Breadon stopped, bit his lip before the appeal in Malcolm’s eyes, tried to pass it off easily. “Oh, well—a change of scenery, what?”
But the moment of alarm in his voice had not passed unnoticed. Crystal Andrews spoke for all of them, her voice preternaturally quiet.
“You’re hiding something, Malcolm. What is it? Is there—danger?”
But Greg didn’t have to answer that question. From the doorway a harsh, defiantly strident voice answered for him. The voice of Bert Andrews, Crystal’s older brother.
“Danger? You’re damn right there’s danger! What’s the matter with you folks—are you all deaf, dumb and blind? We’ve been caught in a space-vortex for hours. Now we’re in the H-layer of a planet we can’t even see—and in fifteen minutes or fifteen seconds we may all be smashed as flat as pancakes!”
The proclamation brought them out of their chairs. Greg’s heart sank; his vain plea, “Mr. Andrews—” was lost in the medley of Crystal’s sudden gasp, Enid Andrews’ short, choking scream, J. Foster’s bellowing roar at his only son.
“Bert—you’re drunk!”
Bert weaved precariously from the doorway, laughed in his father’s face.
“Sure I’m drunk! Why not? If you’re smart you’ll get drunk, too. The whole damn lot of you!” He flicked a derisive hand toward Greg. “You too, Boy Scout! What were you trying to do—hide the bad news from them? Well, it’s no use. Everybody might as well know the worst. We’re gone gooses...geeses...aw, what the hell! Dead ducks!” He fell into a chair, sprawled there laughing mirthlessly with fear riding the too-high notes of his laughter.
J. Foster turned to his secretary slowly. His ire had faded; there was only deep concern in his voice.
“Is he telling the truth, Malcolm?”
Greg said soberly, “Partly, sir. He’s overstating the danger—but there is danger. We are caught in a space-vortex, and as Mr. Breadon realized, the presence of these ionics means we’re in the Heaviside-layer of some heavenly body. But we may not crack up.”
Maud Andrews glanced at him shrewdly.
“Is there anything we can do?”
“Not a thing. The officers on the bridge are doing everything possible.”
“In that case,” said the older woman, “we might as well finish our breakfast. Here, Cuddles! Come to momsy!” She sat down again. Greg looked at her admiringly. Ralph Breadon stroked his brown jaw. He said, “The life-skiffs?”
“A last resort,” said Greg. “Sparks promised he’d let me know if it were necessary. We’ll hope it’s not—”
But it was a vain hope, vainly spoken in the last, vain moment. For even as he phrased the hopeful words, came the sound of swift, racing footsteps up the corridor. Into the dining dome burst Hannigan, eyes hot with excitement. And his cry dispelled Greg’s final hopes for safety.
“Everybody—the Number Four life-skiff—quick! We’ve been caught in a grav-drag and we’re going to crash!”
CHAPTER II
Those next hectic moments were never afterward very clear in Greg Malcolm’s memory. He had a confused recollection of hearing Sparks’ warning punctuated by a loud, shrill scream which he vaguely identified as emanating from Mrs. Andrews’ throat... He was conscious of feeling, suddenly, beneath his feet the sickening, quickening lurch of a ship out of control, gripped by gravitational forces beyond its power to allay... He recalled his own voice dinning in his ears as, incredibly, with Sparks, he took command of the hasty flight from the dining dome down the corridor to the aft ramp, up the ramp, across girdered beams in the super-structure to the small, independently motored rocket-skiff cradled there.
He was aware, too, of strangely disconnected incidents happening around him, he being a part of them but seeming to be only a disinterested spectator to their strangeness. Of his forcing Maud Andrews toward the door of the dome...of her pushing back against him with all the weight of her body...of her irate voice, “Cuddles! I forgot him!” Then the shrill excited yapping of the poodle cradled against her as they charged on down the corridor.
J. Foster waddling beside him, tugging at his arm, panting, “The officers?” and his own unfelt assurance. “They can take care of themselves. It’s a general ’bandon ship.” Enid Andrews stumbling over the hem of a filmy peignoir...himself bending to lift her boldly and bodily, sweating palms feeling the warm animal heat of her excited body hot beneath them... Crystal Andrews stopping suddenly, crying, “’Tina!”...and Hannigan’s reply, “Your maid? I woke her. She’s in the life-skiff.” Bert Andrews stopping suddenly, being sick in the middle of the corridor, his drunkenness losing itself in the thick, sure nausea of the ever-increasing unsteadiness beneath their feet.
Then the life-skiff, the clang of metal as Hannigan slammed the port behind the last of them, the fumbling for a lock-stud, the quick, grateful pant of the miniature hypos, and a weird feeling of weightlessness, rushingness, hurtlingness as his eardrums throbbed and his mouth tasted brassy and bloody with the fierce velocity of their escape.
Sense and meaning returned only when all this ended. As one waking from a nightmare dream, Greg Malcolm returned to a world he could recognize. A tiny world, encased within the walls of a forty-foot life-skiff. A world peopled too scantily. Andrews, his wife and sister, his son and daughter; Tina Laney, the maid; Breadon, Hannigan, young Tommy O’Doul, the cabin-boy (though where he had come from, or when, Greg did not know). And himself. In a life-skiff. In space.
Somewhere in space. He looked through the perilens. What he saw then he might better never have seen. For that shimmering pink-ochre veil had wisped away, now, and in the clean, cold, bitter-clear light of a distant sun he watched the death-dive of the yacht Carefree.
Like a vast silver top, spinning heedlessly, wildly, it streaked toward a mottled gray and green, brown and dun, hard and crushing-brutal terrain below. Still at its helm stood someone, for even in that last dreadful moment burst from its nose-jets a ruddy mushroom of flame that tried to, but could not, brake the dizzy fall.
For an instant Greg’s eyes, stingingly blinded and wet, thought they glimpsed a wee black mote dancing from the bowels of the Carefree; a mote that might be another skiff like their own. But he could not be sure, and then the Carefree was accelerating with such violence and speed that the eye could see it only as a flaming silver lance against the ugly earth-carcase beneath, and then it struck and a carmine bud of flame burst and flowered for an instant, and that was all....
And Greg Malcolm turned from the perilens, shaken.
Hannigan said, “It’s over?” and Greg nodded.
Hannigan said, “The other skiffs? Did they break free, or were they caught?”
“I don’t know. I couldn’t see for sure.”
“You must have seen. Are we the only ones?”
“I couldn’t see for sure. Maybe. Maybe not.”
Then a body scrambled forward, pressing through the tightness of other huddled bodies, and there was a hand upon his elbow. “I’ll take over now, Malcolm.”
*
