World Without Chance: Classic Pulp Science Fiction Stories in the Vein of Stanley G. Weinbaum. John Russell Fearn
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were told to capture it—”
“I did; it’s down below—but only in the first gallery. I can get it. Now you know how came I on the surface to meet you. Obeying orders.”
“That’s clear enough.” Cardew nodded tensely. “But about the ship. You say it’s below. Did you drive it here?”’
“I can do anything. I carried it.”
“Carried it?” Cardew’s voice was faint with amazement.
“Sure. Damned easy! I’ll show you.”
The two stood aside and watched, in bewilderment, as he locked his hand in the manhole’s ring and pulled with all his power. By degrees the great valve rose upward under his enormous strength until it was vertical. Then he jumped down into a cavernous pit.
For nearly five minutes the two waited; then they both gasped in surprise as the familiar, blunted nose of a small private space flier began to appear. Little by little the whole ship began to emerge, thrust up the long pit incline by Jo’s tremendous muscles. When at last it was on the flat ground he looked at them anxiously.
“Down below it was safe from pressure for much longer time than up,” he explained. “Better go quick, scram. Very light to me—almost vacuum.”
Cardew quickly looked the ship over. It was only dented from its earlier fall. He turned to Jo. “Did you manage to find out who it belonged to?”
“Sure. Two people like you—Pluto travelers. Caught in drag and crashed—necks broken. I read their brains before I threw them outside. Darned smart of me, and then some!”
Cardew looked; at him gratefully. “You’re a great scout, Jo,” he said warmly. “I only wish I could repay your generosity. Your orientation was right, by the way. How the devil you knew your way to these cliffs from the Fishnet is more than I can figure.”
Jo’s huge mouth grinned expansively.
“Oriental sense first class,” he agreed modestly. “You carbohydrates—me ammonia, but we think regular, Darned good race mine. Wish I could come with you, but your world would let my compressed body blow apart. No dice and deep regrets offered right now.”
“There must be something we can do!” the girl insisted, turning toward the spaceship’s airlock.
“Perhaps—crystals?” Jo said almost shyly.
Laughing, Cardew unhooked the container from his belt and tossed it over. Then, with a final farewell, he and the girl passed inside the vessel and screwed up the airlock.
Once their stifling suits were removed, Cardew fired the rocket tubes. With a grinding roar, the ship tore furiously against the gravity; the terrific drag of Jupiter made itself evident instantly, a drag mounting with every second that the ship boomed and exploded upward from that titanic world.
In eight minutes both Claire and Cardew were unconscious, robot machinery alone firing the tubes. Then, little by little, as the distance increased and the gravity correspondingly lessened, they came out of insensibility, to find Jupiter a vast, banded disk behind them. Ahead was the void with the single green star of Earth plainly visible in the firmament.
“We made it!” Cardew breathed thankfully. “We actually made it!”
“Thanks to Jo,” the girl put in quietly. “I shall never see smelling salts again but what I’ll think of him.”
Cardew did not answer, but he was smiling.
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