Rocket Ship Galileo (20 page)

“What is your lunar latitude and longitude?”

The voice seemed to hesitate, then went on, “We have you located now. We can exchange details later. Good-by.”

Thereafter Art shouted “hello” until he was hoarse, but there was no answer. “Better stay on the air, Art,” Cargraves decided. “Ross and I will go back to the ship. That’s what they will see. I don’t know, though. They might not show up for a week.” He mused. “This presents a lot of new problems.”

“
Somebody
ought to go to the ship,” Morrie pointed out, “without waiting. They may be just coming in for a landing. They may show up any time.”

“I don’t think it was ship transmission,” said Art, then turned back to his microphone.

Nevertheless it was decided that Cargraves and Ross would go back to the ship. They donned their suits and crawled through the air lock, and had no more than started down the steep and rocky slope when Ross saw the rocket.

He did not hear it, naturally, but he had glanced back to see if Cargraves was behind him. “Look!” he called into his helmet mike, and pointed.

The ship approached them from the west, flying low and rather slowly. The pilot was riding her on her jet, for the blast shot more downward than to the stern. “We had better hurry!,” Ross shouted, and went bounding ahead.

But the rocket did not come in for a landing. It nosed down, forward jets driving hard against the fall, directly toward the
Galileo
. At an altitude of not more than five hundred feet the pilot kicked her around, belly first, and drove away on his tail jet.

Where the
Galileo
lay, there was a flash, an utterly silent explosion, and a cloud of dust which cleared rapidly away in the vacuum. The sound reached them through their feet, after a long time—it seemed to them.

The
Galileo
lay on her side, a great gaping hole in her plates. The wound stretched from shattered view port to midships.

Cargraves stood perfectly still, staring at the unbelievable. Ross found his voice first. “They gave us no chance,” he said, shaking both fists at the sky. “No chance at all!”

WHAT POSSIBLE REASON?

• 15 •

HE TURNED AND STUMBLED
back up the slope to where Cargraves still stood forlorn and motionless. “Did you see that, Doc?” he demanded. “Did you see that? The dirty rats bombed us—they bombed us. Why? Why, Doc? Why would they do such a thing?”

Tears were streaming down his face. Cargraves patted him clumsily. “I don’t know,” he said slowly. “I don’t know,” he repeated, still trying to readjust himself to the shock.

“Oh, I want to kill somebody!”

“So do I.” Cargraves turned away suddenly. “Maybe we will. Come on—we’ve got to tell the others.” He started up the slope.

But Art and Morrie were already crawling out of the lock when they reached it. “What happened?” Morrie demanded. “We felt a quake.”

Cargraves did not answer directly. “Art, did you turn off your transmitter?”

“Yes, but what happened?”

“Don’t turn it on again. It will lead them to us here.” He waved a hand out at the floor of the crater. “Look!”

It took a minute or two for what they saw to sink in. Then Art turned helplessly to Cargraves. “But, Uncle,” he pleaded, “what happened? Why did the ship blow up?”

“They blitzed us,” Cargraves said savagely. “They bombed us out. If we had been aboard they would have killed us. That’s what they meant to do.”

“But why?”

“No possible reason. They didn’t want us here.” He refrained from saying what he felt to be true: that their unknown enemy had failed only temporarily in his intent to kill. A quick death by high explosive would probably be a blessing compared with what he felt was in store for them marooned…on a dead and airless planet.

How long would they last? A month? Two months? Better by far if the bomb had hit them.

Morrie turned suddenly back toward the lock. “What are you doing, Morrie?”

“Going to get the guns!”

“Guns are no good to us.”

But Morrie had not heard him. His antenna was already shielded by the metal drum.

Ross said, “I’m not sure that guns are no good, Doc.”

“Huh? How do you figure?”

“Well, what are they going to do next? Won’t they want to see what they’ve done? They didn’t even see the bomb hit; they were jetting away.”

“Yes?”

“
If they land we’ll hijack their ship!
”

Art came up closer. “Huh? Hey, Ross, that’s tellin’ ’em! We’ll get them! We’ll show them! Murderers!” His words tumbled over one another, squeaking and squawking in their radios.

“We’ll try!” Cargraves decided suddenly. “We’ll try. If they land we won’t go down without a fight. We can’t be any worse off than we are.” He was suddenly unworried; the prospect of a gun fight, something new to his experience, did not upset him further. It cheered him. “Where do you think we ought to hide, Ross? In the
Galileo
?”

“If we have to—
There they come!
” The rocket had suddenly appeared over the far rim.

“Where’s Morrie?”

“Here.” He came up from behind them, burdened with the two rifles and the revolver. “Here, Ross, you take…
hey!
” He had caught sight of the strangers’ rocket. “We’ve got to hurry,” he said.

But the rocket did not land. It came down low, dipping below the level of the crater’s rim, then scooted on its tail across near the wreckage of the
Galileo
, up, out, and away.

“And we didn’t even get a crack at them,” Morrie said bitterly.

“Not yet,” Ross answered, “but I think they’ll be back. This was a second bombing run, sure as anything, in case they missed the first time. They’ll still come back to see what they’ve done. How about it, Doc?”

“I think they will,” Cargraves decided. “They will want to look over our ship and to kill us off if they missed any of us. But we don’t go to the
Galileo
.”

“Why not?”

“We haven’t time. They will probably turn as fast as they can check themselves, come back and land. We might be caught out in the open.”

“That’s a chance we’ll have to take.”

It was decided for them. The rocket appeared again from the direction it had gone. This time it was plainly a landing trajectory. “Come on!” shouted Cargraves, and went careening madly down the slope.

The rocket landed about halfway between the
Galileo
and the shadows, now close to the foot of the hills, for the sun had climbed four ‘days’ higher in the sky. The ship was noticeably smaller than the
Galileo
even at that distance.

Cargraves did not notice such details. His immediate intent was to reach the door of the craft before it opened, to be ready to grapple with them as they came out.

But his good sense came to his aid before he was out in the sunlight. He realized he had no gun. Morrie had kept one, Ross had the other, and Art was waving the revolver around. He paused just short of the dazzling, sunlighted area. “Hold it,” he ordered. “I don’t think they have seen us. I don’t think they will—yet.”

“What are your plans?” Morrie demanded.

“Wait for them to get out, then rush the ship—after they get well away from it. Wait for my signal.”

“Can’t they hear us?”

“Maybe. If they are on this frequency, we’re goners. Switch off your talkies, everybody.” He did so himself; the sudden silence was chilling.

The rocket was almost tail towards them. He now saw three suit-clad figures pile out from a door that swung out from the side. The first looked around briefly, but he appeared not to see them. Since it was almost certain that he was wearing sun goggles, it was doubtful if he could see much inside the shadows.

He motioned to the other two and moved toward the
Galileo
, using a long, loping gallop that the
Galileo
’s crew had learned was the proper way to walk on the moon. That alone was enough to tell Cargraves that these men, their enemies, were not grounding on the moon for the first time.

Cargraves let them get all the way to the
Galileo
, and, in fact, to disappear behind it, before he got up from where he had been crouching. “Come on!” he yelled into a dead microphone, and slammed ahead in great leaps that took him fifty feet at a stride.

The outer door of the lock stood open. He swarmed into it and closed it after him. It clamped by means of a wheel mounted in its center; the operation was obvious. That done he looked around. The tiny lock was dimly illuminated by a pane of glass set in the inner door. In this feeble light he looked and felt for what he needed next—the spill valve for air.

He found it and heard the air hissing into the compartment. He leaned his weight against the inner door and waited.

Suddenly it gave way; he was in the rocket and blinking his eyes.

There was a man still seated in the pilot’s chair. He turned his head, and appeared to say something. Cargraves could not hear it through his helmet and was not interested. Taking all advantage of the low gravity he dived at the man and grappled him about the head and shoulders.

The man was too surprised to put up much of a fight—not that it would have mattered; Cargraves felt ready to fight anything up to and including tigers.

He found himself banging the man’s head against the soft padding of the acceleration chair. That, he realized, was no good. He drew back a gauntleted fist and buried it in the pit of the man’s stomach.

The man grunted and seemed to lose interest. Cargraves threw a short jab straight to the unguarded chin. No further treatment was needed. Cargraves pushed him down to the floor, noticing without interest that the belt of his victim carried a holster with what appeared to be a heavy-caliber Mauser, and then stood on him. He looked out the conning port.

There was a figure collapsed on the ground near the broken bow of the
Galileo
, whether friend or foe it was impossible to say. But another was standing over him and concerning him there was no doubt. It was not alone the unfamiliar cut of his space suit, it was the pistol in his hand. He was firing in the direction of the rocket in which Cargraves stood.

He saw the blaze of a shot, but no answering report. Another shot followed it—and this one almost deafened him; it struck the ship containing him, making it ring like a giant bell.

He was in a dilemma. He wanted very urgently to join the fight; the weapon on the person of his disabled opponent offered a way. Yet he could not leave his prisoner inside the ship while he went out, nor did he, even in the heat of fighting, have any stomach for killing an unconscious man.

He had already decided, in the space of a breath, to slug his man heavily and get outside, when the fast drama beyond the port left him no time. The space-suited stranger at the bow of the
Galileo
was suddenly without a helmet. Around his neck was only a jagged collar.

He dropped his pistol and clutched at his face. He stood there for a moment, as if puzzled by his predicament, took two hesitant steps forward, and sank gently to the ground.

He thrashed around a bit but did not get up. He was still convulsing when a third man appeared around the end of the ship. He did not last long. He appeared confused, unable to comprehend the turn of events, which was quite likely, in view of the ghostly stillness of the gun fight. It was entirely possible that he never knew what hit him, nor why. He was still reaching for his iron when he was struck twice, first in the chest and the second shot lower down.

He bowed forward, until his helmet touched the ground, then collapsed.

Cargraves heard a noise behind him. Snatching the gun he had taken to the ready, and turning, he watched the door of the air lock open.

It was Art, wild-eyed and red. “Any more in here?” the boy called out to him, while swinging his revolver in a wide arc. His voice reached Cargraves faintly, muffled by their two helmets.

“No. Turn on your radio,” he shouted back, then realized his own was still off. Switching it on, he repeated his statement.

“Mine
is
on,” Art replied. “I turned it on while the lock filled. How are they doing outside?”

“All right, it looks like. Here, you guard this guy.” He pointed down at his feet. “I’m going outside.”

But it was unnecessary. The lock opened again and both Ross and Morrie bulged out of it. Cargraves wondered absently how the two had managed to squeeze into that coffin-like space.

“Need any help?” demanded Morrie.

“No. It doesn’t look like you guys did, either.”

“We ambushed ’em,” Ross said jubilantly. “Hid in the shadow of the ship and picked ’em off as they showed up. All but the second one. He darn near got us before we got him. Do you know,” he went on conversationally, as if he had spent a lifetime shooting it out, “it’s almost impossible to sight a gun when you’re wearing one of these fish bowls over your head?”

“Hmm… You made out all right.”

“Pure luck. Morrie was shooting from the hip.”

“I was not,” Morrie denied. “I aimed and squeezed off every shot.”

Cargraves cautioned them to keep an eye on the prisoner, as he wanted to take a look around outside. “Why,” demanded Art, “bother to guard him? Shoot him and chuck him out, I say.”