The Planet Strappers Part 5

"Good. I am glad you paused to think, Nelsen. I am not fabulously rich.

But having more or less money hardly matters to me at this late date, so I am not likely to try to trap you. Yet there is still a game to play, and an outcome to watch--the future. Now get out of here before you become ridiculous by saying more than a casual thanks."

"All right--thanks. Thank you, sir..."

Nelsen felt somewhat numb. But a faint, golden glow was increasing inside his mind.

Tiflin hadn't gone up to Tech. He was still waiting on the street corner. "What the h.e.l.l, Frank?" he said.

"I think we've got the loan, Tif. But he wants to see all of us. Can you go in there, be polite, say you're a Bunch member, make a promise, and--above all--avoid blowing your top? Boy--if you queer this...!"

Tiflin's mouth was open. "You kidding?"

"No!"

Tiflin gulped, and actually looked subdued. "Okay, Frank. Be cavalier.

h.e.l.l, I'd croak before I'd mess this up...!"

By evening, everybody had visited J. John Reynolds, including Charlie Reynolds and Jig Hollins. Nelsen got the backslapping treatment.

Charlie sighed, rubbed his head, then grinned with immense relief.

"That's a load off," he said. "Glad to have somebody else fix it.

Congrats, Frank. I wonder if Otto has got any champagne to go with the hotdogs...?"

Otto had a bottle--enough for a taste, all around. Eileen kissed Frank impulsively. "You ought to get _real_ smart," she said.

"Uh-huh," he answered. "Now let's get some beer--more our speed."

But none of them overdid the beer either...

Just after New Year's they had eight bubbs completed, tested, folded carefully according to government manuals, and stowed in an attic they had rented over Otto's place. They had seven ionics finished and stored.

More parts and materials were arriving. The air-restorers were going to be the toughest and most expensive to make. They were the really vital things to a s.p.a.ceman. Every detail had to be carefully fitted and a.s.sembled. The chlorophane contained costly catalytic agents.

A winter of hard work was ahead, but they figured on a stretch of clear sailing, now. They didn't expect anyone to shake their morale, least of all a nice, soft-spoken guy in U.S.S.F. greys. Harv Diamond was the one man from Jarviston who had gotten into the s.p.a.ce Force. He used to hang around Hendricks'.

He dropped in on a Sunday evening, when the whole Bunch was in the shop.

They were around him at once, like around a hero, shouting and questioning. There were mottled patches on his hands, and he wore dark gla.s.ses, but he seemed at ease and happy.

"There have been some changes in the old joint, huh, Paul?" he said. "So you guys are one of the outfits building its own gear... Looks pretty good... Of course you can get some bulky supplies cheaper on the Moon, because everything from Earth has to be boosted into s.p.a.ce against a gravity six times as great as the lunar, which raises the price like h.e.l.l. Water and oxygen, for instance. Peculiar, on the dry, almost airless Moon. But roasting water out of lunar gypsum rock is an easy trick. And oxygen can be derived from water by simple electrolysis."

"h.e.l.l, we know all that, Harv," Ramos laughed.

So Harv Diamond gave them the lowdown on the shortage of girls--yet--in Serenitatis Base, on the Moon. Just the same, it was growing like corn in July, and was already a pretty good leave-spot, if you liked to look around. Big vegetable gardens under sealed, stellene domes. Metal refineries, solar power plants, plastic factories and so forth, already in operation... But there was nothing like Pallastown, on little Pallas, out in the Asteroid Belt... Mars? That was the heebie-jeebie planet.

Gimp asked Harv how much leave he had on Earth.

"Not long, I guess," Harv laughed. "I've got to check back at the Force Hospital in Minneapolis tomorrow..."

But right away it was evident that his thoughts had been put on the wrong track. His easy smile faded. He gasped and looked kind of surprised. He hung onto Paul's old swivel chair, in which he was sitting, as if he was suddenly terribly afraid of falling. His eyes closed tight, and there was a funny gurgle in his throat.

The Bunch surrounded him, wanting to help, but he half recovered.

"Even a good s.p.a.ce Force bubb, manufactured under rigid government specifications, can tear," he said in a thick tone. "If some jerk, horsing around with another craft, b.u.mps you even lightly.

Compartmentation helps, but you can still be unlucky. I was fortunate--almost b.u.t.toned into my Archer Six, already. _But did you ever see a person slowly swell up and turn purple, with frothy bubbles forming under the skin, while his blood boils in the Big Vacuum?_ That was my buddy, Ed Kraft..."

Lieutenant Harvey Diamond gasped. Huge, strangling hiccups came out of his throat. His eyes went wild. The Kuzaks had to hold him, while Mitch Storey ran to phone Doc Miller. A shot quieted Diamond somewhat, and an ambulance took him away.

That incident shook up the Bunch a little. A worse one came on a Tuesday evening, when not everybody was at the shop.

The TV was on, showing the interior of the _Far Side_, one of those big, comparatively luxurious tour bubbs that take rubbernecks that can afford it on a swing around the Moon. The _Far Side_ was just coming into orbit, where tending skip gliders would take off the pa.s.sengers for grounding at the New Mexico s.p.a.ceport. Aboard the big bubb you could see people moving about, or sitting with drinks on curved benches. A girl was playing soft music on a tiny, lightweight piano.

There wasn't any sign of trouble except that the TV channel went dead for a second, until a stand by commercial with singing cartoon figures cut in.

But Frank Nelsen somehow put his hands to his head, as if to protect it.

Mitch Storey, with a big piece of stellene in his brown mitts, stood up very straight.

Gimp, at a bench, handed a tiny capacitor to Eileen, and started counting, slow and even. "One--two--three--four--five--"

"What's with you slobs?" Jig Hollins wanted to know.

"Dunno--we're nuts, maybe," Gimp answered. "Ten--eleven--twelve--"

Charlie Reynolds and Paul Hendricks were alert, too.

Then a big, white light trembled on the thin snow beyond the windows, turning the whole night landscape into weird day. The tearing, crackling roar was delayed. By the time the sound arrived, all of the stellene in the _Far Side_ must have been consumed. It had no resistance to atmospheric friction at five miles per second, or faster. There were just the heavier metallic details left to fall and burn. Far off, there was a thumping crash that seemed to make the ground sag and recover.

"Here we go!" Charlie Reynolds yelled.

In his and Hollins' cars, they got to the scene of the fragment's fall, two miles out of town, by following a faint, fading glow. They were almost the first to reach the spot. Tiflin and Ramos, who had been working on their jobs, came with their boss, along with a trailing horde of cars from town.

Flashlights probed into the hot impact pit in the open field, where the frozen soil had seemed to splash like a liquid. Crumpled in the hole was a lump of half-fused sheet steel, wadded up like paper. It was probably part of the _Far Side_'s central hub. Magnesium and aluminum, of which the major portions had certainly been made, were gone; they could never have endured the rush through the atmosphere.

Ramos got down into the pit. After a minute, he gave a queer cry, and climbed out again. His mitten smoked as he opened it, to show something.

"It must have been behind a heavy object," he said very seriously, not like his usual self at all. "That broke the molecular impact with the air--like a ceramic nose cone. Kept it from burning up completely."

The thing was a lady's silver compact, from which a large piece had been fused away. A bobbypin had gotten welded to it.

Old Paul Hendricks cursed. Poor Two-and-Two moved off sickly, with a palm clamped over his mouth.

Eileen Sands gasped, and seemed about to yell. But she got back most of her poise. Women have nursed the messily ill and dying, and have tended ghastly wounds during ages of time. So they know the messier side of biology as well as men.

Ramos gave the pathetic relic to a cop who was trying to take charge.

"Somebody must have goofed bad on the _Far Side_, for it to miss...o...b..t like that," Ramos grated. "Or was something wrong, beforehand? Their TV transmitter went out--we were watching, too, at the garage... You can see the aurora--the Northern Lights... Those d.a.m.n solar storms might have loused up instruments...! But who'll ever know, now...?"

The Kuzaks, who had been to an Athletic a.s.sociation meeting at Tech, had grabbed a ride out with the stream of cars from town. Both looked grim.

"No use hanging around here, Charlie," Art urged. "Let's get back to the shop."