The Graveyard of Space, Stephen Marlowe [books for 9th graders .TXT] 📗

blast with your suit rockets. A porthole should be better than an airlock if it's big enough to climb through. You won't have any trouble."

"But you still haven't told me what—"

"Inside the ships. People. They'll all be dead. If they didn't lose their air so far, they'll lose it when we go in. Either way, of course, they'll be dead. They've all been dead for years, with no food. But without air—"[Pg 65]

"What are you stopping for?" Diane said. "Please go on."

"A body, without air. Fifteen pounds of pressure per square inch on the inside, and zero on the outside. It isn't pretty. It bloats."

"My God, Ralph."

"I'm sorry, kid. Maybe you want to stay back here and I'll look."

"You said we only have ten hours. I want to help you."

All at once, the airlock swung out. Space yawned at them, black enormous, the silent ships, the dead sargasso ships, floating slowly by, eternally, unhurried....

"Better make it eight hours," Ralph said over the suit radio. "We'd better keep a couple of hours leeway in case I figured wrong. Eight hours and remember, don't get out of sight of the ship's lights and don't break radio contact under any circumstances. These suit radios work like miniature radar sets, too. If anything goes wrong, we'll be able to track each other. It's directional beam radio."

"But what can go wrong?"

"I don't know," Ralph admitted. "Nothing probably." He turned on his suit rockets and felt the sudden surge of power drive him clear of the ship. He watched Diane rocketing away from him to the right. He waved his hand in the bulky spacesuit. "Good luck," he called. "I love you, Diane."

"Ralph," she said. Her voice caught. He heard it catch over the suit radio. "Ralph, we agreed never to—oh, forget it. Good luck, Ralph. Good luck, oh good luck. And I—"

"You what."

"Nothing, Ralph. Good luck."

"Good luck," he said, and headed for the first jumble of space wrecks.

It would probably have taken them a month to explore all the derelicts which were old enough to have Gormann series eighty radarscopes. Theoretically, Ralph realized, even a newer ship could have one. But it wasn't likely, because if someone could afford a newer ship then he could afford a better radarscope. But that, he told himself, was only half the story. The other half was this: with a better radarscope a ship might not have floundered into the sargasso at all....

So it was hardly possible to pass up any ship if their life depended on it—and the going was slow.

Too slow.

He had entered some dozen ships in the first four hours turning, using his shoulder rockets to blast a port hole out and climb in through there. He had not liked what he saw, but there was no preventing it. Without a light it wasn't so bad, but you needed a light to examine the radarscope....[Pg 66]

They were dead. They had been dead for years but of course there would be no decomposition in the airless void of space and very little even if air had remained until he blasted his way in, for the air was sterile canned spaceship air. They were dead, and they were bloated. All impossibly fat men, with white faces like melons and gross bodies like Tweedle Dee's and limbs like fat sausages.

By the fifth ship he was sick to his stomach, but by the tenth he had achieved the necessary detachment to continue his task. Once—it was the eighth ship—he found a Gormann series eighty radarscope, and his heart pounded when he saw it. But the scope was hopelessly damaged, as bad as their own. Aside from that one, he did not encounter any, damaged or in good shape, which they might convert to their own use.

Four hours, he thought. Four hours and twelve ships. Diane reported every few moments by intercom. In her first four hours she had visited eight ships. Her voice sounded funny. She was fighting it every step of the way he thought. It must have been hell to her, breaking into those wrecks with their dead men with faces like white, bloated melons—

In the thirteenth ship he found a skeleton.

He did not report it to Diane over the intercom. The skeleton made no sense at all. The flesh could not possibly have decomposed. Curious, he clomped closer on his magnetic boots. Even if the flesh had decomposed, the clothing would have remained. But it was a skeleton picked completely clean, with no clothing, not even boots—

As if the man had stripped of his clothing first.

He found out why a moment later, and it left him feeling more than a little sick. There were other corpses aboard the ship, a battered Thompson '81 in worse shape than their own Gormann. Bodies, not skeletons. But when they had entered the sargasso they had apparently struck another ship. One whole side of the Thompson was smashed in and Ralph could see the repair patches on the wall. Near them and thoroughly destroyed, were the Thompson's spacesuits.

The galley lockers were empty when Ralph found them. All the food gone—how many years ago? And one of the crew, dying before the others.

Cannibalism.

Shuddering, Ralph rocketed outside into the clear darkness of space. That was a paradox, he thought. It was clear, all right, but it was dark. You could see a great way. You could see a million million miles but it was darker[Pg 67] than anything on Earth. It was almost an extra-dimensional effect. It made the third dimension on earth, the dimension of depth, seem hopelessly flat.

"Ralph!"

"Go ahead, kid," he said. It was their first radio contact in almost half an hour.

"Oh, Ralph. It's a Gormann. An eighty-five. I think. Right in front of me. Ralph, if its scopes are good—oh, Ralph."

"I'm coming," he said. "Go ahead inside. I'll pick up your beam and be along." He could feel his heart thumping wildly. Five hours now. They did not have much time. This ship—this Gormann eighty-five which Diane had found—might be their last chance. Because it would certainly take him all of three hours to transfer the radarscope, using the rockets from one of their spacesuits, to their own ship.

He rocketed along now, following her directional beam, and listened as she said: "I'm cutting through the porthole now, Ralph. I—"

Her voice stopped suddenly. It did not drift off gradually. It merely ceased, without warning, without reason. "Diane!" he called. "Diane, can you hear me?"

He tracked the beam in desperate silence. Wrecks flashed by, tumbling slowly in their web of mutual gravitation. Some were molten silver if the wan sunlight caught them. Some were black, but every rivet, every seam was distinct. The impossible clarity of blackest space....

"Ralph?" Her voice came suddenly.

"Yes, Diane. Yes. What is it?"

"What a curious thing. I stopped blasting at the port hole. I'm not going in that way. The airlock, Ralph."

"What about the airlock?"

"It opened up on me. It swung out into space, all of a sudden. I'm going in, Ralph."

Fear, unexpected, inexplicable, gripped him. "Don't," he said. "Wait for me."

"That's silly, Ralph. We barely have time. I'm going in now, Ralph. There. I'm closing the outer door. I wonder if the pressure will build up for me. If it doesn't, I'll blast the outer door with my rockets and get out of here.... Ralph! The light's blinking. The pressures building. The inner door is beginning to open, Ralph. I'm going inside now."

He was still tracking the beam. He thought he was close now, a hundred miles perhaps. A hundred miles by suit rocket was merely a few seconds but somehow the fear was still with him. It was that skeleton, he thought. That skele[Pg 68]ton had unnerved him.

"Ralph. It's here, Ralph. A radarscope just like ours. Oh, Ralph, it's in perfect shape."

"I'm coming," he said. A big old Bartson Cruiser tumbled by end over end, a thousand tonner, the largest ship he had seen in here so far. At some of the portholes as he flashed by he could see faces, dead faces staring into space forever.

Then Diane's voice suddenly: "Is that you, Ralph?"

"I'm still about fifty miles out," he said automatically, and then cold fear, real fear, gripped him. Is that you, Ralph?

"Ralph, is that—oh, Ralph. Ralph—" she screamed, and was silent.

"Diane! Diane, answer me."

Silence. She had seen someone—something. Alive? It hardly seemed possible. He tried to notch his rocket controls further toward full power, but they were straining already—

The dead ships flashed by, scores of them, hundreds, with dead men and dead dreams inside, waiting through eternity, in no hurry to give up their corpses and corpses of dreams.

He heard Diane again then, a single agonized scream. Then there was silence, absolute silence.

Time seemed frozen, frozen like the faces of the dead men inside the ships, suspended, unmoving, not dropping into the well of the past. The ships crawled by now, crawled. And from a long way off he saw the Gormann eighty-five. He knew it was the right ship because the outer airlock door had swung open again. It hung there in space, the lock gaping—

But it was a long way off.

He hardly seemed to be approaching it at all. Every few seconds he called Diane's name, but there was no answer. No answer. Time crawled with the fear icy now, as cold as death, in the pit of his stomach, with the fear making his heart pound rapidly, with the fear making it impossible for him to think. Fear—for Diane. I love you, Di, he thought. I love you. I never stopped loving you. We were wrong. We were crazy wrong. It was like a sargasso, inside of us, an emptiness which needed filling—but we were wrong. Diane—

He reached the Gormann and plunged inside the airlock, swinging the outer door shut behind him. He waited. Would the pressure build up again, as it had built up for Diane? He did not know. He could only wait—

A red light blinked over his head, on and off, on and off as pressure was built. Then it stopped.

Fifteen pounds of pressure in[Pg 69] the airlock, which meant that the inner door should open. He ran forward, rammed his shoulder against it, tumbled through. He entered a narrow companionway and clomped awkwardly toward the front of the ship, where the radarscope would be located.

He passed a skeleton in the companionway, like the one he had seen in another ship. For the same reason, he thought. He had time to think that. And then he saw them.

Diane. On the floor, her spacesuit off her now, a great bruise, blue-ugly bruise across her temple. Unconscious.

And the thing which hovered over her.

At first he did not know what it was, but he leaped at it. It turned, snarling. There was air in the ship and he wondered about that. He did not have time to wonder. The thing was like some monstrous, misshapen creature, a man—yes, but a man to give you nightmares. Bent and misshapen, gnarled, twisted like the roots of an ancient tree, with a wild growth of beard, white beard, heavy across the chest, with bent limbs powerfully muscled and a gaunt face, like a death's head. And the eyes—the eyes were wild, staring vacantly, almost glazed as in death. The eyes stared at him and through him and then he closed with this thing which had felled Diane.

It had incredible strength. The strength of the insane. It drove Ralph back across the cabin and Ralph, encumbered by his spacesuit, could only fight awkwardly. It drove him back and it found something on the floor, the metal leg of what once had been a chair, and slammed it down across the faceplate of Ralph's spacesuit.

Ralph staggered, fell to his knees. He had absorbed the blow on the crown of his skull through the helmet of the suit, and it dazed him. The thing struck again, and Ralph felt himself falling....

Somehow, he climbed to his feet again. The thing was back over Diane's still form again, looking at her, its eyes staring and vacant. Spittle drooled from the lips—

Then Ralph was wrestling with it again. The thing was almost protean. It all but seemed to change its shape and writhe from Ralph's grasp as they struggled across the cabin, but this time there was no weapon for it to grab and use with stunning force.

Half-crazed himself now, Ralph got his fingers gauntleted in rubberized metal, about the sinewy throat under the tattered beard. His fingers closed there and the wild eyes went big and he held it that way a long time, then finally thrust it away from him.

The thing fell but sprang to its[Pg 70] feet.