The Skylark of Space by E. E. Smith (books like beach read .TXT) 📕

strange instrument, went to the bottom window, and measured the apparent size of the dark star. Then, after cautioning the rest of the party to sit tight, he advanced the lever farther than it had been before. After half an hour he again slackened the pace and made another observation, finding to his astonishment that the dark mass had almost doubled its apparent size! Dorothy, noting his expression, was about to speak, but he forestalled her.

“We lost ground, instead of gaining, that spurt,” he remarked, as he hastened to his post. “It must be inconceivably large, to exert such an enormous attractive force at this distance. We’ll have to put on full power. Hang onto yourselves as best you can.”

He then pushed the lever out to its last notch and left it there until the bar was nearly gone, only to find that the faint disk of the monster globe was even larger than before, being now visible to the unaided eye. Revived, the three others saw it plainly⁠—a great dim circle, visible as is the dark portion of the new moon⁠—and, the power shut off, they felt themselves falling toward it with sickening speed. Perkins screamed with mad fear and flung himself grovelling upon the floor. Margaret, her nerves still unstrung, clutched at her heart with both hands. Dorothy, though her eyes looked like great black holes in her white face, looked DuQuesne in the eye steadily.

“This is the end, then?”

“Not yet,” he replied in a calm and level voice. “The end will not come for a good many hours, as I have calculated that it will take at least two days, probably more, to fall the distance we have to go. We have all that time in which to think out a way of escape.”

“Won’t the outer repulsive shell keep us from striking it, or at least break the force of our fall?”

“No. It was designed only as protection from meteorites and other small bodies. It is heavy enough to swing us away from a small planet, but it will be used up long before we strike.”

He lighted a cigarette and sat at case, as though in his own study, his brow wrinkled in thought as he made calculations in his notebook. Finally he rose to his feet.

“There’s only one chance that I can see. That is to gather up every scrap of copper we have and try to pull ourselves far enough out of line so that we will take an hyperbolic orbit around that body instead of falling into it.”

“What good will that do us?” asked Margaret, striving for self-control. “We will starve to death finally, won’t we?”

“Not necessarily. That will give us time to figure out something else.”

“You won’t have to figure out anything else, Doctor,” stated Dorothy positively. “If we miss that moon, Dick and Martin will find us before very long.”

“Not in this life. If they tried to follow us, they’re both dead before now.”

“That’s where even you are wrong!” she flashed at him. “They knew you were wrecking our machine, so they built another one, a good one. And they know a lot of things about this new metal that you have never dreamed of, since they were not in the plans you stole.”

DuQuesne went directly to the heart of the matter, paying no attention to her barbed shafts.

“Can they follow us through space without seeing us?” he demanded.

“Yes⁠—or at least, I think they can.”

“How do they do it?”

“I don’t know⁠—I wouldn’t tell you if I did.”

“You’ll tell if you know,” he declared, his voice cutting like a knife. “But that can wait until after we get out of this. The thing to do now is to dodge that world.”

He searched the vessel for copper, ruthlessly tearing out almost everything that contained the metal, hammering it flat and throwing it into the power-plant. He set the bar at right angles to the line of their fall and turned on the current. When the metal was exhausted, he made another series of observations upon the body toward which they were falling, and reported quietly:

“We made a lot of distance, but not enough. Everything goes in, this time.”

He tore out the single remaining light-wire, leaving the car in darkness save for the diffused light of his electric torch, and broke up the only remaining motor. He then took his almost priceless Swiss watch, his heavy signet ring, his scarf pin, and the cartridges from his pistol, and added them to the collection. Flashing his lamp upon Perkins, he relieved him of everything he had which contained copper.

“I think I have a few pennies in my pocketbook,” suggested Dorothy.

“Get ’em,” he directed briefly, and while she was gone he searched Margaret, without result save for the cartridges in her pistol, as she had no jewelry remaining after her imprisonment. Dorothy returned and handed him everything she had found.

“I would like to keep this ring,” she said slowly, pointing to a slender circlet of gold set with a solitaire diamond, “if you think there is any chance of us getting clear.”

“Everything goes that has any copper in it,” he said coldly, “and I am glad to see that Seaton is too good a chemist to buy any platinum jewelry. You may keep the diamond, though,” as he wrenched the jewel out of its setting and returned it to her.

He threw all the metal into the central chamber and the vessel gave a tremendous lurch as the power was again applied. It was soon spent, however, and after the final observation, the others waiting in breathless suspense for him to finish his calculations, he made his curt announcement.

“Not enough.”

Perkins, his mind weakened by the strain of the last few days, went completely insane at the words. With a wild howl he threw himself at the unmoved scientist, who struck him with the butt of his pistol as he leaped, the mighty force of DuQuesne’s blow crushing his skull like an eggshell and throwing him backward to the