The Black Tide, Arthur G. Stangland [good e books to read .TXT] 📗

he next day when he was busily dressing, the ultrafax popped out the breakfast edition.

"Space Bird takes off for Beta Quadrant. Tom Staker gambles all."

Bill stared at the pictures of the rocket climbing savagely at the head of a column of fire. The crazy, stubborn fool. Going it alone, risking his neck and everybody else's aboard. Well, let him go out there and break his blasted neck on the Asteroid Belt.

For the next three days Bill saw much of Margo. She was the most exciting thing he had ever discovered, and he indulged her laughingly when she took to speaking of his position in Intercontinental Lines as an accomplished fact.

On the third day he took Margo to lunch, a Margo with shining eyes, for this was Bill's day of decision. She had done her work well.

He ordered for them, and added, "Also a bottle of champagne."

The waiter brought the champagne first. There was no doubt on Margo's features what this was about, even though it had always been "if", "maybe" "possibly" in Bill's discussions with her about the new job.

In the midst of picking up his glass and proposing a toast, "Here's to my new—" Bill stopped. The ultrafax had popped out a sheet. Carefully putting the glass down, he said, "That's a special bulletin."

Picking it up he read aloud, "Staker Rocket in serious trouble. Home field reports damage by small meteor. Crew on emergency air bottles. Mysterious emanations blind radar scope and disrupt communication with Earth."

Tom—and the others, out there fighting for their lives against suffocation and intense cold. Their quarrel seemed like the antics of teenagers now. He had to get out to the field, see if he could help.

"What are you going to do?" Margo was watching him intently, the knuckles of her small hands white.

"I'm going to the field."

"But—but what about that toast you were making to your new—job, that's what you were going to say, wasn't it?" Her eyes were intense spots of jet.

"I guess that'll have to wait, Margo," he told her. "I can't stand by when Tom needs help."

Margo clutched his hands convulsively. "Bill, don't take a rocket up or you'll die in the same trap he's dying in!" The words rushed out as if through a trapdoor she could not control.

Bill glanced at her with sharp, new interest. "How do you know it's a trap, and how do you know he's going to die?"

Tears began to well up in her large eyes. "All I can tell you is don't go out there, Bill. I don't want to lose you—now."

Dawning realization filled Bill with horror. "Margo—Margo, for God's sake, what kind of a game have you been playing with me!"

Margo's shoulders sagged, and she began to sob out her story. "Bill, please, please believe me. I love you. That was not my part of the agreement with Asteroid Mining—to fall in love with you. Yes. I was hired to separate you and your brother, break up your company."

Before Bill could snarl an answer to that, a hotel service clerk came with a portable phone.

"Call for you, sir."

With his eyes fixed steadily on Margo, he spoke into the transmitter, "Captain Staker."

Christy's strained and tearful voice came over the wire. "Bill, oh, Bill, we're getting terrible news here at the field. Tom's ship is losing oxygen!"

"Yes, I know," he answered. "I just got the Ultra on it. I'll be right out, Christy."

As he replaced the phone he looked at Margo with a grim, loathing expression. "A female trick as old as the universe and I had to fall for it. You and your innocent questions about our Quadrant trajectory! What a sucker I was!" He drew back his hand to slap her but decided against it. She was crying when he left.

On the way to the field the familiar but forgotten black tide of fear rose up like a spectre once more to scatter his gathering ideas for helping Tom. Resigning himself to its power and pulling over to the roadside, he sat still, gripping the wheel. Yes, he told himself tensely, here I sit while Tom and the others drift in space needing help. The realization of their need slowly gave him a greater objective clarity than he had ever had before. He began to see himself now for what he was—a cringing weakling stripped naked of all manliness at the first show of evil. Though he perhaps had been worse than the average, this was the trouble with his whole security minded generation. They never dreamed great dreams like George Staker and his era which wrested atomic power from the treasure house of nature. No, this generation carefully followed safe, charted paths in the world of ideas. It had given up its freedom to a world of government controlled monopolies. And Tom, taking up the torch left by their creatively imaginative ancestor, was trying to recapture a small facet of that golden age.