Masters of Space | Page 2

I'm really hoping, Bill, that she surprises me as much as I intend to surprise the Navy."
* * * * *
Alarm bells clanged as the mighty Perseus blinked out of overdrive. Every crewman sprang to his post.
"Mister Snowden, why did we emerge without orders from me?" Captain Sawtelle bellowed, storming into the control room three jumps behind Hilton.
"The automatics took control, sir," he said, quietly.
"Automatics! I give the orders!"
"In this case, Captain Sawtelle, you don't," Hilton said. Eyes locked and held. To Sawtelle, this was a new and strange co-commander. "I would suggest that we discuss this matter in private."
"Very well, sir," Sawtelle said; and in the captain's cabin Hilton opened up.
"For your information, Captain Sawtelle, I set my inter-space coupling detectors for any objective I choose. When any one of them reacts, it trips the kickers and we emerge. During any emergency outside the Solar System I am in command--with the provision that I must relinquish command to you in case of armed attack on us."
"Where do you think you found any such stuff as that in the directive? It isn't there and I know my rights."
"It is, and you don't. Here is a semantic chart of the whole directive. As you will note, it overrides many Navy regulations. Disobedience of my orders constitutes mutiny and I can--and will--have you put in irons and sent back to Terra for court-martial. Now let's go back."
In the control room, Hilton said, "The target has a mass of approximately five hundred metric tons. There is also a significant amount of radiation characteristic of uranexite. You will please execute search, Captain Sawtelle."
And Captain Sawtelle ordered the search.
"What did you do to the big jerk, boss?" Sandra whispered.
"What you and Bill suggested," Hilton whispered back. "Thanks to your analysis of the directive--pure gobbledygook if there ever was any--I could. Mighty good job, Sandy."
* * * * *
Ten or fifteen more minutes passed. Then:
"Here's the source of radiation, sir," a searchman reported. "It's a point source, though, not an object at this range."
"And here's the artifact, sir," Pilot Snowden said. "We're coming up on it fast. But ... but what's a skyscraper skeleton doing out here in interstellar space?"
As they closed up, everyone could see that the thing did indeed look like the metallic skeleton of a great building. It was a huge cube, measuring well over a hundred yards along each edge. And it was empty.
"That's one for the book," Sawtelle said.
"And how!" Hilton agreed. "I'll take a boat ... no, suits would be better. Karns, Yarborough, get Techs Leeds and Miller and suit up."
"You'll need a boat escort," Sawtelle said. "Mr. Ashley, execute escort Landing Craft One, Two, and Three."
The three landing craft approached that enigmatic lattice-work of structural steel and stopped. Five grotesquely armored figures wafted themselves forward on pencils of force. Their leader, whose suit bore the number "14", reached a mammoth girder and worked his way along it up to a peculiar-looking bulge. The whole immense structure vanished, leaving men and boats in empty space.
Sawtelle gasped. "Snowden! Are you holding 'em?"
"No, sir. Faster than light; hyperspace, sir."
"Mr. Ashby, did you have your interspace rigs set?"
"No, sir. I didn't think of it, sir."
"Doctor Cummings, why weren't yours out?"
"I didn't think of such a thing, either--any more than you did," Sandra said.
Ashby, the Communications Officer, had been working the radio. "No reply from anyone, sir," he reported.
"Oh, no!" Sandra exclaimed. Then, "But look! They're firing pistols--especially the one wearing number fourteen--but pistols?"
"Recoil pistols--sixty-threes--for emergency use in case of power failure," Ashby explained. "That's it ... but I can't see why all their power went out at once. But Fourteen--that's Hilton--is really doing a job with that sixty-three. He'll be here in a couple of minutes."
And he was. "Every power unit out there--suits and boats both--drained," Hilton reported. "Completely drained. Get some help out there fast!"
* * * * *
In an enormous structure deep below the surface of a far-distant world a group of technicians clustered together in front of one section of a two-miles long control board. They were staring at a light that had just appeared where no light should have been.
"Someone's brain-pan will be burned out for this," one of the group radiated harshly. "That unit was inactivated long ago and it has not been reactivated."
"Someone committed an error, Your Loftiness?"
"Silence, fool! Stretts do not commit errors!"
* * * * *
As soon as it was clear that no one had been injured, Sawtelle demanded, "How about it, Hilton?"
"Structurally, it was high-alloy steel. There were many bulges, possibly containing mechanisms. There were drive-units of a non-Terran type. There were many projectors, which--at a rough guess--were a hundred times as powerful as any I have ever seen before. There were no indications that the thing had ever been enclosed, in whole or