The Complete Serials Page 2

  II.

  THE MYSTERIOUS space-shell was only a few miles distant. With Herb at the controls, the Space Pup cruised in an ever-tightening circle around the glinting thing that hung there just off Pluto’s orbit.

  It was a spaceship; of that there could be no doubt, despite the fact it had no rocket tubes. It was hanging motionless. There was no throb of power within it, no apparent life, although dim light glowed through the vision-ports in what probably were the living quarters just back of the control room.

  Gary crouched in the air lock of the Space Pup, with the outer valve swung back. He made sure that his flame pistols were securely in the holsters and cautiously tested the spacesuit’s miniature propulsion units.

  He spoke into the tiny radio mike inside the helmet. “All right, Herb,” he said, “I’m going. Try to tighten up the circle a bit. Keep a close watch. That thing out there, for all we know, may be dynamite.”

  “O.K.,” said Herb’s voice in the space-phones.

  Gary straightened and pushed himself out from the lock. He floated smoothly in space, in a gulf of nothing, a place without direction, without an up or down, an unsubstantial place with the fiery eyes of distant stars ringing him around.

  His steel-gloved hands dropped to the propulsion mechanism that encircled his waist. Midget rocket tubes flared with tiny flashes of blue power, and he was jerked forward, heading for the space-shell. Veering too far to the right, he gave the right tube a little more fuel and straightened out.

  Steadily, under the surging drive of the miniature tubes, he forged ahead through space toward the ship. He saw the gleaming lights of the Space Pup slowly circle in front of him and then pass out of sight.

  A quarter of a mile away, he shut off the tubes and glided slowly in to the shell. He struck its pitted side with the soles of his magnetic boots and stood upright.

  Cautiously he worked his way toward one of the ports from which glowed the faint light. Lying at full length, he peered through the foot-thick quartz. The light inside was feeble and he could see but little. There was no movement of life, no indication that the shell was tenanted. In the center of what at one time had been the living quarters, he saw a large, rectangular shape, like a huge box. Aside from this, however, he could make out nothing.

  Working his way back to the lock, he saw that it was tightly closed. He had expected that. He stamped against the plates with his heavy boots, hoping to attract attention. But if any living thing were inside, it either did not hear or disregarded the stamping on the outer hull.

  Slowly he moved away from the lock, heading for the control-room vision-plate, hoping from there to get a better view into the shell’s interior. As he moved, his eyes caught a curious irregular gleam just to the right of the air lock. As if faint lines had been etched into the metal. For a moment he hesitated and then turned back.

  Dropping to one knee, he saw that a single line of crude lettering had been etched into the steel of the hull. Possibly with acid.

  Brushing at it with a gloved hand, he tried to make it out. Laboriously he struggled with it. It was simple, direct, to the point, a single declaration. When one writes with steel and acid, one is necessarily brief.

  The line read:

  “Control-room vision-plate unlocked.”

  AMAZED, he read the line again, hardly believing what he read. But there it was. That single line, written with a single purpose. Simple directions for gaining entrance.

  Crouched upon the steel plating, he felt a shiver run through his body. Someone had etched that line in hope someone would come. But perhaps he had come too late. The ship had an old look about it. The lines of it, the way the ports were set into the hull—all marks of spaceship designing that had become obsolete centuries before.

  He felt the cold chill of mystery and the utter bleakness of outer space closing in about him. He gazed up over the bulged outline of the shell and saw the steely glare of remote stars. Stars secure in the depths of many light-years, jeering at him, jeering at men who held dreams of stellar conquest.

  He shook himself, trying to shake off the probing fingers of half-fear, glanced around to locate the Space Pup, saw it slowly moving off to his right.

  Swiftly, but cautiously, he made his way toward the bow of the shell, down over the nose and up to the vision-plate.

  Squatting in front of the plate, he jeered down into the control cabin. But it wasn’t a control cabin. It was a laboratory. In the tiny room which must at one time have housed the instruments of navigation, there was now no trace of control panels or calculators or telescopic screen. Rather, there were work tables, piled with scientific apparatus, banks and rows of chemical containers. All the paraphernalia of the scientist’s workshop.

  The door into the living quarters where he had seen the large, oblong box was closed. All the apparatus and the bottles in the laboratory were carefully arranged, neatly put away, as if someone had tidied up before they walked off and left the place.

  He puzzled for a moment The lack of rocket tubes, the indications that the ship was centuries old, the scrawled, acid-etched line by the lock, the laboratory in the control room. He shook his head. It didn’t make much sense.

  Bracing himself against the curving steel hide of the shell, he pushed at the plate. But he could exert little effort. Lack of gravity, inability to brace himself securely, made the task a hard one. Rising to his feet, he stamped his heavy, metallic boots against the quartz, but the plate refused to budge.

  As a last desperate measure he might use his flame guns, blast his way into the shell. But that would be long, tedious work. There should be an easier way.

  Suddenly it came to him, but at the same moment he realized its hazards. He could lie down on the plate, turn on the rocket tubes of his suit and use his body as a battering-ram. But that was dangerous. It would be easy to turn on too much power, to pound his body to a pulp against the quartz.

  Dull anger flared within him.

  “Hell,” he said, “why not take a chance?”

  He stretched flat on the plate, with hands folded under him, fingers on the rocket controls. Slowly he turned the controls. The rockets thrust at his body, bruising him against the quartz. He snapped the studs shut. He believed the plate had given a little. Drawing in a deep breath, he twisted the studs again. Once more his body slammed against the quartz, driven by the flaming tubes.

  Suddenly the plate gave way, swung, plunged him down into the laboratory. Savagely he snapped the studs Jut. He struck hard against the floor the room, cracked his helmet soundly against the metal plates.

  Groggily he groped his way to his feet. The thin whine of escaping atmosphere came to his ears, and unsteadily he made his way forward, leaped at the plate, slammed it back in place again. It closed with a thud, driven deep into its frame by the force of the rushing air.

  A chair stood beside a table and he swung it around, sat down in it, still dizzy from the fall. He shook his head to clear away the cobwebs.

  THERE WAS atmosphere here. That meant that an atmosphere generator was operating. That the ship had developed no leaks, was still air-tight.

  He raised his helmet slightly. Fresh, pure air swirled into his nostrils, better air than he had inside his suit. A little highly oxygenated, perhaps, but that was all. If the atmosphere machine had run unattended for a long time, it might have gotten out of adjustment, might be mixing a bit too much oxygen with the air output.

  He swung the helmet back and let it dangle on the hinge at the back of his neck, gulped in great breathfuls of the atmosphere. His head cleared rapidly.

  He looked around the room from where he sat. There was little to see he had not already seen. A practical, well-equipped laboratory, but the equipment was old, much of it obsolete.

  A framed document stood against a cabinet and getting to his feet, he walked across the room to look at it. Bending close he read it. It was a diploma from the College of Science at Alkatoon, Mars, one of the most outstanding of several universi
ties on the Red Planet. The diploma had been issued to a Caroline Martin.

  Gary read the name a second time. It seemed that he should know it. It raised some memory in his brain, but just what it was he couldn’t say. An elusive recognition that eluded him by the faintest margin.

  He looked around the room. Caroline Martin. A girl who had left a diploma in this room, a pitiful little reminder of many years ago. He bent again and glanced at the date upon the sheep-skin. It was 5976. He whistled softly. A thousand years ago!

  Suddenly he started. If Caroline Martin had left the diploma here, where was Caroline Martin now? He swung about on his heel and stared at the door leading into the living quarters. What would he find there?

  Striding to the door, he jerked it open and stopped, rigid in his stride over the threshold.

  In the center of the room was a tank, securely bolted to the floor by heavy steel brackets. That was the oblong box he had seen from the port outside.

  The tank was filled with a greenish fluid, and in the fluid lay a woman. A woman dressed in metallic robes that scintillated in the light from the single radium bulb in the ceiling above the tank.

  Breathlessly, Gary moved closer, peered over the edge of the tank, down through the clear green liquid, into the face of the woman. Her eyes were closed, and long, curling black lashes lay against the whiteness of her cheeks.

  Her forehead was broad and high, and long braids of raven hair were bound about her head. Slim black eyebrows arched to almost meet above the delicately modeled nose. Her mouth was a bit too large, a trace of patrician in the thin, red lips. Her arms were laid straight along her sides and the metallic gown swept in flowing curves from chin to feet.

  Beside her right hand, lying on the bottom of the tank, was a hypodermic syringe, bright and shining despite the green fluid that covered it.

  Gary stared at her, the breath catching in his throat. “Lord,” he said, “what is this, anyhow?”

  She looked alive and yet she couldn’t be alive. Still there was a flush of youth and beauty in her cheeks, as if she merely slept.

  Laid out as if for death and still with the lie to death in her very look. He stared at the calm, serene face, the arms laid so neatly at her side, the smoothly arranged robe that covered her.

  Caroline Martin was the name upon the diploma out in the laboratory. Could this be Caroline Martin? The girl who graduated from the college of sciences at Alkatoon ten centuries ago?

  Gary shook his head uneasily.

  HE STEPPED BACK from the tank and looked at it, and as he did he saw the copper plate affixed to its metal side. There was wording on the plate. He stooped to read.

  Another simple message, etched in copper plate, a message from the girl who lay inside the tank.

  “I am not dead. I am in suspended animation. Drain the tank by opening the valve at the opposite end. Use the syringe you find in the medicine chest.”

  Gary glanced across the room, saw a medicine chest on the wall above a washbowl. He looked back at the tank and mopped his forehead with his coat sleeve.

  “It isn’t possible,” he whispered.

  Like a man in a dream, he stumbled to the medicine chest, opened it, and found a syringe. He broke it and saw that it was loaded with a cartridge filled with a reddish substance. A drug, undoubtedly, to overcome suspended animation.

  Replacing the syringe, he went back to the tank and found the valve. It was stubborn, defying all the strength in his arms. He kicked at it with his heavy boot and jarred it loose. With nervous hands, he opened it and watched the level of the green fluid slowly recede.

  Watching, an odd calm crept upon him, a stealing calm that made him hard and machinelike to do the thing that faced him. One little slip might spoil it. A wrong interpretation of the wording on the copper plate. What if the drug in the hypodermic had lost its strength through the years? There were so many things that might happen. But there was only one thing to do. He raised a hand in front of him and looked intently at it. It was steady.

  He did not waste time in wondering what it was all about. This was not the time for that. Frantic questioning fingers clutched at his thoughts and he shook them off. Time enough to wonder and to speculate and question when this thing was done.

  When the fluid was level with the girl’s body he waited no longer. He leaned over the rim of the tank and lifted her in his arms. For a moment he hesitated, then turned and went across the floor to the laboratory, laid her on one of the work tables. The fluid, dripping off the rustling metallic dress, left a trail of wet across the plates.

  From the medicine cabinet he took the hypodermic and went back to the girl. He lifted her left arm and peered closely at it. There were little punctures, betraying previous use of a needle.

  “Wish I knew more about this,” he whispered to himself.

  Awkwardly he shoved the needle into her arm, slowly depressed the plunger. Then it was done and he stepped back.

  Nothing happened. He waited.

  Minutes passed and she took a shallow breath. He watched in fascination, saw her come to life again. Saw the breaths deepen, the eyelids flicker, her right hand twitch.

  Then she was looking at him, out of deep-blue eyes.

  “You are all right?” he asked.

  It sounded like a foolish question even as he said it, but he had to say something.

  Her speech was broken. Her tongue and lips refused to work the way they should, but he understood what she tried to say.

  “Yes, I’m all right.” She lay quietly on the work table. “What year is it?” she asked.

  “It’s 6948,” he told her.

  Her eyes widened and she looked at him. “Almost a thousand years!” she said. “You are sure of the year?”

  He nodded. “The year,” he declared, “is about the only thing I am sure of.”

  “How is that?”

  “Why, finding you here,” said Gary, “and reviving you again. I still don’t believe it’s happened.”

  She laughed, a funny, discordant laugh because her muscles, inactive for years, had forgotten how to function rightly.

  “You are Caroline Martin, aren’t you?” asked Gary.

  She started in surprise and rose to a sitting position.

  “I am Caroline Martin,” she replied. “But how did you know that?”

  Gary waved his arm toward the framed diploma. “I read it.”

  “Oh,” she said, “I’d forgotten all about it.”

  “I am Gary Nelson,” Gary told her. “Newspaperman on the loose. My pal’s out there in a spaceship waiting for us.”

  “I suppose,” she said, “that I should thank you, but I don’t know how. Just ordinary thanks aren’t quite enough.”

  “Skip it,” said Gary tersely.

  She stretched her arms above her head.

  “It’s good to be alive again,” she said. “Good to know there’s life ahead of you.”

  “But,” said Gary, “you always were alive. It must have been just like going to sleep.”

  “It was worse than death,” she said. “Because, you see, I made one mistake.”

  “One mistake?”

  “Yes, just one mistake. One you’d never think of. At least I didn’t. You see, when animation was suspended, every physical process was slowed down to almost zero. But with one exception. My brain kept right on working.”

  THE HORROR of it sank into Gary slowly. “You mean you knew? You laid here for years and knew that you were here?”

  She nodded. “I couldn’t hear or see or feel. I had no bodily sensation. But I could think. I’ve thought for almost ten centuries. I tried to stop thinking, but never could. I prayed something would go wrong and I would die. Anything to end that eternity of thought.”

  She saw the pity in his eyes.

  “Don’t waste sympathy on me,” she said and there was a note of hardness in her voice. “I brought it on myself. Stubbornness, perhaps. I played a long shot. Took a gamble.”

  He chuckl
ed in his throat. “And won,” he said.

  “A million to one shot,” she said. “Probably even greater odds than that. This shell is a tiny speck in space. There wasn’t a million-to-one shot, no, not even a billion-to-one shot, that anyone would find me. I had some hope. I placed my faith on someone, but I guess they failed me. Perhaps it wasn’t their fault.”

  “But how did you do it?” asked Gary. “Even today it has our scientists stumped. They have made some progress, but not much. But you made it work for almost a thousand years.”

  “Drugs,” she said. “Certain Martian drugs. Rare ones. And they have to be combined correctly. Slow metabolism to a point where it is almost nonexistent. But you have to be careful. Slow it down too far and metabolism stops. That’s death.”

  Gary gestured toward the hypodermic. “And that,” he said, “reacts against the other drug.”

  She nodded gravely.

  “The fluid in the tank,” he said. “That was to prevent dehydration and held some food value? You wouldn’t need much food with metabolism at nearly zero. But how about your mouth and nostrils? The fluid—”

  “A mask,” she said. “Chemical paste that held up under moisture. Evaporated as soon as it was struck by air.”

  He whistled. “You thought of everything,” he said.

  “I had to,” she declared. “There was no one else to do my thinking for me.” She slid off the table and walked slowly toward him. “You told me a minute ago,” she said, “that the scientists of today haven’t satisfactorily solved suspended animation?”

  He nodded.

  “You mean to say they still don’t know about these drugs?”

  “No,” he said. “There’s some of them would give their right eyes to know about them.”

  “We knew about them a thousand years ago,” the girl said. “Myself and one other. I wonder—”

  She stopped, musing.

  He waited, but she did not continue. She whirled on him. “Let’s get out of here,” she cried. “I have a horror of this place.”

  “O.K.,” said Gary. “Have you an extra spacesuit around?”