CHAPTER THREE
Destination—Death!
“CQX! CQX! Calling Maid of Mercury!”
Saul Duncan looked up from the mike. “No answer. Their radio’s dead.”
“Your wife did her job,” Olcott grunted, fingering his mustache. He had regained his usual impassivity, though Hartman, in the background, had not. The scientist, without his daily quart of khlar, was a nervous wreck, puffing cigarette after cigarette in a vain attempt to calm himself.
“There she is.” Duncan nodded at the visiplate, where the bulk of the Maid lay, occulting stars. “We’ll use visual signals. First, though, we’ll have to—”
His fingers moved swiftly. A four-inch blaster cannon sent its bolt of electronic energy ravening through space, across the Maid’s bow. Lights on the cruiser’s hull blinked into rainbow colors.
Paralleling the Maid, steadily drawing closer, the smaller ship kept on its course.
Duncan said, “They noticed that. They’ll be watching the visiplate—”
“What are you telling them?”
“To send over the radium, or we’ll blast ’em to hell.”
“Good!”
But Duncan’s lips were tight. He was bluffing, of course. Blasting an unarmed ship full of passengers—well, if it came to a showdown, he could not do it, even if Andrea had not been on board. However, the Maid’s captain couldn’t know that. He wouldn’t dare take the risk.
Answering lights flashed on the larger ship’s hull. Duncan read them aloud with the ease of long practice.
“No radium aboard. Is this a joke?”
“Send another blast,” Olcott suggested.
Duncan’s response was to fire a bolt that melted two of the Maid’s stern tubes into slag. That didn’t harm anyone in the passenger ship, but it showed that he was presumably in earnest. And he had to get Andrea aboard now. She had smashed the radio, and probably was already under arrest. Well—
“Sending radium. Don’t fire again.”
“Send one of your passengers also. Jane Horton.” Andrea was booked under that alias, Olcott had said.
There was a pause. Then—“Jane Horton victim of Plutonians. Must have turned off power in Helmet. Found dead in radio room just before you made contact.”
Saul Duncan’s fingers didn’t move on the keys. Deep within him, something turned into ice. He was hearing a voice, seeing a face, both phantoms, for Andrea was dead.
Andrea was dead.
The words were meaningless.
He became conscious of Olcott at his side, talking angrily.
“What’s wrong? What did they say?”
Duncan looked at Olcott. The dead, frozen fury in the pilot’s eyes halted Olcott in mid-sentence.
Automatically Duncan’s hand moved over the keyboard.
“Send the body to me.”
Then he waited.
On the visiplate was movement. A port gaped in the Maid’s hull, the escape-hatch with which all ships were provided. Based on torpedo-tube principle, powered by magnetic energy, the projector was built to hurl crew or passengers out of the ship’s sphere of attraction. Sometimes the rockets would fail, in which case the vessel would crash on any nearby body. If that danger threatened, a man in a spacesuit, equipped with auxiliary rockets, could survive for days in the void, provided he was not dragged down with the ship. The projector took care of that.
Now, tuned to minimum power, it thrust a bulky object out into space, pushing it toward the cruiser. Gravitation did the rest. The spacesuit dropped toward the smaller vessel, thudded against the hull. Duncan threw a series of hull magnets, one after another, till the suit was at an escape valve.
Five minutes later the space coffin lay at Duncan’s feet.
Through the bars that protected the transparent face-plate he could see Andrea, her long lashes motionless on her cheeks. Duncan’s face was suddenly haggard. Olcott’s voice jarred on his taut nerves.
“What happened? Did they—”
“The Plutonians killed her,” Duncan said. “She turned off her Helmet, and they killed her.”
Hartman was staring at a lead box attached to the spacesuit. “They sent the radium!”
Duncan’s lips twisted in a bitter smile. With a quick movement he went to the controls and turned the cruiser into a new course. On the visiplate, the Maid began to draw away.
Olcott said, “How long will it take us to get back to Earth?”
“We’re not going back.” Duncan’s voice held no emotion.
“What?”
“Andrea’s dead. The Plutonians killed her. You and Hartman helped.”
Olcott’s big body seemed to tense. “Don’t be a fool. What good will it do to murder us? What’s done is done. You—”
“I’m not going to murder you,” Duncan said. “The Plutonians will take care of that.”
“You’re crazy!”
Briefly a flash of murderous fury showed in Duncan’s eyes. He repressed it.
“I’m taking this boat to Pluto. I’m going to blast hell out of the Plutonians. They’ll get us eventually, all of us. That’ll be swell. I don’t want to live very long now. But before I die, I’m going to smash as many of the Plutonians as I can, because they killed Andrea. And you two are going with me, because you got Andrea into this mess.”
Hartman said shakily, “It’s suicide. No ship can get within a million miles of Pluto!”
“This ship can. It’s dead black, with rocket screens. And the Plutonians haven’t found us yet—which proves something. Hold it!” The gun flashed into Duncan’s hand as Olcott jerked forward. “I’ll kill you myself if I have to, but I’d rather let the Plutonians do it.” He motioned the others to the back of the cabin as a light flashed on the board. After a moment Duncan nodded.
“That was the Maid. They managed to repair their radio. Andrea didn’t have time to smash it thoroughly before. They’re talking to a patrol boat.”
Olcott’s teeth showed. “Well?”
“We don’t want to be stopped—now.” Duncan fingered the controls. The bellow of rockets grew louder. A shuddering vibration rocked the little cruiser.
“Not too fast!” Hartman said warningly. “This ship crashed once. It’s still weak.”
For answer Duncan only increased the power. The thunder of the tubes grew deafening. Already they had crossed the Lunar Line, heading outward in the plane of the ecliptic.
Duncan rose and went to the spacesuit that held Andrea’s body. He wrenched the intertron knob free from the Helmet.
“We want no Varra spy here.” The knob was not glowing, and, without power, the Varra was not en rapport with the Helmet, but Duncan was taking no chances.
Grimly he went back to the controls. Hartman and Olcott watched him, vainly trying to fight back their fear.
The heavy, crashing roar of the rockets mounted to a deafening crescendo.