The Space Trilogy Page 9

  'We want to use the Morning Star. I've promised the Commander that she'll be ready in three hours.'

  'What!' gasped Ronnie. 'I don't believe it!'

  'There's no time to argue—I'll explain later. The others are coming over right away—they'll have to use space-suits, as you've got the Skylark with you. Now then, make a list of these points, and start checking…'

  For the next twenty minutes we were busy testing the controls—those, that is, which would operate at all. We couldn't imagine what had happened, but were too fully occupied to do much speculating. Fortunately I'd got to know my way around the Morning Star so thoroughly that I was able to give Ron quite a bit of help, calling meter readings to him, and so on.

  Presently there was a bumping and banging from the airlock and three of our colleagues came aboard, towing batteries and power tools. They had made the trip on one of the rocket tractors used for moving ships and stores around the Station, and they'd brought two drums of fuel across with them—enough to fill the auxiliary tanks. From them we discovered what all the fuss was about.

  It was a medical emergency. One of the passengers from a Mars-Earth liner which had just docked at the Residential Station had been taken seriously ill and had to have an operation within ten hours. The only chance of saving his life was to get him out to the Space Hospital—but unfortunately there were no ships available to make the journey. All the ships at the Inner Station were being serviced and would take at least a day to get space-worthy.

  It was Tim who'd talked the Commander into giving us this chance. The Morning Star, he pointed out, had been very carefully looked after, and the requirements for a trip to the Space Hospital were really very trivial. Only a small amount of fuel would be needed, and it wouldn't even be necessary to use the main motors. The whole journey could be made on the auxiliary rockets.

  Since he could think of no alternative, Commander Doyle had reluctantly agreed—on a number of conditions. We had to get the Morning Star over to the Station under her own power so that she could be fuelled up—and he would do the piloting.

  During the next hour, I did my best to be useful and to become accepted as one of the crew. My chief job was going over the ship and securing loose objects, which might start crashing round when power was applied. Perhaps 'crashing' is too strong a word, as we weren't going to use much of an acceleration. But anything adrift might be a nuisance, and could even be dangerous if it got into the wrong place.

  It was a great moment when Norman Powell started the motors. He gave a short burst of power at very low thrust, while everyone watched the meters for signs of danger. We were all wearing our space-suits as a safety precaution. If one of the motors exploded, it would probably not harm us up here in the control-room—but it might easily spring a leak in the hull.

  But everything went according to plan. The mild acceleration made us all drift towards what had suddenly become the floor. Then the feeling of weight ceased again, and everything was normal once more.

  There was much comparing of meter readings, and at last Norman said: 'The motors seem O.K. Let's get started.'

  And so the Morning Star began her first voyage for almost a hundred years. It was not much of a journey, compared with her great trip to Venus. In fact, it was only about five miles from the 'graveyard' over to the Inner Station. Yet to all of us it was a real adventure—and, indeed, quite a heart-warming experience, for we were all very fond of the wonderful old ship.

  We reached the Inner Station after about five minutes, and Norman brought the ship to rest several hundred yards away—he was taking no risks with his first command. The tractors were already fussing around, and before long the tow ropes had been attached and the Morning Star was hauled in.

  It was at this point that I decided I'd better keep out of the way. Rear of the workshop (which had once been the Morning Stars' hold) were several smaller chambers, usually occupied by stores. Most of the loose equipment aboard the ship had now been stuffed into these and lashed securely in place. However, there was still plenty of room left.

  I want to make one thing quite clear. Although the word 'stowaway' has been used, I don't consider it at all accurate. No one had actually told me to leave the ship, and I wasn't hiding. If anybody had come through the workshop and rummaged around in the store room, they would have seen me. But nobody did, so whose fault was that?

  Time seemed to go very slowly while I waited. I could hear distant, muffled shouts and orders, and after a while there came the unmistakable pulsing of the pumps as fuel came surging into the tanks. Then there was another long interval. Commander Doyle must be waiting, I knew, until the ship had reached the right point in her orbit around the Earth before he turned on the motors. I had no idea when this would be, and the suspense was considerable.

  But at last the rockets roared into life. Weight returned: I slid down the walls and found myself really standing on a solid floor again. I took a few steps to see what it felt like—and didn't enjoy the experience. In the last fortnight I had grown so accustomed to the lack of gravity that its temporary return was a nuisance.

  The thunder of the motors lasted for three or four minutes, and by the end of that time I was almost deafened by the noise, though I had pushed my fingers into my ears. Passengers weren't supposed to travel so near the rockets, and I was very glad when at last there was a sudden slackening in thrust and the roar that was surrounding me began to fade. Soon it ebbed into silence, though my head was still ringing and it would be quite a while before I could hear properly again. But I didn't mind that: all that really mattered was that the journey had begun—and no one could send me back.

  I decided to wait for a while before going up to the Control Room. Commander Doyle would still be busy checking his course, and I didn't want to bother him while he was occupied. Besides, I had to think of a good story.

  Everyone was quite surprised to see me. There was a complete silence when I drifted through the door and said: 'Hello! I think someone might have warned me that we were going to take off.'

  Commander Doyle simply stared at me: for a moment I couldn't decide whether he was going to be angry or not. Then he said: 'What are you doing aboard?'

  'I was lashing down the gear in the Store Room.'

  He turned to Norman, who looked a little unhappy.

  'Is that correct?'

  'Yes, sir—I told him to do it. But I thought he'd finished.'

  The Commander considered this for a moment. Then he said to me: 'Well, we've no time to go into this now. You're here and we'll have to put up with you.'

  This was not very flattering: but it might have been much worse. And the expression on Norman's face was worth going a long way to see.

  The remainder of the Morning Stars' crew consisted of Tim Benton, who was looking at me with a quizzical smile, and Ronnie Jordan, who avoided my gaze altogether. We had two passengers. The sick man was strapped to a stretcher which had been fixed against one wall, and must have been drugged for he remained unconscious for the whole journey. With him was a young doctor who did nothing but look anxiously at his watch and give his patient an injection from time to time. I don't think he said more than a dozen words during the whole trip.

  Tim explained to me later that the sick man was suffering from an acute, and fortunately very rare, type of stomach trouble caused by the return of high gravity. It was very lucky for him that he had managed to reach the Earth's orbit: if he had been taken ill on the two months' voyage, the medical resources of the liner could not have saved him.

  There was nothing for any of us to do while the Morning Star swept outwards on the long curve that would bring her, after some three and a half hours, to the Space Hospital. Very slowly, Earth was receding behind us. It was no longer so close that it filled almost half the sky. Already we could see far more of its surface than was possible from the Inner Station, skimming low above the Equator. Northwards, the Mediterranean crept into view: then Japan and New Zealand appeared almost simultan
eously over opposite horizons.

  And still the Earth dwindled behind us. Now it was a sphere at last, hanging out there in space, small enough for the eye to take in the whole of it at one glance. I could see so far to the South that the great Antarctic ice cap was just visible, a gleaming white fringe beyond the tip of Patagonia.

  We were fifteen thousand miles above the Earth, swimming into the path of the Space Hospital. In a moment we would have to use the rockets again to match orbits: this time, however, I should have a more comfortable ride, here in the sound-proof cabin.

  Once again weight returned with the roaring rockets. There was one prolonged burst of power, then a series of short corrections. When it was all over, Commander Doyle unstrapped himself from the pilot's seat and drifted over to the observation port. His instruments told him where he was far more accurately than his eyes could ever do—but he wanted the satisfaction of seeing for himself. I also made for a port that no one else was using.

  Floating there in space beside us was what seemed to be a great crystal flower, its face turned full towards the Sun. At first there was no way in which I could judge its true scale or guess how far away it was. Then, through the transparent walls, I could see little figures moving around, and could catch the gleam of sunlight on complex machines and equipment. The station must have been at least five hundred feet in diameter, and the cost of lifting all that material fifteen thousand miles from the Earth must have been staggering. Then I recalled that very little of it had come from Earth, anyway. Like the other stations, the Space Hospital had been constructed almost entirely from components manufactured on the Moon.

  As we slowly drifted closer, I could see people gathering in the observation decks and glass-roofed wards to watch our arrival. For the first time, it occurred to me that this flight of the Morning Star really was something of an event—all the radio and TV networks would be covering it. As a news-story, it had everything—a race for Me, and a gallant effort by a long-retired ship. When we reached the Hospital, we would have to run the gauntlet.

  The rocket-tractors came fussing up to us and the tow ropes started to haul us in. A few minutes later the airlocks clamped together and we were able to go through the connecting tube into the Hospital. We waited for the doctor and his still unconscious patient to go first, then went reluctantly forward to meet the crowd waiting to welcome us.

  Well, I wouldn't have missed it for anything—and I'm sure the Commander enjoyed it as much as any of us. They made a huge fuss and treated us like heroes. Although I hadn't done a thing, and really had no right to be there at all (there were some rather awkward questions about that), I was treated just like the others. We were, in fact, given the run of the place.

  It seemed that we would have to wait here for two days before we could go back to the Inner Station—there was no Earth-bound ship until then. Of course, we could have made the return trip in the Morning Star, but Commander Doyle vetoed this.

  'I don't mind tempting Providence once,' he said, 'but I'm not going to do it again. Before the old lady makes another trip, she's going to be overhauled and the motors tested. I don't know if you noticed it, but the combustion chamber temperature was starting to rise unpleasantly while we were doing our final approach. And there were about six other things that weren't all they should have been. I'm not going to be a hero twice in one week: the second time might be the last.'

  It was, I suppose, a reasonable attitude: but we were a little disappointed. Because of this caution the Morning Star didn't get back to her usual parking place for almost a month, to the great annoyance of her patrons.

  Hospitals are, I think, usually slightly depressing places—but this one was different. Few of the patients here were seriously ill, though down on Earth most of them would have been dead or completely disabled owing to the effect of gravity on their weakened hearts. Many were eventually able to return to Earth, others could only live safely on the Moon or Mars, and the severest cases had to remain permanently on the station. It was a kind of exile, but they seemed cheerful enough. The Hospital was a huge place, ablaze with sunshine, and almost everything that could be found on Earth was available here—everything, that is, that did not depend on gravity.

  Only about half of the station was taken up by the Hospital: the remainder was devoted to research of various kinds. We were given some interesting conducted tours of the gleaming, spotless labs. And on one of these tours—well, this is what happened.

  The Commander was away on some business in the Technical Section, but we had been invited to visit the Biology Department, which we were promised would be highly interesting. As it turned out, this was quite an understatement.

  We'd been told to meet a Dr Hawkins on Corridor Nine, Biology Two. Now it's very easy to get lost in a space-station: since all the local inhabitants know their way around perfectly, no one bothers with signposts. We found our way to what we thought was Corridor Nine, but couldn't see any door labelled 'Biology Two'. However, there was a 'Biophysics Two', and after some discussion we decided that would be near enough. There would certainly be someone inside who could redirect us.

  Tim Benton was in front, and opened the door cautiously.

  'Can't see a thing,' he grumbled. Phew—it smells like a fishmonger's on a hot day!'

  I peered over his shoulder. The light was very dim indeed, and I could only make out a few vague shapes. It was also very warm and moist sprays were hissing continuously on all sides. There was a peculiar odour that I couldn't identify at all—a cross between a zoo and a hothouse.

  'This place is no good,' said Ronnie Jordan in disgust. 'Let's try somewhere else.'

  'Just a minute,' exclaimed Norman, whose eyes must have become accustomed to the gloom more quickly than mine. 'What do you think! They've got a tree in here. At least, it looks bike it—though it's a mighty queer one.'

  He moved forward, and we drifted after him, drawn by the same curiosity. I realized that my companions probably hadn't seen a tree, or even a blade of grass, for many months. It would be quite a novelty to them.

  I could see better now. We were in a very large room, with jars and glass-fronted cages all around us. The air was full of mist from countless sprays, and I felt as if we were in some tropical jungle. There were clusters of lamps all round, but they were turned off and we couldn't see the switches.

  About forty feet away was the tree that Norman had noticed. It was certainly an unusual object. A slender, straight trunk rose out of a metal box to which were attached various tubes and pumps. There were no leaves, only a dozen thin, tapering branches drooping straight down, giving it a slightly disconsolate air. It looked like a weeping willow that had been stripped of all its foliage. A continual stream of water played over it from clusters of jets, and added to the general moistness of the air. I was beginning to find it quite difficult to breathe.

  'It can't be from Earth,' said Tim, 'and I've never heard of anything like it on Mars or Venus.'

  We had now drifted to within a few feet of the object—and the closer we got, the less I liked it. I said so, but Norman only laughed.

  His laugh turned to a yell of pure fright. For suddenly that slender trunk leaned towards us, and the long branches shot out like whips. One curled around my ankle, another grasped my waist. I was too scared even to yell: I realized, too late, that this wasn't a tree at all—and its 'branches' were tentacles.

  Seven

  WORLD OF MONSTERS

  My reaction was instinctive and violent. Though I was floating in mid-air and so unable to get hold of anything solid, I could still thrash around pretty effectively. The others were doing the same, and presently I came into contact with the floor so that I was able to give a mighty kick. The thin tentacles released their grip as I shot towards the ceiling. I just managed to grasp one of the light fittings in time to stop myself from crashing into the roof, and then looked down to see what had happened to the others.

  They had all got clear, and now that my fright was subsi
ding I realized how feeble those clutching tentacles had really been. If we had been on solid ground with gravity to help us, we could have disengaged ourselves without any trouble. Even here, none of us had been hurt—but we were all badly scared.

  'What the devil is it?' gasped Tim when he had recovered his breath and untangled himself from some rubber tubing draped along the wall. Everyone else was too shaken to answer. We were making our ways unsteadily to the door when there was a sudden flood of light, and someone called out: 'What's all the noise?' A door opened, and a white-smocked man came drifting in. He stared at us for a moment and said:

  'I hope you haven't been teasing Cuthbert.'

  'Teasing!' spluttered Norman. 'I've never had such a fright in my life. We were looking for Dr Hawkins and ran into this—this monster from Mars, or whatever it is.'

  The other chuckled. He launched himself away from the door and floated towards the now motionless cluster of tentacles.

  'Look out!' cried Tim.

  We watched in fascinated horror. As soon as the man was within range, the slim tendrils struck out again and whipped round his body. He merely put up an arm to protect his face, but made no other movement to save himself.

  'I'm afraid Cuthbert isn't very bright,' he said. 'He assumes that anything that comes near him is food, and grabs for it. But we're not very digestible, so he soon lets go—like this.'

  The tentacles were already relaxing. With a gesture exactly like disdain, they thrust away their captive, who burst out laughing at our startled faces.

  'He's not very strong, either. It would be quite easy to get away from him, even if he wanted to keep you.'

  'I still don't think it's safe,' said Norman with dignity, 'to leave a beast like that around. What is it, anyway? Which planet does it come from?'

  'You'd be surprised—but I'll leave Dr Hawkins to explain that. He sent me to look for you when you didn't turn up. And I'm sorry that Cuthbert gave you such a fright. That door should have been locked, but someone's been careless again.'