was that of someone who doesn't exactly grasp what is going on, as Larsen's air was that of a man about to do something he heartily enjoys. He clenched his fists.

Then Horn jumped. He had hit Larsen twice before Larsen realized that anything had begun. He howled with wrath as Horn landed on him a third time; then he charged. His purpose was to get in close, but Horn was already working him over with fists and knees. This was no time for sportsmanship. Larsen was a rough-and-tumble man who outweighed Horn by a good forty pounds. He roared and clinched, and Horn flung the pair of them to the floor and broke the clinch that way. He was up first. This was when he heard the mate dragging himself up the companion ladder, his breathing a discordant honking sound. Horn tried for a knockout on Larsen, who was struggling to rise, but Larsen kicked and Horn's feet went out from under him and he toppled on top of his antagonist.

They were again in a deadly clinch when the mate came staggering and wheezing into the control room. He still gasped and choked, but he saw Horn apparently battling the Theban's skipper to the death and in a position of some advantage. He plucked up the stool beside the ship's computer.

He swung it viciously.

His intentions were of the worst, but only minutes since he'd had a five-pound sapphire-lined bearing hit him in the pit of his stomach. It had had most of the effect of a solar plexus wallop. That effect hadn't worn off. He'd climbed the companion ladders with tremendous effort, gasping futilely for breath. The blow was feeble. Moreover, it was ill directed. And a four- legged stool is not an accurate weapon anyhow.

Horn got a glancing blow alongside his skull. The skipper took the rest. Horn got to his feet, panting, and swung with all the strength he could summon. The red-headed mate went down. He wasn't out completely, but he was no longer a dangerous antagonist.

Horn panted and swallowed, and then he went out of the control room. A moment later he put his head back in.

"You two," he said reasonably, "ought to take time to think things over. If you did manage to kill me, how would you keep your engines running? I'm going down to look at them now."

He went down to the next level. The wizened small engineer looked at him somehow desperately. He sat tensely by the cycle separator, which parted the power going to the Riccardo coils into two direct-current pulsatory signals, pulsing exactly one hundred and eighty degrees out of phase with each other. In a brand-new Riccardo drive it was perfectly foolproof and completely dependable. But in use the phasing coils aged, and they did not age exactly alike. There was a point where differential ageing couldn't be compensated for. A ship's engineer wouldn't let them go past that point, in the days when ships carried engineers and Riccardo drives were the best to be had. In those days new coils were put in during overhaul. But there were no longer many places where outmoded drives could be serviced. They were very, very rare indeed.

"How long have you been standing by like this?" asked Horn, professionally.

The ratty little man said, "Thirty-six hours," in a hopeless voice.

"Since before the landing on Formalhaut," observed Horn. "You're pretty tired. All right. I'm relieving you."

"But-but -"

"You'll be missing the cycle breaks presently," said Horn, "because you'll be too tired to catch them. When you miss one, everything will blow. Get up!"

The little man got up, apprehensively. Horn took his place.

"Tell the cook to send me some coffee," he commanded, "and then get some sleep. Not too much! You'll have to take over again."

The engineer shook visibly. He was frightened, but also he was exhausted. He was in a state where he was liable to commit errors from pure fatigue. He said desperately, "But the skipper -"

"The skipper got me on board to tinker with the engines," said Horn. "It's all right. You get the cook to send me some coffee, and get some rest. Then come back."

Trembling, the engineer went away. Then Horn examined the engines. In the process of training to become a designer of space drives, he'd necessarily learned the history of space engines. He'd absorbed the facts of life about earlier varieties, from those primitive rockets with which men accomplished the incredible, to the Dirac drive which carried the first interstellar ship from one solar system to another. And since Riccardo engines had contained the germs of modern drives, Horn had learned their eccentricities in the process of coming to understand current drives which didn't have drawbacks.

He muttered to himself as he inspected the Theban's engines. There'd been a complete, functioning Riccardo drive where he'd had his technical training. He could compare this seemingly disintegrating mass of patches on patches with his memory of how such a drive had been in the beginning. He could see what had happened. There'd been a series of owners and engineers of the Theban. There were repairs, some done decently and with thoroughness; those were early ones. But there were some that were strictly emergency repairs, never properly replaced by other than emergency materials. They weren't altogether right, and they had side effects producing new emergencies, and these had side effects too. In effect, to Horn the Theban's engines looked as if they'd been mended with strings and glue and the mendings were beginning to fall apart.

Swearing to himself, he did a trivial something here and something else there. One unstable patching job became a little more stable. He reworked an especially perilous temporary repair that should have been replaced at the first possible spaceport. There was a place where two wires at some past time had arced and broken, and the severed ends simply twisted together without even a plastic conductor between them. It appeared miraculous that none of these inadequate patchings had failed before now. The Theban couldn't have had a real engine overhaul in decades.

Presently the red-haired mate came down the companion ladder from the control room. He saw Horn at the engines, and his jaw dropped. He climbed hastily back up to the control room. Seconds later he reappeared with Larsen, the skipper. Horn nodded absent-mindedly at them. It was the one reaction neither of the two could have imagined beforehand. Horn at the engines could be a guarantee of temporary survival. But on the other hand -

"What're you doing there?" growled Larsen.

"I relieved the engineer," said Horn. "He was about to crack up from lack of sleep."

"Lack of liquor, most likely," growled Larsen. "You've got the engines running right?"

"Listen to them," said Horn gently. "Do they sound right? No. I haven't patched them up. I'm finding out what's wrong with them. And I'm waiting for a deal."

He didn't refer to the combat in the control room. Larsen looked malevolent. The red-haired mate looked vengeful but scared. They were in a situation they hadn't planned. Horn had given proof that he wasn't an ordinary, terrifyable sort of man. If he could be scared, he might have been browbeaten into obeying orders. But it was explicit in his behaviour that he could not be cowed. He was a prisoner on the Theban, but in a sense the Theban was at his mercy. He might be forced to make repairs, but only he could tell whether they were repairs or not. The Theban's own engineer couldn't tell. So threats to Horn could mean only so much. But if he repaired the engines permanently, his captors would have no reason not to kill him, and motives of prudence to do so. So it wasn't likely he'd get the engines far from the edge of disaster. He had to be placated and kept placated - but he'd know his captors would never quite dare to release him. It wasn't an easily resolvable problem.

Larsen swore.

"What'd d'you mean a deal? What kind of deal?"

"You figure one out," said Horn pleasantly, "and I'll listen to it. You want this scrapheap fixed up. I suppose you've something specific in mind, or you'd have stayed aground on Formalhaut for repairs. But you didn't. I can make these engines stagger along for a strictly limited length of time. So far I haven't done that, and I won't unless I have reason to. I want to get off this ship and you want it in good working order. You figure out a deal that will satisfy both of us, and I'll listen to it."

Larsen's face grew purple. Horn's infuriating assumption that terms must be made with him - and the fact that he had a good argument - reignited his burning fury over the battle in the control room and its unsatisfying conclusion. He took one step towards Horn.

Horn did something Larsen didn't see. The moaning sound of the engines rose in pitch and volume until it was like a shriek. Then Horn made gestures, and seemingly agitated adjustments, while the purplish tint of Larsen's face faded to a sickly pallor. The red-headed mate made an indecisive movement as if about to wring his hands.

Finally Horn appeared to get the cause of the noise in hand. With an air of complete, tense absorption, he shifted controls. The shriek decreased in loudness and then went down in pitch, and presently the sound of the engines was almost what it had been before. But there was a new, warbling, burbling sound added to what had been heard before.

Horn wiped off his forehead as if it were wet with sudden cold sweat. Larsen and the red- haired mate stood frozen in their tracks.

"That," said Horn, "was close! I really think you'd better get this ship aground somewhere and let me do a little real work on those engines. And while you're doing that, you might figure out a deal to justify my helping you."

He nodded, but again seemed to wipe sweat off his face. Then he added, "And you might tell the cook to send me some coffee."

He leaned back in his seat with an air of vigilance, seeming to pay no more attention to the two at the foot of the companion ladder. Instead, he frowningly listened to the slightly changed noise of the engines.

Larsen muttered to the mate, then turned and went back up to the control room. The mate went below to the galley. Horn did not turn his head.

A little later the cook came up with coffee. There was also a plate with food on it. Horn accepted it abstractedly. The cook said uneasily, "That noise just now - what happened?"

"We almost had it," said Horn, "but I caught it in time. These engines are in horrible shape! Running them anywhere except to a repair shop is just plain crazy."

The cook licked his lips. There'd been space travel for a long, long while now, but there were still cases of ships vanishing in space. Between spaceports the distance might be only days of journeying in overdrive, but in miles it was billions or trillions. And a ship which became helpless in space through the failure of its engines couldn't even hope to be found again. Its crew were dead the instant the failure occurred, though they might move about and go mad from despair.

Or they could take to the boats, of course. But that wasn't necessarily much better. Lifeboats didn't carry enough air for space journeys of indefinite length. Or enough fuel, either.

"Do you think you can keep the engines running?" asked the cook uncertainly.

"I can keep them going longer than your engineer can," said Horn. "But how long that will be, or when time will run out, I can't tell you."

The cook shivered. "The skipper's a tough man. When he starts to do something -"

"Keeping these engines going is a tough job," said Horn.

The cook licked his lips. "We're headed for Hermas now. Will we get there?"

Horn grunted. "Hermas? Why? It's only a beacon. There was a manned station on it once, but they pulled the crew off long ago. Why go there?"

The cook watched as Horn sipped his coffee. "We were goin' there before. We landed at Carola, and we was goin' to land on Hermas, but the engines acted up. The engineer said he couldn't fix 'em. The skipper beat the devil outa him when he said we had to go to Formalhaut for repairs. But we went. Then we couldn't get the repairs quick enough, so you got picked up to make 'em. Now we're headin' back. The skipper's in a hurry. He took a chance on you to save time."

Horn stiffened. Carola and Herinas were beacon planets on the ship lane the Danae would follow to Formalhaut. Ginny would be on the Danae, and he'd be on Hermas when her ship went by. But Larsen was in a furious hurry to get to Hermas by the time the Danae did pass by. It could be coincidence, but Horn was suspicious of fate and destiny, which had promised him Ginny to be with for always, and could mock him -

Why should Larsen want the Theban at a particular place the Danae would pass, at exactly the time the Danae should go by? And why had the Theban landed on Carola? "What are you going to Hermas for?" demanded Horn. "Or Carola? They're beacons, nothing more. They're uninhabited; there's nothing to go there for. And what's the hurry?"

The cook said uneasily, "The skipper don't do things without a good reason."

He went away, more than a little scared by Horn's refusal to guarantee the engines' indefinite operation. He vanished down the ladder to the air room and the galley below that.

Horn found himself tense all over. He'd been worried about Ginny before he was shanghaied. He'd imagined things happening to the Danae, and hence to Ginny, all along the light years of distance between every port and beacon of the ship lanes the Danae would follow. Even the fact that he'd been shanghaied had been more enraging because it meant he wouldn't be at the spaceport to meet Ginny. He'd considered his own danger as a possible cause of distress to Ginny. But this suggested that Ginny was in greater danger than himself!

He couldn't be sure of it, of course. It might be pure accident that a skipper who wouldn't stop at kidnapping had plans for which he risked the lives of everybody aboard his ship, and that those plans required him to be at a place at the time Ginny passed by it. It could be coincidence and nothing more. But Horn had even been worrying about the normal risks of interstellar travelling for Ginny. It was inevitable that he would feel a desperate anxiety now.

It was actually something to worry about. The Danae would normally break out of overdrive both at Carola and at Hermas. She wouldn't land on either, of course. They were simply the beacons on one of the space lanes that had been surveyed and declared safe for space traffic. There were neither meteor streams nor dust clouds along this path. There were no dark stars to be watched for.

So ships followed those lanes with pious care, painstakingly coming out of overdrive at each beacon to verify that they were on course and - should any new danger have developed - to receive recorded warnings of it. There were beacons on inhabited worlds as well as on planets of no other use to humanity. Each beacon was fuelled for years and steadily sent out signals, by Wrangel waves, which could be picked up by a ship even in overdrive. The Danae would depend on such planet falls to be assured of its safety on the way. But the Theban -

Larsen had violated spaceport rules in taking off from Formalhaut without clearance. He'd violated other laws by kidnapping Horn. And there were the guards at the gate, and perhaps the grid operator. He'd done these things to be where the Danae would pass, at the time when it would come out of overdrive.

Horn's flesh crawled. He was not unduly disturbed by the knowledge that Larsen must plan to kill him rather than let him report his abduction. Temporarily, though, Larsen needed him alive and nursing the engines. But Horn dismissed his own situation because he was frantically absorbed in trying to figure out Larsen's plan as it affected Ginny.

Larsen came down the companion ladder from the control room. He scowled at Horn. "Look here!" he rasped. "You want a deal? Okay, try this. Join up with us in this business I'm working, and there'll be two million credits in it for you. Two million! The rest's for us. You keep the engines going, and you get two million in interstellar credit notes when we're a month's ship run away from Hermas. That's the deal. I'm giving you the engineer's cut. He's no good; he goes out an air lock sooner or later. How about it?"

Horn pretended to think it over. "I'll let you know," he said with some reserve. "Let me find out what shape the engines are in. And I'd better know what the business is."

Larsen clenched and unclenched his hands. "Take it or leave it!" he rasped. "But first figure out what happens if you leave it."

He went up the companion ladder. Horn felt as if he were growing very pale. It wasn't likely that Larsen would keep any bargain with a man he'd shanghaied, and who could make trouble for him if he talked. But the offer was almost mockingly extravagant. In fact, it was incredible. There were many supposedly respectable men who would commit any crime for a lot less than two million credits. And Horn already had an idea that on the Theban the price of a murder would be very much less. Very, very much less!

The value of the lives on the Danae, including Ginny's wouldn't be much either. Not the way Larsen would look at it.