FERRY ROCKET

Edmund Cooper

Enter the SF Gateway …

In the last years of the twentieth century (as Wells might have put it), Gollancz, Britain’s oldest and most distinguished science fiction imprint, created the SF and Fantasy Masterworks series. Dedicated to re-publishing the English language’s finest works of SF and Fantasy, most of which were languishing out of print at the time, they were – and remain – landmark lists, consummately fulfilling the original mission statement:

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Welcome to the new home of Science Fiction & Fantasy. Welcome to the most comprehensive electronic library of classic SFF titles ever assembled.

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Chapter One

PRELUDE TO WOOMERA

THE helicopter swung to the north, beginning the last leg of the journey. Astern, the Adelaide airfield receded into the hazy distance. Below and all ahead lay the hot desolate sea of the Australian bush, an expanse of baked soil mottled with a scant green carpet of spinifex, saltbush and nardoo. Here and there, a warped and stunted tree crouched like a scarred survivor under the burning whip of the sun.

The pilot, tunelessly humming the latest song hit, fed a small coil of steel tape into the helicopter’s electronic brain, then settled back to read his newspaper. To him, the desert was what it always was, and there was nothing new to look at. Being on shuttle service between Adelaide and Woomera City, he often made the trip three or four times a week. He knew the country like the back of his own hand, only more intimately; and had the electronic brain rebelled—as electronic brains sometimes do—he would have been able to complete the trip safely while simultaneously concentrating on the Adelaide Guardian crossword.

The front page of that newspaper lay across his knees. It was dated January 1st, 2050. Black headlines flung out their telegramatic message: Seven Aussies for New Year’s Honours; Caroline to come Down Under; Atom Pile goes up in Brazil.

It was the central item that attracted his attention. Nowadays, Aussies were always getting knighted, and berserk atom piles had about as much news value in the twenty-first century as a train smash had in the quaint old days of the twentieth.

But the monarchy was timeless, and young Queen Caroline the First belonged to the hearts of all her scattered peoples. Besides, didn’t her old dad, King Charles, marry an Australian girl? So why should the British have first claim on her. By rights, she ought to spend six months out of every year with her fifty million subjects in Australia. The pilot brightened at the prospect of Queen Caroline’s visit. It was quite a time since the old country had gone gay.

The thoughts of his two passengers were, however, in quite a different vein. One of them—the man—was filled with an unreasonable mounting excitement as the helicopter made its way across the desert to rocket country, to Woomera City. Philip Shane tried to tell himself that there was no solid reason why he should get up steam, that this was just another job and that, as far as excitement went, it certainly couldn’t touch his last assignment. During last year’s “silly season” the London newspapers had, as usual, thought up a lot of the old gags to amuse their readers. So Shane had been assigned to the old Atlantis ballyhoo. For almost a month, he had lived in a marine tractor unit, crawling about the bed of the ocean, looking for the legendary city. They hadn’t found Atlantis—but they had found the wreck of an old Spanish galleon off the Azores: a treasure ship, laden with gold from the Indies and silver from Peru. It had lain there nearly six centuries, untouched … Boy, that was news! Shane had scooped the whole story, and pushed up the circulation of the London Sunday Sentinel by a quarter of a million. He had also helped bring back five million pounds of treasure-trove. Compared with that, what was a mere trip to the moon? Nevertheless, Shane was excited. It was good to be alive in a world that was just wakening up. If and when he ever considered the world as it was before the end of the twentieth century, he felt depressingly sorry for the men who had lived before science had picked the fascinating lock of the atom.

Radiating his good spirits, Philip Shane glanced sociably at his companion, seated opposite, gazing somewhat moodily through the large porthole on the other side of the cabin. The face, thought Shane, was decidedly familiar. He had first noticed her on the strato-rocket when they were ten minutes out of London. At the touch-down in Colombo, when passengers went to the airfield restaurant, he had tried a few conversational gambits; but the girl, without interest or resentment, had simply stone-walled. She seemed just as preoccupied now as she had been during the whole of the trip to Adelaide. It was a pity, thought Shane flippantly, that one so attractive should be so damnably serious.

The girl was entirely oblivious of Shane’s attentions. She was too busy resenting the fact that she had just given up a thoroughly satisfying job at the Cambridge Children’s Clinic in order to go to the moon. She was busy resenting her father’s curt radiogram: “Need you at Lunar City stop Ferry Thirteen stop Berth arranged stop Scheduled leave Woomera January Third three hundred hours stop Greetings Fabian.”

Claire Scott was not only full of resentment, she was thoroughly annoyed. It was characteristic of her father that he would never give a thought to the necessity for explanations when requiring his daughter—or anyone else, for that matter—to make a two hundred and forty thousand mile journey. Sir Fabian Scott, director of Lunar City and its projected solar power station, was a man who demanded unquestioning loyalty from all who worked with him. What is more, he got it. The team of scientists under his control referred to him familiarly as the Great Dictator. But Scott’s dynamic personality, together with his intellectual brilliance and personal courage, commanded their unqualified respect. If he wanted them to work eighteen hours a day, they cursed him—and worked twenty. If a problem was apparently insoluble, and Sir Fabian needed the answer, his team would grind at it night and day until “the G.D.” got what he wanted. But if Scott drove his men hard, he drove himself harder. “Failure,” he once said, “is excusable—sometimes. But the inability to succeed is unforgivable—always.” He set high standards, but he lived up to them. And in his own life-time, he was already a legend. Two thousand million people had heard of Fabian Scott. They knew him as the scientist responsible for the Commonwealth Space Station. They knew him as the man who first set foot on the moon.

“Yes,” thought Claire Scott, as she gazed down at the Australian desert, “I might as well be angry with him now and get it over. Otherwise, I wouldn’t put it beyond the G.D. to spank me for having tantrums. He understands just about everything, except men and women … Well, this is what comes of having a great man for a father … But what on earth—or on the moon—does he want me to do? She smiled faintly, realising that her fear of the approaching journey to the moon was overshadowed by the fear that she might not be able to fulfil satisfactorily whatever role in his plans Sir Fabian had allotted to her.

Philip Shane noticed her slight smile and chose to interpret it as a sign of encouragement. “Happy New Year!” he said. “The same that I wished you over Egypt and in Colombo. But that was a few thousand miles ago; and now I’ve picked up the bits and I’m trying all over again.”

This time she really did smile. “I’m sorry I’ve been so unsociable. May I return the compliment, Mr.——?”

“Shane, Philip Shane. A normally gregarious example of the sub-species journalist. I have taken a correspondence course in good manners, and have learned that a good newshound never bites attractive young ladies … Well, hardly ever.”

The smile deepened and amusement appeared in her hitherto serious eyes. “I wouldn’t for one moment disbelieve you … How far away is Woomera City, do you think?”

“About forty-five minutes. Look, I’ve got a hunch! Want to make a bet, Miss Enigma?”

“What kind of a bet?”

“Well, we’ve shared the same strato-rocket from London; we’ve shared the same helicopter from Adelaide; and I’ll lay even money that we’ve got the same destination.”

“I have a healthy respect for coincidence,” she remarked. “But I’ll risk ten shillings. Now what?”

Shane said: “Ferry Rocket Thirteen! Correct?”

She took a ten-shilling note from her handbag. Then she said: “Wait a minute! That’s only the transport. What’s the destination?”

“Commonwealth Satellite—then all change for Lunar City.”

“You win. But it was easy money.”

“Not at all,” protested Philip. “A, they don’t usually let journalists loose on the moon. B, women, I’m told, are even more of a rarity in Lunar City. For all I knew, you might just as well have been some rocket man’s wife coming out to the desert to catch up on a bit of lost marriage.”

“The observant journalist would see that I haven’t got a ring.”

“Which, in itself,” remarked Philip blandly, “is somewhat promising. Tell you what, I’ll swop the ten bob you just lost for your name.”

“Do you think it’s worth ten shillings?” she asked innocently.

“I’ll be rash and take the risk. After all, it’s really your money.”

“My name is Scott.”

Philip gasped. “Clair de Lune! Don’t tell me you’re Sir Fabian’s daughter!”

“So I understand, on fairly good authority,” replied Claire dryly. However, she was not altogether displeased by the mild sensation her identity seemed to have caused.

“This,” said Philip, after a moment or two, “is little short of miraculous. This trip to the moon is going to be rather more interesting than I thought.”

“Have you ever met my father?” enquired Claire.

“No.”

“He doesn’t like journalists,” she said, with an air of innocent candour. “In fact, he simply loathes your tribe altogether. That, too, may prove interesting … By the way, I’m not being rude, but who gave you permission to go to Lunar City? I thought Fabian was still restricting entry to essential personnel.”

“Strings are pulled,” explained Philip vaguely. “In a way I’m going more as a kind of historian than a journalist. My job is to piece together the full factual story of Lunar City—not necessarily for the press.”

Claire thought it over, then she said brightly: “Daddy will be amused. He doesn’t like spies.”

“I am not a spy—at least, not in the sense Sir Fabian thinks of spies.”

“Who sent you?” she asked abruptly.

“The Sunday Sentinel.”

“The Sunday Sentinel is hardly likely to want the historical approach,” she remarked coldly. “In fact, salacious snooping seems to be far more appropriate … I remember what the Sentinel tried to do to Fabian’s private life a couple of years ago. First of all, they credited him with a mistress in Woomera, and then they even linked his name with Dr. Margaret Willard’s—simply because she, too, was a member of the first rocket team to reach the moon.”

Her smile disappeared and her grey eyes watched Philip distrustfully.

“Not guilty,” he said lamely. Philip was angry with himself because he knew that he was blushing. “I don’t want to snoop, I don’t want to dig up scandal, but I do want to get the good straight story of what’s going on up there. After all, the public hasn’t yet got over the fact that we actually can land on the moon.”

“I thought you said you were not playing to the gallery this time,” she said quickly.

“I said ‘not necessarily’. Damn it, we’ve got to publish something—but I give you my word it will only be general background stuff.”

She appeared sceptical. “I don’t suppose it matters, anyway. Fabian will probably throw you out on the return rocket.”

“Not if I don’t want to go,” retorted Shane.

Claire laughed. “You evidently don’t know my father.”

“And you evidently don’t know me. I may not have a knighthood, but I can pack a pretty heavy load of obstinacy myself sometimes.”

“We’ll see.” She turned her attention to the window once more, gazing at the monotonous desert rolling beneath them. “I don’t think I should like to spend any length of time in this part of the world,” she said at length.

Philip Shane followed her gaze. “Rocket country,” he said. “I wouldn’t know, myself, but the rocket men tell me you can learn to love it. The air is very clear, and at night I imagine the sky looks just like a tent of stars.”

The phrase “a tent of stars” was curiously evocative. It echoed in her memory. It was the kind of phrase Fabian might use in an unguarded moment. For though her father was, by training, a scientist, he was by temperament a poet. Claire gazed at her companion with renewed interest.

“Do you like solitude?” she asked. “The desert, I mean. Do you think you could stand living out here?”

“I don’t know,” he replied absently. “I like being with people; but it’s nice, once in a while, to buy yourself some time just ‘to stand and stare.’ Life gets rather hectic now and again.”

“I thought all journalists had to sell their souls,” she said slyly.

“Some of us get by with just putting them in pawn,” he said, meeting her light mockery. Then he added suddenly: “Look, Claire, let’s make a deal. Let’s be honest with each other. And let’s be friends. I don’t like fencing unless it’s necessary—and even then I still don’t like it if it happens to be with you.”

Her gaze became quizzical: “Don’t you think you’re being just a little nebulous, Mr. Shane?”

“My friends call me Philip.”

“How interesting—Mr. Shane.”

“All right,” said Philip. “Cards on the table, then. There’s something fishy going on in Lunar City, and I’ve been sent to sniff around.”

“By the Sentinel, of course,” she said tartly, “which has a reputation for smelling smells.”

Philip ignored the taunt. “Officially by the Sentinel,” he corrected. “But unofficially, I’ve got orders from higher up.”

“How utterly thrilling!”

Philip was getting angry. “Look, Miss Scott, I may be an anthropoid ape, but I’m trying to be human. If you think your father’s career is good for a laugh, go ahead. And we’ll all make cracks.”

“So far as I know, we haven’t yet discussed my father’s career,” she retorted icily.

“No, but we’re going to. I said I’d put my cards on the table, and here’s one of them.” He took a letter from the inside pocket of his coat and handed it across to her. Claire glanced at the contents impatiently. Suddenly, the colour drained from her face.

“Now do you think I’m shooting the blarney?” asked Philip.

“But the Prime Minister!” she exclaimed. “Why, he’s one of Fabian’s personal friends. What on earth is happening? What’s it all about?”

“It’s because the P.M. happens to be one of your father’s closest friends that he’s asked me to do this job,” said Philip. “Do you know what’s cooking in the politico-scientific world, or have you had your head stuck in the ground?”

“I think you’d better tell me,” she said contritely.

“In the first place,” said Philip, “this solar power station that your father is building is going to upset the economics of a great many nations. Therefore there must be those who wish the whole project would end in failure.”

“I know that.”

“In view of this,” continued Philip, “our people were prepared for spots of sabotage—you know, the wrong equipment being ferried up; faulty instruments; diluted fuels; and all that.”

“Well?” she said tersely.

“But we were not prepared for a general massacre of scientists—which is what has apparently been taking place in Lunar City.”

“Fabian never said anything in his letters,” she began incredulously.

“I don’t suppose he would,” cut in Philip. “Sir Fabian Scott doesn’t seem to me to be the kind of man to worry his women folk. Nevertheless, that doesn’t alter the facts. And the facts are that within the last six weeks more than a dozen scientists and technicians have met their deaths in Lunar City.”

Claire drew in her breath sharply. “What happened to them?” she asked with a rising note of apprehension in her voice.

“Nothing spectacular,” he answered quickly. “Only the kind of thing that might happen to any space-traveller. The kind of thing that is a normal hazard of the game. That’s what’s so damn puzzling. Everyone up there, I suppose, runs the risk of explosive decompression from a torn space-unit, or suffocation with a faulty oxygen supply. But when accidents like these begin to pile up, taking their toll of picked men, people get to asking questions. And the science people themselves are getting rather bored with the situation. They’re beginning to feel like a flock of wild duck, being picked off by some unseen sportsman.”

“Fabian—he’s all right?” demanded Claire in a shaky voice.

Philip studied her closely as he spoke: “Bears a charmed life, or so I’m told. Sir Fabian himself doesn’t seem to be under fire. It’s the lesser fry that keep handing in their dinner pails. Which strikes one, Philip Shane, as mighty curious. You’d think that whoever was doing the damage would want to go for the head man, wouldn’t you?”

Claire nodded dumbly. Shane decided to try his hand at consolation.

“Cheer up. Both the P.M. and Uncle Philip think there’s some sound reason why nothing has happened to your father, and why nothing will. It’s possible, of course, for the P.M. to be fallible, but Uncle Philip has a hunch that in this case he’s perfectly right … I’m pretty good on intuition, you know. My great-great-grandmother was the last of the Scottish witches.”

“It doesn’t follow that her great-great-grandson is necessarily a wizard,” retorted Claire, trying to restore the conversation to its former lighthearted level.

“I’ve got more up my sleeve,” Philip assured her. “About that deal—are you interested?”

“I haven’t heard what it consists of yet.”

“Briefly this,” he said. “I’ll undertake to tell you all I know, and not to radio back to earth any personal or private information about your father of which you don’t approve. In fact, I’ll let you censor every communication I make.”

“And in return—what?”

“In return you accept my friendship for what it is worth, and try to persuade your father if not to help my superficially journalistic efforts, at least to tolerate them.”

Claire regarded Philip Shane thoughtfully for a moment or two, as if she were trying to probe behind the brown, humorous eyes that confronted her.

Then she said: “It’s a bargain!”

“Shake hands, partner. May neither of us regret it.”

They shook hands gravely.

At that point they were interrupted as the helicopter pilot lumbered into the cabin.

“Greetings, folks,” he began. “Woomera City is about fifteen minutes off … Can you give me a word for ship beginning with V? It’s also a sort of container.”

“Vessel,” said Philip promptly.

“Thanks, cobber.” He waved the Adelaide Guardian at them. “Guess you Britishers are going to lose your Queen for a spell.”

“How come?” enquired Philip politely.

The pilot thumped his newspaper. “It says here that Caroline’s going to come Down Under for a while, and when we Aussies get a hold of her, we ain’t going to let her go so quickly, I can tell you.”

“Want to pinch the English Queen, do you?” asked Philip in a bantering tone.

The pilot, a very beefy Australian, spat his words out in disgust: “English Queen nothing! Why Caroline’s half Aussie, or don’t you know that? You got no right to keep her in that washed-up little country hanging off the edge of Europe. Old King Charles knew what he was doing all right when he got himself an Australian girl. Even her grandma used to spend a couple of months every year here. Why there’s folks back in Chenooga that remember seeing her and Prince Philip when they once gave everyone the slip and rode off by themselves in the bush … You British grab too much. That’s why you lost out on the New Commonwealth deal.”

“Pax, buddy,” laughed Shane. “I’m a Canadian! I know just how you feel. This is the real culprit.” He pointed to Claire. “She’s one of those stodgy British grabbers you were just going to tell me about.”

The pilot turned red. “No offence, Miss,” he mumbled awkwardly. “It’s just that I get proper browned, shuttling across this rocket country. There’s times I feel like I’ve been doing it since the beginning of the world. And then I’ve just got to beef about something. When there’s no one else, I just ball out the electronic brain. And that gets me nowhere—’cept maybe fifty miles off course … For two pins I’d stow away in one of them moon rockets.”

Shane gravely produced two pins. “Brother, you’d be sadly congested,” he said. “They tell me the landscape on the moon is just like the Northern Territory—only more so.”

“Why don’t you take another job?” suggested Claire.

“Can’t leave the perishin’ desert, Miss. Wouldn’t know what to do without it. That’s why I get so burned up, and that’s the truth.”

He nodded in the direction of the helicopter’s course.

“Almost there, now. Time was when Woomera was just a couple of shacks and a few half-witted Limeys blowing themselves to bits with guided missiles. And now it’s a regular city, hopping off point for the C.S.S., and then the moon. Well, that’s progress. Mostly Australian progress … See you later, folks. I got to go and kick that brain into a docile mood for touching down.”

Glancing through the port, Philip and Claire detected a dark irregular lump on the far horizon.

“Woomera coming up,” said Shane.

“It looks rather insignificant, when you see it like this, surrounded by hundreds of miles of desert,” said Claire. “I wonder if those early missile pioneers ever really did think we would eventually conquer space?”

“Humanity hasn’t changed,” said Philip. “Those people had their dreams. Perhaps all the ghosts of the old-time rocket men gather round and watch in wonder when a three-stage rocket goes zooming up towards the stars.”

Claire shivered a little. “That’s the part I’m afraid of,” she said. “I’ve heard some grisly tales about the gravitational force on these ferry rockets.”

“It’s not too bad,” Philip assured her. “They give you a dope salad. You hardly feel a thing—except for the fact that you can’t breath for about fifty seconds when the booster accelerates.”

Suddenly, Claire said: “You were just going to tell me something important before our charming pilot graced us with his presence.”

“Was I?” said Philip. “How did you know?”

“Because your eyes said so.”

Shane laughed. “A damn good job we made that deal. With you around, I wouldn’t appear to have much chance of keeping secrets, anyway.”

Claire was not to be diverted. “Come on, Philip. Spill the beans. If it concerns Fabian, even remotely, I’ve got a right to know.”

“Ever heard of Professor Denis Quarles?” asked Philip casually.

“Haven’t I just! He and Father were forever at each other’s throats ever since Father got permission to begin the sitework at Woomera. He even got his political friends to try to defeat the Special Bill when it went through the Commons.”

“Well,” said Philip, “stop me if you’ve heard this one, but Quarles is going up with us on Rocket Thirteen.”

For a few moments, Claire was speechless. At last she exploded. “But Fabian would never permit it! He loathes the sight of Professor Quarles!”

“This is one thing Sir Fabian can’t stop,” said Philip quietly. “Professor Denis Quarles is a one-man Extraordinary Commission appointed to investigate and report on the project at Lunar City.”

“But that’s impossible!”

“I’m afraid it was inevitable. Quarles has lobbied incessantly to get this job. And this spate of ‘accidents’ at Lunar City has given him his opportunity. Quarles claims the whole thing is an ‘inside job’ and that some top Commonwealth scientist is out to see that the solar power station is never completed.”

“Meaning?” asked Claire tensely.

“Figure it out for yourself. I repeat, quote, top Commonwealth scientist, unquote. The phrase belongs to Quarles. Using his terms of reference, figure it out for yourself.”

Claire trembled with anger. “That man is literally mad,” she hissed. “Why, if he even so much as hinted of anything like that in Fabian’s presence, there’d be murder done.”

“Exactly,” said Philip Shane. “Now you know why the P.M. gave me this job. I don’t look like a policeman, I’m not a scientist, and I’ve theoretically got no other axe to grind. I’m just a dim Fleet Street moron out to get a few tit-bits to feed his Sunday regulars on.”

“Has Professor Quarles been empowered to do anything special in Lunar City?” she asked.

“Only to observe and report.”

“Why don’t they send policemen, if they think all these accidents have been arranged.”

“They have,” said Philip. “And the two policemen concerned—high-ranking ones, I believe—quickly joined the scientists whose deaths they were investigating.”

“I hate to think of Lunar City shrouded in such horrible mystery. The conquest of the moon was Father’s special dream, and now it’s going to be wrecked by—by murderers and men like Professor Quarles.” Claire was very near to tears.

“From what I hear,” said Philip, “it would take rather more than a hydrogen bomb to stop a man like Fabian Scott … Cheer up, Claire. We’ll see what can be done to spike Quarles and all these mysterious accidents.”

Claire’s voice rose shrilly as she spoke: “Fabian once said that whatever men touch they destroy. And it’s true! It’s true. Why couldn’t he be content with building the Space Station? Why did he have to go on and on? He’s done too much, and now they’re out to break him!”

“Nonsense!” said Philip sharply. “He can take care of himself. But it looks to me as if someone’s going to be needed to take care of you.”

Hearing the rough edge in his voice, Claire pulled herself together.

“Damn Woomera! Damn Lunar City! Damn everything!”

“That’s better,” agreed Shane imperturbably. “All men are entirely mad—including helicopter pilots and electronic brains. The hell with science, and back to the stone-age … Look, there’s Woomera in all its glory.”

As they gazed through the port-hole at the growing cluster of workshops, laboratories, warehouses, splayed out to the north of the residential area, the helicopter began to slip sedately down to what might have been a small car park.

It was three o’clock in the afternoon of New Year’s Day, 2050. The sun was hot, and the desert air was still and clear. To the north was twelve hundred miles of bush, more desert, thin grassland and eucalyptus forest—the desolate expanses of the Northern Territory. In the path of the sun was the rest of the great Western Desert. To the east and north lay vast untamed tracts, still bearing the same harsh and rugged features of their own prehistory.

But below the helicopter, below that bright metallic bird, lay the small cluster of buildings that was Woomera City—the haunt of that most recent of all animals, the human being.

There, in the desert solitude, he constructed new and shining toys, and dreamed new dreams. There, on the clear desert nights, groups of these same human animals would sacrifice one of their smooth steel gods, sending him aloft in a red roar of flame.

And then these strange but very human beings would gaze at the tranquil stars, until higher dreams of conquest taunted their proud restless minds.

Chapter Two

FIREWORKS

THE helicopter came to rest on the parking-ground for air-taxis, which lay by the side of a large glass and concrete building. That was the Hotel Orion, half-way house between the civilised world and the Commonwealth Space Station. All the scientists and technicians who at one time or another, journeyed to the moon, would stay at the Orion until the time appointed for their Ferry Rocket to leave the Woomera launching basin.

A porter came out from the hotel and took their luggage while Claire and Philip went through the registration formalities.

Claire was given a room on the first floor, and Philip one on the second. They agreed to freshen up and meet again in half an hour for an early cocktail—which, thought Shane, Claire Scott needed rather badly.

As they made their way through the lounge to the escalator, several interested pairs of eyes observed their progress. A tall, heavy-built man with iron-grey hair, started visibly on seeing Claire. Oblivious of the minor sensation she had caused, she continued on her way, by Philip’s side, eager for the privacy of her own room and the relaxation of a cooling shower.

Philip left her on the first floor and went up to his own room. As hotel rooms go, it was very comfortable, complete with visulator, telephone, vacuum tube and a built-in tele-radiogram, together with a surprisingly large selection of films and records.

As he took a fresh shirt from his travelling case, prior to entering the bathroom, he heard a hiss and plop in the vacuum tray. Going over to the wall, he took the message from its aluminium tube.

Station Controller’s Office,

Rocket Launching Site,

Woomera.                                                                                                                                                                                        1530.01.1.50.

The Station Controller presents his compliments to Mr. Philip Shane, of whose arrival he has now been notified, and requests that Mr. Shane will present for final medical inspection and gravitational conditioning at the above site at 1030.02.1.50 Scheduled departure of Rocket Thirteen remains as yet unaltered.

(signed) W. S. Graves.

Commander, Ferry Rockets.

Philip, after a moment’s thought, went to the visulator and dialled Claire’s room number. For almost a minute, the screen was blank; and then her image appeared. She was wearing an opaque black krylon wrapper. Shane, noticing the oval symmetry of her face, contrasted with the thin shiny garment drawn tightly round her slender body, decided it was just as well that she was only on the visulator, and not actually present.

“Well?” she asked impatiently.

“Sorry to bust in on your toilet,” grinned Philip. “But I’ve just had a chit to go for a medical and the dope salad tomorrow morning. Have they battened on to you yet?”

“It was waiting for me.”

“O.K. See you later … Don’t make yourself too beautiful. Some of the boys out here lead a monastic life. It wouldn’t do to have them absent-mindedly popping rockets off to Venus. Hasta la vista!”

They turned the visulators off together.

Shane, naturally, was ready before Claire. He went down to the lounge to wait for her over a large straight whisky.

“Pardon me,” said a voice behind him, “I don’t wish to pry, but I would be grateful if you would tell me whether the young lady who accompanied you to the hotel is Miss Claire Scott.”

Philip glanced through the bar mirror and saw the same heavy-built man who had watched them go up the escalator.

“The same,” said Philip laconically.

“I wonder what she is doing here?” said the grey-haired man half-aloud.

“Minding her own business, Professor Quarles. Care for a glass of poison?” Philip stared at the professor with a dead-pan face.

Quarles chose to believe that Philip wasn’t being rude, and that he actually did mean whisky.

“Thank you, Mr.——”

“Shane.”

“Thank you, Mr. Shane. It’s a little rash at my age, but diluted alcohol certainly has some advantages.”

Philip called for another drink.

As the professor lifted his glass, Philip raised his own and said: “Here’s to Rocket Thirteen—and may 9G not rest too heavily upon us, Amen.”

The professor’s face went a shade whiter. “Are you, too, going to the Satellite?” he asked.

Philip nodded.

The professor sighed. “I wish the beastly things had a slower rate of acceleration,” he said. “I’m sure the whole business must have a profound effect on the human constitution.”

“From what I hear, you needn’t make the trip if you don’t want,” said Philip heartlessly.

The professor replied with dignity: “Sir, I have been commanded to go to this wretched Lunar City.”

“Yeah,” said Philip dryly. “And I know who blotted the order.”

The professor was becoming slightly nettled by this sarcastically knowledgeable young man. He was tempted to leave, yet at the same time he greatly desired to find out how much Shane knew.

“And may I ask, Mr. Shane, what your function is in this lunar project?”

Philip smiled. “Neutral observer,” he said lightly, “in the Scott-Quarles Wars … As a matter of fact, I represent the Sunday Sentinel, whose readers want to know whether or not the moon is really made of green cheese.”

Before Professor Quarles could reply and formulate his obvious distaste for journalists, Claire made her appearance. She came straight across the lounge to Philip, seeming not to notice or recognise Professor Quarles, or that he was in conversation with Shane.

Philip, glancing quickly at Claire and the professor, said: “Allow me to make the introductions. Miss Scott, may I present Professor Denis Quarles.”

A hard wary look came over Claire’s face. She flashed Philip a curious glance, but nevertheless shook the hand that Quarles offered, while muttering some stiff platitudes.

“Let’s not beat about the bush, Miss Scott,” said Quarles surprisingly. “You know very well, I suppose, the relations that exist between your father and myself. But while I detest Sir Fabian’s methods—to say nothing of his outrageous egotism—I am able to retain professional respect for his scientific achievements. He is perhaps a great man, albeit a misguided one.”

“It is possible that Sir Fabian would reciprocate,” said Claire icily. “But I, not being a scientist, take refuge in purely personal reactions.”

“At least,” said Professor Quarles, with what he hoped was disarming simplicity, “there is no reason why a purely academic controversy should force you and I to be rude to each other, Miss Scott.”

“Like my father,” retorted Claire, “I think that politics and science make a pretty rotten mixture.”

An enigmatic gleam came into the professor’s eyes. “I sincerely hope,” he said slowly “that when I arrive in Lunar City, I shall find that Sir Fabian’s science is still uncontaminated by politics.”

“What do you mean by that?” demanded Claire.

“Exactly what I said.”

“I know what you want to do, but you’ll never destroy my father by fair means.”

“I assure you,” said the Professor satirically, “I have no such melodramatic intentions.”

“Children, children,” cut in Shane reprovingly. “You are disturbing my psychic equilibrium.”

Claire turned to him. “I think you’d better take me in to dinner. Mr. Shane.”

Silently, Philip escorted her to the dining room, leaving Quarles staring after them with an expression in which curiosity mingled with anger.

As they took their places at a small secluded table, Philip remarked: “Bad tactics, my dear. You shouldn’t have given Quarles the hammer until we’d pumped out of him whatever information he has.”

“Don’t ask the impossible,” said Claire wearily. “He’s an unspeakable tick.”

“Ticks have a habit of ticking,” said Philip enigmatically. “However,” he added with a grin, there’ll be plenty of time to make him sit up and beg on the trip to the moon. With the natural assets you’ve got, it wouldn’t demand much energy.”

At that moment there was a tremendous roar, and the entire building shook. A blinding flash of light illuminated the dimmed recesses of the dining room.

Instinctively Shane grabbed Claire and pulled her to the floor, crouching over her, arching his body for protection.

The second shock wave came, and the hardwood floor seemed to ripple like water. There was a harsh cracking sound, and the ceiling above them buckled like cardboard. Small pieces of plaster and concrete danced on the tables; and up above, the twisted tubular steel joists lay exposed where the plaster-faced concrete had fallen.

The shock-wave died. Shane pulled Claire unsteadily to her feet. The two or three other early diners stared about them in a daze. Someone, a man, still lay on the floor, having been knocked unconscious.

“Sounds as if the manager’s been beating his wife again,” said Philip dryly.

“What on earth was it?” asked Claire shakily.

“Perhaps someone has been careless with matches at the Launching Site.”

At that moment, a man came through the door. “It’s all over,” he called reassuringly. They’ve just had a little trouble with Rocket Thirteen’s fuel consignment. Something touched off the underground tanks of hydrazine and nitric acid. But they say they can still keep the schedule.”

“Here’s to Rocket Thirteen,” said Shane softly. “I think maybe I’m going to be superstitious before this trip is over.”

“Philip,” said Claire, faltering. “I think I need a drink—badly.” She swayed a little.

Shane caught her just before she dropped. He lifted her up and took her out into the hall. The damage there was very small, since the dining-room, an extension from the main building, was the only part of the hotel that lay squarely exposed to the four-mile distant rocket site.

Even the escalator was still working.

Philip took the unconscious girl up to her own room. Her dark long shock of hair swung loosely from her pale, icy forehead. He laid her on the contour-settee, and then took a decanter of brandy from the cocktail cabinet.

As he forced a few drops between her lips she coughed and opened her eyes.

“Take it easy,” said Shane. “I’ve been watching you. One thing that’s wrong is that you’ve eaten nothing, since we left London last night. And that’s a hell of a long time. You’ve got no stamina left. No wonder your nerves are ready to snap. I’m going to get them to send you up some plain nourishing food, and then I’m going to sit down and watch you eat it.”

She smiled weakly. “Yes, doctor … Is the hotel all right—I mean—nobody’s been hurt, or anything?”

“Dining room was the only place touched, being exposed … It would have to be.”

“I’ll promise to eat, Philip, but I would like half an hour’s rest first.”

“O.K. I’ll time it. I’ll be back on the stroke of the gong … Happy New Year!”

He went to the door, closing it behind him softly.

“Happy New Year, Philip,” whispered Claire softly. “It’s good to know that you’re going to be around.”

She closed her eyes.

Shane went to his own room to check on possible damage. He didn’t find any. Then he went up to the flat roof of the hotel to take a look around. Four miles away, in the deepening twilight, lay the Launching Site. It was connected to Woomera by a road that was a broad straight ribbon of concrete. Along this, atomic-powered cars and lorries were shuttling with incredible speed. Shane knew that most of them did not have any actual drivers, and that their electronic brains could be easily “programmed” for such a simple journey. He guessed that this fast stream of traffic was conveying technicians and fire-fighting equipment to the scene of the explosion.

About a quarter of a mile to the right of the huge launching bowl, Shane fancied he could see a smouldering black crater, belching dark poisonous fumes into the clear desert air.

In the launching bowl itself, he saw what appeared to be the huge, gleaming first stage booster of Rocket Thirteen. Beyond the bowl, white beneath the advance guard of turquoise that heralded the desert night, was the long landing strip that was used for the return of the third-stage rockets after they had delivered their passengers or payload to the two-hour orbit, one thousand and seventy-five miles up from the celestial golf-ball that is earth.

Shane lit a cigarette and surveyed the scene. He gazed at the world of the desert, remote from the twenty-first century, yet itself an advance-post, containing the germ of a new interplanetary civilisation. He puffed at his cigarette and gazed at the approaching night, reviewing the strange chain of events that had brought him from Fleet Street, in the heart of the world’s greatest metropolis, to Rocket City—man’s nearest terrestrial outpost to the stars.

Thirty-six hours ago, Shane had been at 10 Downing Street. The P.M.’s final words still echoed in his ears: “And if you’re lucky enough to find out what it is, try and fix it yourself. But if you come unstuck, I’m afraid it’s your own funeral, because I daren’t give you any official backing. I’ve had a look—a close look—at your dossier, my boy, and it reads well. D.F.C. and bar in the China Wars, the Charles Medal for special services to the Crown, and the Civil Cross for conspicuous gallantry in the Cumberland atomic disaster—to say nothing of crawling about the ocean bed … You sound like an all-rounder—with brains. And that’s just what I want. If you can clear up this affair at Lunar City, Mr. Shane, you can name your own reward—including the moon … Well, good luck.”

As always, when he scented trouble ahead, Shane’s stomach had begun to perform somersaults. But the “tummy-quakes” had stopped—twenty hours ago, when he had watched Claire Scott toying with the food she didn’t eat in the airport restaurant at Colombo.

As Philip Shane finished his cigarette he felt he had acquired a special and proprietary interest in the mysterious affairs of Sir Fabian Scott, the Great Dictator, remote in his lunar citadel, two hundred and forty-thousand miles away.

Low over the desert hung the new moon. Shane turned to it. “Well, Fabian,” he whispered softly. “Let’s hope it’s a frame-up, and that you’re still the white-haired boy. Because a certain person has got just about one hundred per cent faith in you—and I wouldn’t trust myself to be diplomatic if she’s backed a loser.”

Philip glanced at his watch, and saw that the prescribed half-hour was just about up. He went below and made arrangements with the catering department for a simple meal for two in Claire’s sitting-room.

When he went to see her, he found that her colour had returned, and she seemed perfectly normal. But there were still tell-tale lines of tension about her eyes.

They ate their meal in a shared, easy silence. Philip left early soon after the coffee and cigarettes. He wanted her to get as much rest as possible before their mutual appointment with Rocket Thirteen.

Chapter Three

THE PIT AND THE PENDULUM

THE atomic car took them from the Hotel Orion along the broad concrete roads to the block of offices and laboratories shielded by the outside rim of the great launching bowl. It was a fine warm day. To the right and left, small shrivelled bushes and oddly shaped cacti maintained a thin semblance of natural life on the stony, desolate land. Here and there were craters—perhaps of rockets that once rebelled, or third stagers that returned from the stratosphere too fast, and dived to a fiery burial with pilot, passengers and all.

A guard came out to check them at the first barricade. They were automatically covered by a radar controlled rocket-gun mounted in front of the concrete block house.

The guard glanced at their permits, and then inserted a key in the car’s dashboard, turned it, and automatically “programmed” the machine to choose the right avenues and take them to the Ferry Commander’s office.

When they got there, an oldish man was waiting for them at the door.

“Howdy. My name is Midley. If you want to be formal you can call me Dr. Midley. Otherwise, my friends call me Gaff—an abbreviation for Gaffer, since most of ’em think I’m a windbag. Now, you’re Miss Scott, aren’t you. And this is Mr. Shane. You’re just in time. We’re all set to begin the voyage conference.”

He took them inside the heavy-walled building and down some stairs to an underground room lit by neon strips. Several men were seated round a long table. Among them was Professor Quarles.

“Gentlemen,” said Gaff Midley, “here are the two other passengers—Miss Claire Scott and Mr. Philip Shane … And now I’d better introduce you people to the newcomers.”

Gaff Midley performed his function rapidly and efficiently.

In turn, Claire and Philip were introduced to Graves, the Ferry Commander; Rocky Wilson, a good-looking young Australian who would captain the Ferry Rocket and also the space-ship when it left the two-hour orbit; Howard, the navigator; Webster and Lee, the two engineers; and Masters, the radio man.

Professor Quarles said. “There is no need to introduce me. We three have already met … I trust you were not discomposed by last night’s little affair, Miss Scott.” There was a trace of malice in his tone.

With a smile, Claire parried his thrust, and the conference began. Everyone, with the exception of the professor, Claire and Philip, were seasoned space-travellers and knew what to expect.

For the benefit of these three, the Ferry Commander gave a brief account of the voyage. He warned them of the tremendous gravity force they must expect to endure in the few minutes trip up to the two-hour orbit. He explained that they would have twenty-four hours at the Space Station in which to “orientate” themselves. Then would begin the hundred and twenty hour trip to the moon. “So,” he concluded, “in a little over a week from now, you’ll be in Lunar City. And then you’ll be wiser than I am, because I’m just the passport man. Commonwealth Space Station is as far as I get.”

Then they were taken to a circular room where there was an instrument of torture known as the Centrifuge. It consisted of a steel radial arm which could whirl a small cabin round the room with tremendous centrifugal force, achieving the equivalent of twenty times gravity—and much more if necessary.

The professor was the first to be strapped on the contour-couch. The machine was started, and the Ferry Commander eased it up to 5G, then to 7G and finally 10G. Then the Centrifuge was switched off. The professor, white and trembling, was unable to speak for a minute or so.

“It won’t be any worse in the rocket,” Gaff Midley assured him cheerily. The professor shot him a venomous look.

Philip came next, and finally, Claire.

When 10G was applied, she wanted to scream. But there was no breath in her. It felt as if ten people were sitting on her chest. But just when she was drifting into unconsciousness, the Centrifuge stopped.

Philip hurried to the cabin, but she managed to greet him with a smile.

“That’ll make you feel like taking these anti-G pills,” said Gaff Midley as he helped her out. “Firing-point is at three o’clock tomorrow morning, and I want you to take these three pills last thing tonight—at six o’clock—before you turn in. They’ll minimize the gravity sensation, which will be sustained longer in the rocket—about twice as long as you’ve spent in the Centrifuge. But you must rest for eight hours after you’ve taken them, because they’re real hay-makers.” He gave a small envelope to the professor. It contained nine tablets—three for each of them. He nodded to the rocket crew who were busy keeping their faces straight. “Those boys don’t need pills. They’ve made this trip so often they begin to feel there’s something wrong with ’em when they’re only at 1G. They’re all hardened cases.”

The Ferry Commander said: “And now I suppose you’d like to take a look at the rocket.”

He took them out of the laboratories, through an archway containing three sets of heavy steel doors, and along a sort of tunnel which finally led into the launching basin. There, in the centre of the two-hundred yards diameter basin, walled on every side by practically indestructible ramparts of concrete, stood the first and second stage of Rocket Thirteen.

About the giant cylinder, resting its vanes on hydraulic cushions, there was a swarm of men. They were busy manœuvring two automatically powered heavy-duty cranes into position, so that the third stage of the rocket, suspended by steel cables, could be hauled up into position. Compared with the two booster rockets, the third stage—which was the only part to reach the two-hour orbit—was a small affair. Even so, it was seventy foot long and could take a dozen people and forty tons of equipment up to the space station.

Together with its two boosters, it was the size of an old-fashioned twentieth century battle-cruiser stood on end.

Glinting in the morning sunlight, Rocket Thirteen had an air of superb power and beauty.

Even as the Ferry Commander brought his visitors into the launching basin, the third stage was being hauled by the atomic cranes to its appointed place.

Suddenly, one of the steel cables snapped and the third stage was left swinging perilously, suspended from a single crane.

A cry went up from the men below, and they turned to run for cover. Like a great, slow-motion pendulum, the third stage began to slowly oscillate, with a slow torque effect that brought it perilously close to the first and second stages, already in position. In another minute, the third stage would collide, and the whole rocket would come crashing to the floor of the basin.

The Ferry Commander’s face turned white. He knew that the third stage was already fuelled with propellant. In a matter of seconds, hundreds of tons of hydrazine and nitric acid would drench the entire rocket site, destroying every exposed human being.

Rooted to the spot, he and his companions watched with a terrible fascination. Time stood still, and eternity hung on the swaying rocket pendulum.

Then a high-pitched whine came from the crane’s atomic motors as the manipulator, keeping his head in the face of almost certain death, flung the crane into reverse and desperately tried to pull it away from the first and second stagers.

He made it—by the skin of his teeth! As the giant crane ploughed into reverse, one vane of the third stage grazed the vertical boosters, and a shower of green and orange sparks flashed even against the sunlight. Then the third stage swung clear.

A great cheering rose up on all sides, as rocket men ran to congratulate the crane manipulator. But he, now that the ordeal was over, now that the shadow of death had drawn away, had collapsed in his control chair and was weeping like a child.

The whole frightening action had taken less than a minute.

Claire Scott gazed at the faces of the men around her. Fortunately, the danger was already over before she had fully understood it.

The Ferry Commander’s face was bathed in sweat, and his lips were moving soundlessly, as if in prayer. The crew of Rocket Thirteen were white and silent, while Rocky Wilson clenched and unclenched his fists as if he wanted to smash something. The veins on Professor Quarles’ forehead stood out like knotted cords, and his face bore a deep unhealthy flush. And Philip Shane stood quite still, gazing at the rocket. He had faced death many times; but he knew now that the sensation had lost none of its novelty.

“That man,” said the Ferry Commander in a shaky voice, “that man deserves the Civil Cross.”

“Sir,” said Professor Quarles heavily, “if my word carries any weight in Whitehall, he will get it.”

“Why—have you all seen a ghost?” asked Claire stupidly.

“Our own,” replied Philip. “My dear, we’ve just missed going for a swim in nitric acid … Don’t tell me you didn’t see the accident?”

“Accident!” exploded Rocky Wilson. “That was no accident! Those cables can take the stress of half-a-dozen third-stage rockets! It was the same kind of accident that happened last night. Somebody fired that hydrazine, and somebody—I’ll bet a pound to a penny—has been having fun with that cable.”

Professor Quarles regarded him thoughtfully. “I don’t know whether your allegations are based on any evidence or not, Mr. Wilson, but they sound reasonable to me. I’m afraid I shall have to include them in my report.”

Gaff Midley said: “Well, well! The things that happen. It’s a good job I brought my rabbit’s paw with me.”

The Ferry Commander smiled, playing up to Midley’s obvious effort to lessen the tension. “I didn’t know space-psychiatrists were superstitious,” he said.

“Ah,” replied Gaff, “what’s the use of being a psychiatrist if you can’t have a pet neurosis of your own? Besides, psychiatry itself is the greatest superstition of the century.”

“About this flight,” said Philip suddenly to the Ferry Commander, “do you think you can still keep to schedule?”

“Barring an act of God—or human sabotage,” he replied, after nearly half a minute’s silence.

“I think I could use a cup of tea,” said Claire faintly.

They managed to get back to the hotel for an early lunch—after sharing an automatic taxi with Professor Quarles.

Philip and Claire spent the afternoon relaxing on the sunroof and trying to indulge in light-hearted conversation. But every now and then, one of them would gaze at the rocket basin four miles away, watching the sunlight glint on the tip of the third stage rocket, now safely in position. The minutes went by, inexorably bringing zero hour closer.

By half-past-five, in spite of Philip’s attempt to lift the blanket by recounting every amusing anecdote and shaggy dog story he could think of, the conversation had degenerated into mere interruptions of long silences.

At length Claire said. “Well, I’d better be a good girl and take Gaff Midley’s poison.”

“You’d also better get to bed,” said Philip. “You heard what the gent said—eight hours solid.”

Claire shivered. “I hope the G force isn’t going to be as bad as it was this morning.”

“You’ve had the worst,” Philip assured her. “They tell me these drugs inhibit the cortical reaction, whatever that may mean. Anyway, they’re supposed to have a fifty-per-cent efficiency.”

“I hope you’re right,” said Claire. “Because I’m just one hell of a coward.”

Philip grinned. “Aren’t we all? Come on, sweet-heart, it’s time for bed, and Uncle Philip has told you a lot of fairy stories.”

“Aren’t you being just a little paternal?” she enquired archly.

Shane laughed. “It’s the desert air,” he said. “I’d better go and take a cold bath.”

“See you in the stratosphere,” said Claire as she turned to go below, after taking her pills with a grimace.

Shane stayed up a little longer. He smoked several “last” cigarettes, trying to make sense out of what he knew to be facts. At last, with a sigh, he gave it up, and followed Claire, silently accepting the necessity for sleep.

Chapter Four

DOPE SALAD

THE radio alarm woke Claire at one-thirty a.m. She got out of bed shivering slightly, in spite of the room’s automatic temperature control. In a little more than ninety minutes she would be aboard Rocket Thirteen, hurtling up towards the stars at thousands of miles an hour.

Hanging over the bedside chair was the thin black plastic overall she had been instructed to wear. It was the standard garb that all rocket travellers wore beneath their silvered space-suits as an added protection against cosmic radiation. For outside the protective shell of the earth’s atmosphere was the tireless, invisible volley of cosmic rays that could eat their way through human tissue, render a man sterile, or cause a woman—when she came to have children—to produce dangerous abnormalities.

Claire put on the C.R. overall and gathered together in a small valise the few personal belongings she wished to take with her. Then she rang for a special early breakfast. Presently the light above the service hatch in her sitting-room glowed green, and an automatic recorded voice discreetly announced that breakfast was ready.

Claire slid back the door and took out a small tray. On it was a glass of milk and some freshly buttered rolls, together with a small tablet in a box labelled “Rocket Sickness Inhibitor.”

By a quarter to two she had finished “breakfast,” having forced herself to eat one roll and drink half a glass of milk, in which she had dissolved the R.S.I. tablet.

Her thoughts turned to Philip Shane, and she wondered if he, too, was experiencing the same horrible anticipatory queasiness. But as she moved about her room, she was conscious of an increasing sensation of lightness. She seemed to have no weight at all, and to be able to float anywhere without effort. Now that her body had resumed muscular action, the anti-G pills that she had taken eight hours ago were having their effect.

Claire decided to call up Shane on the visulator. She stood before the screen and dialled his room number. There was no response. After a minute or two she tried again. Still no response. Glancing at her watch, she saw that it was nearly two o’clock, and began to wonder if Philip’s radio alarm had failed to operate.

She went up to his room.

There was no response to her repeated knocks. Trying the door, she found it was unlocked. After a few more loud knocks, she opened it and went into the apartment. There was no one in the sitting-room, and no sign of any activity. Claire went across to the bedroom door and opened it.

“Philip,” she called, “it’s time to get up.”

Still no response. She spoke louder, but the man on the bed did not move.

Claire went over to the bed and began to shake him, but still his eyes remained closed, his breathing low and heavy. She got some water and splashed it in his face; then she tried to force brandy between his lips. No visible result was achieved. Claire panicked.

She ran across to the visulator and dialled the launching basin, asking the operator there for Gaff Midley. Presently he appeared on the screen, wearing his black C.R. overall.

“What did you put in those pills?” she asked breathlessly. “I can’t rouse Mr. Shane. He—he’s unconscious.”

Gaff Midley looked startled. “There was nothing in them to knock him out, Miss Scott … Hold fire—I’ll be right over. This is peculiar, to say the least of it.”

He faded out, and Claire switched the visulator off. She went back to the bed and redoubled her efforts to bring Shane round. In a little more than five minutes Gaff Midley arrived, complete with little black bag. He raised Philip’s eyelids and saw the dilated pupils. Then he felt his pulse.

Gaff Midley turned to Claire. “Some joker has slipped him a knock-out drop,” he said. “Now I wonder who doesn’t want Mr. Shane to take Rocket Thirteen?”

Claire stared uncomprehendingly at him. Then suddenly she remembered the letter Philip had shown her in the helicopter. She went across to his clothes and searched them; then she went through his travelling case; then the dressing-table. The letter had disappeared. It wouldn’t be reasonable to suppose that Philip had destroyed it. He might want to use it to back up any action he chose to take at Lunar City.

Meanwhile, Gaff Midley was pumping a stimulant into Philip’s arm with a hypodermic.

Presently Shane opened his eyes, and focused with difficulty.

“What a hell of a trip,” he said thickly. “Are we there yet?”

“Take it easy, Mr. Shane,” said Gaff. “You’re still in the Orion. Somebody’s dosed you with a knock-out drop.”

“Hell’s angels!” Philip sat up quickly, and then put a hand gingerly to his throbbing head. “What time is it? What about the rocket?”

“Quarter-past two,” said Gaff. “And don’t worry. We got about fifteen minutes to spare, so don’t rush yourself.”

“Coffee,” said Philip, pulling a face, “and a lump of plain white bread.”

Claire went to the service hatch and gave the order. While she was gone, Gaff said: “Think you can manage to struggle into your C.R. overall?”

“With the aid of a couple of crutches,” said Shane. He got out of bed unsteadily.

He had just put on the protective clothing when Claire returned with the coffee. “I called you up on the visulator,” she explained, “and couldn’t get any reply. So I came down to investigate. Otherwise, you’d still be flat out.”

“Thanks, pal,” said Philip, as he sipped the coffee. “I reckon I made a good bargain.”

There was a knock at the door. Claire went to investigate. She returned, accompanied by Professor Quarles, also in his C.R. overall.

“Most unfortunate,” said the professor, staring curiously at Philip. “There are far too many strange things happening at Woomera, Mr. Shane. Now who could possibly want to stop you from going up to the orbit?”

“My Aunt Bertha,” said Shane, with a grin. “She doesn’t like aeroplanes.”

“This is a serious matter,” said the professor, reprovingly.

“Don’t I know it!” exclaimed Philip. “I’ve collected a twenty-four carat hangover. And in about half an hour there’ll be a dose of 10G thrown in for good measure.”

Gaff Midley glanced at him quickly. “Have you got a sensation of lightness, Mr. Shane?”

“No. I’m as heavy as lead.”

“Did you take the anti-G pills?”

“Right on the dot,” confirmed Philip, “And if this is what they do, I think I prefer to take the G-force straight, thank you.”

“Somebody switched the pills,” said Gaff emphatically. He turned to Quarles: “Define the sensation he ought to be feeling, Professor.”

“Sheer weightlessness,” said Quarles. “An illusion so complete that you should even be tricked into overestimating your movements—as I notice Miss Scott is doing, and as I certainly am.”

“Talking of weightlessness,” said Gaff, glancing at his watch, “it’s time we were off to the rocket bowl … Do you think you can make the trip, Mr. Shane, or would you rather wait for the next one?”

“No point in turning back on the dentist’s doorstep,” said Philip. “Anyway, that shot in the arm is making me feel a bit more compos mentis.”

“Have you got your things together?” asked Claire.

“Packed ’em before I turned in,” he answered.

“I’ll go and get my own case,” said the professor.

“You know what?” said Philip to Gaff Midley, when Quarles had gone out, “I can’t think of anyone who had the opportunity to switch those pills after Quarles opened the envelope.”

“Then it must be me,” said Gaff easily. “Come on. We’ve got to move. The problem will wait, but the rocket won’t.”

They went down to the hall, where Quarles rejoined them, and out to Gaff Midley’s atomic taxi.

Chapter Five

FIRING POINT

THE atomic taxi sped along the moonlit ribbon of road, through the clear, star-studded night, to the great launching bowl. A wave of excitement surged through Shane as the effect of the drug began to wear off, and Gaff Midley’s stimulant did its work.

He glanced at his companions: Claire, tense and white-faced; Quarles, now silent and phlegmatic; and Gaff Midley, quietly at ease, regarding everyone with critical interest.

The high, sleek, floodlit shape of Rocket Thirteen grew larger, dominating the landscape, flinging its proud, terrestrial challenge to the distant moon. By its side stood the personnel gantry, which, in its hydro-atomic lift, would take the crew and passengers up to the door in the side of the third-stage rocket.

By now the taxi, “programmed” to carry its passengers to the Departure Assembly Room, was weaving its way through the avenues of the scientific and administrative blocks.

When they got there, the crew were already assembled in the D.A.R., whiling away the last tense half-hour before firing point. They were already in their space suits, each of which carried a distinguishing number on its back. Headpieces lay on the tables, while their owners puffed nervously at cigarettes. Each time someone moved, there was a muffled clang as magnetized boots struck on the hard floor.

Gaff Midley showed his companions to a small side-chamber, where their space suits were laid out ready.

Claire was the first to be encased in the tough, armoured suit. Even the “dope salad” did not diminish its clumsy dead-weight. As she walked up and down, testing it, Claire felt like a wooden elephant. Then her headpiece was screwed down while a last pressure check was made.

She took it off again to enjoy the last few minutes of terrestrial freedom. Philip and the professor went through the same routine; and finally, when he was satisfied, Gaff Midley donned his own space suit and gave it the pressure test. The four of them then returned to the Assembly Room.

“Fifteen minutes to go,” announced Rocky Wilson. He grinned at Claire. “These sardine cans certainly clamp down on the glamour, don’t they?”

The door opened, and the Ferry Commander came in. He, too, was wearing a space suit. “Rocky, I’ve decided to go up with you,” he said, without preamble. “I want to check on things at the space station. Besides, I’d like to bring the third stage back myself.”

“Suits me, sir,” said Wilson, giving his chief a curious look.

“You’ll retain command, of course,” said the Ferry Commander. “I’ll be just an extra couple of hundred pounds of cargo.”

A voice came over the intercom speaker.

“Attention all personnel! Attention all personnel! Rocket Thirteen departs in exactly twelve minutes. Attention, Ferry Crew! Attention, Ferry Crew! Twelve minutes to firing point. Stand by to take departure positions. Duty personnel stand by for firing.”

“Well,” said Rocky, picking up his headpiece, “let’s go. In twenty minutes, folks, you can have yourself a cup of coffee one thousand miles up.”

This was it. Claire looked nervously at Philip. He crossed his fingers and smiled.

“Round the light-house and back before tea,” he said, lightly. “Couples half price.”

Professor Quarles’ face was ashen grey. Without a word, he fell in by the side of the Ferry Commander as the group of space-travellers left the O.A.R.

They went down an escalator and stepped on to a lateral conveyor which, so Shane guessed, ran deep under the broad walls of the rocket basin and would emerge near the service gantry.

They came up into a tiny concrete and steel “pillbox” in the launching basin. The Ferry Commander opened the reinforced convex steel door, and the party stepped out into the great man-made bowl.

Rocket Thirteen lay fifty yards ahead, smooth and magnificent, bathed in bluish-white floodlighting. The service gantry stood by on its steel track, ready to lift the crew and passengers high up the side of the rocket to the almost hidden door near the tip of the third stage.

Clothed in their silvered space-suits, as they walked clumsily through the blinding glare of the floodlights, each one of the space travellers, experienced or otherwise, felt the dreamlike quality of stepping from the known, familiar world, right to the brink of a new and dangerous universe. The feeling did not diminish, even for men like Rocky Wilson, who had made thirty such trips. Each time it was just the same—the numbing fascination of saying goodbye to Earth, and thinking that one’s next view of it would be just as smooth, shiny ball floating and spinning aimlessly in the void.

The sky was lightening. As the hydro-atomic lift silently conveyed its human cargo up to the third stage of Rocket Thirteen, the first grey streaks or light hinted at the false dawn breaking in the eastern sky.

Presently, the space-travellers would create their own sunrise.

The lift stopped, level with the entry-port high in the rocket’s side. An automatic gangway eased out cautiously to bridge the four-foot gap between the lift and the doorway.

Rocky Wilson went aboard first, and then the Ferry Commander. Then came the turn of the passengers, and lastly Gaff Midley with the remainder of the crew.

Claire was shown her contour-berth on the starboard side in the central compartment. Rocky Wilson strapped her in position, and said, “For the love of Mike, don’t play with these safety-belts until I tell you … Now, cheer up, Miss Scott. It’s not half as bad as having a tooth out. In fifteen minutes or so I’ll send you a cocktail.”

Claire smiled wanly, and rested her head on the soft foam-rubber cushion. There was a thick zeniflex glass port-hole by her side. Through it she could see the outer rim of the firing basin far below; and beyond, the few remaining lights in Woomera City. But the world—the real world now—was a world of stars.

Philip was allotted a contour-berth opposite to her, on the port side of the rocket. Professor Quarles was strapped in directly behind her.

As Wilson finished checking that his passengers were berthed satisfactorily, a loudspeaker fixed to the forward bulkhead announced:

“Attention, all duty personnel! Attention, Ferry Crew! Five minutes to firing point for Rocket Thirteen. Stand by! Will all departments check with Central Control, please.”

Wilson went to the bulkhead and pressed a three-way switch. He spoke into the micro-attachment. “Hello, Control. Hello, Control. All clear in rocket. Passengers now berthed, crew at stations. Am now closing entry-port. Am now closing entry-port. Over and out.”

Rocky switched off. He turned to the three passengers: “So long, folks. Stick around. We’ll get outside a bottle together when we hit the orbit … Be seeing you. Watch out for bumps.”

With what was meant to be a reassuring smile, he went through the door in the bulkhead and entered the forward compartment, where the crew were already in position.

There was a slight hiss, and the door in the side of the rocket closed, finally cutting off the space-travellers from the world of earth. Outside, the service gantry was now rolling away on its steel track. Down below, the eyes of all the rocket men would be glued to the temporarily immobile beauty of the ferry rocket.

The loudspeaker spoke once more: “Duty alert! Duty alert! Two minutes to firing point. Two minutes to firing point.”

Silence settled like a wall of ice.

Shane was beginning to feel normal now. He wouldn’t be “insulated” from the G force by “dope salad,” but at least he felt he had sufficient stamina to withstand 10G—that is, if it wasn’t going to be any worse than in the Centrifuge.

He eased round on his pillow and gazed at Claire. She was tense and drawn, grimly combating her silent fears. Shane felt sorry for her. She would be just about the third woman to make the trip to the orbit.

“I think I’ll get out and walk,” said Philip, trying weakly for a laugh.

There was a rumble behind, as Quarles cleared his throat and said: “This alone shakes my faith in the progress of science.”

The professor wasn’t trying to be funny, but at least it was good for a smile. Claire looked at Shane and winked.

“Alert! Alert!” said the loud-speaker. “One minute to firing point … Forty-five seconds … Thirty seconds … fifteen … ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one—zero!”

Simultaneously a red light illuminated the words “Firing Point” on a screen fixed to the bulkhead.

Somewhere there was a roar like Niagara Falls pouring through an echo-chamber. The rocket stirred, as if lifted by a gentle breeze, hovered uncertainly for a moment. Then the acceleration began.

Invisible weights seemed to be hurling themselves down on the bodies of the space-travellers. Each one of them felt as if a mountain of lead was quickly piling up on his poor crushed body. Each one of them fought the conviction that he was being compressed into a shapeless mass.

Claire tried to move, to find some less excruciating position; but her limbs were pressed deep into the contour-berth and locked there as if by fetters of iron. The “dope salad” minimised the strain, but still it seemed too great to bear. Each slow, agonising breath cost a tremendous muscular effort, until she knew that she could breathe no more.

Shane, in spite of his own ordeal, strained every sinew to move his head round so that he might give her an encouraging smile. But a greater strength than his forced his head back, back into the foam pillow. The cushion rose and expanded on each side of him until it seemed as if he would be totally swallowed by it.

The brief groans of the professor had already ceased, for he, too, was no longer able to breathe. Claire was now weeping soundlessly, without breath or movement, conscious only of the relentless mounting stress of the G-force.

Suddenly an amber light flashed on the bulkhead panel. “Attention!” said an automatic recorded voice. “Booster One disengaging in six seconds … five, four, three, two, one—zero!”

There was a sudden agonising lurch as the first booster was blown clear by a blast of compressed air. Its job was finished, having forced Rocket Thirteen up to a speed of two and a half miles per second. Presently its steel mesh parachute would lower it down to the Timor Sea, to be later salvaged for another rocket.

“Attention! There will be forty-five seconds at 1G.”

Miraculously, the invisible stress ceased. For a little while Rocket Thirteen would coast freely until the second booster’s rocket motors resumed that relentless thrust.

Everyone gulped in lungfuls of air. In spite of the tears streaming freely down Claire’s face, she waved gaily to Shane, and shouted a greeting to the professor, whom she could not see.

Then, glancing through the port-hole, she saw the sun. It rose like a giant red ball over the curved horizon of the Coral Sea and the southern headland of Papua.

“Philip! Look down! I’ve never seen anything so wonderful!”

There it was, a shining curved segment of the Earth washed by the tide of dawn. Woomera and the Australian desert were still wrapped in darkness. But Rocket Thirteen had already taken its occupants high into the light of sunrise. And they had not yet been up five minutes!

“Attention! Booster Two begins firing in six seconds … Five, four, three, two, one—zero!”

The maddening, crushing, destroying pressure returned. Two G. Three G. Four, five, six, seven, eight, nine G.

All the inescapable agony returned. The mountains of lead piled up, paralysing all movement, paralysing even the vital pumping of the lungs … Increasing … Increasing … Until what was unbearable ninety seconds before, became mild when compared to the ever-increasing thrust.

The agony was fiercer. But this time it was shorter.

Claire was dragged back from the blessing of unconsciousness by a voice that sounded as if in a dream.

“Attention! Booster Two disengaging in six seconds … Five, four, three, two, one—zero!”

Again the sickening lurch, again the bump of invisible mountain peaks. Then the second booster dropped away to its watery rendezvous in the Java Seas. All that was left now was the third stage of the rocket which, with a last burst of power, would rise and level off in the two-hour orbit.

“Attention! There will be thirty seconds at 1G.”

This time, all three of them gazed through the port-holes eagerly. There it lay, the vast curvature of the Earth, spread out like some giant relief map: static in a universe of darkness. For now, Rocket Thirteen was free of the stratosphere, and cruising in the yet infinity of space. The sun had disappeared once more, but moonlight spread its mantle of silver over the Indian Ocean, and far in the north glinted the white, apparently flat carpet of the Himalayas.

“Magnificent!” said Quarles. “I never thought to see the glory of the earth spread out like this in all its splendour!”

“The old boy is human, after all,” said Shane to himself, as he, too, marvelled at this first view of Earth from the dark pit of space.

“Attention! Rocket motors begin firing in six seconds … Five, four, three, two, one—zero!”

Again the mountain of lead rolled down. Again the tension gathered as the space-travellers were forced inexorably back into their contour-berths.

But this time it was bearable—ascending only to a mere 5G. The passengers were still able to breathe—slowly and painfully—but yet able to breathe.

With a tremendous effort, Shane turned his head and saw the lines of strain on Claire’s white face. He tried to call across to her, but the breath rattled painfully in his throat, giving out merely an inarticulate groan.

Time, now, seemed meaningless. Yet Shane knew that not ten minutes ago, Rocket Thirteen had been standing in the launching basin at Woomera. He suddenly realised that the invisible pile of lead on his chest seemed to be changing position. It seemed now to be pressing more against his side. It seemed also to be lessening. Or was that his imagination? Was he simply becoming light-headed?

Then he knew that the G force was decreasing, because he was able to raise his head a little and look through the port-hole. The great ball of the earth seemed somehow to be tilting away from the rocket. Shane realised that Rocket Thirteen must be nearing the orbit and that it was indeed “levelling off.”

Slowly, slowly the G force seemed to be dying away. Now Claire, too, was able to lift her head and gaze around the passenger compartment in wonder.

“Philip, what are we stopping for?”

“We’re not stopping,” said Shane. “But we’ve stopped accelerating. I should think we’re just about doing the critical speed—five miles a second.”

The light flashed on the signal panel:

“Attention,” said the tireless, automatic voice. “The rocket is approaching orbital velocity. Gravity will diminish to zero.”

The passengers began to experience a peculiar sensation of relief—almost as if the terrific G forces they had recently sustained had passed right through them.

The amber light flashed once more, and then flashed green. “Zero gravity,” said the voice. “Zero gravity.”

They were in the orbit.

Suddenly the bulkhead door opened, and Gaff Midley appeared. He stepped curiously into the passenger compartment.

“Hello, folks. Survived the bouncing? I’ll come and help you out of your strait-jackets. Then you can flap your wings a little.”

He went over to Claire and undid her straps. She sat up quickly—and began to float towards the “ceiling.”

“Easy does it,” warned Gaff. “You’re at zero gravity, and don’t forget it. Otherwise you’re going to bump your head an awful lot!”

Claire was awestruck. “What a weird sensation! I feel as if I’m falling at a tremendous speed.”

“Well, you’re not,” said Gaff flatly. “You’ve now got an orbital velocity of fifteen thousand eight hundred and forty miles an hour. But for that you’d be falling all right—at thirty-two feet per second! Now try your hand at walking.”

While Claire stepped gingerly in her magnetised boots up and down the steel floor of the cabin, Gaff helped Philip and Professor Quarles down from their contour-berths.

The professor mistimed his first movement and distinguished himself by hitting the roof. He stayed there, gesticulating wildly.

“Turn over and walk down the walls,” advised Gaff Midley with a grin.

Mustering what dignity remained to him, the professor did as he was told.

“Confounded nuisance!” he exploded wrathfully.

“Of course, if you’d rather have 10G——” suggested Philip slyly. Then, because he had not paid enough attention to co-ordinating his own movements, he slowly began to turn upside down.

“Walk down the wall,” advised Midley patiently. “You’ll just have to get used to substituting magnetism for one G.”

“You look like a big fly,” laughed Claire.

“Wallowing in a celestial cheesecake,” added Shane, carefully walking down the curved wall and achieving an “upright” position.

“We’re now drifting slowly up to the Commonwealth Space Station,” explained Gaff, as he demonstrated the correct technique for walking in magnetised boots. “Take a look through the starboard portholes. After being pushed about by the G forces I always find this view particularly satisfying.”

Claire and the two men manœuvred themselves cautiously towards the thick circles of anti-glare plasti-glass and stared incredulously at the world of the two-hour orbit. There, one thousand and seventy-five miles above the surface of the earth, set against the black curtain of space, a fantastic sight met their eyes. Two third-stage rockets hung nearby apparently motionless, as if suspended by invisible steel ropes. The entry-port of one of them was open; and, through it, a cascade of plastic-covered bales were being pushed effortlessly into space by a man in a silvered space-suit. The bales drifted by the side of the rocket, in a lazy shoal, while another space engineer, floating in the void, roped them together. A tiny “space-taxi,” hardly bigger than a rowing boat, was standing by to tow the cargo away.

Beyond the third stage rockets floated a group of large squat cylinders which, as Gaff Midley explained, were fuel tanks for the refuelling of moon ships.

Beyond these again, surrounded by a swarm of “floating” space engineers, was the first moonship that the three passengers had ever seen. It was a vast, sleek monster, almost the size of a full three-stage rocket. But the moonship completely dwarfed the third-stagers near it, which had jettisoned their massive boosters on the way up to the orbit.

The moonship was being refuelled by a long slender pipe, stretching through space to one of the storage tanks. Large bales of supplies were being manœuvred through its open entry-port by engineers with tiny personal rocket motors strapped to their backs.

The sight was weird and exhilarating. But neither Claire nor her companions were puzzled by the fact that the cargo or the stray duralumin girders did not fall. Intellectually, they realised that a speed of nearly sixteen thousand miles an hour, at an altitude of over a thousand miles, was sufficient to completely cancel the force of gravity. More convincing than this knowledge, however, was the undeniable fact that they themselves were weightless. Somehow, it made the idea of “up and down” seem quite meaningless. And after a minute or two of silent and enthralled “space-gazing,” it appeared quite natural for an engineer to be apparently standing on his head below a large bale of cargo, while his personal rocket-motor gave him sufficient power to ferry the bale to the moonship.

After a minute, Shane spoke: “Well, I’ve seen this sort of thing on 3D visulators until I was sick of it. But being up here, you somehow get the reality and achievement of it all—I reckon the human race can afford to give itself a pat on the back.”

Claire, without taking her eyes from the scene, said: “It was my father who made this possible. He fought against prejudice and scepticism until he got together the men and the materials he needed. Whatever you think of him,” she added slowly, turning to Quarles, “you must admit he had the power to make his dreams come true.”

“My dear Miss Scott,” began Quarles pompously, “I do not for one moment question your father’s achievement—only his motive, and that in a purely scientific fashion.”

“Look,” said Gaff quickly, “there it is—the Commonwealth Space Station … They’re sending a taxi out to meet us.”

Lying obliquely about a mile away was what appeared to be a large silvery car tyre, or a heavy wheel, joined to a spherical hub by two tubular spokes. The Commonwealth Space Station, three hundred feet in diameter, had been in existence for nearly five years. It was the combined achievement of all the economic resources of the British Commonwealth of Nations—plus the outstanding brains of Sir Fabian Scott and his team of scientists.

Thirty thousand miles away, round the other side of the earth in the same orbit, was the American Space Station. It was altogether larger, but it was no better designed and no better equipped.

Perpetually opposite to each other, these two space station circled the earth twelve times each day, keeping their fantastic speeds effortlessly constant, never catching up on each other, never within sight.

Between them, the two stations were “half-way” houses for space-travel.

The Americans, exhibiting their national characteristic of impatience, had been content to leave the colonisation of the moon to Commonwealth resources, while they concentrated upon making long survey flights round the nearer planets, as a necessary prelude to planetary exploration.

Besides acting as a springboard for the stars, the two space stations kept the peace of the world by virtue of the terrible destruction that, from the two-hour orbit, could be unleashed anywhere upon the defenceless earth. Daily they passed over the entire surface of the globe, their long-range telescopes and radar-visulators probing traditional trouble spots for the first sign of riot, rebellion or wholesale war.

The Americans had “thrown up” their own space station in a hurry, towards the end of the prolonged and bitter China Wars. At that time the superior manpower, and comparable productivity of both China and Russia was beginning to tell. But the appearance of the western space station, complete with its armoury of small guided rockets and the new oxygen-bombs, reversed the initiative, and the eastern powers made overtures for peace.

Since then, the tasks of the stations had been two-fold—to act as celestial policemen, and to function as springboards for man’s long leap into space.

Now, as the passengers of Rocket Thirteen gazed for the first time at the Commonwealth Space Station, they marvelled afresh at the miracle of human beings rising up from earth to fashion a new and almost self-supporting home in space.

The Space Station loomed larger, and they could see that it was slowly revolving. The space-taxi had already detached itself from the landing-platform at the static hub of the artificial satellite.

In appearance, the space-taxi was not unlike its terrestrial counterpart—except that it had no wheels and was powered by a rocket-motor, together with small steering jets on port and starboard. Belching a thin gaseous trail, the space-taxi glided to Rocket Thirteen.

The bulkhead door opened once more, and the Ferry Commander appeared.

“I suppose Dr. Midley has been acclimatising you to the new conditions,” he said. “Don’t worry if you can’t co-ordinate at first. We all have to go through the awkward stage up here.” He nodded towards the porthole. “Commonwealth have already sent the space-taxi for us, so you’d better get your headpieces on and we’ll check the oxygen.”

The passengers took their headpieces from the cushioned lockers where they had lain during the brief trip to the orbit. When the headpieces had been screwed down, and the oxygen pressure checked, everyone switched on their tiny audion, or personal transmitter/receiver. For now that the ferry rocket was about to be de-pressurised, conversation could only be carried on by means of radio.

The Ferry Commander stepped back into the control house for a moment. Then he returned. He was followed by Rocky Wilson and the rest of the crew. They were all wearing their headpieces; and oxygen cylinders were clamped to the duralumin frames on their backs.

The red light on the indicator panel flashed three times, and the automatic radio voice announced: “Terrestrial pressure now reducing! Sixty seconds to zero!”

The pressure-meter on the bulkhead began to slowly climb down from the fourteen mark, which was terrestrial surface pressure.

As the needle swung lower, the space passengers felt their suits “balloon” out, as the internal pressure began to compensate.

Presently, as the pressure-gauge needle touched the zero mark, the sliding door of the entry-port opened. There, across the gap of space, was the taxi, waiting. Standing in its oval doorway was a man in a pressure suit. He carried a coil of rope which was weighted at one end.

His voice came over the audion, giving the illusion that he was standing in the rocket itself.

“Hello, Thirteen,” he said. “I gather you’ve brought up the moon crew—to say nothing of a few fresh faces, which will be very welcome. Enough said! Grab the boarding line!”

He tossed the weighted end of the rope across the forty-foot gap; and Rocky Wilson, who stood by the rocket’s doorway, dexterously grabbed the small weight.

Shane, still unused to the novelty of weightlessness, was highly intrigued to see the rope hang slackly, like an idly-rippling snake, in mid-space.

“Passengers first,” said the Ferry Commander, “Pull yourself across, Miss Scott.”

Claire moved to the entry-port, then stared down, fascinated, at the cloudy surface of the earth a thousand miles below. In spite of her reassuring weightlessness, she was suddenly seized by vertigo, and felt that if she stepped away from the rocket, she would spin round and round like a top, while plummeting down to earth in one dreadful, accelerating swoop.

“Bad psychology!” said Gaff Midley reprovingly. “She hasn’t adjusted to the new environment yet. Here, Miss Scott, watch how it’s done.”

He took the weighted end of the line from Rocky Wilson. The man in the space-taxi had already fastened his end to a stanchion.

Gaff Midley gave a gentle tug on the rope. Without effort, he sailed slowly and smoothly across the gap of space. Coming gently to rest in the doorway of the space-taxi, he threw the weight back to Rocket Thirteen. Wilson caught it again and handed it to Claire. “Don’t pull too hard,” he warned. “It only needs the slightest tug to carry you across nicely.”

But Claire, in her nervousness, exerted too much strength. She went shooting across the gap rapidly, and was only saved from a substantial bump by Gaff Midley. With a very audible sigh of relief, she threw the weight back to the rocket.

Shane, profiting by Claire’s experience, crossed over only slightly too quickly; and the professor, following, surprisingly displayed the technique of an expert.

Finally, everyone was aboard the roomy space-taxi, and its tiny rocket motor started up.

“What about the rocket?” asked Shane, gazing back at the third stage of Rocket Thirteen, with its entry-port open.

“It won’t run away,” Rocky Wilson assured him. “We closed down at exactly orbital velocity. And there’s no point in shutting the door, because everything will be preserved very nicely in a perfect vacuum. You’ll have to get used to the idea of ‘parking’ things in space. We do a lot of it up here. After all,” he concluded with a laugh, “there’s nowhere else to put them.”

Gazing through the transparent dome of the space taxi, the visitors could see that along great stretches of the orbit, surrounding the space station, dozens of articles—large and small—were conveniently parked in space. Large two-hundred foot duralumin girders lay loosely roped together in groups, alongside hundreds of tons of baled supplies, all prevented from drifting by a single slender cord. Beyond these, were more fuel tanks, linked together like a string of fat metallic sausages. But dominating everything were the artificial satellite and the moonship, each of them an historic milestone in the conquest of space.

Below, the world was in darkness once more, lit only by sporadic patches of moonlight—for the artificial satellite, travelling twelve times faster than sunrise, had already crossed into darkness once more, and was now speeding over the glittering stretches of the Pacific Ocean.

Below, indistinct blurs in the vastness of the sea, lay the islands of Tahiti and the Marquesas. To the north lay Hawaii, and presently the coasts of North and South America would roll up over the edge of a moonlit world.

Chapter Six

COMMONWEALTH SPACE STATION

“HERE she is,” said the pilot of the space-taxi. “Home sweet home! Now you’ll get a vague idea of what it’s like to spend half your life in an old inner tube.” He skilfully took the taxi over the solar mirror that ran round the rim of the satellite, and eased in to the landing-stage. Above the control turret, the directional radio antenna faced moonward like some inverted skeleton mushroom.

“Want a ground job?” asked the Ferry Commander with a laugh. “It could be arranged. How would you like to sample the night life of Woomera?”

“No thanks,” said the pilot, emphatically. “I’ve only just got used to living in this circular sausage. And I don’t want to go through all that again.”

As they touched the landing stage, Rocky Wilson stepped neatly across and “moored” the taxi.

“Thanks, Captain,” said the pilot. “Well, ladies and gentlemen all, shall we go into the vicarage?”

The party crossed to the satellite. Seen from the hub, it looked even more imposing than when they were approaching it. Ahead, lay a short passage which led below the control turret to the air-lock and compression chamber.

Once inside, the doors were sealed, and the party waited till the flashing of a green light above the pressure gauge indicated that normal terrestrial pressure had returned.

Everyone began to take off their headpieces and switch off the oxygen.

“Whew,” said Shane, “now I know what it feels like to be a bottled plum.”

“You get used to it,” said Gaff. “Presently, you’ll begin to feel a little naked when you’re not wearing your C.P.S.”

“C.P.S.?”

“Combination Pressure Suit,” explained Rocky.

The inner doors opened, and the taxi pilot, who had introduced himself as Bill Henderson, led them down a metal spiral staircase and along a tunnel which again developed another set of spiral stairs.

As they walked along, the space travellers experienced a new sensation—the return of gravity. For Henderson had led them along one of the hollow “spokes” of the satellite to its outer rim. This rim was kept permanently revolving by the occasional firing of small rocket motors. The centrifugal force produced by its slow revolutions was an excellent substitute for gravity.

It was some minutes before the three space travellers realised that the floor on which they were now standing was set at right angles to the control tower at the hub of the satellite. Now, the earth was no longer “below” them but at the “side.” Looking through one of the windows in the room to which they were taken, Claire was caught off-guard by a sudden moonlit vision of Central America. She stared down at her feet incredulously, not at first realising that the “gravity” could come from any other source but earth.

The apartment was not unlike the saloon of some expensive sea-going yacht. Settees lined the walls; tables were bolted to the “deck”; and, with the exception of a few magnetised tubular chairs, all the furniture had fixed positions—for the obvious reason that, if the satellite stopped rotating, everything would drift about.

“Make yourselves at home,” said Henderson. “You know where the drinks are, Captain Wilson—I’ll go and get the Old Man to come down and meet you.”

He disappeared, leaving the slightly dazed space travellers to accustom themselves to this latest change of environment.

Claire, Philip and Professor Quarles had been shown the cabins assigned to their personal use during the brief stay at Commonwealth Space Station. They had already been introduced to Dr. Wills, the director of the satellite. He was very interested in Claire, being one of Sir Fabian Scott’s original team of space-explorers, besides being one of Scott’s personal friends. He expressed no surprise on hearing of Sir Fabian’s radiogram; and merely remarked that it was characteristic of him to reach decisions quickly and then put them into effect immediately.

Later, while Claire was enjoying the luxury of a wash and brush-up in her own room, she found a few moments to consider the events of the past few days. She suddenly remembered the two accidents that had occurred during her brief stay in Woomera, and found herself wondering whether they really were accidents. Oddly enough, the men hardly discussed them, except at the actual time. There had been a moment when Rocky Wilson had obviously felt the need to say something. But Professor Quarles, with his official status as a government investigator, had effectively silenced the space pilot. Claire guessed that the Ferry Commander, too, knew more about the accidents than he cared to admit. But he also was keeping his mouth shut. Were these men trying to protect someone, or were they merely afraid?

Formulating this unanswerable question, Claire sighed. Impetuously, she resolved to discuss things with Philip Shane when she next found an opportunity to talk privately with him. There again, he himself was something of a mystery; and Claire felt that he knew more about the trouble at Lunar City than he cared to admit.

While Claire occupied herself with such thoughts, Shane, enjoying a pre-dinner cigarette in his own room, was similarly reviewing the situation. He arrived at the following conclusions: (1) Clearly someone did not want Rocket Thirteen to get up to the orbit—ergo that person, or persons, unknown did not want one or more of the occupants of Rocket Thirteen to get to their eventual destination of Lunar City. And while it was conceivable that X, the unknown, might have reasons for wishing to keep back Professor Quarles, or Shane himself, or even Claire Scott, the possibility could not be ruled out that the accidents were also designed to “ground” Rocky Wilson and, perhaps, his crew; (2) Both Rocky Wilson and the Ferry Commander knew more about the accidents than they cared to admit; (3) A relationship might possibly exist between the accidents at Woomera and the “switching” of Shane’s “dope salad”; (4) Quarles, if he knew Shane’s real mission, might want to stop him from getting to Lunar City. But then Quarles would not want to stop himself from getting there, since he was out for Sir Fabian Scott’s blood.

As Philip Shane pursued these reflections, he realised that his brain wasn’t working very well. With a shrug he put it down to the effects of the dope, together with the sudden change from terrestrial environment to that of space.

A few yards away, Gaff Midley and the Ferry Commander, sharing a cabin, had a brief but interesting conversation while they waited for the rest.

“Look here, Gaff,” said the Ferry Commander suddenly. “Why have they sent you up to Lunar City? And don’t say it’s for the joy ride?”

“You know the answer to that one,” said Gaff quietly. “I’m a space-psychiatrist. A few of the men have been out there so long they’ve got a little out of touch. They’ve developed a different slant on things, and it’s my job to iron out their troubles.”

“That’s a pretty good official reason,” remarked the Ferry Commander slowly. “But it doesn’t seem to ring the bell.”

“It’s the truth,” said Gaff simply. “And I’m sticking to it.”

After a moment, the Ferry Commander said: “A little bird told me the G.D. is round the bend.”

Gaff looked at him. “The little bird was right. Of course Sir Fabian’s batty—so are all great men. This old world would never get anything done unless a few people went batty once in a while. Then we either lock ’em up or call ’em geniuses—or both.”

“You’re fencing,” said the Ferry Commander.

“So are you,” said Gaff. “And it’s high time we both quit. When you can tell me who blew up the hydrazine dump, and who had a shot at busting Rocket Thirteen, and who switched Shane’s dope salad for a knockout drop, then I’ll tell you exactly what’s wrong in Lunar City.”

“Check,” said the Ferry Commander. “I’ll remember that.” Then he gave his attention to studying an entirely blank wall.

After they had eaten, Dr. Wills, the director of Commonwealth Space Station, took his guests into the satellite’s common-room. Gaff Midley and the Ferry Commander had left a few minutes before.

They had resumed their space-suits and headpieces and had taken a space-taxi to the moonship, where Rocky Wilson and his crew were checking fuel, instruments and supplies in preparation for the trip to Lunar City.

“Well, Miss Scott,” said Dr. Wills, “in a few minutes we shall be in the correct position for you to look up Sir Fabian on the visulator. I expect you’ll have a lot to say to each other. Tell me, how long is it since you saw him?”

“About two years,” answered Claire. “Even when he made trips to Woomera, he was far too busy to fly to England—I’m looking forward to seeing him very much.”

“I really don’t think you’ll find that he has changed greatly,” said Wills. “We look each other up on the visulator almost every day, and he still seems the same old Fabian to me. That reminds me! It’s time we went up to the radio room, Miss Scott. I must check the directional antenna to get a good bearing.” He turned to Quarles and Philip. “If you two gentlemen will excuse us—I’ll be back as soon as I’ve put Miss Scott in contact on the visulator.”

Quarles said: “I’d like to see Sir Fabian, too—when Miss Scott has finished, of course.”

“Certainly,” said Dr. Wills, after a moment’s consideration. “Though you must forgive me for suggesting that Sir Fabian might not reciprocate your desire.”

“You are one of Scott’s men, of course,” remarked the professor abruptly. “In that case, you’d better warn him that it won’t do him any good to be stupid. I’m on my way to Lunar City to see what’s going on for myself, and there’s nothing he can do about it. So if you’ve got his interests at heart, you’d better advise him to co-operate—with an official representative of Her Majesty’s Government!”

Claire paled with anger, but Dr. Wills contented himself with remarking dryly: “I think Sir Fabian is quite capable of making his own decisions.”

Flashing the professor a hostile glance, Claire followed the director of the space station out of the common-room and along the passage-way to the hub of the satellite, where the radio room lay, just below the central control turret.

“I think,” remarked Philip when they were alone, “that you have quite a flair for making enemies, Professor.”

“My so-called enemies seem to have a flair for putting themselves beyond the law,” said the professor, watching Shane carefully. “As I think you will find out when we reach Lunar City. I must say I’m relieved to be travelling on the same moonship as that man’s daughter. It’s the nearest I shall get to a ‘safe conduct’.”

“Would you care to enlarge on that?” asked Shane slowly.

“Use your head, man!” exclaimed the professor impatiently. “You haven’t forgotten the so-called accidents at Woomera, have you? They were designed for one specific purpose—to prevent me from reaching Lunar City.”

“And you think Sir Fabian had a hand in them?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“You implied it.”

“I will go as far as to say,” answered the professor, watching Shane’s eyes, “that Sir Fabian has many devoted acolytes, who do not need to ask him what to do. Scott is playing some mysterious game of his own in Lunar City—and it is by now common knowledge that I have been sent to investigate, and that I am empowered to take whatever action I think fit.”

“What do you think the Great Dictator is up to?” asked Philip quickly.

“Precisely that,” said the professor with an enigmatic gleam. “That man has always played the dictator, riding roughshod over any opposition to his own plans. I know him, and I know his ambition. Sir Fabian Scott wants to build a private empire!”

“Blarney!” exclaimed Shane. “He’s got the kind of self-willed temperament that gets things done, that’s all. Without him, there would have been no Commonwealth Satellite, and no Lunar City.”

“Exactly. And these two achievements are merely stepping stones to some secret goal. I do not like to think of all the fine scientists who have already paid the price for opposing Sir Fabian’s plans.”

The professor, at risk of being incautious, was apparently finding the need to unburden himself.

“Now what do you mean by that?” demanded Shane.

“It is strange,” pursued Quarles, “that so many scientists have died at Lunar City.”

“The risks of colonising must be tremendous,” countered Shane. “No doubt there’s a simple explanation that could clear up the mystery.”

“There is,” agreed the professor. “But it can only be given by one man—who must make answer to his country’s government—and, if necessary, a charge of high treason!”

Shane was nonplussed. “Now we’re in the realm of melodrama. Don’t you think your suspicions are just a shade too fantastic?”

“I do not!” snapped the professor.

“Then why are you telling me all this?”

“Because, Mr. Shane, I believe that you have been sent to spy on me, and for that very reason I wish to define my position to you, and to your—employer.”

“You think I’m one of Scott’s men?”

“I did not say so.”

“Just to keep the record straight, I’ll repeat the facts. I’ve been commissioned by the Sunday Sentinel to come and find my own answer to what’s cooking in Lunar City. The public, being as always, the primary investors, want to know what they’re paying for. The chances are that the Great Dictator will boot me back on the next rocket when he knows I’m a journalist.”

“A convenient explanation,” remarked the professor sceptically. “But one which I do not find myself entirely able to believe.”

Any further discussion was curtailed by the return of Claire, and the enigmatic Dr. Wills.

“Did you get through?” asked Shane.

Claire nodded happily. “He looks years younger,” she said. “I do believe life on the moon must slow up the ageing process—Would you believe it, he’s sent for me to go all the way to Lunar City just because he thinks he needs a private secretary. He wants me to write up a readable account of the development of the city from all his odd notes and tape recordings.”

The professor grunted. “I imagine that task might well have been delegated to one of his enthusiastic young men.”

Claire, ignoring the comment, turned to him and said: “Sir Fabian has decided to see you, Professor Quarles. His actual words were ‘Send up that toy politician before he bursts a blood-vessel and accuses me of attempted murder by remote control’.”

Scowling, Professor Quarles rose without speaking, and made his way to the radio-room.

“In view of the fact that you will be leaving for the moon in just over eighteen hours, I think you ought to get some sleep while you can still relax in a gravity field,” suggested Dr. Wills.

“I think I’ll have a final cup of tea, and rob Mr. Shane of one of his cigarettes,” said Claire. “I don’t feel at all like sleep.”

“I’d better get you a mild sedative,” said Dr. Wills. “Most people lose their desire to sleep when they first come up here. We’ve had men staying awake and active for over a week—and then they were suddenly flattened by cumulative fatigue.”

Overriding Claire’s weak protests, he went out to the central laboratory, adding, as he left the common-room, that he would also bring a sedative for Shane.

“Everybody seems to want to give me a Mickey Finn,” said Philip wryly. “Can it be that my personality is not as attractive as I thought?”

“Have you any idea who could have switched your dope salad at Woomera?” asked Claire, idly gazing through the “window” as the cloudy coast of Africa appeared to slowly gyrate one thousand miles away.

“Gaff Midley has confessed,” said Shane with a grin. “But his sinister motives have yet to be revealed.”

“Not really?” asked Claire.

“Not really,” agreed Philip. “But the only other person, apart from your sweet self, who had any opportunity is, like Caesar’s wife, above reproach.”

“And who might that be?” asked Claire quickly.

“Professor Quarles,” replied Philip.

At that moment, the professor himself entered the room. His face was deathly white.

“Had a cosy chat?” inquired Shane mercilessly.

Before the professor could reply, he was followed by Dr. Wills, who presented each of the space travellers with a sleeping tablet once again advising them to take as much rest as possible before the trip to the moon.

Ten hours later, after the Commonwealth Space Station had made five complete journeys round the earth, the space travellers awoke, relaxed and refreshed, ready now to assimilate the facts and conditions of their new environment of space.

The director of the satellite took them on a tour of his citadel, describing the strange machinery and the functions of each department as it was reached.

In the observation dome, they were able to look at the circular solar mirror, which ran like a vast polished gutter round the wheel of the satellite. The solar mirror produced all the power needed by the space station. It focused the sun’s hard rays upon a tubular “boiler” of mercury, until the metal vaporised and, expanding, drove the turbo-generator at full speed. Such a power unit needed no extra fuel whatsoever, and would run efficiently without attention for years.

In the observation dome, too, the space travellers took their first full look at the sun through the specially-darkened glass panels. Had they gazed at it unprotected, the fierce rays, undimmed by atmosphere, would have blinded them.

There it hung, a bright ball of energy, suspended in a black sky. Beyond and around it were shoals of hard, brilliant stars—stars that would never disappear in the perpetual day-night of outer space. And “below” this same burning penny of the sun was the two-hour orbit, littered with space-taxis, two or three ferry rockets, and the vast moonship. Each of these things caught and reflected the harsh rays of sunlight with such power that it was difficult not to believe that space-taxis, ferry rockets and moonship were themselves glowing. But behind the rockets and taxis were dark pools of shadow, too black for human eyes to probe.

Glancing towards the moonship, the space travellers could see tiny numbered figures gesticulating, pushing and pulling industriously. Rocky Wilson and his crew were having a session.

Dr. Wills escorted his small party down to the space station’s galley, where refrigerators and short-wave cookers operated on the electricity generated by the solar mirror. The short-wave cooker, coupled to an automatic door in the side of a refrigerator, was designed to provide meals with a minimum of effort.

By pressing three switches, Dr. Wills demonstrated how an uncooked chicken could be automatically conveyed from the refrigerator to the short-wave cooker, done to a turn in ninety seconds, and returned to the refrigerator ready for a cold supper. The short-wave cooker was capable of dealing with a sizeable roast in less than a minute, and could boil a gallon of water in fifteen seconds flat.

From the galley, the visitors were taken to see the water-recovery plant, which extracted surplus moisture from the satellite’s atmosphere, purified all used water, in whatever form, and re-cycled it ready for further use. The water-recovery installation was one of the most important features of the satellite since, by enabling the same water to be used over and over again, it had saved hundreds of cubic feet of cargo space in the ferry rockets.

“And now,” said Dr. Wills, when they had concluded the tour of inspection. “I expect you would like to pop around the orbit in a space-taxi, and perhaps have a closer look at the moonship. So if you’ll get your headpieces and check the oxygen pressure, we’ll go out to the landing stage. Henderson has left his own vehicle parked here for just such a purpose.”

Oxygen equipment was checked, headpieces screwed down, and the party ascended the spiral stairs and entered the de-compression chambers.

The doors closed, the red light flashed, and the needle of the pressure gauge began to slowly drop from the fourteen mark to zero. Everyone’s space-suit began to balloon out as their internal pressure compensated.

The outer doors of the airlock opened, and once again the new space travellers experienced tremors of doubt as they stood on the threshold of the void.

The space-taxi was moored there waiting for them. But there was also something else. Floating up to the hub of the space station from a deep pool of shadow cast by the satellite itself, was the curiously motionless figure of a man in a C.P.S. On his back was the recognition sign F.C.I.W. painted in red. It was also repeated on his headpiece. The group on the landing platform recognised the space-suit as that worn by the Ferry Commander.

There was something oddly familiar in his very immobility. Quarles and the director of the satellite spoke to him over the audion, but there was no reply.

The figure, arms akimbo, legs splayed outwards, was slowly rotating in grotesque mimicry of the Commonwealth Satellite.

Shane noticed that the pressure suit was slack, though it should have been ballooned up by the internal pressure of oxygen.

As the figure swung round, harsh sunlight suddenly illuminated the plastiglass visor of the headpiece. The muscles of the three watching men instinctively tautened as they heard Claire Scott’s low, half-stifled scream over their audions.

Through the visor they caught a glimpse of bluish features, half-hidden by patches of frozen red foam.

Shane saw that the Ferry Commander’s pressure suit was punctured by a neat black-rimmed hole. He had died of explosive decompression.

Chapter Seven

THE MOONSHIP

THE informal inquest held in the common-room of the space station had been brief but stormy. It was attended by Rocky Wilson, Gaff Midley, Dr. Wills, Professor Quarles, Shane and Claire Scott. Claire sat silent and white-faced throughout the first part of the grim discussion.

“Murder,” thundered the professor dramatically, “and attempted murder seem to go hand in hand with this Lunar City project—I shall take steps to——”

“We haven’t agreed it was murder, yet,” cut in Rocky Wilson. “Even you, Professor Quarles, must be aware that the pioneering of space involves risks that cannot be measured by terrestrial standards.”

“The hole in that pressure suit,” retorted the professor, “was a neat, round hole—with a charred edge. The suit has been deliberately sabotaged. Any intelligent or innocent person can see that!”

“Would you care to elaborate on that last remark?” asked Rocky, white with anger.

“I have said exactly what I meant. Any intelligent or innocent person would agree that the Ferry Commander’s suit was wilfully damaged.”

“I don’t think I would necessarily agree,” said Shane mildly. “Accidents can and do happen.”

“Accidents,” snorted the professor. “Don’t speak to me of accidents, Mr. Shane. In the short time I have been associated with this venture, I have seen too many accidents—I suppose someone accidentally changed the drugs that Dr. Midley gave you?”

Philip was silent but Gaff Midley then entered the discussion.

“One crime doesn’t prove another, Professor Quarles,” he said quietly. “But, for the moment, we’ll accept this hypothesis of murder. Have you any suggestion as to how it was effected?”

A triumphant gleam appeared in the professor’s eyes. “I most certainly have,” he said. “There is on this space station a well-equipped laboratory. I maintain that the murderer is narrowed down to someone having access to this laboratory.”

“Which points to me as suspect number one,” said Dr. Wills with a smile. “May I inquire, Professor, why you insist upon the murderer having access to a laboratory?”

“Because,” said Professor Quarles, “he needed a highly-polished, concave mirror of specific curvature. Quite a small one would do the job—even a pocket-sized one, with the right curvature.”

“I’m sorry to disappoint you,” said Dr. Wills. “But we do not have any facilities here for working in either glass or polished metal—not to the precision limits required—I see of course what you are getting at. You are implying that the murderer—if we must have one—waited for an opportunity of focusing the sun’s rays upon the unsuspecting Ferry Commander’s pressure suit. I agree that the sun’s heat would be entirely adequate. But I maintain that the supposed crime would require much premeditation—or a convenient and ready-made weapon.”

Suddenly, Claire jumped up and left the common-room. Gaff Midley watched her retreating form.

“That girl is not far from breaking-point,” he announced casually. “A great deal has been packed into the last twenty-four hours for her. If I were you, Professor Quarles, I’d soft-pedal the murder theory for a while.”

“Dr. Midley, I trust you are not trying to deflect the course of justice?” said the professor pompously.

“If you fancy yourself as the blind goddess, go ahead,” retorted Gaff unperturbed.

“I insist upon a full investigation,” said Quarles. “There seems to be a widely accepted view that the two-hour orbit is beyond the law. Doubtless it is due to the fact that the situation at Lunar City has also descended into mere anarchy, if not worse.”

“Look, Professor,” said Rocky Wilson, “let’s cut the wind and get down to the facts. The Ferry Commander is dead. All of us here knew and respected him. His death may or may not be accidental, but we’re all agreed that it’s mighty peculiar. Nevertheless, we don’t know how he died. And the plain truth is that we can’t afford to stop and find out. The moonship has got to leave the orbit in less than seven hours, and there’s a hell of a lot to be done. We can’t wait for a rocket load of policemen to come up and sniff around and photograph the scene of the crime. Because there is no scene of the crime! It’s just plain empty space. If some maniac had it in for the Ferry Commander—well, he was just that, a maniac; and sooner or later he’ll blow his top. Then we’ll get him.”

“After a few more murders, no doubt,” said the professor, dryly.

“Captain Wilson is right,” said Gaff Midley. “There just isn’t anything we can do right now—unless the hypothetical murderer will oblige us by confessing.”

“Any offers?” inquired Shane promptly. His sally, meant to relieve the growing tension, was received in stony silence.

“One thing we can do,” said Rocky Wilson, staring at the clock.

“What’s that?” asked Shane.

“We can give him a decent send-off.”

“Will you kindly define ‘a decent send-off?’ asked the professor cynically.

“Dammit,” exploded Rocky. “We can’t leave him hanging around like—like a stuffed turkey, while we wait for the killer, if any, to panic. Let’s give him a decent burial, a space pilot’s burial, the way he’d want it.”

“I’m a little old-fashioned,” said Quarles petulantly. “Will someone kindly elucidate?”

“Rocky means that we ought to drop the Ferry Commander’s body out of the orbit,” explained Gaff. “That can be done by moving the body westward at high speed, so that it’s velocity becomes less than the orbital velocity. That way, it would slowly lose altitude until finally it hit the atmosphere. The speed of its fall would be such that it would become white hot and rapidly dissolve into incandescent gas. It’s about the most perfect form of cremation there is. There would be literally nothing left.”

“Barbaric!” snapped the professor. “But very convenient. All the evidence destroyed in one fell swoop—literally so. I cannot consent to such a procedure, or share any responsibility for it.”

“Being democratic, if not civilized,” said Gaff, “we’d better put it to the vote. All those in favour of Captain Wilson’s suggestion kindly raise their hands.”

Professor Quarles was the only one who did not do so.

“Carried,” said Gaff. “Now who is going to make the arrangements?”

“I’ll do it,” said Rocky. “It’s the least I can do. In all the time I’ve worked with him, he’s never given me a rough deal. If I ever get to thinking his death wasn’t accidental, and if I ever get to figuring who was responsible, there’s going to be another funeral in the two-hour orbit.”

“Would you like any help?” asked Shane, as Rocky prepared to go.

“No thanks, Mr. Shane, I’ll do it alone.”

“I shall place all the details of this singular arrangement in my interim report,” said the professor weakly, when Rocky had gone.

After a moment, Shane said dryly. “Has it occurred to you, Professor, that there may be those who don’t care a camel’s hump for your interim report?”

Before the professor could reply, the door opened and Claire reappeared.

“It’s gone,” she said without preamble. “As soon as I heard you talking about concave mirrors, I suddenly remembered it.”

“What’s gone?” asked Shane.

“The concave aluminium mirror that Fabian gave me. He sent is as a souvenir from Lunar City six months ago. I’ve carried it everywhere. A little while ago I put it on the locker in my cabin—just after I took the sleeping tablet Dr. Wills gave me!”

Rocky Wilson had performed his last service for his friend and commander; and now he was able to give his undivided attention to the preparation of the moonship. There remained but three hours to firing-point.

Professor Quarles, Claire and Philip Shane were already aboard, and had been allotted their berths for the five-day journey. Once more they were having to readjust themselves to life at zero gravity. In the Commonwealth Satellite, they had spent a great deal of the time in the synthetic gravity field of the space station’s revolving “tyre.”

But now they were confronted by the problem of spending a considerable time, and performing all the normal functions of the daily routine, at Z.G.

In the moonship, they had to get used to the fact that it was impossible to drink liquid from a cup, or eat food from a plate. For the liquid would tend to float about the cabin in large globules, and the food would skate merrily across the table, rebounding from bulkhead to bulkhead. Because of this, all drinking fluid was stored in plastic “babies’” bottles; and the space passengers had to accustom themselves to drinking by “squirting.” They had also to get used to eating solid food pre-cut into neat little cubes.

The passengers’ accommodation was a roomy, cylindrical compartment between the space-navigation deck and the “cookhouse” or communal relaxation/dining room. Below the cookhouse was the engineers’ department, where a whole battery of electronic brains—compensators, auto-pilots, and intelligencers—were synchronised to act in perfect unison. These brains were capable of plotting the entire journey to the moon, executing all necessary power manœuvres, correcting any faulty development of the course, and they were also able to control the landing of the moonship at Lunar City so that it touched down smoothly on the selected site.

The function of Rocky Wilson, as Captain of the moonship, was to make any “human” decisions for which the electronic brains could not be programmed. Should the journey prove uneventful, the captain of the moonship would merely act as a passive spectator, keeping a watchful eye on things, while the tireless, sleepless electronic brains did all the work. Should, on the other hand, an unforeseen emergency arise, it would be the duty of the captain to select the appropriate emergency-action tape and feed it to the intelligencer, or master-brain. This machine would then digest the information supplied by the steel tape, and would consequently programme all the other brains for whatever action was necessary.

While the professor, Shane and Claire Scott were learning to get about comfortably in the passenger compartment by pulling the various wall-slings, or stepping cautiously around in their magnetised boots and acquiring the gentle art of not hitting the “ceiling,” Gaff Midley was up on the space-navigation deck, doing what he could to help in the departure preparations.

“How are the visitors making out?” asked Rocky, as he stepped up to the astrodome, and watched the swarm of space-taxis below, discharging their cargoes into the moonship’s entry-port.

“They’re busy settling in,” replied Gaff with a grin, “and finding out what they can do. I’ll go down and see them again, presently. Last time I was in the passenger compartment, Professor Quarles was having fun trying to give himself a drink. He got an eyeful.”

“I’m beginning to develop an intense dislike for that character,” announced Rocky. “He’s beginning to get under my skin.”

“Well, don’t let him,” advised Gaff. “You know the sort of thing that can happen on these moon-hops if people get nervy with each other. Personally, I can’t say his absence would move me to tears; but he’s here, and we’ve just got to grin and bear it.”

“It’s going to seem a long five days,” announced Rocky. He stepped down from the astrodome. “Well, that’s the last batch of bits and pieces stowed aboard. Now we can sit down and twiddle our fingers. Do you know the real reason why they sent that guy up for the moon trip, Gaff?”

“Don’t you read the papers, Rocky?”

The captain of the moonship grinned. “When I’m stuck in 5G and I’ve got nothing better to do.”

“Professor Quarles is a one-man Extraordinary Commission appointed to look into things at Lunar City.”

“You mean Whitehall has sent him up to spy on the G.D.?”

“That’s about it.”

There was a moment or two’s silence. Then Rocky said: “And what’s your racket, Gaff?”

“The usual. One or two of the big brains are getting a bit neurotic out in Lunar City. So old Grandpa Midley has come up to sing ’em a few psychological lullabies.”

“Don’t give me the old father image. What’s the real reason? Seems to me I’m carrying a mighty unusual human cargo this trip. No technicians, no astronomers, no physicists—only a government ferret, a trick cyclist, a journalist and Sir Fabian’s daughter. Take ’em all together, they don’t look worth their weight in hydrazine to me.”

“Speaking for myself, as the trick cyclist, I can assure you I’m not,” confessed Gaff disarmingly. “However, a few of the morons still think a table-spoonful of psychiatry does ’em good, so what can I do.”

“Quit stalling,” said Rocky. “I want the truth.”

“Captain Wilson,” said Gaff seriously. “I have a disturbing suspicion that you’re an honest man. It’s irrational; but being human, I’m inclined to cherish the illusion.”

“I’m as crooked as a cork-screw,” retorted Rocky. “But I still want the truth.”

“They tell me,” remarked Gaff, “that death is becoming a major industry at Lunar City.”

“So?”

“You’d think the top man wouldn’t rest until he got the situation in hand, wouldn’t you?”

“Seems reasonable,” agreed Rocky. “So what?”

“Work it out for yourself,” suggested Gaff. “I’ll say this much, though. Because Sir Fabian Scott happens to be a brilliant scientist it doesn’t necessarily make him a brilliant human being.”

“You think he’s round the bend?”

“Did I say that?”

“No, but you hinted at it.”

“Merely a vague and rather wild notion,” corrected Gaff.

Rocky Wilson frowned thoughtfully. “It could explain a lot of queer things. You know what, Gaff? I’ve had the same idea myself for quite a while. But I tried to forget it because it seemed kind of disloyal.”

“And loyalty,” added Gaff, “is what Sir Fabian demands above everything else.”

“You said it!” agreed Rocky emphatically. “Now I wonder why the G.D. sent for his daughter? That yarn about writing up the construction of Lunar City is a load of bull. I know the scribe who’s been detailed for that very job.”

“It gives food for thought,” said Gaff slowly. “Sir Fabian doesn’t usually allow mere human sentiment to influence his plans.”

“I got an uneasy feeling she’d have done better to stick around in England,” pronounced Rocky. “Why the G.D. should want to park her in Lunar City, with all this funny business going on, beats me.”

“And there,” concluded Gaff, “we are but two minds with a single question-mark. I suppose I’d better go and see whether Quarles has managed to give himself a bump on the head, yet.”

With a slight push, he propelled himself expertly across the navigation deck to the central connecting door.

Rocky Wilson followed him, remarking: “Think I’ll hop back to the satellite for half an hour, and check calculations with Dr. Wills.”

Rocky Wilson had returned from Commonwealth Space Station; the swarms of taxis round the moonship had melted away; the litter of odd girders, empty canisters and nylon bags had been cleared from the moonship’s “runway”; the entry-ports were closed and all compartments pressurised; the crew were in their power manœuvre positions; and the sleek space ship, with its gleaming hull of duralumin meteor-bumpers, had been accurately positioned for the take-off. There remained but fifteen minutes to firing point. Then the battery of powerful rocket motors would begin to consume hydrazine and nitric acid at over a ton a second. Green, luminous jets of flame would belch forth, creating a powerful thrust; and the moonship would move slowly along the orbit, then outwards on the long drop to the moon.

The atmosphere on the space-navigation deck was one of tense expectancy. Howard, the navigator, together with the two engineers and the radio operator were being given final briefing by Rocky Wilson, whose genial familiarity now gave place to an air of authority, as was necessary for a man on whose decisions and commands the lives of the crew and passengers depended.

“As soon as the power manœuvre is completed,” said Wilson, “you, Howard, will check the ascent ratio and the trajectory ellipse; Webster will tally the fuel consumption; Lee will disengage the auxiliary tanks and the flat helium cylinders; and I will fix the reckoning. Then Masters can radio all the dope back to Commonwealth, and we’ll ask them to give us a cross-bearing. When we’ve done all that, we can call up Lunar City and tell them we’re on our way in accordance with Schedule Three. Any questions?”

“What about verifying the ship’s attitude on the external visulators?” asked Howard.

“I’ve done that,” said the captain, “and also double-checked it. The attitude is dead set, with no measurable variation.”

“There was a point zero seven fault in the gyro-manipulator,” said Webster, the senior engineer. “But I programmed the brain-control to compensate for it.”

“I remembered that fault when I gave the ship the once-over,” said Wilson. “Glad you reminded me, though. I wouldn’t have remembered that the darn thing had been allowed for. By the way, I forgot to ask if our atmosphere has been checked since we’ve pressurised the whole ship.”

“Just done it, Captain,” said Lee. “Dead on ten pounds of pressure, and dead on the sixty-forty mixture of helium and oxygen.”

“Stout work!” commented the space captain. “Are the extractors devaporising satisfactorily?”

“As well as can be expected, until we get the new set, remarked Webster dryly. “By the time we get to the second power manœuvre, I’ll bet a modest dollar the atmosphere is like a Turkish bath.”

“Well, don’t go into the airlock wearing nothing but a bath towel,” retorted Wilson, with a slight smile. “And remind me to try and acquire a new set when we touch down. They should have reconditioned the first ones by now.” He glanced at the electrochron on the control panel. “There’s about seven minutes left. We’d better get into the strait-jackets and say a few prayers.”

The crew disappeared once more to their departure positions. Captain Wilson took his place on the contour-berth by the central control block, and occupied himself by checking, for the fifth time, the readings of altitude meters, reactor needles, gyro-stabiliser and the automatic positional echometer.

Down below, in the passenger chamber, the scene was no less tense.

“Now, don’t get yourselves all worked up,” advised Gaff Midley, trying to relax the psychological tension as firing-point inexorably approached. “You did the worst part of the trip in Rocket Thirteen. All you’re going to get now from the first power manœuvre is a gentle acceleration of 1/10G, building up slowly to 1/3G at the end of thirty-three minutes. Why, it’s less than you’d normally feel in a bath-chair!”

Claire smiled wanly, unconvinced that she would not once more have to undergo ordeal by 10G. She had an uneasy feeling that Gaff Midley was merely trying to soothe her, as he would a small child, with a pleasant fiction.

“Look, Miss Scott,” said Gaff patiently, “we’ve already got a velocity of nearly sixteen thousand miles an hour, simply by being in the two-hour orbit. To get up to break-away speed, we only need to step our orbit velocity up by another three and a half thousand miles an hour. We shall take over thirty minutes to do this—as opposed to the ten minutes or so we took to climb from zero velocity in Woomera up to the orbit velocity. Now that makes sense, doesn’t it?”

Claire nodded dutifully, but without conviction.

“The spirit is willing,” she said, “but the flesh is weak. My stomach is already doing a few somersaults in anticipation. I’ll be all right as soon as we’re under way.”

Shane smiled sympathetically. “I can’t say I’m ready to sit down and work out chess problems, myself. However, as Miss Scott says, once the needle’s in the tooth stops hurting. How about you, Professor?”

“I’m quite adjusted, thank you,” replied Quarles unconvincingly. “What Dr. Midley says is quite true. We shall hardly know that we are moving.”

At that moment, the captain’s voice came over the intercom.: “Three minutes to firing-point! Everybody happy? There’s no need to run a temperature, it’ll be as smooth as butter.”

Gaff Midley flicked back the switch and replied: “We’re all set, captain. Nobody’s struggling to get out and walk, but I don’t think they really believe me when I tell ’em it’s less than 1/10th G.”

The passengers heard a chuckle from the space-navigation deck.

“Gaff has given it to you straight,” said Wilson. “You won’t believe me, but this is a part of the trip you’re going to enjoy. I want you all to use your contour-berths for the departure—a routine precaution—but as soon as we’re under way, you can get out and do what you like.”

A red light flashed on the bulkhead. On the space-navigation deck, Captain Wilson almost relaxed. His hardest work—checking controls, feeding the right programme to the electronic brains—was already behind him. Now, the fate of the moonship was controlled by the automatic pilot and its small family of lesser brains. As far as this first power manœuvre was concerned, the captain of the moonship might just as well go to sleep, for the possibility of human error had been totally eliminated.

“Sixty seconds to firing-point,” said the auto-announcer. “Forty-five seconds … thirty … fifteen … ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one—zero!”

Somehow indefinably, it seemed to the passengers that the moonship suddenly became alive. She seemed to quicken and vibrate with the vitality of some magnificent animal. The echo of a great dampened roaring seemed to charge the very atmosphere, and with it came an overwhelming sensation of power and purpose. In the first moments after firing-point, all the passengers’ doubts and secret fears dissolved in the exhilaration of successfully beginning the long trip to the moon. As they gazed through the portholes, watching all the space-taxis, tankers and third stage rockets fall away and behind them like a swarm of bright metallic flies, watching the Commonwealth Space Station shrink to a tiny white ring, everyone aboard the moonship, whether experienced space traveller or amateur, was reawakened to the wonder of human achievement—that man, with all his imperfections, could carve a pathway even to the stars!

The space-ship, smooth and indomitable, swung slowly out from the two-hour orbit, out in a gentle, rising curve, patiently climbing to a velocity of twenty thousand miles an hour—a mere snail’s pace amid the remote and vacant deserts of space stretching their deceptive veil of darkness between a hundred thousand million suns.

Below the moonship, the tiny celestial golf ball that is Earth swung steadily upon its appointed course. There, bathed in cloud and sunlight, the blurred pattern of Asia passed slowly out of sight.

To the space-travellers the Earth was no longer real. It was a dream, a phantom, shimmering with deceptive solidity in the hard light of the sun. It was an illusion belonging to some other existence.

What now was the real world, the only world, was the silvery shell of the moonship, climbing to a frontier in space—a frontier where the relentless pull of the planet that created it would fade, and where the gravity field of the moon, like an invisible tentacle, would grip the space-ship, drawing it with increasing urgency through two hundred thousand miles of darkness.

This was the only world—a tiny shell encasing a few human beings, silently navigating the uncharted darkness.

Such were the random thoughts of Shane, Claire Scott, Gaff Midley, and even Professor Quarles as they gazed at the shrinking image of Earth, which seemed now to roll slowly away through unimaginable corridors of total night.

On the starboard bow of the space-ship was the blinding, hypnotic ball of the sun. But the moon, the destination of this long, falling journey into space, was as yet unseen. Presently, she would climb round the rim of the earth, as if consciously moving towards the appointed rendezvous.

Chapter Eight

THE SECOND POWER MANŒUVRE

THE voyage began to develop its own routine. Time passed slowly for the crew, whose work consisted chiefly of supervising the combination of electronic brains, which was in complete control of the moonship. Once or twice the engineers and the captain donned their headpieces and made external examinations of the hull and its light meteor-bumpers. But there was little for them to do. An automatic radio contact had been established with Lunar City; and once, Sir Fabian Scott looked up the captain of the moonship on the visulator. But his conversation was confined entirely to questions relating to the flight, together with a formal enquiry after Claire’s well-being. He did not ask to see her, and Wilson thought it best not to mention the fact that Sir Fabian had been in contact, to the passengers.

Early on the fifth “day,” the moonship passed the gravity frontier—the point between Moon and Earth where the gravitational pull of each body is perfectly balanced. By this time the unpowered momentum-velocity of the space-ship had dropped to four hundred miles an hour. But from then on, it would begin to accelerate, as the lunar gravity became stronger and stronger, while the Earth-pull proportionately decreased.

The moon, now only twenty thousand miles away, stared up with a bright, baleful stillness—all its craters, its lava plains, its high volcanic mountains thrown into weird relief by the green earth-light. Presently the sun would rise, to change that greenish desolate moonscape into a fierce, burning wilderness whose equatorial temperature would be above boiling-point. But the lunar day—as long as fourteen earth-days—would not begin until after the moonship had touched down.

Having passed the gravity frontier, the moonship began to pick up speed, racing to the point, only six hours away and five hundred miles above the lunar surface, when the second power manœuvre would begin. By that time, the moonship would have gathered a velocity of nearly six thousand miles an hour; and unless something was done to retard this headlong flight, it would smash into the face of the moon like some vast meteor.

The second power manœuvre, which was designed to make zero velocity and zero altitude coincide, consisted in its first stage of turning the space-ship round. This was technically known as reversing the altitude; and it was the trickiest part of the whole manœuvre, since a successful landing could be turned into a disaster if the altitude of the ship was the slightest fraction of a degree out. As soon as the altitude had been reversed by means of the gyro-manipulator, the rocket motors, now pointing directly at the moon, would begin firing. Hundreds of tons of hydrazine and nitric acid would be translated into a blast of green flame bearing down to the moon’s surface. In this way, firing against the thrust of the ship, the rocket motors would begin to knock off speed until, as on previous trips, the sleek monster settled as gracefully as a ballet dancer. The accurate correlation of velocity/altitude decrease was a problem too large for the human brain to tackle. So, before the power manœuvre began, the captain of the moonship would programme the electronic brain that acted as master-pilot. He would feed its instructions to it by inserting the appropriate touch-down tape. From then on, the fate of the moonship and all aboard would be in the lap of the gods, since, if any error developed, the captain would have to be very fast indeed to correct it by means of manual control.

The landing site was about two miles from the group of laboratories, workshops, stores and living-quarters that, encased in a plastic dome, was Lunar City. A few miles farther out on the great lava plain was the construction site for the vast solar power station that would gather the sun’s rays together and focus the tremendous heat on to a solar reactor to break down the atomic structure of selenon, the unstable moon-metal. The colossal electronic energy thus liberated would ultimately be beamed to distribution points all over the Earth.

When, and if this project was completed, humanity would have no further need of terrestrial atomic piles, since all industrial and domestic power would be supplied by broadcast beam from the primary distributor on the moon. At present the construction of the huge polished mirror had only just started; and at the beginning of each lunar day, teams of scientists went out from their base to the power station, working furiously to accomplish as much as possible before the onset of the long, frozen night.

Lunar City itself was situated not far from the moon’s south pole. It was but a few miles away from the vast crater Tycho which, with its high mountainous walls and great scarred plains, with its crevasses and gaping chasms, dominated the southern hemisphere. The site near Tycho had been chosen because, being in a polar region it would not get unbearably hot during the two-week lunar day; and during the correspondingly lengthy night, protection from the deep cold could be obtained by using certain natural caverns, the walls of which had particularly good properties of insulation.

Through the reflector telescope in the moonship’s astrodome, Lunar City, dwarfed by the giant crater, looked very small indeed—a tiny plastic bubble set on the surface of a dead world. Captain Wilson stared at it intently for a minute or two. Then he stepped down from the astrodome and allowed Claire Scott to take his place.

She gazed at it silently for a while, and then exclaimed: “But it’s so terribly small! I thought Lunar City would be—well, I certainly expected it to be more than what it is.”

“The works of man,” said Gaff Midley, “are never quite so big or so important as we think they are. Back on earth, people talk about Lunar City as they talk about London or New York, forgetting that both those places have been there a long time; while, up here, work has only just begun. Some day, I suppose, maybe not until the twenty-second century, Lunar City will have transformed its little shacks into one big metropolis. And I suppose by that time half its inhabitants will have been born on the moon.”

“Do you think it’s worth while colonising such a desolate place?” enquired Shane, as he gazed at thousands of square miles of lifeless terrain.

“Personally, no. But humanity might have other ideas. And it will do the human race a lot of good to pit itself against some really tough problems. Physically, as well as psychologically, the basic principle of life is expand or die.”

“I think,” remarked Professor Quarles, staring hard at the lunar landscape, “I think the Americans have done well to by-pass the moon and concentrate upon survey flights round the nearer planets. They are a race of businessmen, well accustomed to thinking in terms of profit and loss. And they have seen that the moon is not a profitable investment. We Commonwealth scientists would have done well to follow their example. But the stubbornness of certain eminent though irresponsible men has led us to spend vast sums of money on this—this white elephant.”

“That’s exactly what it will be, Professor,” said Wilson. “A white elephant—transmitting its strength across space for the benefit of humanity. If it succeeds, this solar power station will be worth a hundred deep-space survey flights.”

“If it succeeds!” snorted the professor. “Is that likely? Not, apparently, before every Commonwealth scientist lies dead on the lunar plains.”

“You, of all people,” retorted the captain, “should know that experiment is necessary. Think of all the lives we lost establishing Commonwealth Satellite in the two-hour orbit. But we finally succeeded.”

“With what result?”

“Well,” said the captain slowly, “it helped stop a fifth world war, didn’t it? I reckon most of the guys who lost their lives on the job considered it was a fair bargain. Unlike you, Professor, they were classed as expendable. So you might say they had a personal interest in trying for world peace.”

Gaff Midley skilfully diverted what promised to be a first-class argument.

“How far are we off firing-point, Captain?” he asked.

“About four hours,” replied Wilson.

“Then I suggest that we go back to the passenger chamber and get some rest,” said Gaff, “before the second power manœuvre. We’ve all been weightless for some time, and we’re going to feel the strain when the G force returns—even though it won’t be very strong. Also, when we touch down, I don’t suppose you’ll think about sleeping for the first twenty-four hours. Nobody ever does. And then they wonder why they get nervous exhaustion!”

He led his reluctant companions from the space-navigation deck and made them all relax on the contour-berths. But no one was sufficiently composed to go to sleep.

Captain Wilson’s voice came over the intercom: “Stand by for change of attitude prior to landing manœuvre.”

The lunar altitude of the space-ship was nine hundred miles—which were being eaten up at the rate of more than five thousand miles an hour. By the time the ship had reversed its attitude, the altitude would be a mere five hundred miles. Then the rocket motors would begin firing.

Howard, the navigator, took a snap position, while the captain checked it with the electrochron and the radar altimeter. From now on it was up to the electronic brain. The flight trajectory and timing were dead on, and the master-pilot had been programmed accordingly. Wilson went to the central control berth, facing the panel of three external visulators which would give him a picture of the ship externally as it appeared in space and in relation to the moon. He lay down, strapped himself in, and pressed the switch. The visulators lit up, showing the moonship from starboard, port and stern positions.

“Sixty seconds to attitude reversal!” said the auto-announcer. “Forty-five seconds … thirty … fifteen … ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one—zero!”

Howard, from his own contour-berth, looked across at his chief and grinned, crossing his fingers. But Wilson’s whole attention was riveted upon the external visulators.

Slowly, the vault of stars seemed to turn upside down, and the moon to fall astern. The earth floated slowly across the starboard bows, and it seemed as if the entire universe had gone into a tail-spin that would never stop. But the electronic brain knew its job, and held the gyro-manipulator in strict control. The stars came out of their tail-spin, the earth stopped its slow-motion dance, and the moon fell into position dead astern. It was as if the cosmos had played at musical chairs, while the space-ship had stayed quite still.

Again the auto-announcer delivered its tense message: “Sixty seconds to firing-point … forty-five seconds … thirty seconds … fifteen seconds … ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one—zero!”

Once more, after days of tranquil, unpowered flight, the battery of rocket motors released their tremendous surge of energy. Once more, after the long weightless fall through space, the G force returned, making everyone aboard the moonship feel that their veins were filled with falling mercury. Small items that had not been secured went bouncing to the deck—an odd magazine, a stray pencil, and the inevitable empty plastic bottle—everything reacquired the tendency to fall. And to the recently weightless space-travellers this was as much a miracle as when they had first noticed everything that was loose floating effortlessly in a field of zero gravity.

The returning G force was only about one-third that of normal terrestrial gravity. But its first impact was such that Claire Scott found herself writhing on the contour-berth and groaning aloud, as if she were suffering the crushing stress of 10G that had been imposed on her in Rocket Thirteen. After a minute or two, however, she had readjusted, and was able to smile apologetically at an anxious Philip Shane.

“Six minutes to zero altitude!” boomed the auto-announcer.

On the space-navigation deck, Captain Rocky Wilson was no more conscious of the twitching in his legs caused by the returning G force than he was conscious of the sweat on his forehead. His hands gripped tightly two chromed levers on either side of the contour-berth. One was the manual deflector which, in an emergency, could be used by the captain to alter the attitude of the space-ship; and the other was the manual retarder which, should the occasion arise, would boost the rocket motors to capacity-thrust to break an over-quick fall, or even regain some altitude. If either of these levers were used, the electronic control would be automatically cut out, and the spaceship would respond only to the captain.

Rocky Wilson’s whole consciousness was focused upon the panel of external visulators. On the port and starboard visulators he could see the attitude of the ship in relation to surface level; and the stern visulator gave him a view as if he were actually looking over the green blast of the rocket motors to the huge crater of Tycho, growing larger and larger like some demented mushroom.

Nearer, inexorably nearer, came the pitted surface of the moon; and the menacing peaks of the jagged mountain ring rose like the sharp, uneven fangs of some ravenous carnivore, ready to crush the space-ship to a shapeless pulp. To one side of this towering mountain range lay the tiny plastic dome that sealed off Lunar City from the airless void. And beyond, falling slowly astern, was the relatively smooth lava-plain that was the landing site.

“Three minutes to zero altitude!” said the damnably calm voice of the auto-announcer.

Howard, the navigator, stared at his instruments with the same hypnotic concentration that his captain gave to the visulators.

“Trajectory normal, Captain! Altitude/velocity coefficient without variation!” Howard’s voice was taut and high-pitched.

“Check!” snapped Wilson, without taking his eyes from the visulators. “Attitude normal. Landing site assuming vertical.”

“Sixty seconds to zero altitude!” said the auto-announcer. “Forty-five seconds … thirty seconds … fifteen seconds … ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one—zero!”

As the last seconds were counted out, in a time that would never stop, the great green flames of the rocket motors bit their way deep into the lunar surface, the retractable spider-legs eased out from the stern of the ship, and the central support pushed its way through the fiery blast of the motors to make first contact with the moon. It sank slowly into the now molten surface rock, feeling for support. Then the spider-legs came down to the uneven rock-face, stabilising the ship’s vertical attitude. On the instant that stability was achieved, the electronic brain cut off the rocket motors.

The unheard vibration ceased; the surge of power died; and the moonship stood motionless. Again, the passengers and crew were aware of a profound silence. Through the portholes, the horizon no longer dipped or the landscape pass by at terrifying speed. There was only the high, immobile barrier range of Tycho, the unwinking pattern of stars and—two hundred and forty thousand miles away—the green, slow-spinning ball of earth. The sky was black, and the stark lunar landscape was bathed in dull greenish light … The trip was over. And, as often before, both passengers and crew gave reverent thanks—each person in his own fashion—for the deep and satisfying human achievement of a successful voyage to the moon.

Captain Wilson was the first to break the silence. The passengers heard his voice over the intercom.

“Good old brain!” he was saying in the tender accent that a man usually reserves for his lover. “Good old brain! You sure hit the high notes, darling. Why, it was as pure as a Woomera barmaid … You never let the old man down, do you, sweet-heart? Except maybe once in a blue moon!”

Chapter Nine

LUNAR CITY

THE moonship stood like a spectacular metallic lighthouse surrounded by a green frozen sea—a sea of rocks and lava-beds stretching out to the sharp horizon.

Two miles away, the transparent dome of Lunar City now appeared respectably large. It seemed miraculous that the plastic “bubble” could remain inflated, but the space-travellers knew that there was no crushing atmospheric pressure, no storms or climatic variations to crush its delicate membrane. However, for all its apparent weakness, the triple-thickness self-sealing plastic was quite able to survive bombardment by high-velocity dust-meteors—the greatest danger to any creature, or construction, exposed on the inhospitable lunar surface.

Beyond the man-made city, the vast mountain range of Tycho reared like some prehistoric citadel. Over its jagged, tooth-like edges, a thin bright radiance began to appear, spreading slender spears of white light over the weird green stillness of the surrounding plateau.

Everyone aboard the moonship had by now assembled on the space-navigation deck to gaze in wonder at Lunar City, the first human outpost on a dead world.

“Look!” said Rocky Wilson, relaxing once more his official mask of space-pilot. “They are sending a tractor for us.”

The passengers followed his keen gaze, and saw what seemed like a squat yellow beetle crawling rapidly towards the moonship. The tractor, moving at about thirty miles an hour, scattered a thin wake of dust which immediately settled again. For though the moon’s surface was covered by a fine dust layer, there was no atmosphere to hold it suspended once it had been disturbed.

The lunar tractor bore some resemblance to an old-fashioned twentieth century army tank—which, indeed, had been its direct ancestor. It was a track-laying vehicle, atomically powered and capable of a top speed of sixty miles an hour. Its rounded duralumin body supported a spacious plastic observation dome which was pressurised so that the occupants need not wear their own pressure equipment.

“Better put on our headpieces,” said Wilson, “and get ready for the airlock … I’m afraid you’ll have to climb down a nylon ladder, Miss Scott.”

“I’m beginning to get used to such minor details,” said Claire. “By this time, my nervous reactions are pretty well paralysed.”

“The surface gravity is only a sixth of what it is on earth,” warned Gaff. “So don’t get too athletic, or you may find yourself doing a few entertaining but scarifying capers.”

When headpieces had been put on and pressure checked, the group made their way down to the ship’s airlock. The pressure needle fell to zero, and the outer doors opened. Rocky Wilson led the way to the entry-port, and operated the external door mechanism. Then he took the nylon ladder from its locker and secured one end to the stanchions of the entry-port. He tossed out the bundle of ladder and watched it drop in slow motion to the surface of the moon. He was the first to descend, swinging confidently down on the thin rungs. As he jumped from the last rung to the ground, Shane was amused to see him bounce nearly three feet high.

Howard was the next to go down; and he, with Rocky Wilson, waited at the bottom of the ladder, holding it taut while the rest followed.

On reaching solid ground, Shane felt an irresistible desire to jump and test the G force to see if it really was only one-sixth that of earth. Professor Quarles succumbed to the same childish temptation; and, together, they rose a spectacular twelve or fifteen feet up and then fell slowly back.

“I wouldn’t repeat that just yet, if I were you,” called Rocky Wilson over the audion. “You haven’t readjusted yet, and if you damage your combination pressure suits, we shan’t be able to supply the appropriate bunch of lilies!”

The tractor had by this time pulled up a few yards away. The driver got out and came towards the moonship. With a stab of disappointment, Claire saw that there was no one else in the vehicle.

“Hi!” said the driver. “Nice touch-down … My name is Chambers. The G.D. asked me to come and pick you up. He would have come along with the red carpet himself, but he hadn’t got back from the construction site before you arrived.”

“Well, let’s go,” said Rocky. “These people will have plenty of time to look at the moon—from now on. Pretty soon, I expect, they’ll get to thinking how nice it was on good old earth. Then they’ll appreciate the sort of services they get for nothing on a decently equipped planet.”

“Unless,” said Chambers with a laugh, “they get space-happy—like the rest of us.”

The greenish earth-light was disappearing. Over the high, cracked rim of Tycho poured the hard, pitiless light of the lunar sunrise. Now the whole landscape was being thrown into brilliant relief, with sharp serrated outlines and deep pools of shadow.

“Another day,” grunted Chambers. “Another ruddy, blinding, two-week day!”

Lunar City covered an area of about six acres. At the apex, its translucent plastic dome was about a hundred and fifty feet from the ground. Within this protective skin was a pressurised atmosphere of oxygen and helium, where it was possible for people to work and live without wearing their headpieces or, indeed, even their pressure suits. But everyone still wore their black C.R. overalls as a secondary protection against the unceasing cosmic radiation.

The city could be entered, at four separate points, by airlocks. From these airlocks ran the two main “roads” that divided the installation up like a hot-cross bun. Each sector was numbered and had its own special group of buildings. Number one sector contained the stores, administrative, and hospital buildings; number two sector, the “domestic” blocks; number three, the laboratories and workshops; and number four, the experimental “garden.” In the experimental garden, a synthetic soil had been developed for the growing of earth-plants. The seeds of certain fruits and vegetables had been brought from earth and, by a stepped-up process of electro-germination, had been encouraged to reach complete maturity during the short “season” of the lunar day. This experimental garden, perhaps, was the most impressive symbol of man’s determination to conquer the moon.

The lunar tractor, carrying the crew and passengers of the space-ship, entered the city by the “western” airlock. It then ambled along an avenue which, according to its name-post, was called The Strand. Parked at various points along the road were several more lunar tractors, some with trailers attached.

“Home, sweet home!” remarked Chambers, the driver, as he switched off the atomic engine. “Now I’d better take you in to the G.D.—if he’s back yet—for a general pow-wow.”

Sir Fabian chose to receive his daughter first, and to see her alone—which was entirely natural. He greeted her rather formally, and then launched into a series of questions about the journey and about her companions. Claire answered him as well and as truthfully as she could, and wondered all the time she was speaking why they should be such strangers to each other. She tried to blame herself, and to convince herself that the unfamiliar atmosphere between her and her father was due to the fact that she had not yet “come round” from the fantastic voyage.

Before she left, at her father’s suggestion, for a brief rest in the quarters that had been assigned to her, she felt it necessary to warn him once more about Professor Quarles.

“That—that fossil!” exclaimed Sir Fabian in disgust. “I don’t care if he’s the Commission to end all Commissions! I shall certainly lose no sleep over Quarles, my dear. And now that he’s on my territory, he’d better behave himself.”

“What do you mean?”

“Merely,” said Sir Fabian, “that here in Lunar City, I am the law. And the sooner that Professor Quarles realises that his very existence depends upon my good will, the better it will be for him.”

“What a peculiar thing to say!” The colour drained from Claire’s face as her reluctant mind fought back the implication of Sir Fabian’s words.

“Ah, but then I’m a peculiar man,” said Sir Fabian with a disarming grin, “whose bark—as my assistants will tell you—is very much worse than his bite … But you positively must not worry about Quarles, Claire. I shall merely make him look ridiculous and send him home with his tail between his legs.”

Nevertheless, Claire left her father feeling puzzled and uneasy. Somehow, he had changed—even though he appeared more youthful. It was, thought Claire, just as if the true Fabian wasn’t really there.

Sir Fabian went back to his desk, sat down, flicked the intercom and asked for Quarles and Shane to be sent in, then pretended to study a sheaf of papers. Here, in his private office, at the hub of a world in which he was truly the Great Dictator, Sir Fabian Scott relished the opportunity of meeting his professional enemy. Quarles had always been the orthodox little scientist, with his nose hard down to his own particular grindstone, unable to take the larger view; while Fabian Scott, as he told himself with satisfaction, had always been the visionary, the man of achievement. He had put up Commonwealth Space Station, he had established Lunar City, and it would not be long before the solar power station beamed its unlimited energy to the earth. Or would it? Sir Fabian smiled, as he thought of his own private plans for the moon. If Quarles so much as got the vaguest suspicion of their nature, his hair would most certainly stand on end.

The communicating door opened, and the professor walked in, followed by Shane. Sir Fabian, looking at his papers, counted ten very slowly before he gave his attention to the two men. Then he suddenly glanced up at them and said: “I’m sorry to be so busy, gentlemen. Do sit down.”

As Shane and the professor each took an easy chair—which had been converted from the contour-berths of the first moonships—Sir Fabian gave his attention to his papers once more.

“Look here, Scott!” said the professor angrily. “There is no need for this childish play-acting!”

“Then do not indulge in it, Professor,” retorted Sir Fabian. “Unlike you, sir, I am too busy to act a part—whether as a politician, or anything else … Incidentally, I am not accustomed to my inferiors referring to me simply by my surname. If Her Majesty Queen Caroline—whom, I understand, you inappropriately represent—saw fit to confer a knighthood on me, the least you can do is to respect her decision.”

Philip Shane thought the professor was going to have apoplexy. However, by an almost superhuman effort of will, he managed to control himself.

“Very well, Sir Fabian,” said the professor quietly. “I will do my best to respect your generous assessment of your own value. But I would remind you that I did not come to the moon merely to engage in a slanging match. Nor is it fitting that Mr. Shane here, who represents the Press, should witness the spectacle of two eminent scientists squabbling in such a fashion.”

“Ah, yes, the so-called journalist,” said Sir Fabian coolly, in a tone that roused many primitive instincts in Philip Shane. But, recalling his own extraordinary mission, he kept a tight control over himself, determined to do what he could for Sir Fabian regardless of personal feelings. So far, he had felt an irrational sympathy for the man, in spite of the many adverse reports he had heard. But personal contact, and Sir Fabian’s insolent assumption of personal superiority, was rapidly transforming the sympathy into sheer dislike.

“On the whole,” said the director of Lunar City, “I do not like scribblers. They tend to be an under-hand bunch of sensation-pedlars. And my private experience does nothing to increase my confidence. I have yet to meet a reputable journalist … Why have you come here?”

“Because I didn’t have the foresight to refuse the assignment, Sir Fabian.”

“I suppose you will endeavour to scribble lurid and fictitious details concerning our private lives.”

“The supposition is not quite scientifically accurate,” said Philip evenly. “I have been given the job of writing-up in non-technical language an account of the whole project.”

“I see. Tripe for the masses. It is, of course, to be expected that the readers of the Sunday Sentinel will be entirely familiar with the theory of cumulative solar heat and electronic conversion.”

“As always, Sir Fabian, the public is interested in progress—scientific, social and criminal.”

“What do you mean by that?” A dangerous glint appeared in Sir Fabian’s eyes.

“A mere scribbler’s cliché,” explained Philip easily. “We write so many clichés that we get into the habit of speaking in them.”

“You would do well to correct that tendency,” observed Sir Fabian, as he switched on the intercom. He turned to the instrument. “Please ask Dr. von Sturm to spare me a moment.” Then he gave his attention to Philip once more: “I want you to be careful while you are in Lunar City—careful what you do, what you say, and, above all, what you write. Before it is transmitted, all your work will be submitted for my approval or otherwise. I personally will be unable to devote any time to answering puerile questions, but my deputy will bear with you as best he may … My daughter, being illogically feminine, seems to feel that you have made yourself useful. And to please her, I will show you more tolerance than your profession justifies. But do not on any account tax my patience too much. And do not try to play the spy!”

Before Shane could make any reply, a tall, lean man entered the director’s office. He glanced enquiringly at Scott.

“Erich,” said Sir Fabian familiarly, “it is unfortunately necessary for me to make you responsible for this—this journalist. Answer his questions—within reason. But do not let him meddle … And now, Professor Quarles, let us discuss what you propose to do here. For the sooner we define our respective positions, and the less we see of each other, the better I shall like it.”

As Dr. Erich von Sturm led Shane from the room, Philip found himself sympathising with Professor Quarles in what, doubtless, would be a stormy interview.

“You know, Sir Fabian, that I’ve been appointed to make a report to the Government on affairs at Lunar City?”

“I know you’ve fiddled yourself some lucrative political appointment.”

“My ‘fiddling’ is less important than the excessive mortality rate on this Lunar project,” said Quarles tartly.

“Good God, man!” exploded Sir Fabian. “Do you expect men to conquer space and found colonies outside their own planet without taking risks?”

“You yourself worked out what I believe you called the calculated risks long before the first landing was made.”

“Even my calculated risks could not cope with all the unknown factors. But I do not expect such a conventional mind as yours to appreciate the enormity of our achievement.”

“I am afraid I must correct your error. My conventional mind also appreciates the loss of nearly a dozen of our best atomic physicists.”

“You have heard, I take it,” remarked Sir Fabian ironically, “of such things as dust-meteors, defective pressurising and insufficient insulation. Of all the hazards we face out here, decompression, caused by faulty pressurising or meteoric bombardment, is most common. Three-quarters of our casualties come under this heading.”

“I was already familiarised with the effects of explosive decompression in the two-hour orbit,” explained the professor dryly, “when the Woomera Ferry Commander mysteriously died.”

“Then you should know better than question what you are pleased to call this ‘excessive mortality,’” said Sir Fabian smoothly.

“Accidents cannot be avoided,” retorted the professor, “but they can sometimes be arranged.”

“Tell me more!” demanded Sir Fabian in a voice that was dangerously calm.

Professor Quarles continued, undaunted by those penetrating eyes: “It struck me as rather peculiar when I checked your—er—casualty list that all the men who died, with two exceptions, were atomic physicists. No chemists were lost, no geologists, no astronomers, no biologists—only atomic physicists. Being somewhat familiar with statistical probabilities, Sir Fabian, I worked out that the odds against such a combination were hundreds to one.”

“So you immediately jumped to the conclusion that I was responsible?”

“No,” said the professor quietly, “but I did arrive at the reasonable conclusion that someone, and not something, was responsible.”

“I admire your deductions,” said Sir Fabian lightly. “They show that you are more picturesquely imaginative than I thought.”

The professor ignored his pleasantry. “And when I discovered that the two exceptions were high-ranking policemen, who had been sent to investigate the so-called accidents, I felt that my conclusion was more accurate than I would wish.”

“So you persuaded the Government to send you to Lunar City to bag the hypothetical murderer?”

“No. But I did accept an appointment to investigate impartially a most mysterious situation … We cannot afford to lose such men as Perkins, Winter, Bressway and the others—apart from any consideration of justice!”

“Justice! When have you and your kind ever given me justice?” thundered Sir Fabian. “I know your sort—comfortable armchair scientists, who are afraid of independent achievement, and run whining at the first hint of danger.”

“Sir Fabian,” began Professor Quarles, in a voice whose very conviction momentarily surprised his opponent, “it is useless to deny the fact that you and I hate each other. Nevertheless, that does not blind me to your achievement, and the fact that you are a great scientist.” He paused for a moment, then added: “Nor does it prevent me from regarding you as entirely mad!”

There was a brief electric silence. Then Sir Fabian Scott said slowly: “Professor, I admire your frankness, which, in the circumstances, borders upon courage … Officially, you represent the Crown. Officially, then, I will not obstruct your movements or your reports. But—and bear this in mind always—if you attempt to interfere with my authority or my plans, you may place yourself in grave danger!”

“Of explosive decompression?” demanded the professor, as he stood up to go.

Sir Fabian Scott, white with rage, did not answer him.

In a constant gravity field, even if it was only one-sixth that of earth, Shane rediscovered the satisfaction of comfortable sleep. He shared a duralumin apartment with Gaff Midley and the professor; and when they had settled in, all three men relaxed, in varying degrees, and allowed the accumulated fatigue of the voyage to have its way. They slept long, if not soundly, though Quarles was troubled by disconcerting dreams.

Less than twelve hours after the actual touch-down, the three men met together, after a breakfast in Lunar City’s communal restaurant, to “chew the lunar rag,” as Gaff lightly put it. He listened very intently, however, as both Shane and the professor gave their impressions of the interview with Sir Fabian Scott.

“It is my considered impression that he is quite mad,” stated the professor flatly.

“What do you think?” asked Gaff, turning to Shane.

“Don’t ask me! That’s your pigeon. You’re supposed to be the psychiatrist … What’s your guess?”

“Hard to say,” pronounced Gaff thoughtfully. “If a man of lesser psychological stature than Sir Fabian exhibited the same characteristics, I would say he was suffering from paranoia. But Scott is not, and has never been, what you would call a normal man. Therefore he cannot be judged by normal standards. I want more facts before I make a diagnosis.”

“Tush!” exclaimed the professor petulantly. “Anyone but a psychiatrist could see that he is quite unbalanced.”

“Well,” countered Gaff with a grin, “you, Professor Quarles, are an unbalanced person—psychiatrically speaking—but I haven’t got enough evidence to conclude that you are mad.”

The professor retired into dignified silence.

“What’s happened to Claire Scott?” asked Shane abruptly.

“Turned housekeeper and nursemaid for the G.D.,” answered Gaff. “I saw her in passing this morning when I went down the block to the restaurant.”

“In view of the condition of her father, I am deeply sorry for her,” pronounced Quarles.

“Amen,” said Philip Shane.

“I wonder if it would be possible to visit the moon-ship?” asked Quarles thoughtfully, after another short silence.

“I don’t suppose there’s a law against it. You’d need to take a tractor, though,” advised Gaff. Then he added, with a smile: “Have you left your vitamin pills aboard?”

“Merely one or two books I forgot to take from my locker,” said Quarles vaguely. “I don’t think a tractor would be necessary. Besides, I would like to inspect the terrain leisurely, and the moonship is less than two miles away.”

“Let me give you a piece of advice,” said Gaff. “Wherever you go, on the moon, don’t go alone. The reason is obvious. Personally, I’d like to accompany you—I could do with a spot of exercise. But I’ve got some work here at base to do first.”

“Perhaps Mr. Shane would like to come, if he has nothing better to do.”

“Might as well,” agreed Shane. “I’ll be getting in Sir Fabian’s hair quite soon enough.”

Walking, even in a combination pressure suit, was a very pleasant exercise, making little muscular demand; but the two men had to be constantly careful that they did not over-estimate the energy required, and go bounding along “out of control.”

“What was your opinion of Sir Fabian’s chief assistant?” asked Quarles presently.

“Dr. von Sturm? Oh, he tried to make himself pleasant, but the attempt wasn’t altogether successful. He struck me as a kind of glib gent, who might be just a little too clever.”

“I might have phrased it more carefully, but broadly, I agree with you,” said the professor.

Shane laughed. “I’m beginning to regard scientists as very peculiar birds.”

“With few notable exceptions, I’m afraid I must reluctantly endorse your verdict,” said Quarles mildly.

Philip glanced at his companion in surprise. The professor seemed to be getting dangerously reasonable. During the last few hours, his usual hostility had diminished. Perhaps, now that he’d got to Lunar City, Quarles realised that he’d bought himself a man-sized job; and maybe he was out to make a few allies. Shane resolved that he would “play along” with the professor just so far as it suited his purpose.

“Why do you really want to go to the moonship?” he asked unexpectedly. “You didn’t seriously think we were going to swallow that flimsy excuse, did you?”

“And why not?” demanded Quarles. “You will admit, I hope, that it is possible for me to leave my diary and notebooks in my locker?”

“No,” said Shane, “for the simple reason that I searched your locker before we disembarked.”

“And why did you do that?” asked the professor resentfully.

“Because I was looking for a letter—one that I lost in Woomera.”

“May I ask why you should expect to find it in my locker?”

“I thought you might have stolen it,” was the uncompromising reply.

“I most certainly did not.”

“I’m almost inclined to believe you.”

By this time, they had reached the landing site. The moonship was just as it had been left, with the nylon ladder hanging down. On the moon there was no point in sealing up the space-ship, since no one would be likely to interfere with it or attempt an un-programmed space-voyage. The external instruments, too, would remain in good condition in the near-perfect vacuum of the moon’s ultra-thin trace of atmosphere.

Before the two men went aboard, the professor stopped and said: “Look here, Mr. Shane, I think it’s high time we came to some understanding.”

“I’m always open to consider a proposition,” said Shane non-committally.

“Clearly,” continued the professor, “you know my purpose in coming to Lunar City, just as I know yours. In a way, we are after the same thing—the truth. If we can help each other instead of hindering, it will be to our mutual advantage … I know what you’re thinking. There is a popular idea that I am out for Sir Fabian’s blood. To be quite frank, I am—but by legitimate means. Much as I dislike him, I would not have it said that I tried to destroy an innocent man.”

“Well, if he’s not innocent,” said Shane reasonably, “he must be guilty—but of what?”

“That,” said the professor, “remains to be discovered … My proposition is that we co-operate in solving the mysteries that seem to abound in this place. When, and if, we arrive at the truth, we must then reconsider whether our interests are still the same. I think it might be a useful partnership. I am employed by the Crown, and you, indirectly, by the people. Together we serve the interests of the nation.”

“The truth is a pretty good objective,” said Shane cautiously, “and so far, I’m with you. But I reserve the right of independent action should we disagree on the nature of the solution, or the methods of obtaining it.”

“Agreed,” said Quarles. “And now I will tell you why I have come to the moonship.”

“I’m all ears, or audion,” said Shane.

“I want to radio direct to earth.”

“You could have done that in Lunar City.”

“Doubtless—by kind permission of Sir Fabian. I do not think he would approve of a cypher message to Whitehall. And his curiosity might be troublesome.”

“I see. So you’re going to use the ship’s directional antenna.”

“Exactly. And now, in view of our partnership, you will want to know what the message is.”

“That’s only reasonable, since I’m a sort of accessory to the act.”

“I am requesting an investigation of the accidents at Woomera, plus a careful search of Commonwealth Space Station.”

“What do you want the Satellite combed for?”

“A mirror,” said Professor Quarles, as he grasped the nylon ladder. “A small concave mirror.”

They passed through the airlock, and were then able to remove their headpieces, since the chambers of the ship were still pressurised. Then Quarles took a slim volume of the poems of John Dryden from the internal pocket of his pressure suit. At the back of the book was a finely printed cipher-key, and a sheet of paper on which the professor had written about sixty groups of code.

It took Quarles about twenty minutes to beam Europe with the directional antenna, and another ten to deliver his message. Meanwhile, Shane, gazing idly through the astrodome on the navigation-deck, saw a tractor come as if from the western airlock of Lunar City. It sped towards the moonship purposefully, casting a dusty wake.

“Sir Fabian, it appears, is anxious to know what we’re up to,” commented the professor, as he switched off the transmitter.

“In that case, someone had better talk fast,” remarked Shane, as he picked up his headpiece.

While they were in the airlock, waiting for the pressure to drop, Quarles spoke over the audion.

“I’m afraid I owe you an explanation and an apology, Mr. Shane.”

“How come?”

“Concerning the problem of how you took an opiate instead of the anti-gravity tablets at Woomera.”

“You begin to arouse my interest,” said Shane with irony.

“The—er—culprit was, of course, myself.”

“I know. I worked out long ago that, logically, it could only be you … The motive interests me.”

“I formed the conclusion,” explained Quarles, “that you were one of Scott’s spies. Therefore I felt justified in preventing you from taking Rocket Thirteen.”

“Good job the plan backfired,” said Shane. Then, after a moment, he added: “What makes you think I’m not one of Sir Fabian’s boy scouts, anyway?”

“Obviously,” answered Quarles, as he opened the outer door, “neither you nor Scott is such a consummate actor as to be able to stage that interview especially for my benefit.”

Shane made no comment, and they both began to descend the nylon ladder in silence.

The driver of the lunar tractor stopped his machine a few yards from the moonship. He put on his headpiece and came out to meet them.

“Good morning, gentlemen. You are abroad early. I trust you found what you wanted in the space-ship?”

The voice was that of Dr. Erich von Sturm.

Chapter Ten

THE HYDROXY BOMBS

For obvious reasons, the long lunar day and its correspondingly lengthy night needed to be split up into shorter units for the benefit of the human invaders. The earth-cycle of twenty-four hours had therefore been adopted for the convenient rotation of work, relaxation and sleep. These synthetic days, which began and ended in the same blazing sunlight, or the same greenish earth-light, were rather disconcerting to the inexperienced moon-visitors. But they gradually adjusted themselves to the new routine.

On the second morning of their stay in Lunar City, Shane decided to nose around by himself. He was not looking for anything in particular; but he wished to get the feel of the place, to make contact with some of Sir Fabian’s team of scientists, and to find out how Claire Scott was faring. Also, as became a journalist, he wanted to give the impression of working up some angle for an article, to be ultimately radioed to the Sunday Sentinel. Accordingly, early after breakfast, he left the duralumin pill-box apartment that he shared with the professor and Gaff Midley. He strolled idly around the experimental garden; and then, making up his mind, walked firmly to the administrative block.

After Shane had left the apartment, Gaff Midley laid down the thick textbook on psychiatry which had been absorbing his attention, and spoke to Quarles: “Returning to our conversation yesterday, Professor, I’m inclined to agree that Sir Fabian is in a highly unstable state of mind.”

“I should be interested to know what has led you to that profound conclusion,” enquired the professor, with a faintly patronising air.

Gaff Midley, however, refused to be taunted. “Two things. First, I’ve had a chance to chew the rag with a few of the boys who are based here. And second, I had a not-so-cosy chat with Sir Fabian himself … He gave me the impression of being a walking column of hydrazine—ready to blow up if anyone so much as breathed on him. But the main thing that worries me is that his science boys have lost that old esprit de corps. They seem to live under a cloud of suspicion and resentment … There’s something pretty serious cooking—only nobody knows what it is.”

“Except Scott, the soi-disant Great Dictator … Well, Dr. Midley, dictators have a habit of over-reaching themselves, and I do not think that Sir Fabian will be an exception.”

“Look here, Professor Quarles,” said Gaff abruptly, “are you willing to take a fair risk, if there’s a chance of clearing up part of this mystery?”

“Perhaps,” replied Quarles carefully. Then he added: “But before we go any further, I’d like to know just where you stand, Dr. Midley.”

Gaff grinned. “As always, on the side of sanity, Professor … To be frank, I don’t care a tuppenny damn about your Commission—Extraordinary, or otherwise. But I’m very much concerned with the well-being of the men at Lunar City—including Sir Fabian—and anything that can be done to remove the psychological tension is worth doing.”

“What have you got in mind?” asked the professor.

“I had a talk with Chambers, who brought us from the ship in his tractor. Now Chambers belongs to the tribe of geologists, and he’s got a fair grudge against Sir Fabian.”

“Which is?” questioned the professor.

“That the Great Dictator has declared the caverns to be out of bounds.”

“What caverns?”

“I’m sorry. I assumed you already knew of them … When Lunar City was first being established, they chose this site because there is a chain of natural caverns conveniently near. All the stores used to be dumped there until they put the bubble up. Now, according to Chambers, those caverns are the answer to a geologist’s prayer. They just about break every law in the geological rule-book and point the way—so he tells me—to a whole flock of new and revolutionary theories. Until recently, Chambers was able to explore them freely; and as frequent trips had to be made to the stores dump, he was often able to combine business with pleasure.”

“I see.”

“But Sir Fabian,” continued Gaff, “has had all the dumps moved into the city here. Furthermore, he’s let it be known that he’ll hang, draw and quarter anyone exploring the caves—on the ground that it’s too dangerous.”

“This is, to say the least of it, peculiar,” commented the professor, watching Gaff Midley with great concentration.

“It was in those very caves,” pursued Gaff, “that Perkins and Bressway, the atomic physicists, met their deaths by explosive decompression.”

“Good God!” exclaimed Quarles.

“Furthermore,” said Gaff, “Chambers maintains that, while Perkins and Bressway could conceivably have been careless enough to damage their pressure suits, the caverns are not sufficiently dangerous to warrant Sir Fabian’s edict … Our geologist friend gave them considerable attention before he got rapped on the knuckles, and he swears there is a natural underground passage to them from inside Lunar City.”

“This is beginning to sound like the blood-and-thunders I used to read as a boy,” said Quarles incredulously.

“He also says,” concluded Gaff, “that the passage comes out in what are now Sir Fabian’s quarters.”

Professor Quarles was speechless; and for a minute or so the two men gazed at each other in silence. Then Quarles found his voice.

“What is the proposition involving the ‘fair risk’ of which you spoke?”

“Having only recently arrived,” said Gaff, “you and I can’t be expected to be familiar with the latest Act of Parliament. I suggest we quietly take a look at these mysterious caves; and if we’re caught, we’ll just have to plead innocent curiosity—and keep our fingers crossed.”

“I have the right,” began the professor, “of going where I choose, and investigating anything I wish, according to the terms of my Commission.”

“You also have the right to free decompression,” retorted Gaff. “It should be unnecessary for me to remind you that it’s rapidly becoming an old lunar custom.”

“Do you think——”

“Very little!” Gaff completed the professor’s unfinished sentence sardonically. “Maybe Sir Fabian is a victim of paranoia, and maybe he isn’t. But I wouldn’t want to make a bet either way.”

“Then what do you suggest?”

“You’re a scientist,” answered Gaff. “You should be very interested in taking a closer look at the crater Tycho. Anyway, that’s the line we’ll plug when we borrow the lunar tractor. We’ll let it be known that we’re just going near the foothills for a closer look. You’ll be the interested party, and I’ll just be going along for the ride. We’ll take the tractor out through the eastern airlock, go off towards Tycho, then double back when we pass out of sight in the dead ground behind the caverns. They begin in the side of a small ravine that’s higher on this side than on the Tycho side … I think we stand a reasonable chance of getting away with it … What do you say?”

“I do not concede the necessity for secrecy,” said the professor. “However, I accept your plan.”

“I suppose we’re expendable,” said Gaff pleasantly. “But we’d better make our wills, just in case Fabian is right about the danger.”

“I sadly fear,” said the professor neatly, “that the danger lies in men rather than in the moon.”

They parked the lunar tractor about a mile up the ravine, choosing a position that was screened on three sides by large boulder formations. Then, with headpieces screwed down, they got out of the pressurised cabin and slowly made their way down the bed of the ravine towards the entrance of the main cavern.

Besides electric torches and a mountaineering rope, Gaff Midley had brought a large ball of thin nylon cord, one end of which he secured to a small rock in the cavern’s first recess.

“No point in getting a long way in,” he remarked, “and then finding we’ve forgotten the way out. Sir Fabian would feel so virtuous he’d sing hymns at the funeral.”

Then they began the torturous work of probing the frozen, pitch-black depths where no sunlight reached and where, until recently, the fine lunar dust had remained undisturbed for a thousand million years.

The cavern subdivided into more passages and caverns. And the two men settled patiently to the formidable task of systematic exploration. For an hour or more, they cautiously probed the larger caves where, as was unmistakably evidenced, the stores had been lately kept.

It was while they were negotiating a connecting passage that Quarles noticed a relatively small opening that led unobtrusively behind a large, jutting-out head of rock. Unwinding the nylon cord, the two men followed the twisting passage until it gave into a moderately sized cave.

Shining their torches around the walls, they discovered a group of six cylindrical duralumin containers, each the size and thickness of a man. While Gaff held the torches, Professor Quarles lifted one of the containers away from the wall of the cave. Considering that the moon exerted only one-sixth G, the cylinder was unexpectedly heavy, and the professor staggered dangerously with his burden which, on earth, would have weighed more than a quarter of a ton.

He set it down gently, and began to unscrew the cap. Inside the container was another cylinder, which the two men carefully drew out. It was made of some heavy metal which, by the torchlight, seemed to be copper. Both ends were closed by heavy caps which neither Quarles nor Gaff Midley could move.

Turning the peculiar object over, Quarles discovered that three small instrument dials, three recessed switches and a white plastic lever were built into the smooth side. Gaff Midley held the torch close, while the professor stared at the instrument gradations. For a while he knelt there, muttering unintelligible phrases too quietly for his audion to transmit.

Suddenly he jumped to his feet and, in a voice pitched high with fear, exclaimed: “Heaven help us! What a hideous find! Whatever can that madman want with these?”

“For the love of Mike, what is it?” demanded Gaff tensely.

With a tremendous effort, the professor regained control of himself. He spoke more calmly, but his voice still held that note of undiminished fear: “This, Dr. Midley, is a hydroxy bomb—powerful enough to destroy a city five times the size of London. It is the most terrible weapon the world has ever known!”

For a few seconds neither man spoke, but the thoughts of each were racing along at breakneck speed. They had sought to unravel a mystery, and had uncovered a greater mystery. Why should Sir Fabian Scott—assuming he was responsible—secrete half a dozen such terrible weapons in a lunar cave? Why, indeed, should these incalculable agents of destruction be on the moon at all? What plan, what insane scheme, would necessitate the use of such dread atomic power? These questions raced through the numbed minds of the two men, generating further questions, but providing no answers.

Was it because of the hydroxy bombs that Perkins and Bressway had died? The atomic physicists were outstanding examples of the few top scientists in whose power it lay to manufacture bombs of this type. Had they, then, undertaken the work at Sir Fabian’s bidding, and afterwards paid the penalty for knowing too much?

Both Gaff Midley and the professor, staring hypnotised at the deadly copper cylinder, found themselves too shocked to undertake any intelligent thinking in the presence of such horrible, latent power.

“Let’s get out of here,” said Gaff hoarsely. “We’re not going to do much useful thinking while we nurse this little monster.”

“We’d better replace it exactly as we found it,” said Quarles. “And pray that our excursion will not be discovered. Otherwise, I have no doubt that we shall quickly join the physicists who died because of this damnable secret.”

Very carefully, now, the two men eased the hydroxy bomb back into its duralumin container and replaced the cap. They handled it as if it were made of thin, brittle glass that would disintegrate at the slightest pressure. Taking one end each, they lifted the container and returned it slowly to its place. Then, after a last look round to ensure that the cylinders were in exactly the same position as before, and that no evidence of their discovery had been left behind, the two men retraced their steps. They went slowly back into the main cave, rewinding the nylon cord as they followed its trail. At last, they were out once more in the hard lunar sunlight. They lost no time in travelling up the bed of the ravine to where they had left the lunar tractor, feeling, irrationally, that the greater distance they put between themselves and the caverns, the safer they would be—though both men were fully aware that the detonation of a single hydroxy bomb would devastate the area for miles around.

Back in the lunar tractor, the sense of panic diminished, and they sat still for a few minutes, trying to work things out.

“You’re the scientist,” said Gaff. “Have you any idea why Sir Fabian might want such things? Could he possibly use them in connection with the solar power station?”

“Given the fact that his methods are entirely unorthodox,” replied Quarles, “even in my wildest imagination I cannot see what possible use they would be for the project. There is enough energy in those six bombs to blow a crater that would compare with Tycho itself—and perhaps much larger, for all I know. I am not a physicist but a chemist, and I can only guess vaguely at their combined power.”

“Let’s assume for the moment that he’s suffering from paranoia,” said Gaff thoughtfully. “Would it be possible for one of those bombs to be fired by rocket at the earth?”

The professor was appalled by the thought. “You don’t think he would try to——”

“I merely want to know if it’s possible.”

“Very much so, I’m afraid. The fuel consumption for such a small payload would be very reasonable. It would be quite possible to fly a small rocket containing a hydroxy bomb along the directional radio beam and place it practically anywhere on the planet.”

“So, assuming he thought there was a conspiracy against him,” pursued Gaff, “Sir Fabian would be able to retaliate by literally threatening to destroy, say, London or Melbourne or Ottawa?”

“I think we must be a little mad ourselves, to be talking like this,” said Quarles plaintively.

“Mad or not, we’ve got to consider all possibilities,” retorted Gaff. “You admit yourself that Sir Fabian is an unorthodox scientist. I’m merely trying to figure out what an unorthodox scientist might attempt if he were mentally ill.”

“Why stop at mere retaliation?” demanded Quarles. “Why not suggest—since he has such terrible engines of destruction, and the means to direct them—that Sir Fabian Scott wants to make himself Master of the World?”

“I’d already discarded that one as being just a little obvious,” admitted Gaff quietly. “Scott is a clever man. Don’t make the mistake of thinking that insanity would turn him stupid.”

Gaff was just about to start the tractor’s atomic motor, when the professor silently grasped his arm and pointed. Below them, down the bed of the ravine came another tractor. They could see through the translucent dome that it contained only one man. He was not wearing his headpiece in the pressurised compartment; and as he passed below their boulder screen, both Quarles and Gaff Midley recognised his features.

“Scott!” gasped the professor.

Midley gripped his arm, and pointed to the small aerial at the back of his headpiece. The professor understood, and kept silent. It would be just possible that, at such close range, Sir Fabian’s audion would pick up snatches of conversation, even though his headpiece lay on the seat by his side.

The normal range of an audion was about a mile. But for convenience it could be enlarged or decreased by means of a simple resistance control. As Sir Fabian’s tractor passed below their hiding-place, both men turned down their audion range to the minimum. And Gaff Midley demonstrated the trick of touching his aerial while speaking, so that the transmission was only effective for a dozen yards or so.

“It doesn’t require much hard thinking to work out where he’s going,” pronounced Gaff.

“The hydroxy bombs! I wonder what he is going to do?”

“Maybe he’s just going to count the eggs and stroke them lovingly,” suggested Gaff. “And maybe he’s got more positive plans … What do you say we do a bit of spying? It’s not exactly healthy, but I’m willing to take a chance if you are.”

“It is our duty,” said Quarles firmly.

They got out of the tractor again and made their way, with great caution, down the ravine. A hundred yards from the entrance of the main cavern, they stopped, finding cover behind a conveniently low buttress of volcanic rock. There they waited.

Sir Fabian Scott had driven his tractor right up to the dark opening. It lay partly in the brilliant sunshine and partly in the pitch-black shadow of the cave. Scott himself had already disappeared.

While the two men awaited further developments, they once more turned their thoughts to reviewing the situation, striving to find some reasonable explanation for the existence of the six deadly bombs. They did not have long to wait. Sir Fabian, apparently, was well accustomed to picking his way through the lunar caves.

At last he emerged. A powerful torch was fixed to his headpiece so that in the caves it would illuminate the path ahead. As he passed out of the shadow, Quarles and Midley saw the sunlight glint upon the long duralumin cylinder in his arms. Sir Fabian, carrying the hydroxy bomb with relative ease, dumped it unceremoniously in the storage compartment of the tractor. Then, without wasting any time, he returned to the cavern. Presently a second hydroxy bomb joined the first. Sir Fabian then entered the pressurised dome of the tractor and took off his headpiece. He mopped his forehead with a handkerchief. Apparently the sustained effort had made even the athletic director of Lunar City sweat.

Finally, while the two watchers crouched low behind their protective buttress, Sir Fabian started the atomic motor, and the tractor reversed, swung round, and set off across the ravine, climbing obliquely up the far side. As it reached the top of the rocky slope, Quarles and Gaff Midley scrambled quickly up the rock-face to discover what direction Sir Fabian was taking.

The lunar tractor ploughed steadily along a straight course over the vast, pitted lava-plain. A thin, foam-like wake of dust followed it, spouting up behind the tractor like a bushy tail.

Sir Fabian Scott was heading for the high mountain ring of the crater Tycho.

“Dr. Midley,” said Professor Quarles, without any humorous intention, “should I shortly be in a position to need psychiatrical treatment, I trust you will still be in a condition to give it!”

Quarles and Gaff Midley took their tractor farther up the ravine, and then wheeled sharply, setting course for Lunar City, as if they were returning from a trip to the foothills of Tycho.

They passed through the eastern airlock and took the tractor back to the administrative block, where it had been found convenient to have the tractor-park.

When they returned to their quarters, they found Philip Shane waiting for them. Before they could tell him of their discovery, Shane said without preamble:—

“I have news for you. One, Philip Shane, has bought himself a large packet of trouble.”

“What have you done—pulled a skeleton from under the G.D.’s contour-berth?” enquired Gaff.

“More or less,” admitted Shane. “Fact is, I’ve been playing the role of the efficient journalist, but I’ve played it too darn well.”

“I dislike hearing fragmentary accounts,” observed the professor testily. “Your professional training should at least enable you to relate your story coherently.”

“Touché!” said Philip, with a grin. “All right, here’s what happened. I went out with the idea of looking up Claire Scott to see how she was making out—while at the same time hoping to get a lead on the mystery set-up hereabouts. I’d already chewed a mouthful of words with one or two of the science boys; but when I got around to mentioning such trivial details as the mortality rate among physicists, and the frequency of explosive decompression, they shut up like clams. They were willing to spin yarns about the solar power station, and the latest moon-discoveries, but that was all. I got the impression it wasn’t quite decent to discuss the hazards of faulty pressurising.”

“I’ve met with the same response,” agreed Gaff.

“So,” continued Shane, “I decided to go to the fountain-head. Being on good terms with Claire, I thought she might act as a kind of buffer-state between me and Sir Fabian … I found her at home, but not Fabian, which suited me nicely … The trouble with Claire Scott is that she’s so obstinately loyal. As soon as I saw her, I knew she’d been having a rough time. She seemed to be very much afraid of something—but trying to get her to talk about it was as much use as trying to pump the G.D. Then I thought of another angle. I came over all journalistic and said I’d like to have a look at the great man’s study, and so forth—gave the impression I wanted to build up an enthusiastic personality-story for the Sentinel.

“Claire said there was no harm in showing me around if I didn’t get too inquisitive. So she let me loose in the inner sanctum. She stayed there all the time while I babbled on about telling the Sentinel’s readers the real solid facts of life at Lunar City. I was noseying about as much as I dared, of course, but the nearest I got to finding top-secret stuff was a book of crossword puzzles. Then I remembered the door.”

“What door?” asked the professor impatiently.

“Perhaps you didn’t notice it, Professor. But when Sir Fabian interviewed us, I noticed a half-open door which led into a small workshop or lab.”

“It entirely escaped my observation,” said Quarles. “Proceed.”

“Claire said the room was Sir Fabian’s private glory-hole, where he often tinkered about, if the job he was doing didn’t require a full-sized lab. I asked her if I could take a quick look; and she said I could do just that, and no more … Well, I went through the doorway, while she stood watching me.”

“How was it equipped?” demanded the professor intently.

“I’m not qualified to say,” replied Philip. “But it looked a pretty poor lab to me. There was a bench, a few bottles of something or other, and a stack of ordinary metal tools. But on the bench was a small short-wave radio transmitter with half its innards out. It wasn’t the sort of thing I’d normally pay much attention to, except for one mildly interesting detail. There were three white push-buttons on the case, labelled, respectively, Plato, Copernicus and Tycho.”

Gaff Midley and Quarles exchanged significant glances, which Shane intercepted with some curiosity. However, he made no comment, and went on with his story:—

“Now comes the interesting part. Enter von Sturm! I’d just put my hand on the case, to take a closer look, when he appeared in the doorway … Look, Gaff, would you say I was the type to exaggerate things out of all proportion?”

“Professionally, yes,” said Gaff, with a grin. “Psychologically, no.”

“If I’ve ever seen anyone ready to do murder,” continued Philip, “it was von Sturm—with me at the receiving end. The man was literally shaking with anger. If Claire hadn’t been there, we’d have been beating each other’s brains out, I think. Then he started to talk, while Claire stood and watched, absolutely petrified. He said a lot of very interesting things about me and the professor, enlarging into a picturesque description of our respective parents and general ancestors.” He grinned. “Professor Quarles will be interested to know that he is a cross between a cow and a wart-hog, while my own parentage is even more elaborate … He was trying to make me go for him, of course—so that he could plead self-defence at the inquest.”

“What did you do?” asked Quarles tensely.

“What do you think?” countered Shane with a smile. “I certainly didn’t play it his way, though I’d have given a year’s salary to have waded in. No, sir, I just stood there, cap in hand, so to speak, and took it like a lamb. I said I was very sorry for being nosey, but that I was only an ignorant scribbler who didn’t know any better. I also apologised for any possible damage to the tape-recorder, and pointed out that I’d only just touched it when he appeared.”

“Why did you call it a tape-recorder?” demanded Quarles.

“I was brought up to think that scientists used their brains,” retorted Shane. “Matter of fact, I was trying to play up to von Sturm’s low opinion of me, and make out that I didn’t know the difference between a short-wave set and a recorder … Incidentally, I’ve got a tape machine in Fleet Street that might have been its brother.”

“It was a bit thin,” remarked Gaff, “but it was worth pulling. Do you think he fell for it?”

“I don’t know,” admitted Shane. “But I had him puzzled. He couldn’t make up his mind whether I was a blundering cretin or a calculating genius.”

“What happened then?” asked Gaff.

“Being the Teutonic type, once he’d blown his top, he started wavering. He confined himself to elaborating on what he’d do next time he caught me snooping. Then he told me to get out. He finally added something about telling the G.D., who would then publicly boil me in oil. And that was that. I thought Claire was going to throw a fit, but she just smiled wanly and repeated von Sturm’s advice more tactfully … In for a penny, in for a pound; so I grovelled a bit more and apologised in seven different positions … And here I am … Now make sense out of that, if you can!”

“Plato, Copernicus and Tycho,” mused the professor half-aloud. “You know, Dr. Midley, they would have to be detonated by radio … Copernicus is on the lunar equator, and Plato is in the northern hemisphere. But what in heaven’s name does he intend to do?”

“From what you tell me, they’d make one hell of a mess of the craters,” said Gaff thoughtfully.

“I’m ’way out of my depth,” said Shane. “It strikes me you two have got a few beans of your own to spill. What about it?”

“The floor is all yours, Professor,” said Gaff. “Go to it.”

Methodically, as if he were lecturing on the finer points of the carbon cycle to a hall full of students, Professor Quarles related the discovery of the hydroxy bombs, and the strange mission of Sir Fabian Scott.

When he had finished, Philip Shane gave a low whistle, expressive of complete perplexity.

“Either things are very complex or I’m very simple,” he said. “But it seems to me that Scott is so far round the bend that they haven’t designed the strait-jacket that could hold him … I don’t know much about hydroxy bombs, but I should think it would only take a modest clutch of those kind of eggs to blast the moon clean out of its orbit!”

The two older men stared at him.

“Say that again, slowly,” demanded Gaff. “I’m feeble-minded.”

“My imagination is running amok,” said Shane apologetically. “I said I didn’t think it would take many hydroxy bombs to blast the moon out of its orbit.”

“Plato, Copernicus and Tycho,” echoed the professor slowly. “Perfect natural shock-absorbers in the same longitudinal segment of the moon! If the bombs were detonated simultaneously in those three craters, the shock waves would focus through the centre and create a tremendous unified thrust.”

“Kindly translate,” said Shane to Gaff Midley.

“Freely rendered,” said Gaff, staring past him with unseeing eyes, “it means you’ve hit the nail on the head!”

Chapter Eleven

DEATH AT TYCHO

QUARLES was missing—which, in itself, was an interesting fact. If the situation had been a more normal one, if the professor had not shared the terrible secret of the hydroxy bombs, if he and Sir Fabian Scott had not been out for each other’s blood, neither Gaff Midley nor Philip Shane might have paid much attention to the professor’s absence. But recent events had cast a pall of suspicion and uncertainty over the minds of the two men.

Quarles had been absent now for six hours. He had apparently breakfasted before either Gaff or Philip were awake. And then he had pursued his own mysterious plans. Both men had spent a considerable time searching Lunar City itself and making discreet enquiries. No information of any value was to be obtained, except that Chambers, the geologist, thought he saw the professor go out through the western airlock—alone. For obvious reasons, the enquiries were not pursued with the director of Lunar City, or his second-in-command, von Sturm.

Gaff was getting anxious. “I warned him never to go out alone,” he said for about the fifth time. “I should have realised the old boy was contra-suggestible. I’ll bet he got some odd notion into his nut of stealing a march on us, and producing some elaborate fait accompli like a rabbit out of a hat. I only hope he hasn’t walked into an outsize helping of trouble—for which Quarles has a natural talent.”

Philip nodded thoughtfully. “No point in sitting here meditating. We’d better go out and hunt him down. I’ll take evens on my original guess that he’s gone to the moonship to get another radio message in while the going is still good.”

“If the going is still good,” commented Gaff dryly. “Sir Fabian wears something on his neck besides a headpiece. Your little effort with the short-wave radio will have given him something to think about. Unlike von Sturm, he won’t make the mistake of underrating his opponent … Well, I suppose we’d better borrow a tractor and push off.”

“If he is at the moonship, and if he has been radioing,” said Philip slowly, “taking a tractor out there would be rather unwelcome advertisement. I think we’d better walk. We can always come back and borrow one if we draw a blank, and have to go farther afield.”

“You’re getting dangerously near to being intelligent,” said Gaff with a smile. “Come on, then. When we bag Professor Quarles, I’m going to give him a large piece of my mind—though there’s little enough to spare—for throwing us into a panic.”

The two men took up their headpieces and left the duralumin hut. Unobtrusively, they made their way to the western airlock.

The moonship stood gleaming in the lunar sunlight like a smooth column of fire. The nylon ladder was still there, hanging from the entry-port. Without wasting any time, the two men climbed up it and entered the pressure chamber. Gaff closed the doors, and switched on the pressure pump. The needle began to climb; but, at the same time, the red light began to flash intermittently. Gaff Midley turned the pump off and stared at Philip. Absent-mindedly, Shane made to loosen his headpiece, but Gaff stopped him quickly.

“I thought you said the ship had been left pressurised?” he said, in surprise.

“It was,” confirmed Philip. “The whole ship was pressurised last time I came—with Quarles.”

“Well, it isn’t now,” said Gaff flatly. “The red light says the air has been pumped out. The ship’s atmosphere has been evacuated.”

Suddenly, unaccountably, Shane’s heart began to beat a little faster. “Where is the evacuation control?” he demanded.

“Here,” said Gaff, pointing to a red switch. “To pump the air out, all you have to do is come into the pressure chamber and throw the switch.”

“I think we’d better take a look around,” said Shane. “Perhaps Quarles has chucked all the air out for reasons of his own—though what benefit it would be, I really don’t know.”

The two men opened the internal door and made their way through the ship. As they passed through the passenger compartment, Gaff glanced at the professor’s contour-berth, and suddenly stood still. Shane saw it almost simultaneously. There, resting on the berth, was the professor’s headpiece.

Immediately, the two men turned their attention to the door connecting with the space-navigation deck. It was bolted—from the passenger side.

“He’s been here,” said Gaff, over the audion. His voice was more high-pitched than usual.

“I think we’re going to find something,” said Shane. “And I don’t think we’re going to like it.” Slowly he pushed back the bolt and opened the door. It resisted, and he had to exert more pressure.

Behind the door, on the space-navigation deck, was the body of Professor Quarles. In death, he was not pleasant to look at. The evacuation of the atmosphere had caused his blood to boil.

“Poor devil,” said Gaff. “He was hardly what they call a sympathetic character. But the old boy had got guts, and he was honest.”

“Well, Professor,” said Shane, forcing himself to look down at the distorted face. “I didn’t hold any brief for either you or your Commission, until we got to Lunar City. But it seems you were right after all. I think, maybe, we’ll do what we can to fix the score.”

Gaff went over to the directional radio. “Set’s switched off,” he answered. “So we don’t even know whether he had time to get started.”

“Is there a book lying about?” asked Shane quickly. “He had a cypher-key at the back of a small volume of Dryden’s poems.”

The two men searched the entire navigation deck.

“Nothing here,” said Gaff finally. “Whoever did it came in and collected the loot after Quarles had passed out.”

“Wonder why they bolted the door again?” said Shane thoughtfully.

“Maybe he didn’t bring his cypher-key after all,” suggested Gaff.

“That’s unlikely,” said Philip. “I can’t imagine the professor sending his dope in plain language—especially if he was going to spin a yarn about the hydroxy bombs.”

“Sounds reasonable,” said Gaff. They searched the navigation deck again, and then the passenger compartment; but without result.

“Looks like our decompression specialist has scooped the jackpot,” said Shane disappointedly.

“Well, what do we do now?” demanded Gaff, as he perched himself on the edge of a contour-berth.

“There’s one thing we won’t do,” answered Shane thoughtfully. “We won’t spread the glad tidings that we’ve discovered the professor’s body. Our death-dealing friends have had the initiative quite long enough. It’s about time we started a small counter-plot … If anyone asks us about Quarles, I suggest we let it be known that, so far as we are concerned, he’s gone off by himself chasing butterflies.”

“You’ve got something there,” agreed Gaff. “If they think we don’t know much, perhaps we’ll live a little longer … Have you any idea who accounted for the professor?”

“I don’t expect von Sturm was sitting at home reading the Good Book when it happened,” retorted Philip grimly. “He seems to me to be the executive type—besides being a little space-happy on his own account … I didn’t believe you when you said you were coming to Lunar City to have a look at the psychotics; but now I’m beginning to think we need a battalion of trick cyclists.”

“A few strong arms would be more to the point,” said Gaff. “But whatever we do, we’ll have to do it fast, before these jokers take the next trick.”

“I wish I could be sure they didn’t already know too much about me for my own health,” said Shane. “I lost an important letter in Woomera, but I’ve an uneasy suspicion that somebody found it before I lost it.”

“Somebody certainly did,” answered Gaff, with a grin. “I did. It’s not a very sound idea to have 10G flung at you in a centrifuge if you’re carrying something valuable on you. I found it on the floor of the cabin when you’d had your dose.”

“Why the devil didn’t you give it back?” asked Philip sharply. “I’ve been losing a lot of nervous energy over that little effort.”

“Two reasons,” explained Gaff. “I wanted to fit the whole picture together for myself; and I didn’t think you’d feel very trusting if you knew I already had your secret. But nobody else knows.”

“And that’s just where you’re wrong, brother,” said Shane.

“Who else can possibly know?”

“Claire Scott,” said Shane. “Like a clown, I practically told her the story of my life on the trip to Woomera.”

“I think Miss Scott is fundamentally sound,” said Gaff with some conviction.

“Yes, and her father is fundamentally cock-eyed,” said Shane. “He can get just what he wants out of people—including his own daughter.”

The two men made their way back to Lunar City with the problem of future action still unresolved. Gaff favoured the idea of trying to “ambush” Sir Fabian on one of his solitary trips, and then confronting him with the accumulated evidence. According to Gaff, there was a not too remote possibility that Sir Fabian might break down psychologically, if he could be convinced that his plans were known and “allowed for.” Shane, on the other hand, favoured the practical first step of trying to disable the short-wave transmitter, or even the hydroxy bombs. Either plan involved a great many discouraging difficulties, and promised little hope of success.

They did not take the direct path back to Lunar City, but made a wide detour in the hope that they might give the impression of returning from a brief haphazard exploration. Their arrival at the western airlock was duly observed by Dr. von Sturm, who promptly informed Sir Fabian.

Seated at the desk in his private study, the director of Lunar City pondered a two-fold problem. It was apparent that the death of Professor Quarles—or his prolonged absence—would soon be common knowledge. It was also clear that the Commonwealth of Nations would soon despatch another and presumably more efficient Investigation Commission to Lunar City—complete with its own “task force,” and capable of assuming direct control.

During the last few months, Sir Fabian Scott had been playing simply for time. Every move, every liquidation, had been designed to that end. But by now he realised that the patience of the people on earth would be exhausted. There would be no more scope for trickery, subterfuge, or facile explanations of the latest fatal “accident.” Sir Fabian was astute enough to know that the death of Quarles would limit the time available to a matter of days. Presently, the reserve moonship would leave the two-hour orbit, bringing a shipload of special agents or security men right into the Great Dictator’s citadel. Unless he could act before that time, Sir Fabian was well aware that his plan—the most daring conceived by human mind—would collapse, and that all the work, the sacrifice of good men like Bressway and Perkins, would be destroyed by the idiots from earth, the men without vision … It was a pity, thought Sir Fabian, that von Sturm had found it necessary to eliminate Quarles. It was a great pity—because the hydroxy bombs would have to be detonated before schedule. The resultant variation would be an interesting and incalculable matter … With a sigh, Sir Fabian decided to act.

Meanwhile, Philip Shane and Gaff Midley returned to their apartment, still undecided, but intuitively aware that whatever action they took must be quick and decisive. Scarcely had they removed their head-pieces, prior to a serious council of war, when there was a knock at the door.

It was von Sturm. Once again, they had lost the initiative.

“May I come in?” asked the scientist unnecessarily.

“Make yourself at home,” said Gaff—adding, with a disarming grin: “After all, you’re the landlord.”

Von Sturm laughed—a trifle synthetically. “I have two missions,” he announced precipitately. “First I must apologise to Mr. Shane for my unpardonable behaviour. Living as we do in this strange environment, our nerves tend to get sadly overworked—of which I’m sure Dr. Midley has ample evidence.”

“I’m toying with a theory that you people haven’t got any nerves left,” said Gaff with a straight face.

“But I had no reason or excuse for losing control of myself as I did,” continued von Sturm, with what was meant to be embarrassed candour. “Mr. Shane was not familiar with our little taboos, and it was perfectly natural for him, in his capacity as a journalist, to be interested in Sir Fabian’s private workshop.”

“No bones broken,” said Philip lightly. “I only hope I didn’t damage anything.”

“Not at all,” said von Sturm jovially. “Only my reputation as assistant host—and that was entirely my own fault … And now I come to my second mission. It is one of the rare occasions when Sir Fabian has a few hours to spare, and he is wondering whether you two gentlemen—and Professor Quarles, of course—would care to accompany him to the solar power station and inspect the progress.”

“Would it be possible for me to take notes for an article?” enquired Shane, keeping up his role as a news-happy scribbler.

“Certainly,” said von Sturm. “I myself will consider it a pleasure to explain any technical points that may trouble you.”

“I’d like to go very much,” said Gaff, exchanging a lightning glance with Shane. “I’m eager to see how far you’ve got with the project … But I can’t answer for Professor Quarles. We haven’t seen him for an hour or two. I think maybe he’s gone to take a look around outside the bubble. He was very interested in the lava formation.”

“There is not a great deal of time available,” said von Sturm easily. “So perhaps we had better not wait for Professor Quarles. It is possible we shall meet him on the way, I suppose. In any case, there will be other opportunities for his official inspection.”

“I’d better leave a message on his contour-berth,” said Gaff, “telling him where we’ve gone. Then he won’t panic.”

Von Sturm smiled. “The professor is what you call a suspicious type,” he said. “He would immediately assume that Sir Fabian had eaten you for dinner.”

The solar power station was an immense project, and its construction site covered many acres. There was a vast circle of duralumin girders—like some ultra-modern Stonehenge—which would eventually support a double lip of huge parabolic mirrors, similar in design to those of the Commonwealth Space Station. This great ring of polished mirrors would be able to catch and focus the sun’s rays at all times during the long lunar day.

But the principle of the large-scale solar power station differed essentially from that of the Commonwealth Satellite. In the latter, the sun’s rays were focused upon a mercury “boiler”; but here, the tremendous heat would be concentrated upon atomically unstable material. The resultant disintegration would release an almost inexhaustible fund of energy, which would be beamed to distribute power receivers on earth … Such was the hope of the Commonwealth Governments, and such, once, had been the dream of Sir Fabian Scott. But now, for him, the project had been eclipsed by a greater one. He was no longer interested in the solar power station; though, for obvious reasons, work on it had to continue.

On a slight rise, commanding a view of the entire construction site, was a lunar tractor. Through its pressurised transparent dome, the four occupants gazed down at the duralumin network, casting its spidery shadow in the hard white light. Sir Fabian, in the driver’s seat, with Dr. von Sturm at his side, discoursed with apparent enthusiasm on the progress made during the past few weeks.

Seated directly behind Sir Fabian, seeing only his profile as he described and pointed out something of particular interest, Shane tried to consider with detachment this man who was master of so many fantastic secrets, and who would tolerate no opposition to his private plans. Gaff Midley, also, was less interested in the solar power station than he was in that supremely dominant personality. He tried, with clinical calmness, to imagine the mentality of a man who could ruthlessly “eliminate” any human being who interfered with his secret project.

It seemed probable that Sir Fabian’s particular madness was so far advanced that he no longer understood the implications of the act of murder. He had tried to put himself not outside the law, but above it; and, in doing so, he had himself become a victim of his own despotism. For whether he wished to or not, Sir Fabian Scott could never go back, could never renounce the course of action to which he had committed himself. Now, he was under a compulsion more dominant than fear. He had become a slave to his own desire for power.

Von Sturm, while paying dutiful attention to his chief’s remarks, managed to keep a wary eye on the two men behind. This trip to the solar power station had not been planned solely for the entertainment of Gaff Midley and Philip Shane. It had another purpose which, presently, it would be the grim duty of Dr. von Sturm to reveal.

“And so, gentlemen,” concluded Sir Fabian, “in six months, with luck, the solar power station will be ready to beam its energy across to earth. Even so, I do not think it will be adequate for long. In this age of expansion and new horizons, humanity is always greedy for power to operate its increasingly ambitious schemes.”

“Humanity hungers for different kinds of power, Sir Fabian,” said Gaff quietly. “But I suppose there is a theoretical limit to our capacity for assimilation—beyond which there is the danger of total destruction.”

Sir Fabian laughed. “Do you think we are in any immediate danger of passing that critical limit?”

“As a race, no,” replied Gaff. “But with the increase of material power, the temptation is greater than ever before—for individuals.”

Sir Fabian, half-turning in his seat, bestowed on Gaff a long and curious glance.

Von Sturm broke the uneasy silence. “Is there anything else you would like to see, gentlemen? Perhaps you would like to put on your headpieces and take a stroll round the construction site?”

It was then that Shane, on the spur of the moment, asked: “I wonder if it would be possible to take a look at the crater Tycho?”

For a moment, von Sturm was off-guard. His jaw dropped, and he gaped. “The crater Tycho?” he repeated stupidly.

Then Sir Fabian suddenly laughed. “And why not, Erich? It is fitting that Mr. Shane and Dr. Midley should see our spectacular crater—very fitting. How far is it by the northern route?”

“About one and a half hours,” replied von Sturm, gazing at his chief with puzzled eyes.

Sir Fabian ignored him. He turned round to his two passengers. “I am in the mood for playing truant from the depressing mountains of work that surround me,” he told them. “We shall do better than take you to Tycho. We shall take you actually inside it. In the course of exploring the terrain, I discovered a path through the mountain range which can be negotiated by lunar tractor … It is a most impressive sight viewed from the inside.” Then he seemed to shake with silent laughter as he added: “I can assure you confidently that you will remember Tycho for the rest of your lives.”

Sir Fabian turned on the atomic motor and skilfully swung the tractor round. Ahead, over a scarred and undulating sea of rock, lay the clearly outlined volcanic ramparts of the ominous crater.

Presently, the lunar tractor was lurching and bouncing over the rough lava-beds at breakneck speed.

They had already begun to climb. The mountains towered above them like gaunt enduring sentinels, silently resenting this latest insolence of man.

Throughout the journey, the occupants of the tractor had been for the most part silent, each immersed in his own thoughts. But occasionally Sir Fabian would make some observation, or comment on the subtly changing features of the landscape; and a brief conversation would follow, only to be doomed by a few unproductive remarks. Silence hung like a shroud.

Strangely, however, the director of Lunar City seemed almost light-hearted. Gone, temporarily, was that alienating attitude of complete superiority which had made him so many enemies. In its place, there were flashes of a younger, carefree personality, a glimpse of the man who in the early days had commanded such respect and loyalty, a glimpse of Fabian Scott as he was, perhaps, before the heavy shadow of paranoia had chilled his human qualities.

Had the two passengers been aware of the true reason for his light-heartedness, they would have been filled with an even greater sense of excitement, mingled with danger, than that which now afflicted them both.

The tractor continued to climb steadily, sometimes facing gradients of two in five. Tirelessly, the atomic motor met the challenge of the tortuous path.

At last, between mountains which still seemed as high as they were before the ascent had begun, the apex of the pathway was reached; and there before them lay the vast hollow of the crater, ringed by Sir Fabian, “but no more dangerous … Hold on to your seats. Here we go!” forbidding peaks that burned with sunlight against the black pit of the sky.

“The descent is slightly more hair-raising,” warned

He set the tractor down the narrow switchback course at a pace which made even the experienced von Sturm turn a shade paler.

“He’s trying to break our nerve,” thought Shane grimly, as he hung on to the shock bars with both hands. “Well, let him! We’ll see who breaks first—if we don’t all get smashed to bits.” He turned to look at Gaff Midley, who however, stared straight ahead, his lips set in a tight, firm line.

Courting disaster at every sharp turn of the natural pathway, miraculously, the tractor reached the bed of the crater without mishap. The muscles of its occupants, aching with the recent tension, relaxed as Sir Fabian drove smoothly over the glassy bed of rock. Presently the tractor was halted near the edge of a narrow chasm, which stretched across the bowl of the crater as far as the eye could see.

Sir Fabian switched off the atomic motor, and picked up his headpiece. He turned to his companions and said: “Here we are, gentlemen, inside the bowl of Tycho as I promised. I hope you didn’t find the descent too boring. And now I suppose you would like to stretch your legs and look around.”

“I can think of pleasanter ways to kill time than bouncing down the side of a mountain in a tractor,” said Shane. “But the result is certainly worth it. It’s very good of you to take so much trouble, Sir Fabian.”

The director of Lunar City permitted himself to enjoy his secret joke. “Not at all,” he said, with a curious smile. “I told you that it would be a sight you would remember for the rest of your lives.”

The four men, having put on their headpieces, got out of the tractor and gazed about them.

Shane, glancing at the strange formation of the chasm, noticed several sets of parallel scratches on the face of the rock, leading right to the edge of the fissure. Silently, he caught Gaff Midley’s attention and directed it to the tell-tale marks. It appeared that this was by no means the first trip made by lunar tractor to this particular spot.

It was then, without any need of words, that Philip Shane and Gaff Midley decided to act. Sir Fabian Scott had played it his way for quite long enough.

The director of Lunar City and his chief assistant stood by the tractor, watching the two men. Sir Fabian, still smiling, nodded almost imperceptibly. Von Sturm interpreted his signal, and began to move casually towards Philip Shane, who stood now at the edge of the chasm.

A sixth sense warned Shane, and he turned round. Von Sturm stood about three yards away. There was nothing unusual in his attitude, but Shane knew that he was out to kill.

Gaff Midley broke the silence. “Seems you’ve been here quite a lot of times, Sir Fabian,” he said quietly over the audion.

Before Sir Fabian could answer, Shane delivered the follow-up. “This chasm would be the logical place to dump the hydroxy bombs. How many are you hatching here?”

Sir Fabian did not move. He merely laughed. His laughter came over the audion like an uncontrollable wave of madness.

“I told you we were dealing with moderately intelligent men, Erich,” he said in a light, bantering tone. As he continued speaking, he moved slowly towards Gaff Midley. “They understand, of course, that it becomes necessary for them to die.”

“I don’t think Professor Quarles entirely appreciated that necessity,” said Gaff. “But then we have an advantage, since he was murdered without warning or explanation.”

“In the interests of science, I do not consider that this comes under the heading of murder,” said Sir Fabian pleasantly.

“In the interests of paranoia,” retorted Shane, “It’s all in the day’s work.”

“Be quiet, pig!” snarled von Sturm. “You, I will kill with my own hands.”

“You change your classifications quickly,” remarked Philip sarcastically. “Last time, I was a rather peculiar hybrid.”

“It seems Mr. Shane wants you to lose your temper, Erich,” commented Sir Fabian. “It is unnecessary to give him that satisfaction.”

“I admire your ingenuity, Sir Fabian,” continued Gaff unemotionally. “In some ways, it would be interesting to allow you to continue the experiment … But you don’t seriously think that simultaneous detonations at Plato, Copernicus and Tycho will jolt the moon out of its orbit, do you? I admit the idea of a satellite being used as a galactic space-ship is quite entertaining—if impractical. Unfortunately, the people of earth have a certain sentimental attachment to the moon. I don’t think they’d like to see it go sailing away to fall into a star. And they certainly wouldn’t be much amused if your plans misfired and the moon disintegrated … On the whole, I think it’s best that we stop you now … It’s a pity you’ve had to kill a lot of good men. Otherwise, it might have been worth while giving you treatment and getting you back to normal.”

Sir Fabian’s voice was infinitely gentle. “Little man,” he purred, “you have an enquiring mind, which it will be a pity to destroy. I almost wish you could be spared to observe the success of the project. Using the moon as a mobile observatory, we shall undertake the greatest scientific exploration that man has ever known. We shall be able to change our direction or velocity at will, by further recourse to hydroxy bombs—of which I have a useful store. We shall, in fact, be able to choose our pathway through the stars.”

“And later,” added von Sturm fanatically, “we shall select and swing into orbit round some unknown planet where the conditions for life, and its evolutionary phase, may be far in advance of the planet earth. But this you will not know, for your funeral pyre will be the hydroxy group at Tycho.”

“You, brother, will swing into nothing more exciting than a strait-jacket,” observed Shane dryly.

“I have been weak enough to regret the deaths of some who interfered with our plan,” exclaimed von Sturm, his voice rising. “But yours, Mr. Shane, will afford lasting pleasure. I shall remember how your blood boiled before it froze.”

“Erich!” said Sir Fabian sharply. “Melodrama is quite unnecessary for our purpose.”

“Especially Teutonic melodrama,” added Shane contemptuously. “By Wagner out of the Götterdämmerung. Any moment now, I expect to hear a celestial orchestra playing The Ride of the Valkyries!”

Von Sturm could no longer control himself. Philip Shane had neatly goaded him to breaking point.

“Go on, Siegfried,” continued Shane mercilessly. “Go and fetch your pea-shooter from the tractor! … ‘You, I will kill with my own hands,’ the man says … Bah! You couldn’t tackle my Aunt Bertha! No wonder you had to sneak up behind Quarles and use decompression!”

“Erich!” warned Sir Fabian, in a voice like steel.

But Dr. Erich von Sturm no longer heard the voice of his master. With a cry of rage, he suddenly sprang at Philip Shane—who had been waiting for that very moment.

In his anger, von Sturm completely forgot that the G force of the moon was only one-sixth that of earth. He put too much power into the spring. Quickly, Shane ducked, flinging up both arms to thrust his attacker clean over his shoulders. Von Sturm’s clutching hands brushed his headpiece, but failed to find a grip. As the body of the scientist passed over his back, Shane straightened out, and turned, ready to meet further assault. But the precaution was unnecessary.

Dr. Erich von Sturm, unable to retard his fall, passed clean over the edge of the chasm, rebounded from the opposite wall, and disappeared into the pitch-black shadow. It was five seconds until his scream died abruptly in the audions of the three remaining men. Before it had ended, Sir Fabian began to edge towards the lunar tractor.

“Don’t move!” snapped Shane. “Or I’ll give you a rugger tackle that’ll knock the daylight out of you! Appreciating our late friend’s mistake, I’m aiming low.”

Sir Fabian stood quite still.

“Nicely taken, son,” said Gaff quietly. “There won’t be a formal inquest.”

“I think that just about squares things for the professor,” said Shane, not taking his eyes from Sir Fabian. “He would have thought the method untidy, but he would have approved the result.”

When he spoke, Sir Fabian’s voice was entirely calm. “This is unfortunate,” he said softly. “I, too, underestimated you, Mr. Shane … It is a great pity that Erich was so emotionally unstable. I had a premonition that he might let me down one day … And now, you are two against one … It is indeed unfortunate.”

“Look here, Sir Fabian,” said Gaff almost gently. “The party is over. No one’s going to use that shortwave detonator now. The moon is going to stay put … But I’ll tell you what is going to happen: the solar power station will be completed and beam its energy out to earth. That, and the Commonwealth Space Station, will remain your contribution to the advancement of mankind.”

“You don’t understand,” said Sir Fabian Scott in a voice that was curiously remote. “You little men will never understand. You cannot be aware of the dreams that motivate such men as I. Evolution does not stop. When physical evolution slows down, the human species sub-divides spiritually—as it is now doing. I and my kind, the new race of men, are alien to you. You cannot understand why we should accept the challenge of the cosmos, why we should dream of a profitless and dangerous journey without destination. This, to you, is madness; but to me—and to the others who will follow—it is a necessity. For we are true men, and more than men. We have become fit to seek the face of God.”

Gaff did not argue. “You are ill,” he said quietly, “very ill. You know what space-madness is as well as I do. But, existing as you have done, remote from the human world, you’ve allowed it to dominate you, to eat away your personality until there was only one defence left, a greater madness—paranoia—the delusion of being unique, of being above mere human values, of being Prometheus incarnate, the half-divine superman.”

“Well, little man,” said Sir Fabian in that same curiously remote voice, “you think you are sane and I am mad. But it seems to me that both of us are neither … And so, aided by Erich’s stupidity, you have destroyed my work. That, naturally, is the function of little men … I really think the conversation is irrelevant, you know. It surprises me that I am not angry, but then I am very tired … Possibly, what I am about to do marks an end—and possibly, a beginning. In any case, you at least will see that Fabian Scott knows how to die.”

Before either Shane or Gaff Midley could stop him, Sir Fabian Scott, director of Lunar City, snapped back the emergency seal of his headpiece. The air burst out of his pressure-suit, sucked by the relentless lunar vacuum. His body fell on the hard, shiny rock.

And then there was silence.

The two men stared, hypnotised, at the body. Then, after a minute or two. Shane said slowly: “He’s given us a lead, Gaff. I think I know how we can tie this affair up neatly, with the minimum trouble.”

“How do you mean?” asked Gaff.

“If we give the story as it stands, to the world,” explained Philip, “we’re going to discredit the whole power-station project. Probably, the panic would be enough to set back Commonwealth exploration of space by about ten years—to say nothing of political repercussions, or the ensuing flat spin among scientists themselves.”

“So?”

“So we’ll let the public keep its hero. We’ll fix his death to look like an accident. That way we’ll get by without making more people than necessary lose their sleep.”

“You’re not by any chance thinking of Claire Scott, are you?” enquired Gaff.

“Among others,” replied Philip. “Enough people have suffered already … Besides, we owe Scott something. Even his little effort with the hydroxy bombs can’t destroy the fine work he accomplished.”

“Hell! What are we going to do about the bombs?” exclaimed Gaff.

“Fabian was pretty thorough,” answered Shane confidently. “There will probably be a map with their dispositions somewhere among his personal effects. We’ll have to get up a squad of special duty men to round them up and dismantle them.”

“You’re the man with all the answers,” remarked Gaff. “How are you going to explain away the death of Professor Quarles?”

“He’ll have to share Fabian’s accident,” explained Philip. “The old boy wouldn’t have had much enthusiasm for the idea, but it can’t be helped. I think we’d better fix it so that the lunar tractor gets buried in a landslide, while Fabian and the professor were coming down the inner wall of Tycho.”

Gaff Midley sighed. “I foresee a lot of hard work in the next few hours … We’d better pray that nobody has been to the moonship and found the professor.

Shane said: “That’s exactly where we are going now, in Fabian’s tractor. You’ll have to drop off near Lunar City for another tractor for the return journey, while I go on to the moonship. It’d help if you could grab some explosives, too.”

They got into the tractor, and Shane took the driver’s seat. “I’m damned if I know how to work this thing!” he exclaimed. “Very likely, we shan’t need to fake an accident—which will be rather annoying, as I’ve an unreasonable desire to remain alive.”

“Hi, wait a minute!” called Gaff. He withdrew his hand from the locker under the seat which had been recently occupied by von Sturm. “Look what I’ve got!” Gaff Midley displayed a shabby volume of Dryden’s poems.

“That’s it,” said Philip. “See what’s at the back.”

There was a folded slip of paper with the professor’s neat spidery writing on it:

Message from Security Control, Woomera, relayed by London:

Two saboteurs apprehended at Launching Site. Sufficient evidence for prosecution. Cross-questioning revealed implication of Dr. Wills at Commonwealth Satellite. Security Police despatched by ferry rocket for investigation in two-hour orbit. Concave mirror discovered at Space Station, but Wills denied charge and denied receiving orders from Lunar City. Evaded arrest by dropping out of orbit in space-taxi. Disintegration unavoidable on reaching stratosphere at high velocity. Security Control Officers despatched to Lunar City by reserve moonship. Imperative need full report of situation at Lunar City immediately.

Spread out over each line of the writing were several groups of cypher, from which the message, or its main points, had apparently been decoded. Below the message were some remarks which the professor had presumably noted down for his own convenience:

1. Confer with Shane and Midley.

2. Disable short-wave detonator set.

3. Confront Scott with evidence.

4. Consider possibility of——

It appeared, from the sudden scrawl and the incompleted point four, that the professor was interrupted while actually writing. Afterwards, von Sturm must have gone to the space-navigation deck and removed the message. It said a great deal for his self-confidence that he felt safe in leaving the incriminating evidence in the lunar tractor.

Silently, Gaff Midley handed the slip of paper to Philip.

“It seems they’d got the thing pretty well taped,” commented Shane. “I can’t say I ever suspected Wills, though.”

“I knew he was one of Fabian’s men,” answered Gaff. “But I didn’t suspect that he was in on what’s turned out to be the hydroxy project.”

“Perhaps he didn’t, either,” said Shane. “Maybe Scott was just using him. Or maybe he was going to hop to Lunar City before the big bang … Wonder why he had to kill the Ferry Commander?”

“I should think he had a line on Wills—probably followed up the sabotage angle on his own account—and then went up to the orbit to have it out with him.”

“That’s a reasonable explanation, anyway,” Philip switched on the atomic motor. As he did so, the volume of poems fell from Gaff’s knee, opening at a page where part of a poem was heavily underlined in pencil.

Gaff Midley picked the book up and glanced at the few lines of verse. “Listen to this,” he said, “and tell me who it reminds you of.”

He cleared his throat and read quietly:

“A daring pilot in extremity,

Pleased with the danger, when the waves went high

He sought the storms; but, for a calm unfit,

Would steer too nigh the sands to boast his wit.

Great wits are sure to madness near allied

And thin partitions do their bounds divide.”

“That,” said Shane, “is the perfect epitaph for Sir Fabian Scott.”

“So, apparently, thought Professor Quarles,” said Gaff slowly, staring out through the transparent dome at the bare and lifeless rocks.

“Well,” said Philip Shane, releasing the handbrake, “there’s work to be done. Let’s go.”

“Ready?” asked Gaff over the audion.

Shane was about fifty yards away, walking towards him from a large head of rock. Beneath it was a lunar tractor. Stretching out from the foot of the mountains, in a high blaze of sunlight, the great bowl of the crater Tycho remained grimly enduring, dead and immortal, as it had been for unnumbered millions of years.

“All set!” called Shane, as he drew closer to his companion.

Gaff Midley held a small metal box in his hand. He pressed the white button in its centre.

There was no sound, no shock wave of expanding air. But the massive rock above the tractor disintegrated as if it were fragile glass. Hundreds of tons of jagged fragments subsided into a huge cairn over the tractor and the two dead scientists it contained. Presently, the lunar dust settled tranquilly on a monument which united, in death, the two men who had been such mortal enemies.

“What now?” asked Gaff dully.

Philip Shane sighed wearily. “Explanations,” he said. “The whole bloody gauntlet of explanations … And then we’d better radio the truth to London.”

Silently, they returned to the other tractor.

Neither of the men spoke during the long, slow trip through the natural pass in the mountains. Each of them was tired—tired, almost, beyond endurance. Finally, when they had reached the lava plains, when the plastic bubble of Lunar City began to grow appreciably larger, Gaff Midley spoke once more.

“Who’s going to tell Claire?” he asked quietly.

Shane did not answer for a few moments, then he said: “I will, so help me. I’ll tell it like a wooden soldier. I’ll tell it with a straight face and a bucket of crocodile tears … Hell, Gaff! I’m not human any more. I’m as space-happy as they come!”

“Take it easy, son. You’ve done a tough job, and now you’ve got the reaction. But for your little effort, we’d have both been sleeping with the hydroxy bombs.”

“Here’s to Philip Shane!” said Shane savagely. “Trouble-shooter and big brother to little orphan girls.”

“Go easy with her,” said Gaff. “And for God’s sake go easy with yourself.”

“What do you think?” said Shane, enigmatically, as he headed for the eastern airlock.

Epilogue

THE space-taxi took them from Commonwealth Space Station to Rocket Thirteen, which had been circling the earth at nearly sixteen thousand miles an hour, twelve times a day, ever since the space-travellers left for the moon. There it stood, maintaining the same attitude and the same position amid all the scattered debris of the two-hour orbit. Far below, the sunny, cloudy face of India was slowly turning to the dark side of the world.

From the astrodome of Commonwealth Space Station the new director waved good-bye to his temporary guests. Of the original party, only Claire Scott, Gaff Midley and Philip Shane were returning to Woomera, to a world where one could breathe without oxygen cylinders, where the sky was blue, and where even in the deserts life flourished and fulfilled its destiny.

As they passed the moonship in which they had recently returned to the orbit, the three passengers in the space-taxi signalled to a group of engineers busy manipulating bales of supplies through the open entry-port. Rocky Wilson and his crew were preparing for yet another two hundred and forty thousand-mile voyage.

At last they reached Rocket Thirteen, where the new ferry pilot was already waiting for them. He had programmed the rocket, checked that the “runway” was clear, and had radioed acceptance of the scheduled firing-point both to Commonwealth and to Woomera.

The passengers settled back on their contour-berths and relaxed. On the downward trip, the slow spiral back to earth, the G force would be far less formidable. Presently, the ferry pilot came in and checked the safety straps, and then went to his own berth in the forward compartment. With a slight hiss, the door of the rocket’s entry-port closed.

“Two minutes to firing-point!” said the auto-announcer.

Gaff Midley, who was occupying the berth that had once been used by Quarles, spoke to Claire: “It won’t be long before you are back in Cambridge, my dear. And then I want you to forget all about it for a while—but only for a while … Until you can look back at the whole voyage without bitterness or pain.”

“Thank you, Gaff,” said Claire. “What a waste it is that such a man should die … You know, I don’t seem to be able to think of him as my father now—only as Sir Fabian Scott, the man who reached $$$ the moon.”

“That’s true,” said Shane, quietly, gazing across at Claire, “he did that. He reached for the moon … Promise me you’re going to put this tragedy right behind you, Claire … Some day we’ll talk about it when it doesn’t hurt any more.”

“I’ll try,” she said, with a smile. “You and Gaff have been very kind … Probably I haven’t taken it so badly as I’ve appeared to … You see, I began to feel that I ought to live up to him. And I seemed to draw courage from his courage, and the fact that he was a truly great man.”

Philip Shane gazed deeply into her eyes. “Yes,” he said, slowly, “Sir Fabian was a great man.”

“One minute to firing-point!” boomed the auto-announcer. “Fort-five seconds … thirty seconds … fifteen … ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one—zero!”

THE END

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Also by Edmund Cooper

Collections

Jupiter Laughs

Voices in the Dark

A World of Difference

Novels

All Fool’s Day (1966)

The Cloud Walker (1973)

A Far Sunset (1967)

Five to Twelve (1968)

Kronk (1970) (aka Son of Kronk)

The Last Continent (1970)

Merry Christmas Ms Minerva (1978)

The Overman Culture (1971)

Prisoner of Fire (1974)

Seahorse in the Sky (1969)

Seed of Light (1959)

The Slaves of Heaven (1975)

The Tenth Planet (1973)

Transit (1964)

Uncertain Midnight (1958) (aka Deadly Image)

Who Needs Men? (1972)

Ferry Rocket (1954) (writing as George Kinley)

The Expendables (writing as Richard Avery)

1. The Expendables: The Deathworms of Kratos (1975)

2. The Expendables: The Rings of Tantalus (1975)

3. The Expendables: The Wargames of Zelos (1975)

4. The Expendables: The Venom of Argus (1976)

Edmund Cooper (1926 – 1982)

Edmund Cooper was born in Cheshire in 1926. He served in the Merchant Navy towards the end of the Second World War and trained as a teacher after its end. He began to publish SF stories in 1951 and produced a considerable amount of short fiction throughout the ’50s, moving on, by the end of that decade, to the novels for which he is chiefly remembered. His works displayed perhaps a bleaker view of the future than many of his contemporaries’, frequently utilising post-apocalyptic settings. In addition to writing novels, Edmund Cooper reviewed science fiction for the Sunday Times from 1967 until his death in 1982.

Copyright

A Gollancz eBook

Copyright © The Edmund Cooper Literary Trust. Contact e-mail dfpcantab@yahoo.co.uk 1954

All rights reserved.

The right of Edmund Cooper to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

This eBook first published in Great Britain in 2015 by Gollancz

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A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN 978 0 575 11661 0

All characters and events in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

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Content

FERRY ROCKET
Edmund Cooper

Enter the SF Gateway …

Chapter One PRELUDE TO WOOMERA

Chapter Two FIREWORKS

Chapter Three THE PIT AND THE PENDULUM

Chapter Four DOPE SALAD

Chapter Five FIRING POINT

Chapter Six COMMONWEALTH SPACE STATION

Chapter Seven THE MOONSHIP

Chapter Eight THE SECOND POWER MANŒUVRE

Chapter Nine LUNAR CITY

Chapter Ten THE HYDROXY BOMBS

Chapter Eleven DEATH AT TYCHO

Epilogue

Also by Edmund Cooper

Edmund Cooper (1926 – 1982)

Copyright