Chapter 12. _At Rope's End_

With Boulton lying across the back seat, the four men acted

simultaneously. Thinking only of self-defense, they drew their pistols

and fired point-blank into the monsters attacking them. As the men

emptied their guns, the Martians in front stumbled, fell, rolled over,

or began to run aimlessly as the heavy slugs tore through them.

They were not easy to kill--which was to be expected of creatures

without much of a central consciousness--but on the other hand, once

struck or injured, they seemed to lose contact with their fellows and to

act wholly without direction. They plunged wildly into each other, and

before the men in the jeep had finished their barrage, the clearing was

a milling, confused mob. Body clashed against body, legs scrambled

under legs, and the angry buzz was now lost amid the clattering and

banging of shell against shell.

Haines slid into the front seat behind the steering wheel, stepped on

the gas, and drove toward a momentary gap in the mob. The jeep tore

through, raced around the corner, and headed down an empty street.

Crouching in the back, Burl, Russ, and Ferrati hastily reloaded.

"We can't let ourselves get stopped, or even hole up. That A-bomb's

going to go off in about twenty minutes, and we'd better be back at the

ship before then," cried Russ.

As they bumped along, they noticed that the Martians who came within

fifty feet of their jeep suddenly stopped whatever they were doing and

turned toward them, hostile. They were like a stick drawn along among

bees--as they traveled they left fury in their wake.

"It must be Boulton," Russ yelled to Burl above the roar of their

passage. "He must be charged with the irritating vibration."

Burl nodded as he looked back. The Martians had started after them on

foot, and could lope fast when they wanted to. "They've got some sort of

organized action going," he called to Haines. "I think it's steam

carts!"

"The mass mind caught on fast," said Russ. "And look! They're warned in

advance now!"

They were nearing the edge of the city, and looming before them,

blocking their right-of-way, were two steam carts--big ones carrying a

large number of Martians. They were holding metallic rods and

instruments in their hand-members.

Ferrati opened a chest built against the back of the seat and took out a

light machine gun. Climbing into the front, next to Haines, he kneeled

down behind the windshield, raised the gun, and blazed away.

The steam carts suddenly swerved, one after the other, ran wildly into

the side of a building, and turned over. The jeep roared past them,

raced across the last hundred feet of city paving and out onto the

desert. Haines had to slow down to navigate safely the uneven layers of

barren soil, rock and sand. Burl holstered his gun and reached across

for one of the abandoned walkie-talkies.

In the excitement of their exit, none had noticed the change in the

Martian scenery. But now it occurred to Burl that the day was distinctly

lighter, and he fancied the Sun--small though it was--felt warmer. The

Sun-tap demolished, this was to be expected, and by the same token,

radio communication should now be practical.

Sure enough, he got Lockhart's voice at once. Hastily, he warned the

commander of what had happened.

As they drew nearer the _Magellan_, the great spaceship lowered toward

the ground and let down its grapples and ladders. Burl saw that there

was no time to be lost. A stream of Martians and steam carts was pouring

out of the city on their trail.

They reached the spaceship and slammed to a halt. The men leaped out.

Burl and Russ lifted Boulton's unconscious body from the jeep and,

between them, managed to hoist him awkwardly up the dangling rope

ladder.

The others hooked grapples onto the jeep, and when it was secure, leaped

for safety themselves.

As the first of the Martian steam carts was almost on them, the

_Magellan_ lifted into the air. It rose high above the surface and swung

off into the desert. The Martians drew to a halt. Burl, looking down

from the doorway of the cargo hatch, could see them milling aimlessly

around. None, he noticed, ever glanced up. Air flight, apparently, was

an inconceivable phenomenon to them.

After the jeep had been pulled into the cargo hold and secured, the

outer ports were sealed. When everyone was safely in the inner sphere,

the _Magellan_ drew away from Mars and started on the next lap of its

long mission.

Boulton was carefully examined. Nothing could be made of his condition.

He seemed to bear no physical hurt, although he slept on. He was placed

in his bunk, and there he rested, breathing slowly, temperature normal,

dormant.

The life of the spaceship resumed, for the time being, without him. The

next port of call was Jupiter, and that presented problems of its own.

Between Mars and Jupiter was the great asteroid belt, a region of many

thousands of tiny planetoids, ranging in size from worldlets of two or

three hundred miles in diameter down to rocks the size of footballs.

"The debris of an exploded planet," was the comment Russ made to Burl.

"That's the most likely explanation. Anyway," he added, "there seems to

be no Sun-tap station on any of them. The next one is beyond the

asteroids, in Jupiter's orbit."

During the next few days, Lockhart and the two astrogators were busy

working out a rather complex maneuver, which consisted of having the

ship jump over the asteroid belt rather than travel directly through it.

While the orbits of thousands of the larger asteroids had been charted,

there were thousands more that consisted of just chunks of rock too

small to notice. They could not chance a collision with one of

these--yet to work out the whereabouts of all of them was impossibly

time-consuming.

What the _Magellan_ did was to depart from the plane of the ecliptic,

that level around the Sun to which all the planets generally adhere, and

to draw outward so as to avoid the path of the asteroids, then to come

back in onto the orbit and plane of Jupiter. This involved some tricky

work with the various gravitational lines, using Mars and the Sun for

repulsion and certain stars for attraction.

There were quite a number of gravity shifts, and during this period no

one could be quite sure what his weight would be from one moment to

another. There were several periods of zero gravity, when the crew

members would float and face the complex annoyances of a steady feeling

of free fall. Burl, after a couple of such sessions, got the hang of it

rather comfortably.

Lockhart looked at him oddly and smiled. "Glad to know it. I may have a

task for you soon, then."

Others found the weightless conditions not so bearable. One of the

engineering crew, Detmar, had to be hospitalized. What he had resembled

severe seasickness. Oberfield also experienced moments of acute upset.

Boulton's condition did not change. Once or twice he stirred slightly in

his sleep, and seemed to murmur something, but then he would lapse back

into his coma. Fortunately he did not resist food, and did swallow

liquids forced into his mouth.

Except for one or two rare intervals, communication with Earth had

ceased. Besides, the mother world was now moving away from them and

would pass behind the Sun. Efforts to obtain medical advice for Boulton

proved futile.

After they had passed the orbital line of the asteroids and had

rearranged their drive so that they were falling freely toward Jupiter,

Lockhart called the exploring crew together. "I've got a job for you

men," he announced.

Haines, Ferrati, and Burl gathered about the control board to listen.

They were restless for something to do--plans for the Jupiter landing

could not be made until they knew what the situation was going to be,

for it would be one thing if the station were located on that giant

planet itself, another if on one of its satellites.

The colonel wasted no time. "While you were on Mars and we were waiting

for you, I took the opportunity to examine the outer shell of this

ship. You know, of course, that we are constantly being bombarded by

cosmic dust, the micrometeorites that always prove troublesome to the

Earth satellites and space platforms. The ship has been fortunate in

that it has not been struck by any meteoric matter of size, but we have

been peppered heavily by dust particles. As a result, the outer shell of

our ship is pitted in some spots, and in several places worn perhaps

dangerously thin. I don't mean to imply that there are going to be any

holes very soon, but I think that there are some parts which we should

reinforce or patch."

When he stopped for breath, Burl broke in. "You mean you want us to work

on the outer shell?"

Lockhart nodded. "Someone has to do it, and during flights you men are

the deck crew. So it's going to be your baby. I am going to keep the

ship on free fall for the next several periods and this should make it

simpler for you to go outside, in space suits, and do the job."

The next hour saw all three hard at work. Dressed in heavy, sealed,

warmed outer-space outfits, wearing metal bowl-like helmets with sealed

glass fronts, and drawing oxygen from tanks strapped on their backs, the

three men left the inner sphere and emerged on the outer surface of the

_Magellan_.

Burl found it a weird and awesome experience. There was no gravitational

drag, so that even as he stepped through the exit port, the scene

shifted until he seemed to be standing on metal ground, looking upward

at thousands and tens of thousands of silent white stars. Nothing

moved--except, of course, the space-suited bodies of the two men already

half out of sight and looking not quite human. There was no sound save

that of his own breath and the faint hum of the radio phone tucked in

his helmet.

He was firmly attached to the ship by a long nylon rope which he hooked

to rings set on the outer shell. He made his way toward the wide rounded

nose of the ship. In one hand he carried a bucket of a liquid plastic

resembling tar in thickness and consistency. With a brush in the other

hand he would stop--held to the surface by magnetic soles--and smear the

plastic protective surfacing over the little pits and pockmarks that now

marred the surface of the once spotless ship. The work was not hard, and

shortly became a routine which he found did not require much

concentration.

It was dip and smear, in a steady rhythmic motion. Haines was working

out of sight on a more complex repair job which involved welding a sheet

of metal over a badly beaten and sprung section. Ferrati was on the

opposite side of the ship.

As he worked, Burl watched the stars, and every now and then was

rewarded by the sight of a moving spark of light--an asteroid or meteor.

He could see mighty Jupiter ahead--a wide disc of white and yellow,

faintly belted with gray and pale blue bands. The famous red spot was

not visible. Four of the planet's twelve attendant satellites strung out

alongside it, and he recognized them as the big ones discovered by

Galileo with his first telescope: Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto.

The other eight were tiny, and probably would not be visible until they

were right on top of Jupiter, though he supposed that Russell Clyde

could probably pick them out now by telescopic sightings.

Burl could hear in his radio the sound of someone whistling softly, and

supposed it was Ferrati. There was a short cut-in as Lockhart called a

time-shift on the general intercom. A brief exchange followed between

Caton in the Zeta-ring chamber of the ship's nose and the colonel, with

the information that Caton was coming down into the living section.

Then, after a brief period of silence, Burl heard a series of odd noises

on his phones, something went bump, and the sound faded. He was now on

the nose of the ship itself, the wide mushrooming surface beneath his

feet, and Jupiter high over his head. Bending over, about to smear a dab

of plastic on a tiny pitted mark, he suddenly felt himself gripped and

pulled.

Caught by surprise, he jerked upward, the brush flying from his hand and

sailing into the sky. His shoes clung momentarily to the surface, but

their magnetic grip was too weak, and they loosened. He kicked out

wildly, falling away into the emptiness of outer space--a space which

had a moment ago been a sky and had suddenly turned into a bottomless

pit.

He fell backward, seized momentarily by terror. He was brought up short

by his rope. It held, and he grabbed it and hung on.

Something had changed. Somebody had altered the ship's drive. The ship

was no longer on free fall; it was on gravity drive--and going backward!

Not driving toward Jupiter under added acceleration, but fighting to

reduce its fall, to stop its drive, to fly away from Jupiter!

In his earphones there was a jumble of sounds. He heard Ferrati yelling

and realized that he, too, must be falling away from the ship, saved

only by a rope. And the voice of Haines--plastered flat against the

surface, the ship driving upward against him.

Vague noises emanated from the control room. Evidently no one was at the

commander's mike. He called into it, adding his voice to those of his

comrades.

After several agonizing minutes, a voice came over the radio. It was

Russell Clyde's and it was excited and angry. "Hold on out there as long

as you can! Lockhart's been knocked unconscious! We're trying to get

into the engine room and take back control!"

Perplexed, Burl shouted, "Who's in the engine room? Take control from

whom?"

There was another pause as he heard sounds of pounding, as if someone

were trying to hammer open a metal panel. Then Russ's voice came on

again. "Its Boulton! He came to suddenly, sneaked up here, knocked out

the commander, and climbed up into the Zeta-ring chamber! Caton was down

below--and Boulton's locked the trap door and is running the drive. He's

reversed our route, away from Jupiter, and into outer space! Boulton's

apparently gone crazy! And we can't get in to stop him!"

Burl, suspended over an abyss, clung to the end of the taut, thin nylon

line, as the ship pulled him helplessly along into the uncharted depths

of infinity, with a mad-man at the controls.