Space Lawyer (19 page)

For the first time old Simeon could see what the Chief was thinking; what Foote had been thinking; what the whole dad-blamed System by now must be thinking.

He walked over to the screen, switched it on. Central Operator appeared. "Get me Clem Borden," he snapped, "and get him fast."

"Borden?" interjected the Chief. "Isn't that the racer who won the Interplanetary Cup last year?"

"The same," grunted Kenton.

Then a youngish, wiry, space-tanned individual moved on the screen. "Oh, hello, Mr. Kenton. You want me?"

"Clem," said Simeon, "it's now 3 P. M. I want your
Deimos
ready by 6 P. M., jam-packed with every drum of fuel and every ounce of food you can stow on board. We're taking off on a very long trip."

The racer was astounded. "It's impossible, Mr. Kenton," he said firmly. "That's too short notice."

"Nothing is impossible," yelled Simeon. "Look at your contract of charter. It says you're to be ready on demand. Well, I'm demanding right now."

"But I thought you weren't starting until the Commission—"

"Dingblast the Commission! Look, Clem, I'll take care of the fuel and the food. just you get the ship tuned up and ready."

"But a crew can't be assembled—"

"I'll
be the crew. Don't you think I'm capable? Why, when was a young man—"

A light dawned on the racer. He also had been listening to the newscasts. In fact, all other news had been crowded off the waves. "Okay, Mr. Kenton," he said suddenly. "I'll be ready. I sympathize—"

"Blast your sympathy!" howled Kenton. "You just be ready on time!"

The Chief protested. "Look here, Mr. Kenton. Don't you think you'd better leave this to the Patrol? After all—"

"No," howled old Simeon. "It's my daughter, and that skittleskewed young Dale is cooking up something that’ll land 'em both in a dadscrambled mess. Your Patrol has foozled the job, ain’t they? Well, Simeon Kenton will find 'em or—"

Looking at the tornado of human energy that was disrespectfully known as Old Fireball, the Chief was compelled to admit to himself that he damn well might.

CHAPTER 12

SPARKS was a beaten man. He kept staring at the empty visor screen and wailed miserably to himself. "They'll take my license away for this."

Twice the Patrol signal had come in, and twice Kerry Dale had peremptorily refused to answer it.

Each time Kerry merely asked: "Were you able to identify the Patrol ship?"

"Not visually, if that's what you mean."

"It's
exactly
what I mean."

"But," protested Sparks with the feeling that he had done this before—and in vain, "they're out of visual range. And you know as well as I that it's a Patrol boat."

"I know nothing of the sort," said Kerry with a straight face. "It may be a pirate decoy. You forget, Sparks," he added gravely, "that high jacking gang of Foote's. It's thought to be hiding out somewhere in the Belt."

"Oh!" Sparks flung up his hands and confessed himself defeated. But he continued to mutter and complain to himself.

Kerry went to see Sally. She was completely over her near-tragic experience; and she was, as Kerry was compelled to confess, more ravishingly beautiful than ever.

"You're demoralizing my crew," he told her severely. "Instead of keeping their eyes on their jobs, they just gape and moon at you."

"As though I were a two-headed calf," she dimpled. "They'll soon get over me."

"But
I
won't."

"That's what I like to hear."

The young man groaned. "Will you be serious!" he exclaimed. "It was a crazy stunt coming after me."

"It's crazier for you not to turn back," she retorted. "You'll lose any chance you may have had to file on the comet."

"No. I'm going on."

"You have some trick up your sleeve," she accused. "Maybe."

"And you won't tell it to me?"

"No," he said frankly. "A secret is a secret only as long as only
one
person knows it. But look, Sally, you should have let me put you on that cargo ship. Your father—"

"He knows I'm safe. Or am I?"

He deliberately mistook her meaning. "You may not be," he said. "I don't know what we're liable to run into. And remember, you told me Foote came out ahead of me. He's thoroughly unscrupulous. There may be—well—"

Sally's eyes danced. "A fight? I'd love that. Things were much too quiet back on Earth. If you'll give me a ray gun—"

He groaned and, like Sparks, confessed himself beaten.

Had he dared land at Planets, he would have deposited her there willy-nilly. But then he would have had no excuse that he hadn't heard the Commission directive. And doubtless they'd detain him for investigation. As it was he had lost enough time by turning back to rescue Sally, and by swinging way out of his course into uncharted space to avoid being pursued by the Patrol. He hadn't told Jem or anyone else yet; but he was
not
going to land on Ganymede. The same situation would apply there. He was heading directly for the comet.

The
Flash
moved steadily on. Day after day. Space was empty, hollow. The sun receded to a small pale disk; Earth had long since vanished to the naked eye. Not a ship was seen; not even a vagrant asteroid. All signals had ceased. Even the powerful Patrol sets couldn't send this far. Jupiter, with its great red spot, loomed to the left and began to recede.

The crew looked restless and muttered among themselves. Jem came to Kerry and cleared his throat. "I've been steering by your orders, Kerry, without asking no questions. But we're goin'
away
from Ganymede, an' we're passing Jupiter. The crew's getting mighty uneasy. No ship's ever gone this way before." He looked earnestly at his chief. "I think it's time," he said, "to let the crew in on what ye're doing. Otherwise ye're liable to have a first-class mutiny on your hands."

Kerry grinned. "All right, Jem. I agree with you. It
is
time." He led the puzzled mate to the observation telescope. "You see that comet, Jem?"

Jem stared. Comet X lay like a fiery tadpole across ten degrees of arc. Its head burned with a peculiar white iridescence; its tail was a flaming orange scimitar. "Yes," he said finally, "I been seeing it a long time. What about it?"

"We're going there."

Jem looked disgustedly at his boss. "And why, might I ask," he demanded, "are we going to a blooming comet? A handful o' dust, gas an' emptiness."

Kerry explained what he had heard from the astronomer, Wilson.

Jem whistled. "A solid head, hey! Elements not found in the System?" Then he scratched his head. "That's okay. But why're ye so all-fired afraid to meet anyone? Why were we skulkin' along back alleys, so to speak?"

Then Kerry told him the rest of the story; of the leakage of the secret and the Commission's order bringing all starters back to scratch.

"And ye're going ahead regardless?" exclaimed Jem.

"Yes."

Jem stared a moment; then his eye twinkled. "Aha! You've got some of your legal tricks up your sleeve."

Kerry grinned in exchange. "Maybe I have. Now you can tell the boys what we're up to. You can promise them a cut on whatever we find."

"They'll love that," crowed Jem.

"Oh, by the way. Don't say anything about the Commission order."

Jem winked broadly. "I won't."

"Another thing. You'd better start breaking out our . . . er . . .
rayguns and atomic weapons."

The mate stopped short. "Oh, oh! You're thinking there may be life on the comet?"

"No; vermin. I have reason to believe Jericho Foote got ahead of me. He won't have guts enough to come out here himself; but I have a hunch he's sending that bunch of outlaws he's got on the string."

Jem chuckled, rubbed his hands. "I've been spoiling to meet tip with those birds. Don't ye worry, Kerry, our boys '11 take care of themselves." Then he stopped, rubbed his chin. "But how about Miss Sally?"

"I don't know. It's been bothering me right along. Oh well, we'll have to take as few chances as possible."

"Bah!" growled Jem to himself as he turned away. "She's a swell dame, but why the devil didn' she stay at home?"

Sally didn't seem to worry. Her eyes sparkled, and she had the crew eating out of her hand. She had taken only an overnight bag with her; but through some magic known only to herself, she always managed to look freshly groomed and with a change of costume.

The men were on their toes now, joking, thronging at every off-moment to the observation port to watch the fast-growing comet.
The news that there might be a gang of outlaws ahead of them didn't bother them one bit. In fact, they remembered what the gang had done to Captain Ball; and they had a score to settle with cutthroats who were callous enough to set a crew helplessly adrift in space to almost certain death. They fastened their weapons grimly to their belts.

Even Sally sported a raygun. When Kerry expostulated, she laughed gayly. "Oh, you don't know me, sir. I'm no helpless female. I've taken prizes for sharpshooting in the Megalon tournaments."

"But this may be no tournament, Sally."

She looked at him steadily. "I'm not afraid of danger, Kerry," she said. "If I had been, I wouldn't have taken that desperate trip after you."

That was true, he thought. With her color heightened and her eyes sparkling, she looked like—what did that early composer of almost forgotten operas call them? Oh, yes, Valkyries.

Comet X was now a glorious sight. It spread half across space; its tail glowing and coruscating with a million colors. Yet the stars shone steadily behind the glowing curtain, disclosing its near-vacuum of repelled infinitesimal particles.

The head, however, was another matter. Surrounded by its own veil of iridescent gas, the solid core was now a perceptible disk of pure white, shimmering with a life all its own.

"That light is self-emitting," thought Kerry. "Wilson was right; this is no reflection or ionization induced by the sun."

He turned the spectroscope on the core, studied the pattern of bright lines and dark. No; they didn't fit any of the elements hitherto known to man. He tried the delicate heat-gatherer. The comet was icy cold; close to the frigidity of space. His excitement grew. "That means," he told Sally who was watching him work, "it's some form of intense radio-activity." He calculated the mass; and stared at the results. "By heavens, Sally!" he exclaimed, "this is
really
something new. Either its basic material is under tremendous pressures almost of the order of the dwarf stars, or it's the heaviest thing ever found. The atomic weight runs to about 562; just double that of paraplutonium."

"What does that mean, Kerry?"

He got up, paced the narrow deck. "That means," he said slowly, "a new form of intra-atomic energy, to which our old forms will seem as primitive as the hydrogen bomb of the infancy of research seems to us."

Sally was silent a moment. "Then this is something bigger than mere private exploitation," she said slowly.

"Yes, it is. But," he frowned, "the law says nothing of that. And by the time that the Council could get around to it, and all the legal red tape be unwound that safeguards our liberties, Comet X will be far out in space again, and lost forever to us."

"I thought Wilson said," the girl protested, "that it had an elliptical orbit."

"Of two thousand odd years," grinned Kerry. "However, he advanced that merely as a hypothesis. He was wrong. I've been checking positions right along. Comet X is on a true parabola --one of the rarest orbits in the universe. It's a complete stranger to our System. It's come from God knows what other universe in space."

"Then—then—" she faltered, "there'll be only a few short weeks to get out whatever we can."

"A week at the most now," he corrected. "And another week on its outward swing. The comet is accelerating rapidly as it gets the tug of the sun. Once inside the orbit of Venus, it'll be too hot to handle."

"Oh!" she wailed. "Then my father's getting the Commission to hold everyone back for two weeks may cause incalculable damage."

"He meant well, Sally." Kerry grinned and added: "For himself."

"So we're the only ones to find what there is to be found." "And Foote's gang," he reminded her. Kerry's voice hardened. "Now I have added reasons, if I needed any, to see to it that they don't succeed."

"But how—"

Jem came up. "We'll be right on top of her in three hours," he said cheerfully. "What're your orders?"

"Break out those new space-suits, Jem. Have every man get into one."

"Do I rate one?" asked Sally.

Kerry surveyed her trim form. "Most decidedly. We're sure to hit radiations of terrific intensity. I only hope they stand up"

Jem said sotto-voce: "How about our space cannon.

Shouldn't we load her now?"

"By all means. We've got to be prepared for any eventuality."

As the comet seemed to swell more and more rapidly on the sight, excitement grew to fever pitch on the
Flash.
Even Sparks forgot his forebodings and scanned his instruments with a mounting intensity. He was having trouble, be reported. The radiations were causing the screen to glitter and spark as though a million fireflies were playing tag across it.

"That's not so bad," commented Kerry. "If we can't see the other fellow, then he won't be able to see
us.
Better forget about the screen, Sparks. Use the visual telescope instead. Sometimes," he grinned, "more primitive methods work when the latest weapons of science don't."

It was tricky work pulling alongside. They had met the comet head-on, and they had to swing in a huge series of concentric spirals, constantly narrowing, in order to bring the
Flash
safely down to the core.

They were about five thousand miles from the surface, on their next to the last swing, when Sparks, his eyes glued to the

telescope, yelled out: "I see something, Mr. Dale."