Chapter 11

THE AFTERNOON following the home-coming of the Skylark, Season and Dorothy returned from a long horseback ride in the park. After Seaton had mounted his motorcycle, Dorothy turned toward a bench in the shade of an old elm to watch a game of tennis on the court next door. Scarcely had she seated herself when a great copper-plated ball landed directly in front of her. A heavy steel door snapped open and a powerful figure clad in leather leaped out. The man's face and eyes were covered by his helmet flaps and amber goggles.

Dorothy leaped to her feet with a shriek—Seaton had just left her and this spaceship was far too small to be the Skylark—it was the counterpart of "Old Crip," which, she knew, could never fly. As these thoughts raced through her she screamed again and turned in flight; but the stranger caught her in three strides and she found herself helpless in a pair of arms as strong as Seaton's.

Picking her up lightly, DuQuesne carried her over the lawn to his spaceship. Dorothy screamed wildly as she found that her fiercest struggles made no impression on her captor. Her clawing nails glanced harmlessly off the glass and leather of his helmet; her teeth were equally ineffective against his leather coat.

With the girl in his arms DuQuesne stepped into the vessel. The door clanged shut behind them. Dorothy caught a glimpse of another woman, tied tightly into one of the side seats.

"Tie her feet, Perkins," DuQuesne ordered, holding her around the body so that her feet extended straight out in front of him. "She's a fighting wildcat."

As Perkins threw one end of a small rope around her ankles Dorothy doubted up her knees, drawing her feet as far away from him as she could. He stepped up carelessly and reached out to grasp her ankles. She straightened out viciously, driving her riding-boots into the pit of his stomach with all her strength.

It was a true solar-plexus blow; and, completely knocked out, Perkins staggered backward against the instrument-board. His outflung arm pushed the power lever out to its last notch, throwing full current through the bar, which was pointed straight up as it had been when they made their landing.

There was the creak of fabricated steel stressed almost to its limit as the vessel shot upward with a stupendous velocity, and only the ultra-protective and super-resilient properties of the floor saved their lives as they were thrown flat upon it by the awful force of their acceleration.

The maddened spaceship tore through the thin layer of the earth's atmosphere in instants—it was through it and into the almost-perfect vacuum of interplanetary space before the thick steel hull was even warmed through.

Dorothy lay flat upon her back, just as she had fallen, unable even to move her arms, gaining each breath by a terrible effort. Perkins was a huddled heap under the instrument board. The other captive, Brookings' ex-secretary, was in somewhat better case, as her bonds had snapped and she was lying in optimum position in one of the seats—forced into that position and held there, as the designer of those seats had intended. She, like Dorothy, was gasping for breath, her straining muscles barely able to force air into her lungs because of the paralyzing weight of her chest.

DuQuesne alone was able to move, and it required all of his Herculean strength to creep and crawl, snakelike, toward the instrument board. Finally, attaining his goal, he summoned all his strength to grasp, not the controlling lever, which he knew was beyond his reach, but a cutout switch only a couple of feet above his head. With a series of convulsive movements he fought his way up, first until he was crouching on elbows and knees, then into a squatting position. Then, placing his left hand under his right, he made a last supreme effort. Perspiration streamed from his face; his muscles stood out in ridges visible even under the heavy leather of his coat; his lips parted in a snarl over his locked teeth as he threw every ounce of his powerful body into an effort to force his right hand up to that switch. His hand approached it slowly—closed over it—pulled it out.

The result was startling. With the terrific power instantly cut off, and with not even the ordinary force of gravity to counteract the force DuQuesne was exerting, his own muscular effort hurled him upward, toward the center of the ship and against the instrument board. The switch, still in his grasp, was again closed. His shoulder crashed against the knobs which controlled the direction of the power bar, swinging it through a wide arc. As the ship darted off in the new direction with all its former acceleration he was hurled back against the board, tearing one end loose from its supports and falling unconscious to the floor on the other side. After what seemed like an eternity, Dorothy and the other girl felt their senses slowly leave them.

With its four unconscious passengers the ship hurtled through empty space, its already inconceivable velocity being augmented every second by a quantity almost equal to the velocity of light—driven furiously onward by the prodigious power of the disintegrating copper bar.

Seaton had gone only a short distance from his sweetheart's home when, over the purring of his engine, he thought he heard Dorothy scream. He did not wait to make sure, but whirled his machine around and its purring changed to a bellowing roar as he opened the throttle. Gravel flew under skidding wheels as he made the turn into the Vaneman grounds at suicidal speed. He arrived at the scene just in time to see the door of the spaceship close. Before he could reach it the vessel disappeared, with nothing to mark its  departure except a violent whirl of grass and sod, uprooted and carried high into the air by the vacuum of its wake. To the excited tennis players and the screaming mother of the abducted girl it seemed as though the great metal ball had vanished utterly. Only Seaton traced the line of debris in the air and saw, for a fraction of an instant, an infinitesimal black dot in the sky before it disappeared.

Interrupting the clamor of the young people, each of whom was trying to tell him what had happened, he spoke to Mrs. Vaneman rapidly but gently. "Mother, Dottie's all right. Steel's got her, but they won't keep her long. Don't worry, we'll get her back. It may be a week or it may take a year; but we'll bring her back!"

He leaped upon his motorcycle and shattered all speed laws on the way to Crane's house.

"Mart!" he yelled. "They've got Dottie, in a ship made from our plans. Let's go!"

"Slow down—don't go off half-cocked. What do you plan?"

"Plan! Just chase 'em. and kill 'em!"

"Which way did they go, and when?"

"Straight up. Full power. Twenty minutes ago."

"Too long ago. Straight up has moved five degrees. They may have covered a million miles, or they may have come down only a few miles away. Sit down and think—use your brain."

Seaton sat down and pulled out his pipe, fighting for self-possession. Then he jumped up and ran into his room, coming back with an object compass whose needle pointed upward.

"DuQuesne did it?" he cried, exultantly. "This is still looking right at him. Now let's go, and snap it up!"

"Not yet. How far away are they?"

Seaton touched the stud that set the needle swinging and snapped on the millisecond timer. Both men watched in strained attention as second after second went by and the needle continued to oscillate. It finally came to rest and Crane punched keys on the computer.

"Three hundred and fifty million miles. Half-way out of the solar system. That means a constant acceleration of about one light"

"Nothing can go that fast, Mart. E Equals M C square."

"Einstein's Theory is still a theory. This distance is an observed fact."

"And theories are modified to fit facts. Hokay. He's out of control—something went haywire."

"Undoubtedly."

"We don't know how big a bar he's got, so we can't figure how long it'll take us to catch him. For Pete's sake, Mart, let's get at it!"

They hurried out to the Skylark and made a quick check. Seaton was closing the lock when Crane stopped him with a gesture toward the power plant.

"We have only four bars, Dick—two for each engine. It will take at least one to overtake them, and at least one to stop. If we expect to get back within our lifetime it will take the other two to get us back. Even with no allowance at all for the unexpected, we are short on power."

Seaton, though furiously eager to be off, was stopped cold. "Check. We'd better get a couple more—maybe four. We'd better load up on grub and X-plosive ammunition, too."

"And water," Crane added. "Especially water."

Seaton called the brass foundry. The manager took his order, but blandly informed him that there was not that much copper in the city, that it would be ten days or two weeks before such an order could be filled. Seaton suggested that they melt up some finished goods—bus bars and the like—price no object; but the manager was obdurate. He could not violate the priority rule.

Seaton then called other places, every place he could think of or find in the yellow pages, trying to buy anything made of copper. Bar—sheet—shapes—trolley wire—cable—house wire—anything. There was nothing available in any quantity large enough to be of any use.

After an hour of fruitless telephoning he reported, in fulminating language, to Crane.

"I'm not too surprised. Steel might not want us to have too much copper."

Sparks almost shot from Seaton's eyes. "I'm going to see Brookings. He'll give me some copper or a few of the atoms of his carcass will land in Andromeda." He started for the door.

"No, Dick, no!" Crane seized Seaton by the arm. "That wouldn't—couldn't—get us anything except indefinite delay."

"What else, then? How?"

"We can be at Wilson's in five minutes. He has some copper on hand, and can get more. The Skylark is ready to travel." 

In a few minutes they were in the office of the plant in which their vessel had been built. When they made their wants known the ironmaster shook his head.

"I'm sorry, but I don't think I've got over a hundred pounds of copper in the place, and no non-ferrous equipment. . . ."

Seaton started to explode, but Crane silenced him and told Wilson the whole story.

Wilson slammed his fist down onto his desk and roared, "I'll get copper if I have to tear the roof off of the church!" Then, more quietly, "We'll have to cobble up a furnace and crucible . . . and hand-make patterns and molds . . . and borrow a big lathe . . . but you'll get your bars just as fast as I can possibly get them out."

Two days passed before the gleaming copper cylinders were ready. During this time Crane added to their equipment every article for which he could conceive any possible use, while Seaton raged up and down in a black fury of impatience. While the bars were being loaded they made another reading on the object compass. Their faces grew tense and their hearts turned sick as minute followed minute and the needle still would not settle down. Finally, however, it came to rest. Seaton's voice almost failed him as he said, "About two hundred and thirty-five light-years. Couldn't nail the exact end-point, but that's fairly close. They're lost like nobody was ever lost before. So long, guy." He held out his hand. "It's been mighty nice knowing you. Tell Vaneman if I come back I'll bring her with me"

Crane refused the hand. "Since when am I not going along, Dick?"

"As of just now. No sense in it. If Dottie's gone I'm going too; but M. Reynolds Crane very positively is not."

"Nonsense. This is somewhat farther than we had planned for the first trip, but there is no real difference. It is just as safe to go a thousand light-years as one, and we have ample supplies. In any event, I am going."

"Who do you think you're kidding? . . . Thanks, ace." This time, hands met in a crushing grip. "You're worth three of me."

"I'll call Vaneman," Crane said, hastily.

He did not tell the lawyer the truth, or any close approximation of it—merely the chase would probably be longer than had been supposed, that communication could very well be impossible, that they would in all probability be gone a long time, and that he could not even guess at how long that time would be.

They closed the locks and took off. Seaton crowded on power until Crane, reading the pyrometers, warned him to cut back the skin was getting too hot.

Free of atmosphere, Seaton again advanced the lever, notch by notch, until he could no longer support the weight of his hand, but had to resort to the arm-support designed for that emergency. He pushed the lever a few notches farther, and was forced violently down into his seat, which had automatically moved upward so that his hand still controlled the rachet handle. Still he kept the ratchet clicking, until he knew that he could not endure much more.

"How . . . you . . . coming?" he wheezed into his microphone. He could not really talk.

"Paas . . . s . . . sing . . . ou . . . u . . . t" Crane's reply was barely audible. "If . . . f . . . y . . . y . . . o . . . uu . . . c . . . c . . . ss . . . t . . . a . . . n . . . g . . . g . . . o . . . a . . . h . . . e . . . d . . . d . . ."

Seaton cut back a few notches. "How about this?"

"I can take this much, I think. I was right on the edge."

"I'll let her ride here, then. How Long?"

"Four or five hours. Then we had better eat and take another reading."

"All right. Talking's too much work, so if it gets too much for you, yell while you still can. I'm sure glad we're on our way at last."