Wandl the Invader by Ray Cummings (ebook pc reader .txt) 📖

"Thank God you've got a power-suit, Gregg. So have I. We must keep together."

"Yes."

I could feel the floor grid of the chamber shuddering beneath my feet. The Cometara was cracking, bursting outward throughout her length; at any instant she might collapse.

For a moment we stood poised. Beneath us, here at the[61] brink were millions upon millions of miles of emptiness, the remote, unfathomable void. Blazing worlds down there in the black darkness.

"Good-by, Gregg. It may be the end for us."

"Good luck, Johnny."

His bloated figure dropped away from me. I waited just an instant, and then I dove into space.

For a moment there was a chaos of strangeness, the wrench to my sense of the transition. I had been the inhabitant of a little world, the Cometara, with a gravity beneath my feet. Now, in a breath, I had no world to inhabit. I was alone in space. No gravity; nothing solid to touch; emptiness.

I was in a world to myself, and the abnormality of it brought a mental shock. But in a moment the adjustment came. I passed the transition, the sense of falling.

The firmament steadied and my senses cleared. My dive from the Cometara carried me in a slow arc some three hundred feet away. There had been a sense of falling, but no actual fall. My velocity was retarded, with the mass of the Cometara pulling at me. I went like a toy boat in water shoved by a child, quickly slowing. In a few moments, the velocity was gone, and I hung poised. I saw Grantline's bloated form not over fifty feet from me. He waved an arm at me.

Out here in the void I lay weightless, as though upon an infinitely soft feather bed. I could kick, flounder, but not endow myself with motion. I craned my neck, gazed around through the bulging vizor pane.

The Earth and the Sun hung level with the white star-dots strewn everywhere. I could not see that unknown light-beam from Greater New York; it was shafting out now in the other direction, so that the Earth hid it from me. Venus was visible to one side of the Sun. The enemy light-stream from Grebhar was apparent; and as I turned my body and bent double to look behind me, I saw Mars and the sword-like ray from Ferrok-Shahn. The beams streamed off like the radiance of the Milky Way, faintly luminous but seemingly visible for an infinite distance.

The Cometara was obviously falling now toward the Moon, drawn irresistibly, and all of us with her, toward the lunar surface. It seemed so close, that black and white mountainous[62] disc. We were, I suppose, some twenty thousand miles from it, gathering speed as it pulled at us. But that motion was not apparent now. Distance dwindled all these celestial motions, so that all the firmament seemed frozen into immobility.

But there was some motion. Twenty or more bloated figures, the survivors from the wreck of the Cometara, were encircling it in varying orbits, revolving around it like tiny satellites. Some were closing in, drawn against it. I saw one plunge against the wrecked dome, and begin crawling like a fly. And I found that the forces of the firmament were molding my orbit also. My outward plunge was checked. I poised for an indeterminate instant, and then I took my orbit. I too, was a satellite of the Cometara.

I gazed at the wreck of the Cometara. My ship! My first command! So smoothly, confidently rising from the Earth only a few hours ago; and she had come to this. She lay askew in the heavens. The dome was cracked throughout all its length and smashed like a shell at the sterntip.

I could see the interior litter beneath the dome, the twisted and strained lines of the hull. A dead ship now, the mechanisms stilled; dead and silent inside, with all the warmth gone out of it. All the air dissipated, so that in every cubby, every dark corridor of that broken hull there was the coldness and silence of interplanetary space.

I suppose these thoughts swept me within a few seconds. I saw myself starting to revolve in my orbit. Perhaps my motion would carry me around indefinitely; or I might be drawn down to the vessel as those other survivors had been drawn.

Grantline, with one of the few power suits, was coming toward me now, with tiny fluorescent streams back along his body from his shoulder blades. I switched on my own mechanism. It moved me toward him, and our gravity attracted us. We shut off the power when twenty feet apart; drifted together; contacted; bounced apart like rubber balls as our inflated suits struck. Then in a moment we had drifted back and clung.

I touched the metal plate of his shoulder. "Working all right?"

"Yes. Thank God for this much, Gregg. I wonder how many are alive."

In the chaos of the abandonment, many of the men's air[63] mechanisms had failed to operate. It is always so in times of disaster. We could see, revolving around the wreck, and motionless against its dome, those horrible flabby, deflated suits where the delicate Erentz mechanism had failed. Within was only a corpse.

"Too many," I said. "And not more than four or five of us with power. What shall we do first? Round them up? We must all get together."

His answering voice was grim. "We can tow them from the wreck. Six or seven of us altogether have power. Do you suppose we can get away, Gregg? Get loose from the ship before she falls?"

Only trying it could tell us that. The Cometara, and all of us with her, were plunging for the Moon. We would seek out the men who were alive and tow them in a string. If we could break the gravity pull of the ship, and then struggle upward from the Moon, we could maintain ourselves here in space until some rescue ship from Earth, Venus or Mars would come and pick us up.

"You take one side, Gregg; I'll take the other. Don't go aboard; she might collapse."

"I'll pick up the men without power and alive. The others with power suits will do the same. Then we'll meet out here, about where we are now?"

"Yes. And hurry, Gregg! Every mile toward the Moon makes it that much harder. We're falling fast."

"Good luck!" I shoved away from him. And within a minute, as he went in an arc toward the Cometara bow and I toward her stern, I suddenly thought of that returning enemy vessel. My last look through the 'scope had shown that she was returning; and then I had forgotten it.

My gaze swept the firmament now. I had no 'scope instruments within the helmet. With the naked eye the enemy ship was not in sight. But I knew that meant little; within a moment she could come in view and be here if she were going at any great velocity.

There were on the Cometara, at the time of the disaster, some sixty-odd men; perhaps forty had gotten away. And I could see very soon that not more than fifteen, or less, out here were alive. Two with power were ahead of me now, slowly floating past the wrecked dome of the stern. One had picked[64] up two others, found them alive and was towing them out. They went past me, moving very slowly so that I could see that two were all that one of us could tow and attain any velocity at all.

I contacted with the leader. He was one of Grantline's men.

"Two or three hundred feet out," I directed. I gestured. "Grantline said to meet out there. I'll tow others."

"Yes. Around the stern you'll find—God! Haljan, look!"

A mile from us the enemy ship was in view. Passing—no! Stopping! With incredible retardation she had plunged into view, was here, and yet had no great forward velocity. She seemed no more rapid than a great air liner winging past, so close that her reddish-tinged bulging hull length showed clearly. The discs were gone. The funnel set on top of her was sloped diagonally toward us as she rolled on her side, so that momentarily I could see down into it. There was some mechanism down there. The bow radiance was a narrow opalescent beam in advance of the bow.

"Slowing, Haljan!"

"Yes, stopping. Don't try to meet Grantline. Tow your men away!"

"Or should we board the Cometara and hide?"

"No. They've come back to bombard her."

I kicked at him violently. With his two drifting figures clinging behind, he swung past me. I headed behind the stern. Upon its dangling framework several of our men were glued, lying there inert. I caught a glimpse of the interior of the stern, the littered deck; men lying there had been stricken before they had time to get into their suits.

On the outside, forward, I saw Grantline come rounding the bow, towing a figure and heading for another. On the outside of the bow-peak a group of others were perched, gesticulating for help. I started that way; then I saw another, and nearer figure in a power suit heading for them. I swung back. There were two figures on the outside of the under-hull whom I could more quickly reach. Inverted flies. Their feet were on the keel. They stooped and waved toward me.

I took a swoop. Passing close down the hull, my rocket-streams struck the hull plates and gave me sudden downward velocity. I shot down, out past the keel. And again I saw the[65] enemy ship. She hung poised, no more than two miles away. And as I looped over, with all the black, star-strewn firmament in a dizzy whirl, the great Moon-disc, first above, and then below me, I saw the bow-beam of the enemy swinging. It came to the Cometara, and there it clung.

I had gone perhaps fifty feet below the keel with my dive when I righted. I was mounting. I saw the opalescent ten-foot circle of the beam moving along the Cometara hull. It seemed to do no damage; then suddenly it darted down and clung to me.

I felt nothing save the impact of a gentle push, something shoving with a ponderable force against me.

I saw the Cometara receding, the heavens swinging as I turned over. The red disc of the distant Earth swooped. The Moon surface momentarily seemed rotating and lifting above me.

I was helpless, rolling, then whirling end-over-end. Then again I steadied. The beam was gone from me.

I saw the Cometara, a full mile away from me! The enemy ship was again in motion, moving toward me, and between the Cometara and the Earth. And the beam was steady upon the Cometara's mid-section.

The Cometara had a new velocity now. I could not miss it. She was dwindling rapidly in visual size; relative to me, she was receding, falling upon the Moon. More than that she was being pushed downward by the repulsive force of the strange enemy beam upon her. I stared, as with all the little dots which were our men around and upon her, she went down into the void.

I found myself presently alone up here, with the enemy ship hovering nearby. Its maneuvering to thrust the wrecked Cometara toward the Moon had brought it within a mile of me. The bow-beam was still on the Cometara; and then abruptly it vanished.

The Cometara had almost dwindled beyond the sight of my unaided vision. By chance, undoubtedly, the beam had fallen upon me and thrust me from the wreck. I was alone up here now with the enemy, but they may not have noticed me, or cared. I found my power mechanism intact. I turned it on; slowly, like a log in water, I began moving away.

A minute. Five minutes. The Cometara was lost. Grantline,[66] all the men, were lost; with that added downward thrust they could never free themselves from the falling wreck.

I was jerked out of my thoughts by the sight of an oncoming red blob. Something was coming from the enemy ship, red with the sunlight and earthlight, silvered by the Moon and the stars. It took form. It was a disc, another of those cursed whirling discs, sent to annihilate me!

Then, when it was a quarter of a mile away, I saw that it was a disc which was turning slowly. Rocket radiances came from its rotating circumference; it came sailing directly at me, so swiftly that my own velocity was futile.

Another minute and I was caught. I saw that the disc was some fifteen feet in diameter, and that it bulged, so that within its convex floor and ceiling was a space of several feet.

I cut off my power and with pounding heart