Spacehounds of IPC, E. E. Smith [best books to read for students TXT] 📗

dispelled the mist, and when they had descended to within a few thousand feet of the surface, their vision was unobstructed. Immediately below them the terrain was mountainous and heavily wooded; while far to the east the rays of a small, pale sun glinted upon a vast body of water. No signs of habitation were visible as far as the eye could reach.

"Now to pick out a location for our power-plant. We must have a waterfall for power, a good place to hide our ship from observation, and I'd like to have a little seam of coal. We can use wood if we have to, but I think we can find some coal. This is all sedimentary rock—it looks a lot like the country along the North Fork of the Flathead, in Montana. There are a lot of coal outcrops, usually, in such topography as this is."

"We want to hide in a hurry, though, don't we?"

"Not particularly, I think. If they had missed us at all, they would have had us long ago, and with all the damage we did with those projectors they won't be surprised at one piece being missing—I imagine they lost a good many."

"But they'll know that somebody caused all that disturbance. Won't they hunt for us?"

"Maybe, and maybe not—no telling what they'll do. However, by the time they can land and get checked up and ready to hunt for us, we'll be a mighty small needle, well hidden in a good big haystack."

For several hours they roamed over the mountainous region at high velocity, seeking the best possible location, and finally they found one that was almost ideal—a narrow canyon overhung with heavy trees, opening into a wide, deep gorge upon a level with its floor. A mighty waterfall cascaded into the gorge just above the canyon, and here and there could be seen black outcrops which Stevens, after a close scrutiny, declared to be coal. He deftly guided their cumbersome wedge of steel into the retreat, allowed it to settle gently to the ground, and shut off the power.

"Well, little fellow-conspirator against the peace and dignity of the Jovians, I don't know just where we are, but wherever it is, we're here. We got away clean, and as long as we don't use any high-tension stuff or anything else that they can trace, I think we're as safe as money in a bank."

"I suppose that I ought to be scared to death, Steve, but I'm not—I'm just too thrilled for words," Nadia answered, and the eager sparkle in her eyes bore out her words. "Can we go out now? How about air? Shall we wear suits or go out as we are? Have you got a weapon of any kind? Hurry up—let's do something!"

"Pipe down, ace! Remember that we don't know any more about anything around here than a pig does about Sunday, and conduct yourself accordingly. Take it easy. I'm surprised at the gravity here. This is certainly Ganymede, and it has a diameter of only about fifty seven hundred kilometers. If I remember correctly, Damoiseau estimated its mass at about three one-hundredths that of the Earth, which would make its surface gravity about one-sixth. However, it is actually almost a half, as you see by this spring-balance here. Therefore it is quite a little more massive than has been...."

"What of it? Let's go places and do things!"

"Calm yourself, Ginger, you've got lots of time—we'll be here for quite a while, I'm afraid. We can't go out until we analyze the air—we're sure lucky there's as much as there is. I'm not exactly the world's foremost chemist, but fortunately an air-analysis isn't much of a job with the apparatus we carry."

While Nadia controlled her impatience as best she could, Stevens manipulated the bulbs and pipettes of the gas apparatus.

"Pressure, fifty-two centimeters—more than I dared hope for—and analysis all x, I believe. Oxygen concentration a little high, but not much."

"We won't have to wear the space-suits, then?"

"Not unless I missed something in the analysis. The pressure corresponds to our own at a height of about three thousand meters, which we can get used to without too much trouble. Good thing, too. I brought along all the air I could get hold of, but as I told you back there, if we had to depend on it altogether, we might be out of luck. I'm going to pump some of our air back into a cylinder to equalize our pressure—don't want to waste any of it until we're sure the outside air suits us without treatment."

When the pressure inside had been gradually reduced to that outside and they had become accustomed to breathing the rarefied medium, Stevens opened the airlock and the outside doors, and for some time cautiously sniffed the atmosphere of the satellite. He could detect nothing harmful or unusual in it—it was apparently the same as earthly air—and he became jubilant.

"All x, Nadia—luck is perched right on our banner. Freedom, air, water, power, and coal! Now as you suggested, we'll go places and do things!"

"Suppose it's safe?" Her first eagerness to explore their surroundings had abated noticeably. "You aren't armed, are you?"

"No, and I don't believe that there was a gun of any kind aboard the Arcturus. That kind of thing went out quite a while ago, you know. We'll take a look, anyway—we've got to find out about that coal before we decide to settle down here. Remember this half-gravity stuff, and control your leg-muscles accordingly."

Leaping lightly to the ground, they saw that the severed section of fifty-inch armor, which was the rim of their conveyance, almost blocked the entrance to the narrow canyon which they had selected for their retreat. Upon one side that wall of steel actually touched the almost perpendicular wall or rock; upon the other side there was left only a narrow passage. They stepped through it, so that they could see the waterfall and the gorge, and stopped silent. The sun, now fairly high, was in no sense the familiar orb of day, but was a pale, insipid thing, only one-fifth the diameter of the sun to which they were accustomed, and which could almost be studied with the unshielded eye. From their feet a grassy meadow a few hundred feet wide sloped gently down to the river, from whose farther bank a precipice sprang upward for perhaps a thousand feet—merging into towering hills whose rugged grandeur was reminiscent of the topography of the moon. At their backs the wall of the gorge was steep, but not precipitous, and was covered with shrubs and trees—some of which leaned out over the little canyon, completely screening it, and among whose branches birds could now and then be seen flitting about. In that direction no mountains were visible, indicating that upon their side of the river there was an upland plateau or bench. To their right the river, the gorge, and the strip of meadow extended for a mile or more, then curved away and were lost to sight. To their left, almost too close for comfort, was the stupendous cataract, towering above them to a terror-inspiring height. Nadia studied it with awe, which changed to puzzled wonder.

"What's the matter with it, Steve? It looks like a picture in slow motion, like the kind they take of your dives—or am I seeing things?"

"No, it's really slow, compared to what we're used to. Remember that one-half gravity stuff!"

"Oh, that's right, but it certainly does look funny. It gives me the creeps."

"You'll get used to it pretty quick—just as you'll get used to all the rest of the things having only half their earthly weight and falling only half as fast as they ought to when you drop them. Well, I don't see anything that looks dangerous yet—let's go up toward the falls a few meters and prospect that outcrop."

With a few brisk strokes of an improvised shovel he cleared the outcrop of detritus and broke off several samples of the black substance, with which they went back to the "Forlorn Hope."

"It's real coal," Stevens announced after a series of tests. "I've seen better, but on the other hand, there's lots worse. It'll make good gas, and a kind of a coke. Not so hot, but it'll do. Now we'd better get organized old partner, for a long campaign."

"Go ahead and organize—I'm only the cheap help in this enterprise."

"Cheap help! You're apt to be the life of the party. Can you make and shoot a bow and arrow?"

"I'll say I can—I've belonged to an archery club for five years."

"What did I tell you? You're a life saver! Here's the dope—we've got to save our own supplies as much as possible until we know exactly what we're up against, and to do that, we've got to live off the country. I'll fake up something to knock over some of those birds and small game, then we can make real bow-strings and feathered arrows and I'll forge some steel arrow-heads while you're making yourself a real bow. We'd better make me about a hundred-pound war bow, too...."

"A hundred!" interrupted Nadia. "That's a lot of bow, big boy—think you can bend it?"

"You'd be surprised," he grinned. "I'm not quite like Robin Hood—I've been known to miss a finger-thick wand at a hundred paces—but I'm not exactly a beginner."

"Oh, of course—I should have known by your language that you're an archer, otherwise you'd never have used such an old-fashioned word as 'pounds.' I shoot a thirty-five-pound bow ordinarily, but for game I should have the heaviest one I can hold accurately—about a forty-five, probably."

"All x. And as soon as I can I'll make us a couple of suits of fairly heavy steel armor, so that we'll have real protection if we should need it. You see, we don't know what we are apt to run up against out here. Then, with that much done, it'll be up to you to provide, since I'll have to work tooth and nail at the forges. You'll have to bring home the bacon, do the cooking and so on, and see what you can find along the line of edible roots, grains, fruits, and what-not. Sort of reverse the Indian idea—you be the hunter and I'll keep the home fires burning. Can do?"

"What it takes to do that, I've got," Nadia assured him, her eyes sparkling. "Have you your job planned out as well and as fittingly as you have mine?"

"And then some. We've got just two methods of getting away from here—one is to get in touch with Brandon, so that he'll come after us; the other is to recharge our accumulators and try to make it under our own power. Either course will need power and lots of it...."

"I never thought of going back in the 'Hope.' Suppose we could?"

"About as doubtful as the radio—I think that I could build a pair of matched-frequency auto-dirigible transmitter and receptor units, such as are necessary for space-ships fed by stationary power-plants, but after I got them built, they'd take us less than half way there. Then we'd have only what power we can carry, and I hate even to think of what probably would happen to us. We'd certainly have to drift for months before we could get close enough to any of our plants to radio for help, and we'd be taking awful chances. You see, we'd have to take a very peculiar orbit, and if we should miss connections passing the inner planets, what the sun would do to us at the closest point and where what's left of us would go on the back-swing, would be just too bad! Besides, if we can get hold of the Sirius, they'll come loaded for bear, and we may be able to do something about the rest of the folks out here."

"Oh!" breathed the girl. "Wouldn't it be wonderful if we could! I thought, of course, they'd all be...." her voice died away.

"Not necessarily—there's always a chance. That's why I'm trying the ultra-radio first. However, either course will take lots of power, so the first thing I've got to do is to build a power plant. I'm going to run a penstock up those falls, and put in a turbine, driving a high-tension alternator. Then, while I'm trying to build the ultra-radio, I'll be charging our accumulators, so that no time will be lost in case the radio fails. If it does fail—and remember I'm not counting on its working—of course I'll tackle the transmission and receptor units before we start out to drift it."

"You say it easy, Steve, but how can you build all those things, with nothing to work with?"

"It's going to be a real job—I'm not try to kid you into thinking it'll be either easy or quick. Here's the way everything will go. Before I can even lay the first length