Chapter 12

FOR FORTY-EIGHT hours the uncontrolled engine dragged DuQuesne's vessel through the empty reaches of space with an awful and constantly increasing velocity. Then, when only a few traces of copper remained, the acceleration began to decrease. Floor and seats began to return to their normal positions. When the last particle of copper was gone, the ship's speed became constant. Apparently motionless to those inside her, she was in reality moving with a velocity thousands of times greater than that of light.

DuQuesne was the first to gain control of himself. His first effort to get up lifted him from the floor and he floated lightly upward to the ceiling, striking it with a gentle bump and remaining, motionless and unsupported, in the air. The others, none of whom had attempted to move, stared at him in amazement.

DuQuesne reached out, clutched a hand-grip, and drew himself down to the floor. With great caution he removed his suit, transferring two automatic pistols as he did so. By feeling gingerly of his body he found that no bones were broken. Only then did he look around to see how his companions were faring.

They were all sitting up and holding onto something. The girls were resting quietly; Perkins was removing his leather costume.

"Good morning, Dr. DuQuesne. Something must have happened when I kicked your friend."

"Good morning, Miss Vaneman." DuQuesne smiled, more than half in relief. "Several things happened. He fell into the controls, turning on all the juice, and we left considerably faster than I intended to. I tried to get control, but couldn't. Then we all went to sleep and just woke up."

"Have you any idea where we are?"

"No . . . but I can make a fair estimate." He glanced at the empty chamber where the copper cylinder had been; took out notebook, pencil, and slide rule; and figured for minutes.

He then drew himself to one of the windows and stared out, then went to another window, and another. He seated himself at the crazily tilted control board and studied it. He worked the computer for a few moments.

"I don't know exactly what to make of this," he told Dorothy, quietly. "Since the power was on exactly forty-eight hours, we should not be more than two light-days away from our sun. However, we certainly are. I could recognize at least some of the fixed stars and constellations from anywhere within a light-year or so of Sol, and I can't find even one familiar thing. Therefore we must have been accelerating all the time. We must be somewhere in the neighborhood of two hundred thirty-seven light-years away from home. For you two who don't know what a light-year is, about six quadrillion—six thousand million million—miles."

Dorothy's face turned white; Margaret Spencer fainted; Perkins merely goggled, his face working convulsively.

"Then we'll never get back?" Dorothy asked.

"I wouldn't say that—"

"You got us into this!" Perkins screamed, and leaped at Dorothy, murderous fury in his glare, his fingers curved into talons. Instead of reaching her, however, he merely  sprawled grotesquely in the air. DuQuesne, braced one foot against the wall and seizing a hand-grip with his left hand, knocked Perkins clear across the room with one blow of his right.

"None of that, louse," DuQuesne said, evenly. "One more wrong move out of you and I'll throw you out. It isn't her fault we're here, it's our own. And mostly yours—if you'd had three brain cells working she couldn't have kicked you. But that's past. The only thing of interest now is getting back."

"But we can't get back." Perkins whimpered. "The power's gone, the controls are wrecked, and you just said you're lost."

"I did not" DuQuesne's voice was icy. "What I said was that I don't know where we are—a different statement entirely."

"Isn't that a distinction without a difference?" Dorothy asked acidly.

"By no means, Miss Vaneman. I can repair the control board. I have two extra power bars. One of them, with direction exactly reversed, will stop us, relative to the earth. I'll burn half of the last one, then coast until, by recognizing fixed stars and triangulating them, I can fix our position. I will then know where our solar system is and will go there. In the meantime, I suggest that we have something to eat."

"A beautiful and timely thought!" Dorothy exclaimed. "I'm famished. Where's your refrigerator? But something else comes first. I'm a mess, and she must be, too. Where's our room . . . that is, we have a room?"

"Yes. That one, and there's the galley, over there. We're cramped, but you'll be able to make out. Let me say, Miss Vaneman, that I really admire your nerve. I didn't expect that lunk to disintegrate the way he did, but I thought you girls might. Miss Spencer will, yet, unless you . . ."

"I'll try to. I'm scared, of course, but falling apart won't help . . . and we've simply got to get back."

"We will. Two of us, at least."

Dorothy nudged the other girl, who had not paid any attention to anything around her, and led her along a hand-rail. As she went, she could not help but think—with more than a touch of admiration—of the man who had abducted her. Calm, cool, master of himself and the situation, disregarding completely the terrible bruises that disfigured half his face and doubtless half his body as well—she admitted to herself that it was only his example which had enabled her to maintain her self-control.

As she crawled over Perkins' suit she remembered that he had not taken any weapons from it, and a glance assured her that Perkins was not watching her. She searched it quickly, finding two automatics. She noted with relief that they were standard .45's and stuck them into her pockets.

In the room, Dorothy took one look at the other girl, then went to the galley and back.

"Here, swallow this." she ordered.

The girl did so. She shuddered uncontrollably, but did begin to come to life.

"That's better. Now, snap out of it," Dorothy said, sharply. "We aren't dead and we aren't going to be."

"I am," came the wooden reply. "You don't know that beast Perkins."

"I do so. And better yet, I know things that neither DuQuesne nor that Perkins even guess. Two of the smartest men that ever lived are on our tail, and when they catch up with us . . . well, I wouldn't be in their shoes for anything."

"What?" Dorothy's confident words and bearing, as much the potent pill, were taking effect. The strange girl was coming back rapidly to sanity and normality. "Not really?"

"Really. We've got a lot to do, and we've got to clean up first. And with no weight . . . does it make you sick?"

"It did, dreadfully, but I've got nothing left to be sick with. Doesn't it you?"

"Not very much. I don't like it, but I'm getting used to it. And I don't suppose you know anything about it"

"No. All I can feel is that I'm falling, and it's almost unbearable."

"It isn't pleasant. I've studied it a lot—in theory—and the boys say all you've got to do is forget that falling sensation. Not that I've been able to do it, but I'm still trying. The first thing's a bath, and then—"

"A bath! Here? How?"

"Sponge-bath. I'll show you. Then . . . they brought along quite a lot of clothes to fit me, and you're just about my size . . . and you'll look nice in green. . . ."

After they had put themselves to rights, Dorothy said, "That's a lot better." Each girl looked at the other, and each liked what she saw.

The stranger was about twenty-two with heavy, wavy black hair. Her eyes were a rich, deep brown; her skin clear, smooth ivory. Normally a beautiful girl, thought Dorothy, even though she was now thin, haggard, and worn.

"Let's get acquainted before we do anything else," she said. "I'm Margaret Spencer, formerly private secretary to His High Mightiness, Brookings of Steel. They swindled my father out of an invention worth millions and then killed him. I got the job to see if I could prove it, but I didn't get much evidence before they caught me. So, after two months of things you wouldn't believe, here I am. Talking never would have done me any good, and I'm certain it won't now. Perkins will kill me . . . or maybe, if what you say is true, I should add 'if he can.' This is the first time I've had that much hope."

"But how about Dr. DuQuesne? Surely he wouldn't let him."

"I've never met DuQuesne before, but from what I heard around the office, he's worse than Perkins—in a different way, of course. He's absolutely cold and utterly hard—a perfect fiend."

"Oh, come, you're too hard on him. Didn't you see him knock Perkins down when he came after me?"

"No—or perhaps I did, in a dim sort of way. But that doesn't mean anything. He probably wants you left alive—of course that's it, since he went to all the trouble of kidnapping you. Otherwise he would have let Perkins do anything he wanted to with you, without lifting a finger."

"I can't believe that." Nevertheless, a chill struck at Dorothy's heart as she remembered the inhuman crimes attributed to the man. "He has treated us with every consideration so far—let's hope for the best. Anyway, I'm sure we'll get back safely."

"You keep saying that. What makes you so sure?"

"Well, I'm Dorothy Vaneman, and I'm engaged to Dick Seaton, the man who invented this spaceship, and I'm as sure as can be that he is chasing us right now."

"But that's just what they want!" Margaret exclaimed. "I heard some Top Secret stuff about that. Your name and Seaton's brings it back to me. Their ship is rigged, some way or other, so it will blow up or something the first time they go anywhere!"

"That's what they think" Dorothy's voice dripped scorn. "Dick and his partner—you've heard of Martin Crane, of course?"

"I heard the name mentioned with Seaton's, but that's all."

"Well, he's quite a wonderful inventor, and almost as smart as Dick is. Together they found out about that sabotage and built another ship that Steel doesn't know anything about. Bigger and better and faster than this one."

"That makes me feel better." Margaret really brightened for the first time. "No matter how rough this trip will be, it'll be a vacation for me now. If I only had a gun . . ."

"Here," and as Margaret stared at the proffered weapon, "I've got another. I got them out of Perkins' suit."

"Glory be!" Margaret fairly beamed. "There is balm in Gilead, after all! Just watch, next time Perkins threatens to cut my heart out with his knife . . . and we'd better go make those sandwiches, don't you think? And call me Peggy, please."

"Will do, Peggy my dear—we're going to be great friends. And I'm Dot or Dottie to you."

In the galley the girls set about making dainty sandwiches, but the going was very hard indeed. Margaret was particularly inept. Slices of bread went one way, bits of butter another, ham and sausage in several others. She seized two trays and tried to trap the escaping food between them—but in the attempt she released her hold and floated helplessly into the air.

"Oh, Dot, what'll we do anyway?" she wailed. "Everything wants to fly all over the place!"

"I don't quite know—I wish we had a bird-cage, so we could reach in and grab anything before it could escape. We'd better tie everything down, I guess, and let everybody come in and cut off a chunk of anything they want. But what I'm wondering about is drinking. I'm simply dying of thirst and I'm afraid to open this bottle." She had a bottle of ginger ale clutched in her left hand, an opener in her right; one leg was hooked around a vertical rail. "I'm afraid it'll go into a million drops and Dick says if you breathe them in you're apt to choke to death."

"Seaton was right—as usual." Dorothy whirled around. DuQuesne was surveying the room, a glint of amusement in his one sound eye. "I wouldn't recommend playing with charged drinks while weightless. Just a minute—I'll get the net."

He got it; and while he was deftly clearing the air of floating items of food he went on. "Charged stuff could be murderous unless you're wearing a mask. Plain liquids you can drink through a straw after you learn how. Your swallowing has got to be conscious, and all muscular with no gravity. But what I came here for was to tell you I'm ready to put on one G of acceleration so we'll have normal gravity. I'll put it on easy, but watch it"

"What a heavenly relief!" Margaret cried, when everything again stayed put. "I never thought I'd ever be grateful for just being able to stand still in one place, did you?"

Preparing the meal was now of course simple enough. As the four ate, Dorothy noticed that DuQuesne's left arm was almost useless and that he ate with difficulty because of his terribly bruised face. After the meal was done she went to the medicine chest and selected containers, swabs, and gauze.

"Come over here, doctor. First aid is indicated."

"I'm all right . . ." he began, but at her imperious gesture he got up carefully and came toward her.

"Your arm is lame. Where's the damage?"

"The shoulder is the worst. I rammed it through the board."

"Take off your shirt and lie down here."

He did so and Dorothy gasped at the extent and severity of the man's injuries.

"Will you get me some towels and hot water, please, Peggy?" She worked busily for minutes, bathing away clotted blood, applying antiseptics, and bandaging. "Now for those bruises—I never saw anything like them before. I'm not really a nurse. What would you use? Tripidiagen or . . ."

"Amylophene. Massage it in as I move the arm."

He did not wince and his expression did not change; but he began to sweat and his face turned white. She paused.

"Keep it up, nurse," he directed, coolly. "That stuff's murder in the first degree, but it does the job and it's fast."

When she had finished and he was putting his shirt back on: "Thanks, Miss Vaneman—thanks a lot. It feels a hundred per cent better already. But why did you do it? I'd think you'd want to bash me with that basin instead."

"Efficiency." She smiled. "As our chief engineer it won't do to have you laid up."

"Logical enough, in a way . . . but . . . I wonder . . ."

She did not reply, but turned to Perkins.

"How are you, Mr. Perkins? Do you require medical attention?"

"No," Perkins growled. "Keep away from me or I'll cut your heart out."

"Shut up!" DuQuesne snapped.

"I haven't done anything!"

"Maybe it didn't quite constitute making a break, so I'll broaden the definition. If you can't talk like a man, keep still. Lay off Miss Vaneman—thoughts, words, and actions. I'm in charge of her and I will have no interference whatever. This is your last warning."

"How about Spencer, then?"

"She's your responsibility, not mine."

An evil light appeared in Perkins' eyes. He took out a wicked-looking knife and began to strop it carefully on the leather of the seat, glaring at his victim the while.

Dorothy started to protest, but was silenced by a gesture from Margaret, who calmly took the pistol out of her pocket. She jerked the slide and held the weapon up on one finger.

"Don't worry about his knife. He's been sharpening it for my benefit for the last month. It doesn't mean a thing. But you shouldn't play with it so much, Perkins, you might be tempted to try to throw it. So drop it on the floor and kick it over here to me. Before I count three. One." The heavy pistol steadied into line with his chest and her finger tightened on the trigger.

"Two." Perkins obeyed and Margaret picked up the knife.

"Doctor!" Perkins appealed to DuQuesne, who had watched the scene unmoved, a faint smile upon his saturnine face. "Why don't you shoot her? You won't sit there and see me murdered!"

"Won't I? It makes no difference to me which of you kills the other, or if you both do, or neither. You brought this on yourself. Anyone with any fraction of a brain doesn't leave guns lying around loose. You should have seen Miss Vaneman take them—I did."

"You saw her take them and didn't warn me?" Perkins croaked.

"Certainly. If you can't take care of yourself I'm not going to take care of you. Especially after the way you bungled the job. I could have recovered the stuff she stole from that ass Brookings inside an hour."

"How?" Perkins sneered. "If you're so good, why did you have to come to me about Seaton and Crane?"

"Because my methods wouldn't work and yours would. It isn't on planning that you're weak, as I told Brookings—it's on execution."

"Well, what are you going to do about her? Are you going to sit there and lecture all day?"

"I am going to do nothing whatever. Fight your own battles."

Dorothy broke the silence that followed. "You did see me take the guns, doctor?"

"I did. You have one in your right breeches pocket now."

"Then why didn't you, or don't you, try to take it away from me?" she asked, wonderingly.

" 'Try' is the wrong word. If I had not wanted you to take them you wouldn't have. If I didn't want you to have a gun now I would take it away from you," and his black eyes stared into her violet ones with such calm certainty that she felt her heart sink.

"Has Perkins got any more knives or guns or things in his room?" Dorothy demanded.

"I don't know," indifferently. Then, as both girls started for Perkins' room DuQuesne rapped out, "Sit down, Miss Vaneman. Let them fight it out. Perkins has his orders about you; I'm giving you orders about him. If he oversteps, shoot him. Otherwise, hands off completely—in every respect."

Dorothy threw up her head in defiance; but, meeting his cold stare, she paused irresolutely and sat down, while the other girl went on.

"That's better," DuQuesne said. "Besides, it would be my guess that she doesn't need any help."

Margaret returned from the search and thrust her pistol back into her pocket. "That ends that," she declared. "Are you going to behave yourself or do I chain you by the neck to a post?"

 "I suppose I'll have to, if the doc's gone back on me," Perkins snarled. "But I'll get you when we get back, you—"

"Stop it!" Margaret snapped. "Now listen. Call me names any more and I'll start shooting. One name, one shot; two names, two shots; and so on. Each shot in a carefully selected place. Go ahead."

DuQuesne broke the silence that followed. "Well, now that the battle's over and we're fed and rested, I'll put on some power. Everybody into seats."

For sixty hours he drove through space, reducing the acceleration only at mealtimes, when they ate and exercised their stiffened, tormented bodies. The power was not cut down for sleep; everyone slept as best he could.

Dorothy and Margaret were together constantly and a real intimacy grew up between them. Perkins was for the most part sullenly quiet. DuQuesne worked steadily during all his waking hours, except at mealtimes when he talked easily and well. There was no animosity in his bearing or in his words; but his discipline was strict and his reproofs merciless.

When the power bar was exhausted DuQuesne lifted the sole remaining cylinder into the engine, remarking:

"Well, we should be approximately stationary, relative to Earth. Now we'll start back."

He advanced the lever, and for many hours the regular routine of the ship went on. Then DuQuesne on waking, saw that the engine was no longer perpendicular to the floor, but was inclined slightly. He read the angle of inclination on the great circles, then scanned a sector of space. He reduced the current, whereupon all four felt a lurch as the angle was increased many degrees. He read the new angle hastily and restored touring power. He then sat down at the computer and figured—with that much power on, a tremendous and unnerving job.

"What's the matter, doctor?" Dorothy asked.

"We're being deflected a little from our course."

"Is that bad?"

 "Ordinarily, no. Every time we pass a star its gravity pulls us a little out of line. But the effects are slight, do not last long. and tend to cancel each other out. This is too big and has lasted altogether too long. If it keeps on, we could miss the solar system altogether; and I can't find anything to account for it"

He watched the bar anxiously, expecting to see it swing back into the vertical, but the angle grew steadily larger. He again reduced the current and searched the heavens for the troublesome body.

"Do you see it yet?" Dorothy asked, apprehensively.

"No . . . but this optical system could be improved. I could do better with night-glasses, I think."

He brought out a pair of grotesque-looking binoculars and stared through them out of an upper window for perhaps five minutes.

"Good God!" he exclaimed. "It's a dead star and we're almost onto it!"

Springing to the board, he whirled the bar into and through the vertical, then measured the apparent diameter of the strange object. Then, after cautioning the others, he put on more power than he had been using. After exactly fifteen minutes he slackened off and made another reading. Seeing his expression, Dorothy was about to speak, but he forestalled her.

"We lost more ground. It must be a lot bigger than anything known to our astronomers. And I'm not trying to pull away from it; just to make an orbit around it. We'll have to put on full power—take seats!"

He left full power on until the bar was nearly gone and made another series of observations. "Not enough," he said, quietly.

Perkins screamed and flung himself upon the floor; Margaret clutched at her heart with both hands; Dorothy, though her eyes looked like black holes in her white face, looked at him steadily and asked, "This is the end, then?"

"Not yet." His voice was calm and level. "It'll take two days, more or less, to fall that far, and we have a little copper left for one last shot. I'm going to figure the angle to make that last shot as effective as possible."

"Won't the repulsive outer coating do any good?"

"No; it'll be gone long before we hit. I'd strip it and feed it to the engine if I could think of a way of getting it off."

He lit a cigarette and sat at ease at the computer. He sat there, smoking and computing, for over an hour. He then changed, very slightly, the angle of the engine.

"Now we look for copper," he said. "There isn't any in the ship itself—everything electrical is silver, down to our flashlights and the bases of the lamps. But examine the furnishings and all your personal stuff—anything with copper or brass in it. That includes metallic money—pennies, pickles, and silver."

They found a few items, but very few. DuQuesne added his watch, his heavy signet ring, his keys, his tie-clasp, and the cartridges from his pistol. He made sure that Perkins did not hold anything out. The girls gave up not only their money and cartridges but their jewelry, including Dorothy's engagement ring.

"I'd like to keep it, but . . ." She said, as she added it to the collection.

"Everything goes that has any copper in it; and I'm glad Seaton's too much of a scientist to buy platinum jewelry. But, if we get away, I doubt very much if you'll be able to see any difference in your ring. Very little copper in it—but we need every milligram we can get."

He threw all the metal into the power chamber and advanced the lever. It was soon spent; and after the final observation, while the others waited in suspense, he made his curt announcement.

"Not quite enough."

Perkins, his mind already weakened, went completely insane. With a wild howl he threw himself at the unmoved scientist, who struck him on the head with the butt of his pistol as he leaped. The force of the blow crushed Perkin's head and drove his body to the other side of the ship. Margaret looked as though she were about to faint. Dorothy and DuQuesne looked at each other. To the girl's amazement the man was as calm as though he were in his own room at home on earth. She made an effort to hold her voice steady. "What next, doctor?"

"I don't exactly know. I still haven't been able to work out a method of recovering that plating . . . It's so thin that there isn't much copper, even on a sphere as big as this one."

"Even if you could get it, and it were enough, we'd starve anyway, wouldn't we?" Margaret, holding herself together desperately, tried to speak lightly.

"Not necessarily. That would give me time to figure out something else to do."

"You wouldn't have to figure anything else," Dorothy declared. "Maybe you won't, anyway. You said we have two days?"

"My observations were crude, but it's a little over two days—about forty-nine and a half hours now. Why?"

"Because Dick and Martin Crane will find us before very long. Quite possibly within two days"

"Not in this life. If they tried to follow us they're both dead now."

"That's where even you are wrong!" she flashed. "They knew all the time exactly what you were doing to our old Skylark, so they built another one, that you never knew anything about. And they know a lot about this new metal that you never heard of, too, because it wasn't in those plans you stole!"

DuQuesne went directly to the heart of the matter, paying no attention to her barbs. "Can they follow us in space without seeing us?" he demanded.

"Yes. At least, I think they can."

"How do they do it?"

"I don't know. I wouldn't tell you, if I did!"

"You think not? I won't argue the point at the moment. If they can find us—which I doubt—I hope they detect this dead star in time to keep away from it—and us."

"But why?" Dorothy gasped. "You've been trying to kill both of them—wouldn't you be glad to take them with us?"

"Please try to be logical. Far from it. There's no connection. I tried to kill them, yes, because they stood in the way of my development of this new metal. If, however, I am not going to be the one to do it—I certainly hope Seaton goes ahead with it. It's the greatest discovery ever made, bar none; and if both Seaton and I, the only two men able to develop it properly, get killed it will be lost, perhaps for hundreds of years."

"If he must go, too, I hope he doesn't find us . . . but I don't believe it. I simply know he could get us away from here."

She continued more slowly, almost speaking to herself, her heart sinking with her voice, "He's following us and he won't stop even if he knows he can't get away."

"There's no denying the fact that our situation is critical; but as long as I'm alive I can think. I'm going to dope out some way of getting that copper."

"I hope you do." Dorothy kept her voice from breaking only by a tremendous effort. "I see Peggy's fainted. I wish I could. I'm worn out."

She drew herself down upon one of the seats and stared at the ceiling, fighting an almost overpowering impulse to scream.

Thus time wore on—Perkins dead; Margaret unconscious; Dorothy lying in her seat, her thoughts a formless prayer, buoyed only by her faith in God and in her lover; DuQuesne self-possessed, smoking innumerable cigarettes, his keen mind at grips with its most desperate problem, grimly fighting until the very last instant of life—while the powerless spaceship fell with an appalling velocity, and faster and yet faster, toward that cold and desolate monster of the heavens.