Subspace Survivors | Page 9

Herc?"
"With thanks to you, Barbara, for the word; slime. If Lopresto is a
financier, I'm an angel, with wings and halo complete. Gangsters;
hoodlums; racketeers; you'd have to open every can of concentrate
aboard to find all their spare artillery."
"Check. The first thing to do is----"
"One word first," Bernice put in. "I want to thank you, First Off--no,
not First Officer, but I could hardly----"
"Sure you can. I'm 'Babe' to us all, and you're 'Bun'. As to the other,
forget it. You and I, Herc, will go over and----"
"And I," Adams put in, definitely. "I must photograph everything,
before it is touched; therefore I must be the first on board. I must do
some autopsies and also----"
"Of course. You're right," Deston said. "And if I haven't said it before,
I'm tremendously glad to have a Big Brain along ... oh, excuse that
crack, please, Dr. Adams. It slipped out on me."
Adams laughed. "In context, I regard that as the highest compliment I
have ever received. To you youngsters my advanced age of fifty-two
represents senility. Nevertheless, you men need not 'Doctor' me. Either
'Adams' or 'Andy' will do very nicely. As for you two young
women----"
"I'm going to call you 'Uncle Andy'," Barbara said, with a grin. "Now,
Uncle Andy, you being a Big Brain--the term being used in its most

complimentary sense--and the way you talked, one of your eight
doctorates is in medicine."
"Of course."
"Are you any good at obstetrics?"
"In the present instance I am perfectly safe in saying----"
"Wait a minute!" Deston snapped. "Bobby, you are not----"
"I am too! That is, I don't suppose I am yet, since we were married only
last Tuesday, but if he's competent--and I'm sure he is--I'm certainly
going to! If we get back to Earth I want to, and if we don't, both Bun
and I have got to. Castaways' Code, you know. So how about it, Uncle
Andy?"
"I know what you two girls are," Adams said, quietly. "I know what
you two men must of necessity be. Therefore I can say without
reservation that none of you need feel any apprehension whatever."
Deston was about to say something, but Barbara forestalled him. "Well,
we can think about it, anyway, and talk it over. But for right now, I
think it's high time we all got some sleep. Don't you?"
* * * * *
It was; and they did; and after they had slept and had eaten "breakfast"
the three men wafted themselves across a couple of hundred yards of
space to the crippled starship. Powerful floodlights were rigged.
"What ... a ... mess." Deston's voice was low and wondering. "The
whole Top looks as though she'd crash-landed and spun out for eight
miles. But the Middle and Tail look untouched."
Inside, however, devastation had gone deep into the Middle. Bulkheads,
walls, floors, structural members; were torn, sheared, twisted into
weirdly-distorted shapes impossible to understand or explain. And,
much worse, were the absences; for in dozens of volumes, of as many

sizes and of shapes incompatible with any three-dimensional geometry,
every solid thing had vanished--without leaving any clue whatever as to
where or how it had gone.
[Illustration]
After three long days of hard work, Adams was satisfied. He had taken
pictures as fast as both officers could process the film; he had covered
many miles of tape with words only half of which either spaceman
could understand. Then, finally, he said:
"Well, that covers the preliminary observations as well as I know how
to do it. Thank you, boys, for your forbearance and your help. Now, if
you'll help me find my stuff and bring some of it--a computer and so
on--up to the lounge?" They did so; the "and so on" proving to be a
bewildering miscellany indeed. "Thank you immensely, gentlemen;
now I won't bother you any more."
"You've learned a lot, Doc, and we haven't learned much of anything."
Deston grinned ruefully. "That makes you the director. You'll have to
tell us, in general terms, what to do."
"Oh? I can offer a few suggestions. It is virtually certain: One, that no
subspace equipment will function. Two, that all normal-space
equipment, except for some items you know about, will function
normally. Three, that we can't do anything about subspace without
landing on a planet. Four, that such landing will require extreme--I
might almost say fantastic--precautions."
Although both officers thought that they understood Item Four, neither
of them had any inkling as to what Adams really meant. They did
understand thoroughly, however, Items One, Two, and Three.
"Hell's jets!" Deston exclaimed. "Do you mean we'll have to blast
normal to a system?"
"It isn't as bad as you think, Babe," Jones said. "Stars are much thicker
here--we're