The Mysterious Planet

CHAPTER 11 Bound for Planet X

“ONLY ONE CHANCE,” Simon gasped. The strain of trying to maneuver under such an acceleration pressure was telling on him. But his hands were still in complete mastery of the controls.

He flipped the ship further over, using the full strength of the steering jets, and went skimming over the little moon, forcing the Icarius into a power curve that shot her out of the sight of the three ships. There would, however, be no time for a careful landing before they caught up. Bob couldn’t see any chance.

Simon’s eyes were glued to the screen, though, and he was cutting almost entirely around the moon. It required a constant turning with the steering rockets to swing the main jet off course enough to keep the circle going.

Ahead of them, the mock-up ship suddenly appeared. Simon headed straight for it. As it came near, he forced the Icarius down until she was almost skimming the ground, and began braking furiously. The mock-up swelled in the screen—and behind it lay a mass of ugly boulders. Bob ducked instinctively—or tried to; the pressure in the cushion kept him from doing more than nodding his head.

Something flipped across the observation port. There was a simultaneous blast from the braking rockets, and the Icarius gave a screech as her bottom scraped rock. Then she was still.

They were inside the mock-up, placed there almost as if Simon had been a hand and the ship a ball to be dropped into a pocket. Bob sighed, and almost relaxed. It was logical—and the last thing in the world he would have thought of doing. But it was the only really good cover on the whole moon—and perhaps the last place where the aliens would look for them.

Now some of Simon’s cockiness came back. “How was that for a landing, boy? Did the Academy make or not make a mistake?”

“Maybe they did,” Bob had to admit. “I don’t care. What I want to know is how we’re going to get out.”

“No trouble, I think. That stuff stuck to metal, but it didn’t seem to bother anything else. And the Icarius has a porcelain glaze all over her. Anyhow, I don’t think the stuff is tough enough to worry a set of hydrogen rockets.”

Bob shook his head. “I didn’t mean that. I mean that we may not be found here, but we still are no nearer getting back to Outpost than before. We can’t stay here forever.”

“We can stay for a month at least,” Simon told him. “I keep her pretty well stocked. Juan, you’re pretty good at heating things. Want to fix up a lunch?”

Juan got out of his seat, still looking worried, and began opening lockers and taking out whatever struck his fancy. Most of the cans were of the type which heated the food automatically when a button on top was pressed, and then popped open when it was ready.

He selected three of these, and three bulbs of cold tea. Eating here would be easier than in no gravity, but not too much.

The chief trouble with their hide-out, Bob decided, was that they couldn’t look out. The blast of the braking rockets had apparently blown the tough fabric up as the ship went through, and it had settled back again. The best plastic fabrics known to men would have been completely consumed, but this stuff seemed to have almost unlimited tolerance to heat, cold, pressure and almost everything else. They were walled in thoroughly.

Reaction set in as he realized they might actually be safe for a while. His hands shook as he took the warm can from Juan, and he noticed that Simon could hardly hold his. But that could be partly sheer physical strain. Operating those controls as he had done against top acceleration pressure must have strained bis muscles to the limit.

“They’ll hardly hang around a month so near Outpost,” Bob decided finally. “If we can stick it out without being found for a few hours, they’ll probably go away.”

“Yeah.” Simon had given up trying to control his muscles. He had found a lever that wasn’t present on regulation acceleration chairs and pressed it, to let his seat slope back. Now he half lay on it, sipping at the tea and trying to relax.

“Yeah,” he repeated. “If we last a few hours, we’ll be all right, I guess. I wish I knew where those aliens are right now.”

“You could try the radar,” Juan suggested. “It should go through this cloth, should it not?”

“It might. But I don’t know whether they can detect it or not. Better leave it off.” Simon rolled over and bent his face down, trying to line up the port and his eye in such a way that he could see through the faint slit near the bottom of the mock-up they were in. He gave up.

The inability to see what was going on began to get on their nerves sooner than Bob would have expected. They knew that the black ships were probably somewhere around, and they suspected that the aliens might have ways of detecting them of which they knew nothing. But they couldn’t be sure.

Finally, Jakes got up and began straightening up the slight mess their eating had made.

Juan started to help, but Simon shook his head. “We’d better stay in our seats. If we have to take off, it’ll be pretty sudden.”

“You can’t take off,” Bob told him. “You’d run smack into those boulders ahead.”

Jakes frowned and nodded slowly. “Hey, that’s right. I forgot all about them. We’d better swing the Icarius around, and do it quick. Shouldn’t be too heavy here.”

That seemed to be the only answer, and they got into their space suits again, which seemed to be a regular job on this moon. Outside, they saw that there was plenty of room for the maneuver under the tent-like dome. And the whole ship shouldn’t weigh enough on this moon to bother them.

But the force of inertia was as strong as ever. Here, a man could probably lift a thousand pounds with his little finger. But he couldn’t have jerked it up, any more than on Earth. The old law that things resist change of motion with a force proportional to their mass—not merely their weight—still applied. The Icarius had a motion of zero, and changing it to anything else took a lot of work and effort. Even with the light weight, there was also some friction working against them—and almost none in their favor to hold them down.

Bob finally solved it by fastening a line to the ship and having the three brace themselves against one of the slim metal supports for the mock-up. It took minutes of straining at the cord to get the ship into a slow motion, barely visible to their eyes, but it did begin turning.

And at least there was no sign outside, as there would have been if they’d slewed her around with the steering jets.

Once in motion, it wasn’t hard to overcome friction here enough to keep her turning. But at the end, it proved equally hard to stop the ship, and a long process of trial and error was needed to get her lined up to suit Simon Jakes.

This tune, they were all sweating from honest labor. Juan started back inside, but Simon and Bob both had the same idea. They flopped down on their stomachs and began peering out under the slit at the bottom of the fabric. When they were close to it—but carefully not touching it—they could see a fair amount of the rocky terrain around them.

Bob slid over beside Jakes and touched helmets with him, not trusting the use of radio, which might carry far enough for the black ships to detect. “We could leave one man outside here to keep guard. And leave the outer seal of the air lock open. Then if things happen, he could make a dash for it, perhaps bang on the inner lock and let the others know it was time to do something. You could take off while I was getting through the inner lock.”

“And you could get squashed flat under the acceleration pressure,” Simon answered.

“Nope. But we might let the air out of the ship, and keep our space suits on. Then we could keep both seals of the lock open.”

This seemed like the best idea. Bob ducked his head down and looked out again.

For a second, his heart seemed to explode. Coming down gently as a feather and almost touching the surface was the hull of a great black ship! As he swiveled his gaze, he saw another—and beyond that a third. They were arranged together at the side of the mock-up, and there was no question but what they were coming with a full knowledge of where the Icarius was hidden!

He touched Jakes and pointed, unable to speak. The older boy glimpsed the ship and jerked. “Back,” he said hoarsely. He began scrambling backward over the ground, too startled to think of turning around or getting to his feet. Bob yanked him up, and they scrambled as swiftly as they could toward the lock.

Simon was the logical one to go through first, and he made no protests as Bob gave him a push. The lock moved through its cycle slowly. Then Bob was in it, and finally emerging.

Jakes’s white face was already free of his helmet. “Strip,” he said in a whisper that was as natural as it was ridiculous. “Work the ship better without the suit.”

He left the suit lying where it was, Bob following his example. Now there was no reason for not using the radar. Juan had it turned on, and it showed the three ships among the boulders, mixed with the skeletal framework of the mock-up. Radar never gave a completely clear picture, but something was apparently opening on one of the ships, as if a landing party was in progress.

“Ready,” Jakes said. He glanced back, and then set his controls carefully before releasing the lock that kept them inactive.

Bob was getting used to taking off at the full power of the jets. But this had the added flavor of a high scream from the bottom of the ship as it slid over the rough ground, and the view of waiting rocks just ahead, which they barely missed; but the rocks were far behind before this realization struck home. The ship came upward slowly, straightened, and then leaped out into space.

“Where?” Simon asked.

“Outpost,” Bob decided instantly. It was the nearest place and the safest. They might have thrown off some pursuit by twisting around and heading down toward Neptune, but that lay millions of miles away, and the aliens obviously had some means of detecting them.

“If they’re putting out landing parties, we have some chance,” he decided. “It may take a few minutes for them to realize what is going on and get all their men— or whatever they are—back.”

Then he saw that his hopes were futile. On the screen, he spotted one of the big ships lifting easily. As he watched, the other two also rose toward them. They were already a fair distance away but that wouldn’t mean much if these ships could travel as the other aliens had done.

At first, it didn’t seem probable, since they came up from the surface at a leisurely clip, and seemed to be moving about in an aimless fashion. “Looking for us,” Jakes guessed. “Either that or making sure we didn’t

leave someone behind.”

It looked more like the latter. The Icarius continued to gain distance, while the black ships moved about over the surface, as if directing some type of searching beam downward. Then they all clumped together, and began moving straight upward, toward the Icarius.

Jakes groaned and tried to nurse another bit of speed out of his straining jets. But they were already at maximum, and nothing more could be done.

The black ships seemed to be thinking things over for a moment more. Then one of them leaped into an acceleration about twice what the Icarius could pull, others seconding the move. The distance began to narrow, more and more rapidly.

They were still less than a fifth of the way to Outpost, and their chances were growing slimmer every second. There was no way to outrun the ships. There was no basis for comparison—it was something like a snail trying to outrun an eagle.

Again the black ships increased their acceleration, until it must have been nearly fifty gravities. Bob hadn’t quite believed his memory of the other tunes, but he believed this. He didn’t want to, but there was no way to deny it. The ships were moving toward the Icarius at a rate which made the result a matter of a minute or less.

Jakes cut his acceleration. The black ships came up behind and matched course and speed instantly. Two of them spread out, and the third suddenly leaped ahead of the Icarius and again matched course. The position of the Planet X ships was an equilateral triangle, with the Icarius dead center.

Jakes hit the controls, and shot downward abruptly, curving off to the side as he did so. The other ships were delayed a split second in following him, but a second later they repeated their maneuver of putting him in the center. Then he tried going up. This time the triangle they formed was smaller.

It grew smaller with each maneuver, until the ships were almost touching the Icarius. Seen through one of the ports, they were huge, without a sign of a break in their smooth hulls.

There were no portholes, though radar had really made these needless for any ships. And there was no evidence of any driving mechanism. They blasted their way through space.

Somehow, they simply moved.

The next time Simon tried to move, he found that nothing happened. One of the big ships was touching the Icarius, and it seemed to be locking them down, though no mechanical contact of magnetic or hooked grapple had been tried.

The leading ship swung over slowly, until the bottom of one end was in line with the Icarius. It began backing up smoothly, while a hatch, twice big enough to engulf the little ship completely, opened in it.

Jakes waited until the sides of the huge opening were at the port, and then cut on his braking rockets. They shot out of the nose of the Icarius, with a blast that should have shriveled anything they touched. But nothing happened. The great ship went on backing around them, until they were completely engulfed.

In the viewing screen from the rear, the boys saw the big doors began to shut again. Bob knew now how Jonah had felt when the whale had swallowed him. This looked exactly like such a huge mouth closing down over them.

Then something seemed to suck them sharply downward and they landed with a shrill clang of metal against what was probably the floor of the huge chamber that had swallowed them.

Jakes cut on the lights of the ship trying to make out something of the place where they had been swallowed. But it seemed to be nothing but a room ten times the size of the whole Icarius, built of black metal, and without any other features.

The jets of the Icarius had obviously been running all along, since Jakes suddenly cut them off. But it made no difference. Then a feeling of weight began to press at their bodies, rising until it had reached about Earth-normal. It stayed there.

“Here we go, bound for Planet X,” Jakes muttered. “And right now, since we can’t do anything, I’m going to sleep. I’m dead.”

He touched the button that turned the seat into a rough couch, and lay back. Bob tried the same, and found it more comfortable than most of the beds in which he had slept. He was surprised to find his own eyes heavy. It didn’t seem possible that he could actually fall asleep. But somehow, after the long flight, the fact that there was now nothing at all they could do seemed to leave him dulled and drowsy.

His last thought was a sudden wonder about what would happen to them if the alien ship ever tried jumping up to her top gravity of acceleration. But there was nothing he could do about that either!