Islands in the Sky Read online

  But no one knew much about the Cygnus, except that she was down in Lloyd’s Register as a medium freighter and was about due to be withdrawn from service, since she had been in operation for almost five years without a major overhaul. It attracted little surprise when she came up to the station and anchored (yes, that’s the expression still used) about ten miles away. This distance was greater than usual, but that might only mean that she had an ultracautious pilot. And there she stayed. All attempts to discover what she was doing failed completely. She had a crew of two. We knew that because they jetted over in their suits and reported to Control. They gave no clearance date and refused to state their business, which was unheard of but not illegal.

  Naturally this started many theories circulating. One was that the ship had been chartered secretly by Prince Edward, who as everybody knew had been trying to get out into space for years. It seems the British Parliament won’t let him go, the heir to the throne being considered too valuable to risk on such dangerous amusements as spaceflight. However, the Prince is such a determined young man that no one will be surprised if he turns up on Mars one day, having disguised himself and signed on with the crew. If he ever attempts such a journey, he’ll find plenty of people ready to help him.

  But Peter had a much more sinister theory. The arrival of a mysterious and untalkative spaceship fitted in perfectly with his ideas on interplanetary crime. If you wanted to rob a space station, he argued, how else would you set about it?

  We laughed at him, pointing out that the Cygnus had done her best to arouse suspicion rather than allay it. Besides, she was a small ship and couldn’t carry a very large crew. The two men who’d come across to the station were probably all she had aboard.

  By this time, however, Peter was so wrapped up in his theories that he wouldn’t listen to reason, and because it amused us we let him carry on and even encouraged him. But we didn’t take him seriously.

  The two men from the Cygnus would come aboard the station at least once a day to collect any mail from earth and to read the papers and magazines in the rest room. That was natural enough, if they had nothing else to do, but Peter thought it highly suspicious. It proved, according to him, that they were reconnoitering the station and getting to know their way around. “To lead the way, I suppose,” said someone sarcastically, “for a boarding party with cutlasses.”

  Then, unexpectedly, Peter turned up fresh evidence that made us take him a little more seriously. He discovered from the Signals Section that our mysterious guests were continually receiving messages from earth, using their own radio on a wave band not allocated for official or commercial services. There was nothing illegal about that, since they were operating in one of the “free ether” bands, but once again it was unusual. And they were using code. That was most unusual.

  Peter was very excited about all this. “It proves that there’s something funny going on,” he said belligerently. “No one engaged on honest business would behave like this. I won’t say that they’re going in for something as old-fashioned as piracy. But what about drug smuggling?”

  “I should hardly think that the number of drug addicts in the Martian and Venusian colonies would make this very profitable,” put in Tim Benton mildly.

  “I wasn’t thinking of smuggling in that direction,” retorted Peter scornfully. “Suppose someone’s discovered a drug on one of the planets and is smuggling it back to earth?”

  “You got that idea from the last Dan Drummond adventure but two,” said somebody. “You know, the one they had on last year—all about the Venus lowlands.”

  “There’s only one way of finding out,” continued Peter stubbornly. “I’m going over to have a look. Who’ll come with me?”

  There were no volunteers. I’d have offered to go, but I knew he wouldn’t accept me.

  “What, all afraid?” Peter taunted.

  “Just not interested,” replied Norman. “I’ve got better ways of wasting my time.”

  Then, to our surprise, Karl Hasse came forward.

  “‘I’ll go,” he said. “I’m getting fed up with the whole affair, and it’s the only way we can stop Peter from harping on it.”

  It was against safety regulations for Peter to make a trip of this distance by himself, so unless Karl had volunteered he would have had to drop the idea.

  “When are you going?” asked Tim.

  “They come over for their mail every afternoon, and when they’re both aboard the station we’ll wait for the next eclipse period and slip out.”

  That would be the fifty minutes when the station was passing through the earth’s shadow. It was very difficult to see small objects at any distance then, so there was little chance of detection. They would also have some difficulty in finding the Cygnus, since she would reflect very little starlight and would probably be invisible from more than a half mile away. Tim Benton pointed this out.

  “I’ll borrow a ‘beeper’ from Stores,” replied Peter. “Joe Evans will let me sign for one.”

  A beeper is a tiny radar set, not much bigger than a hand torch, which is used to locate objects that have drifted away from the station. It’s got a range of a few miles on anything as large as a space suit and could pick up a ship a lot farther away. You wave it around in space, and when its beam hits anything you hear a series of “beeps.” The closer you get to the reflecting object, the faster the beeps come, and with a little practice you can judge distances pretty accurately.

  Tim Benton finally gave his grudging consent for this adventure, on condition that Peter keep in radio touch all the time and tell him exactly what was happening. So I heard the whole thing over the loud-speaker in one of the workshops. It was easy to imagine that I was out there with Peter and Karl in that star-studded darkness with the great shadowy earth below me, and the station slowly receding behind.

  They had taken a careful sight of the Cygnus while she was still visible by reflected sunlight and had waited for five minutes after we’d gone into eclipse before launching themselves in the right direction. Their course was so accurate that they had no need to use the beeper: the Cygnus came looming up at them at just about the calculated moment, and they slowed to a halt.

  “All clear,” reported Peter, and I could sense the excitement in his voice. “There’s no sign of life.”

  “Can you see through the ports?” asked Tim. There was silence for a while, apart from heavy breathing and an occasional metallic click from the space suit’s controls. Then we heard a “bump” and an exclamation from Peter.

  “That was pretty careless,” came Karl’s voice. “If there was anyone else inside, they’ll think they’ve run into an asteroid.”

  “I couldn’t help it,” protested Peter. “My foot slipped on the jet control.” Then we heard some scrabbling noises as he made his way over the hull.

  “I can’t see into the cabin,” he reported. “It’s too dark. But there’s certainly no one around. I’ll go aboard. Is everything O.K.?”

  “Yes. Our two suspects are playing chess in the recreation room. Norman’s looked at the board and says they’ll be a long time yet.” Tim chuckled. I could see he was enjoying himself and taking the whole affair as a great joke. I was beginning to find it quite exciting.

  “Beware of booby traps,” Tim continued. “I’m sure no experienced pirates would walk out of their ship and leave it unguarded. Maybe there’s a robot waiting in the air lock with a ray gun!”

  Even Peter thought this unlikely and said so in no uncertain tones. We heard more subdued bumpings as he moved around the hull to the air lock, and then there was a long pause while he examined the controls. They’re standard on every ship, and there’s no way of locking them from outside, so he did not expect much difficulty here.

  “It’s opening,” he announced tersely. “I’m going aboard.”

  There was another anxious interval. When Peter spoke again, his voice was much fainter, owing to the shielding effect of the ship’s hull, but we could still hear him
when we turned the volume up.

  “The control room looks perfectly normal,” he reported, with more than a trace of disappointment in his voice. “We’re going to have a look at the cargo.”

  “It’s a little late to mention this,” said Tim, “but do you realize that you’re committing piracy or something very much like it? I suppose the lawyers would call it ‘unauthorized entry of a spaceship without the knowledge and consent of the owners.’ Anyone know what the penalty is?”

  Nobody did, though there were several alarming suggestions. Then Peter called to us again.

  “This is a nuisance. The hatch to the stores is locked. I’m afraid we’ll have to give up; they’ll have taken the keys with them.”

  “Not necessarily,” we heard Karl reply. “You know how often people leave a spare set in case they lose the one they’re carrying. They always hide it in what they imagine is a safe place, but you can usually deduce where it is.”

  “Then go ahead, Sherlock. Is it still all clear at your end?”

  “Yes. The game’s nowhere near finished. They seem to have settled down for the afternoon.”

  To everyone’s surprise, Karl found the keys in less than ten minutes. They had been tucked into a little recess under the instrument panel.

  “Here we go!” shouted Peter gleefully.

  “For goodness’ sake, don’t interfere with anything,” cautioned Tim, now wishing he’d never allowed the exploit. “Just have a look around and come straight home.”

  There was no reply; Peter was too busy with the door. We heard the muffled “clank” as he finally got it open and there were scrapings as he slid through the entrance. He was still wearing his space suit, so that he could keep in touch with us over the radio. A moment later we heard him shriek: “Karl! Look at this!”

  “What’s the fuss?” Karl replied, still as calm as ever. “You nearly blew in my eardrums.”

  We didn’t help matters by shouting our own queries, and it was some time before Tim restored order.

  “Stop yelling, everybody! Now, Peter, tell us exactly what you’ve found.”

  I could hear Peter give a sort of gulp as he collected his breath.

  “This ship is full of guns!” he gasped. “Honest—I’m not fooling! I can see about twenty of them, clipped to the walls. And they’re not like any guns I’ve ever seen before. They’ve got funny nozzles, and there are red and green cylinders fixed beneath them. I can’t imagine what they’re supposed—”

  “Karl,” Tim demanded, “is Peter pulling our legs?”

  “No,” came the reply. “It’s perfectly true. I don’t like to say this, but if there are such things as ray guns, we’re looking at them now.”

  “What shall we do?” wailed Peter. He didn’t seem happy at finding this support for his theories.

  “Don’t touch anything!” ordered Tim. “Give us a detailed description of everything you can see and then come straight back.”

  But before Peter could obey, we all had a second and much worse shock. For suddenly we heard Karl gasp, What’s that?”

  There was silence for a moment; then a voice I could hardly recognize as Peter’s whispered, “There’s a ship outside. It’s connecting up. What shall we do?”

  “Make a run for it,” whispered Tim urgently—as if whispering made any difference. “Shoot out of the lock as quickly as you can and come back to the station by different routes. It’s dark for another ten minutes; they probably won’t see you.”

  “Too late,” said Karl, still hanging on to the last shreds of his composure. “They’re already coming aboard. There goes the outer door now.”

  5 STAR TURN

  For a moment no one could think of anything to say. Then Tim, still whispering, breathed into the microphone, “Keep calm! If you tell them that you’re in radio contact with us, they won’t dare touch you.” This, I couldn’t help thinking, was being rather optimistic. Still, it might be good for our companions’ morale, which was probably at a pretty low ebb.

  “I’m going to grab one of those guns,” Peter called. “I don’t know how they work, but it may scare them. Karl, you take one as well.”

  “For heaven’s sake, be careful!” warned Tim, now looking very worried. He turned to Ronnie.

  “Ron, call the commander and tell him what’s happening—quickly! And get a telescope on the Cygnus to see what ship’s over there.”

  We should have thought of this before, of course, but it had been forgotten in the general excitement.

  “They’re in the control room now,” reported Peter. “I can see them. They’re not wearing space suits, and they aren’t carrying guns. That gives us quite an advantage.”

  I suspected that Peter was beginning to feel a little happier, wondering if he might yet be a hero.

  “I’m going out to meet them,” he announced suddenly. “It’s better than waiting in here, where they’re bound to find us. Come on, Karl.”

  We waited breathlessly. I don’t know what we expected—anything, I imagine, from a salvo of shots to the hissing or crackling of whatever mysterious weapons our friends were carrying. The one thing we didn’t anticipate was what actually happened.

  We heard Peter say (and I give him full credit for sounding quite calm): “What are you doing here, and who are you?”

  There was silence for what seemed an age. I could picture the scene as clearly as if I’d been present—Peter and Karl standing at bay behind their weapons, the men they had challenged wondering whether to surrender or to make a fight for it.

  Then, unbelievably, someone laughed. There were a few words we couldn’t catch in what seemed to be English, but they were swept away by a roar of merriment. It sounded as if three or four people were all laughing simultaneously at the tops of their voices.

  We could do nothing but wait and wonder until the tumult had finished. Then a new voice, amused and friendly, came from the speaker.

  “O.K., boys, you might as well put those gadgets down. You couldn’t kill a mouse with them unless you swatted it over the head. I guess you’re from the station. If you want to know who we are, this is Twenty-first Century Films, at your service. I’m Lee Thomson, assistant producer. And those ferocious weapons you’ve got are the ones that Props made for our new interstellar epic. I’m glad to know they’ve convinced somebody. They always looked quite phony to me.”

  No doubt the reaction had something to do with it, for we all dissolved in laughter then. When the commander arrived, it was quite a while before anyone could tell him just what had happened.

  The funny thing was that, though Peter and Karl had made such fools of themselves, they really had the last laugh. The film people made quite a fuss over them and took them over to their ship, where they had a good deal to eat that wasn’t on the station’s normal menu.

  When we got to the bottom of it, the whole mystery had an absurdly simple explanation. Twenty-first Century were going all out to make a real epic, the first interstellar and not merely interplanetary film. And it was going to be the first feature film to be shot entirely in space, without any studio faking.

  All this explained the secrecy. As soon as the other companies knew what was going on, they’d all be climbing aboard the bandwagon. Twenty-first Century wanted to get as big a start as possible. They’d shipped up one load of props to await the arrival of the main unit with its cameras and equipment. Besides the “ray guns” that Peter and Karl had encountered, the crates in the hold contained some weird four-legged space suits for the beings that were supposed to live on the planets of Alpha Centauri. Twenty-first Century was doing the thing in style, and we gathered that there was another unit at work on the moon.

  The actual shooting was not going to start for another two days, when the actors would be coming up in a third ship. There was much excitement at the news that the star was none other than Linda Lorelli, though we wondered how much of her glamour would be able to get through a space suit. Playing opposite her in one of his usual tough, h
e-man roles would be Tex Duncan. This was great news to Norman Powell, who had a vast admiration for Tex and had a photograph of him stuck on his locker.

  All these preparations next door to us were rather distracting, and whenever we were off duty the station staff would jump into suits and go across to see how the film technicians were getting on. They had to unload their cameras, which were fixed to little rocket units so that they could move around slowly. The second spaceship was now being elaborately disguised by the addition of blisters, turrets and fake gun-housings to make it look (so Twenty-first Century hoped) like a battleship from another solar system. It was really quite impressive.

  We were at one of Commander Doyle’s lectures when the stars came aboard. The first we knew of their arrival was when the door opened and a small procession drifted in. The Station Commander came first, then his deputy, and then Linda Lorelli. She was wearing a rather worried smile, and it was quite obvious that she found the absence of gravity very confusing. Remembering my own early struggles, I sympathized with her. She was escorted by an elderly woman who seemed at home under zero g and gave Linda a helpful push when she showed signs of being stuck.

  Tex Duncan followed close behind. He was trying to manage without an escort and not succeeding very well. He was a good deal older than I’d guessed from his films, probably at least thirty-five. And you could see through his hair in any direction you cared to look. I glanced at Norman, wondering how he’d reacted to the appearance of his hero. He looked just a shade disappointed.

  It seemed that everyone had heard about Peter and Karl’s adventure, for Miss Lorelli was introduced to them, and they all shook hands very politely. She asked several sensible questions about their work, shuddered at the equations Commander Doyle had written on the blackboard and invited us all across to the company’s largest ship, the Orson Welles, for tea. I thought she was very nice, much more agreeable than Tex, who looked bored stiff with the whole business.