Doom Ship - Robert Moore Williams, ebook, Temp
[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
//-->Doom ShipbyRobert Moore WilliamsWhen the space ship crashed, the lives of twenty humans lay in the hands of a fanatic!An A\NN/A Preservation Edition.Notes“THE ship’s falling!” Screaming the words, the girl in the yellow dress tossed the cocktail, with whichshe had been celebrating the successful takeoff from Venus, straight up against the metal ceiling of themain cabin with a sudden gesture.To John Balfour, who of necessity had developed a feel for such things—along with a feel for athousand other things that helped a man stay alive on the Veiled Planet—it had seemed for some timethat the ship had been yawning badly from her course. The steering jets had roared too often, he hadthought, and the ship had been nudged southward well away from the lanes usually followed by spaceships taking off from Venus. He had shrugged the feeling aside. Presumably the pilot knew his business.Presumably pompous Captain Vincent knew how to get a commercial liner into space. Presumably—The lifting jets faltered, the girl screamed, the floor of the cabin tilted downward. The girl, grabbinghastily for a handhold, lost her footing and landed in Balfour’s lap.In other circumstances, he would have thought it was quite nice to have this curvesome chunk ofpulchritudinous female animal in his arms. In fact, sitting there watching her, he had been wondering ifmaybe, before the ship eased in to Luna Station on Earth’s moon—There were a lot of things he had missed during the two years he had spent on Venus and womenwas one of them. The human women on Venus were a wary lot, generally, and the native girls justdidn’t—Well, they did, of course, but it wasn’t the same. Now if this Lora Calhoun—Balfour’s pleased anticipations had been interrupted when the jets faltered and Lora Calhoun herselflanded in his lap in a flurry of yellow skirt that revealed two very attractive legs, though he did not havetime to notice such things.A loudspeaker in the ceiling suddenly began to blurt words.“All passengers in your seats at once. Fasten safety belts. Prepare for emergency landing.”The speaker was striving for a calm tone of voice. He wasn’t succeeding. The sudden faltering of thelifting jets and the tilt of the floor of the ship had frightened the passengers. Actually, so far as space shipswere concerned, there was no such thing as an emergency landing. There was either a safe landing orthere was no landing at all. The elaborate system of padded chairs with attached safety belts was largelyto make the passengers feel safe. It fooled nobody. When a space ship actually crashed, all that was leftto do was to pick up the pieces—if they could be found at all.Balfour caught one glimpse of the passengers scuttling for their chairs like startled rabbits diving intotheir holes at the appearance of a fox. At the front end of the cabin, the Negro steward, who a minutebefore had been mixing and serving drinks, was holding on to the bar with both hands. In Balfour’s armsthe girl was squealing.The jets caught, burst out with a full-throated roar. Groans ran through the steel hull of the ship. Thefloor tilted. Balfour held his breath. If the jets held—Through the port he caught a glimpse of something that warned him the jets had better hold. For aminute, the eternal cloud banks of Venus had lifted. Below him was spread a vast panorama of jungle, ofmountains lifting up out of swamps, of rivers winding their way through that swamp, of inter-connectingcanals. From this height the cities were not visible, but he knew they were there, hidden by the jungle,cleverly built into the mountains.THE WORLD down below him was Go-roum, the impenetrable home of the savage warrior races ofVenus. So far as Balfour knew—and it was part of his job to know—only one human had everpenetrated the Go-roum and had emerged alive to tell his story. He was that human. He had spent thebetter part of two years down there in that festering green tangle. During that time there hadn’t been aminute when his life had not been in danger. If the Roum had penetrated his disguise, if they hadsuspected his purpose there, they would have sliced off his head with no more compunction than theyshowed in slicing off the head of a jungle lizard.They were warriors. From the oldest doddering graybeard to the youngest boy in his cradle, theypracticed daily with weapons. They were savages. They cared nothing for the life of any creature,including themselves. But they were not fools.On the contrary, Balfour had clear evidence that the scientific advancement of the Roum equaled thatof humans in some respects, and in one area at least, exceeded the discoveries made by earth’sscientists.When the first human landing had been made on Venus, the Roum had been the masters of the planet,holding tributary every other race, exacting tribute from every tribe, but at the first appearance of a spaceship in their sky they had dropped their conquests as if they were suddenly too hot to hold and had pulledback into the jungle homeland from which they had sprung. Every Roum administrator, every Roumwarrior backing him up, every Roum scientist investigating local resources had stopped work at a singlecommand and had headed for home.The liberated tribes had hailed the humans with great joy, as liberators, but the humans, viewing thehegira of the Roum, had not been happy about the situation.If you startle a tiger at his kill and the tiger takes one look at you and the gun you carry and,recognizing the deadliness of the gun, does not dispute his kill with you, you know one thing for sure.You’ve got to watch out for that tiger!The humans knew they had to look out for the Roum. The day would come when the Roum wouldemerge from their jungle strongholds to be at human throats.Human suspicions were strengthened when they tried to make friends with the Roum. The Roumwere willing to be quite friendly, outside their jungle, they sent deputations of scientists, to exchangeinformation, they sent other deputations, to examine space ships, but the information they were willing togive in return was useless and they were not willing to permit humans to visit their homeland. The gatethere was jammed shut, locked tight, and triple barred. Whatever they were doing there, they consideredtheir own business. They didn’t want any visitors, they didn’t want any guests, they didn’t want anyscientific observers. All they wanted was to get inside a space ship.Orders from up above had soon placed all space ships, all space ports, all space crewmen, off-limitsto Roum.You don’t give a gun to a tiger. You don’t give space ships, or the secret of their construction, to thesavagest race of warriors in the solar system, not if you’ve got good sense. Instead you put them in thestrictest kind of quarantine, you isolate them as you would isolate the carriers of a dangerous disease,hoping that time and endless patience will enable you to make friends with them. While you are givingthem time to learn how to live in peace, you keep both eyes wide open, watching for the flash of a knifebeing drawn, you keep both ears keenly alert, listening for the creep of stealthy feet coming up behindyou.Especially you don’t give them space ships when rumors begin to come through that they have a newweapon. What that new weapon was, no man knew. John Balfour had spent almost two years, as asecret agent, trying to find out what it was.Some of the results of the use of that weapon he had seen, the scarred side of a mountain that lookedas if it had been hit by a continuous succession of thunderbolts, a ragged, burned section of jungle thatlooked as if it had been hit by an atomic bomb, only no bomb had been exploded there. Roum scientistsdidn’t have that secret yet. But they had something else, something perhaps as dangerous and as deadly,something that gashed the side of a mountain, something that mowed down the jungle.He had seen where the weapon had been tested. When it was, its effective range, how it worked, hedid not know. But one thing was certain, he did not want to see these weapons mounted in fleets ofspace ships, he did not want to see the Roum warriors turned loose in the lanes of space.Grim-faced Admiral Hatridge, in Venus Port, had listened to his report, and had ordered him back toearth in person to disclose his findings to the highest UN administrative authority, who must make thedecision as to the action to be taken here on Venus. Perhaps his action might be a full-scale minor war,against the Roum, as a preventative measure, but likely it would not be. You can’t successfully atombomb a jungle thousands of square miles in area. Also, you don’t use an atom bomb on a hornet’s nestunless you are sure you can cope with the remaining hornets. Also, you just don’t use an atom bombunless you have no other alternative, not if you’re human.DURING THE split second in which the jets faltered and caught, during which the loudspeakershouted its commands and the passengers scuttled for their cushioned chairs and safety belts, thesethoughts passed through John Balfour’s mind. In his mind was one other thought.If the ship crashedhere, if the ship landed here, Roum scientists would have what they wanted—the secrets of spaceship construction.Even from a wrecked ship, they could learn too much.The girl twisted in his lap. The forward jets faltered, their steady roar became a broken blast. Balfourscrambled to his feet, dropped the startled girl in the chair he had just left, and headed forward for thecontrol room.Perhaps nothing could be done, but if anything could be done, now was the time to do it.Two men were in the control room, pompous Captain Vincent and the pilot. They had their headstogether and their eyes on the instrument panel. Captain Vincent looked up as the door opened. Surpriseshowed on his face.“No passengers allowed in here. Get to hell out.”Technically, the captain was in the right. Passengers were not permitted in control rooms, especiallyduring an emergency. But Balfour had no intention of letting a technicality stop him.“Captain—”“I’m doing everything humanly possible to save the ship. I don’t want any advice from a passenger.”“You’re going to get some,” Balfour spoke. “Captain, this ship is over the Go-roum.”“What?” Vincent gasped the word. Involuntarily he turned toward the port. Outside there was nothingbut mist. “You’re crazy. We’re a hundred miles north of the Go-roum.” The captain’s eyes jerkedtoward the pilot, then came back again to Balfour. “Who the hell are you? What do you want?”“I haven’t got time to tell you who I am. What I want is this: Don’t make a forced landing here. If wehave a choice of landing here and landing somewhere else, then try to land somewhere else. Try to landout of the Go-roum, no matter how much additional risk you have to run.”Captain Vincent’s face turned purple. “Are you trying to tell me to risk my life and the lives of mycrew and passengers by gliding this ship an extra hundred miles when I see a chance to set it down insafety here—”“I’m telling you to take that chance,” Balfour answered.“Look, Captain!” the pilot shouted. The radar screen in front of him had come to life, revealing a high,jungle-covered plateau. What was hidden under the growth of trees the mist-probing radar did notreveal, but it showed one fact clearly—the plateau was fairly level. Beyond it were high mountains.Below it was a broken tangle of impenetrable gorges. The ship was miles above it but, with carefulhandling, it could be set down on the plateau.“We can land there,” the pilot stated. The broken roar of the jets accented his meaning. “With luck,we can take off again, after the ship is repaired.”Captain Vincent made his decision instantly. “Then land there.” His hand went inside his coat pocket,came out with a flat, snub-nosed automatic. His eyes glared at Balfour. “Get to hell out of my controlroom.”BALFOUR sighed and stepped backward through the door. It was too much to ask the average runof human beings to risk their lives on the chance that other men might live yet this was what he had beentrying to do here in this control room. If this ship fell into the hands of the Roum, if their scientists had achance to study it, if the Roum warriors with their vicious secret weapon were loosed on the lanes ofspace, then certainly other men would die, men who had never heard of the Roum.Counting passengers and crew, there were not over twenty human beings on this ship. CaptainVincent had refused to take a chance with their lives when taking that chance might have given untoldthousands a better chance for life in some future that was to come. A few might have died here, thatthousands might live later.For a moment, John Balfour considered with pleasure the thought of throttling Captain Vincent. “Thedamned fool! Even if he saves his neck by landing here, the Roum will chop off his head soon enough.”Down there in that jungle the Roum would certainly see a space ship in distress over their land. Itwould be a spectacle that would interest them as nothing else would. They might keep alive the humanoccupants of that ship, until they had learned everything the humans knew, but there would come a timewhen the lives of human cattle would no longer be of value to them. Then—There comes a time when a man accepts the fact that he is going to die. This time came to JohnBalfour now. If the ship crashed, he would die. If the ship landed safely, the Roum would get him. Nomatter which way the scales dipped now, the answer was the same.Some men accept their fate with sullen indifference, some accept it with paralysis, some, snatching atstraws, scream with fear. Captain Vincent had been one of the straw-snatchers. Balfour accepted it innone of these ways. He was still alive. Something might yet be done. Warning might be given. He hurriedto the radio room.A word from him to Admiral Hatridge in Venus Port that a space ship was down in the Go-roumwould bring a space cruiser in a hell of a hurry. If worst came to worst, an atom bomb could blow thewrecked ship into fragments of molten metal so small that no scientist could determine how they had oncefunctioned. Admiral Hatridge would issue an order to drop such a bomb, if he had to! If he knew in timethat such an order was needed!Kicking open the door of the radio room, Balfour stopped, appalled.A hammer had been used in here. Nothing else could account for the wreckage that had been done.The panels shielding the RF transmitters had been effectively smashed. Behind the panels the transmittingtubes were a tangle of twisted filaments and broken grids. Tuning coils had been smashed. The key, forcode operation, and the mike, for voice transmission, had been pounded into broken metal and smashedplastic.Yes, a hammer had been used to accomplish the destruction here. Whoever had wielded the hammerhad used it first of all on the head of the radio operator. He sprawled forward on the floor, a youth withhis sleeves rolled up as if he was ready for work. The back of his head had been smashed like anegg-shell.No SOS, no warning, no call for help, would ever go out over this radio transmitter. This radiooperator would never pound his key sending out an urgent warning to the admiral at Venus Port that aspace ship was down in the Go-roum.At the thought of what this wrecked radio room meant, Balfour took an involuntary step backward.In the throbbing roar of the faltering jets, he did not hear the step in the passageway behind him.Nor did he feel the blackjack hit him. He didn’t know anything had hit him. Suddenly, he just didn’tknow—anything.CHAPTER IITHE SOFT musical chirp of thecreech,the tree lizard, came to his ears. For a moment, he thoughthe was back on Venus again, in the jungle, but on second thought he knew this was not right. He was ona space ship headed for earth. But, if this was true, how did it happen he could hear the musical chirp ofa lizard that lived in the jungle of Venus?It was too much of a problem. He gave up trying to solve it. Voices came to his ears. Somewheremen were arguing. Frightened men. He listened without any great interest. What were frightened men tohim? Something wet and soft passed over his face.“What are we going to do?” Squeaky Voice said.“I still say our best bet is to take guns and supplies from the ship and head straight into the jungle,”Firm Voice answered. There was strength in this voice. Balfour decided he liked the man who owned it.“Gentlemen, gentlemen,” a soothing voice spoke. “We can remain right where we are, in perfectsafety. In forty-eight hours, at the longest, the ship will be repaired. Then we can take off again.”Dimly, Balfour recognized this voice as belonging to Captain Vincent. Who was Captain Vincent? Atthis moment, he didn’t know. He didn’t much care. The voices came again but he had lost interest.Something soft and wet was passing over his face again. He opened his eyes.
[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]