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

opposite side of the vessel. Margaret lay in her seat in a dead faint. Dorothy and DuQuesne looked at each other in the feeble light of the torch. To the girl’s amazement, the man was as calm as though he were safe in his own house, and she made a determined effort to hold herself together.

“What next, Doctor DuQuesne?”

“I don’t know. We have a couple of days yet, at least. I’ll have to study awhile.”

“In that time Dick will find us, I know.”

“Even if they do find us in time, which I doubt, what good will it do? It simply means that they will go with us instead of saving us, for of course they can’t pull away, since we couldn’t. I hope they don’t find us, but locate this star in time to keep away from it.”

“Why?” she gasped. “You have been planning to kill both of them! I should think you would be delighted to take them with us?”

“Far from it. Please try to be logical. I intended to remove them because they stood in the way of my developing this new metal. If I am to be out of the way⁠—and frankly, I see very little chance of getting out of this⁠—I hope that Seaton goes ahead with it. It is the greatest discovery the world has ever known, and if both Seaton and I, the only two men in the world who know how to handle it, drop out, it will be lost for perhaps hundreds of years.”

“If Dick’s finding us means that he must go, too, of course I hope that he won’t find us, but I don’t believe that. I simply know that he could get us away from here.”

She continued more slowly, almost speaking to herself, her heart sinking with her voice:

“He is following us, and he won’t stop even if he does see this dead star and knows that he can’t get away. We will die together.”

“There’s no denying the fact that our situation is critical, but you know a man isn’t dead until after his heart stops beating. We have two whole days yet, and in that time, I can probably dope out some way of getting away from here.”

“I hope so,” she replied, keeping her voice from breaking only by a great effort. “But go ahead with your doping. I’m worn out.” She drew herself down upon one of the seats and stared at the ceiling, fighting to restrain an almost overpowering impulse to scream.

Thus the hours wore by⁠—Perkins dead; Margaret still unconscious; Dorothy lying in her seat, her thoughts a formless prayer, buoyed up only by her faith in God and in her lover; DuQuesne self-possessed, smoking innumerable cigarettes, his keen mind grappling with its most desperate problem, grimly fighting until the very last instant of life⁠—while the powerless space-car fell with an appalling velocity, faster and faster; falling toward that cold and desolate monster of the heaven.

X The Rescue

Seaton and Crane drove the Skylark in the direction indicated by the unwavering object-compass with the greatest acceleration they could stand, each man taking a twelve-hour watch at the instrument board.

Now, indeed, did the Skylark justify the faith of her builders, and the two inventors, with an exultant certainty of their success, flew out beyond man’s wildest imaginings. Had it not been for the haunting fear for Dorothy’s safety, the journey would have been one of pure triumph, and even that anxiety did not prevent a profound joy in the enterprise.

“If that misguided mutt thinks he can pull off a stunt like that and get away with it, he’s got another think coming,” asserted Seaton, after making a reading on the other car after several days of the flight. “He went off half-cocked this time, for sure, and we’ve got him foul. We’d better put on some negative pretty soon hadn’t we, Mart? Only a little over a hundred light-years now.”

Crane nodded agreement and Seaton continued:

“It’ll take as long to stop, of course, as it has taken to get out here, and if we ram them⁠—good night! Let’s figure it out as nearly as we can.”

They calculated their own speed, and that of the other vessel, as shown by the various readings taken, and applied just enough negative acceleration to slow the Skylark down to the speed of the other space-car when they should come up with it. They smiled at each other in recognition of the perfect working of the mechanism when the huge vessel had spun, with a sickening lurch, through a complete half-circle, the instant the power was reversed. Each knew that they were actually traveling in a direction that to them seemed “down,” but with a constantly diminishing velocity, even though they seemed to be still going “up” with an increasing speed.

Until nearly the end of the calculated time the two took turns as before, but as the time of meeting drew near both men were on the alert, taking readings on the object-compass every few minutes. Finally Crane announced:

“We are almost on them, Dick. They are so close that it is almost impossible to time the needle⁠—less than ten thousand miles.”

Seaton gradually increased the retarding force until the needle showed that they were very close to the other vessel and maintaining a constant distance from it. He then shut off the power, and both men hurried to the bottom window to search for the fleeing ship with their powerful night-glasses. They looked at each other in amazement as they felt themselves falling almost directly downward, with an astounding acceleration.

“What do you make of it, Dick?” asked Crane calmly, as he brought his glasses to his eyes and stared out into the black heavens, studded with multitudes of brilliant and unfamiliar stars.

“I don’t make it at all, Mart. By the feel, I should say we were falling toward something that would make our earth look like a pinhead. I remember now that I noticed that the bus