Triplanetary
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[Transcriber's note:
Typographical errors have been corrected.
This etext was produced from Amazing Stories January,
February, March and April 1934. Extensive research did not
uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this
publication was renewed.]
_Triplanetary_
By EDWARD E. SMITH, Ph.D.
We are sure that our readers will be highly pleased to have
us give the first installment of a story by Dr. Smith. It
will continue for several numbers and is a worthy follower
of the "Skylark" stories which were so much appreciated by
our readers. We think that they will find this story
superior to the earlier ones. Dr. Smith certainly has the
narrative power, and that, joined with his scientific
position, makes him an ideal author for our columns.
Illustrated by MOREY
CHAPTER I
Pirates of Space
Apparently motionless to her passengers and crew, the Interplanetary
liner _Hyperion_ bored serenely onward through space at normal
acceleration. In the railed-off sanctum in one corner of the control
room a bell tinkled, a smothered whirr was heard, and Captain Bradley
frowned as he studied the brief message upon the tape of the recorder--a
message flashed to his desk from the operator's panel. He beckoned, and
the second officer, whose watch it now was, read aloud:
"Reports of scout patrols still negative."
"Still negative." The officer scowled in thought. "They've already
searched beyond the widest possible location of the wreckage, too. Two
unexplained disappearances inside a month--first the _Dione_, then the
_Rhea_--and not a plate nor a lifeboat recovered. Looks bad, sir. One
might be an accident; two might possibly be a coincidence...." His voice
died away. What might that coincidence mean?
"But at three it would get to be a habit," the captain finished the
thought. "And whatever happened, happened quick. Neither of them had
time to say a word--their location recorders simply went dead. But of
course they didn't have our detector screens nor our armament. According
to the observatories we're in clear ether, but I wouldn't trust them
from Tellus to Luna. You have given the new orders, of course?"
"Yes, sir. Detectors full out, all three courses of defensive screen on
the trips, projectors manned, suits on the hooks. Every object detected
in the outer space to be investigated immediately--if vessels, they are
to be warned to stay beyond extreme range. Anything entering the fourth
zone is to be rayed."
"Right--we are going through!"
"But no known type of vessel could have made away with them without
detection," the second officer argued. "I wonder if there isn't
something in those wild rumors we've been hearing lately?"
"Bah! Of course not!" snorted the captain. "Pirates in ships faster than
light--fifth order rays--nullification of gravity--mass without
inertia--ridiculous! Proved impossible, over and over again. No, sir, if
pirates are operating in space--and it looks very much like it--they
won't get far against a good big battery full of kilowatt-hours behind
three courses of heavy screen, and a good solid set of multiplex rays.
Properly used, they're good enough for anybody. Pirates, Neptunians,
angels, or devils--in ships or on sunbeams--if they tackle the
_Hyperion_ we'll burn them out of the ether!"
Leaving the captain's desk, the watch officer resumed his tour of duty.
The six great lookout plates into which the alert observers peered were
blank, their far-flung ultra-sensitive detector screens encountering no
obstacle--the ether was empty for thousands upon thousands of
kilometers. The signal lamps upon the pilot's panel were dark, its
warning bells were silent. A brilliant point of white in the center of
the pilot's closely ruled micrometer grating, exactly upon the
cross-hairs of his directors, showed that the immense vessel was
precisely upon the calculated course, as laid down by the automatic
integrating course-plotters. Everything was quiet and in order.
"All's well, sir," he reported briefly to Captain Bradley--but all was
not well.
* * * * *
Danger--more serious far in that it was not external--was even then, all
unsuspected, gnawing at the great ship's vitals. In a locked and
shielded compartment, deep down in the interior of the liner, was the
great air purifier. Now a man leaned against the primary duct--the aorta
through which flowed the stream of pure air supplying the entire vessel.
This man, grotesque in full panoply of space armor, leaned against the
duct, and as he leaned a drill bit deeper and deeper into the steel wall
of the pipe. Soon it broke through, and the slight rush of air was
stopped by the insertion of a tightly fitting rubber tube. The tube
terminated in a heavy rubber balloon, which surrounded a frail glass
bulb. The man stood tense, one hand holding before his silica-and-steel
helmeted head a large pocket chronometer, the other lightly grasping the
balloon. A sneering grin was upon his face as he awaited the exact
second of action--the carefully pre-determined instant when his right
hand, closing, would shatter the fragile flask and force its contents
into the primary air stream of the _Hyperion_!
* * * * *
Far above, in the main saloon, the regular evening dance was in full
swing. The ship's orchestra crashed into silence, there was a patter of
applause and Clio Marsden, radiant belle of the voyage, led her partner
out into the promenade and up to one of the observation plates.
"Oh, we can't see the earth any more!" she exclaimed. "Which way do you
turn this, Mr. Costigan?"
"Like this," and Conway Costigan, burly young first officer of the
liner, turned the dials. "There--this plate is looking back, or down, at
Tellus; this other one is looking ahead."
Earth was a brilliantly shining crescent far beneath the flying vessel.
Above her, ruddy Mars and silvery Jupiter blazed in splendor ineffable
against a background of utterly indescribable blackness--a background
thickly besprinkled with dimensionless points of dazzling brilliance
which were the stars.
"Oh, isn't it wonderful!" breathed the girl, awed. "Of course, I suppose
that it's old stuff to you, but I--a ground-gripper, you know, and I
could look at it forever, I think. That's why I want to come out here
after every dance. You know, I ..."
Her voice broke off suddenly, with a queer, rasping catch, as she seized
his arm in a frantic clutch and as quickly went limp. He stared at her
sharply, and understood instantly the message written in her eyes--eyes
now enlarged, staring hard, brilliant, and full of soul-searing terror
as she slumped down, helpless but for his support. In the act of
exhaling as he was, lungs almost entirely empty, yet he held his breath
until he had seized the microphone from his belt and had snapped the
lever to "emergency."
"Control room!" he gasped then, and every speaker throughout the great
cruiser of the void blared out the warning as he forced his already
evacuated lungs to absolute emptiness. "Vee-Two Gas! Get tight!"
Writhing and twisting in his fierce struggle to keep his lungs from
gulping in a draft of that noxious atmosphere, and with the unconscious
form of the girl draped limply over his left arm, Costigan leaped toward
the portal of the nearest lifeboat. Orchestra instruments crashed to the
floor and dancing couples fell and sprawled inertly while the tortured
First Officer swung the door of the lifeboat open and dashed across the
tiny room to the air-valves. Throwing them wide open, he put his mouth
to the orifice and let his laboring lungs gasp their eager fill of the
cold blast roaring from the tanks. Then, air-hunger partially assuaged,
he again held his breath, broke open the emergency locker, donned one of
the space-suits always kept there, and opened its valves wide in order
to flush out of his uniform any lingering trace of the lethal gas.
He then leaped back to his companion. Shutting off the air, he released
a stream of pure oxygen, held her face in it, and made shift to force
some of it into her lungs by compressing and releasing her chest against
his own body. Soon she drew a spasmodic breath, choking and coughing,
and he again changed the gaseous stream to one of pure air, speaking
urgently as she showed signs of returning consciousness. Now, it was
Clio Marsden's life.
"Stand up!" he snapped. "Hang onto this brace and keep your face in this
air-stream until I get a suit around you! Got me?"
She nodded weakly, and, assured that she could now hold herself at the
valve, it was the work of only a minute to encase her in one of the
protective coverings. Then, as she sat upon a bench, recovering her
strength, he flipped on the lifeboat's visiphone projector and shot its
invisible beam up into the control room, where he saw space-armored
figures furiously busy at the panels.
"Dirty work at the cross-roads!" he blazed to his captain, man to
man--formality disregarded, as it so often was in the Triplanetary
service. "There's skulduggery afoot somewhere in our primary air! Maybe
that's the way they got those other two ships--pirates! Might have been
a timed bomb--don't see how anybody could have stowed away down there
through the inspections, and nobody but Franklin can neutralize the
shield of the air-room--but I'm going to look around, anyway. Then I'll
join you fellows up there."
"What was it?" the shaken girl asked. "I think that I remember your
saying 'Vee-Two gas.' That's forbidden! Anyway, I owe you my life,
Conway, and I'll never forget it--never. Thanks--but the others--how
about all the rest of us?"
"It was Vee-Two, and it is forbidden," Costigan replied grimly, eyes
fast upon the flashing plate, whose point of projection was now deep in
the bowels of the vessel. "The penalty for using it or having it is
death on sight. Gangsters and pirates use it, since they have nothing to
lose, being on the death list already. As for your life, I haven't saved
it yet--you may wish I'd let it ride before we get done. The others are
too far gone for oxygen--couldn't have brought even you around a few
seconds later, quick as I got to you. But there's a sure antidote--we
all carry it in a lock-box in our armor--and we all know how to use it,
because crooks all use Vee-Two and so we're always expecting it. But
since the air will be pure again in half an hour we'll be able to revive
the others easily enough if we can get by with whatever is going to
happen next. There's the bird that did it, right in the air-room! It's
the chief engineer's suit, but that isn't Franklin that's in it. Some
passenger--disguised--slugged the chief--took his suit and
projectors--hole in duct--p-s-s-t! All washed out! Maybe that's all he
was scheduled to do to us in this performance, but he'll do nothing else
in this life!"
"Don't go down there!" protested the girl. "His armor is _so_ much
better than that emergency suit you are wearing, and he's got Mr.
Franklin's Lewiston, besides!"
"Don't be an idiot!" he snapped. "We can't have a live pirate
aboard--we're going to be altogether too busy with outsiders directly.
Don't worry, I'm not going to give him a break. I'm taking a Standish
and I'll rub him out like a blot. Stay right here until I come back
after you," he commanded, and the heavy, vacuum insulated door of the
lifeboat clanged shut behind him as he leaped out into the promenade.