Spacehounds of IPC Part 12

"According to my figures, it ought to be about four hours right ascension, and something like plus twenty degrees declination. My figures aren't accurate, though, since I'm working purely from memory, so we'd better cover everything from Aldebaran to the Pleiades."

"But the directions will change as we go along, won't they?"

"Not unless we pa.s.s it, because we're heading pretty nearly straight at it, I think."

"I don't see anything interesting thereabouts except stars. Will it have much tail?"

"Very little--it's close to aphelion, you know, and a comet doesn't have much of a tail so far away from the sun. Hope it's got some of its tail left, though, or we may miss it entirely."

Hours pa.s.sed, during which the two observers peered intently into their instruments, then Stevens left the telescope and went over to his slate.

"Looks bad, ace--we should have spotted it before this. Time to eat, too. You'd better...."

"Oh, look here, quick!" Nadia interrupted. "Here's something! Yes, it _is_ a comet, and quite close--it's got a little bit of a dim tail."

Stevens leaped to the communicator plate, and, blond head pressed close to brown, the two wayfarers studied the faint image of the wanderer of the void.

"That's it, I just _know_ it is!" Nadia declared. "Steve, as a computer, you're a blinding flash and a deafening report!"

"Yeah--missed it only about half a million kilometers or so," he replied, grinning, "and I'd fire a whole flock of I-P check stations for being four thousand off. However, I could have done worse--I could easily have forgotten all the data on it, instead of only half of it."

He applied a normal negative acceleration, and Nadia heaved a profound sigh of relief as her weight returned to her and her body again became manageable by the ordinary automatic and involuntary muscles.

"Guess I am a kind of a weight-fiend at that, Steve--this is much better!" she exclaimed.

"n.o.body denies that weight is more convenient at times; but you're a s.p.a.cehound just the same--you'll like it after a while," he prophesied.

Stevens took careful observations upon the celestial body, altered his course sharply, then, after a measured time interval, again made careful readings.

"That's it, all x," he announced, after completing his calculations, and he reduced their negative acceleration by a third. "There--we'll be just about traveling with it when we get there," he said. "Now, little K. P.

of my bosom, our supper's been on minus time for hours. What say we shake it up?"

"I check you to nineteen decimals," and the two were soon attacking the savory Ganymedean goulash which Nadia had put in the cooker many hours before.

"Should we both go to sleep, Steve, or should one of us watch it?"

"Sleep, by all means. There's no meteoric stuff out here, and we won't arrive before ten o'clock tomorrow, I-P time," and, tired out by the events of the long day, man and maid sought their beds and plunged into dreamless slumber.

While they slept, the "Forlorn Hope" drove on through the void at a terrific but constantly decreasing velocity; and far off to one side, plunging along a line making a sharp angle with their own course, there loomed larger and larger the ma.s.ses which made up the nucleus of Cantrell's Comet.

Upon awakening, Stevens' first thought was for the comet, and he observed it carefully before he aroused Nadia, who hurried into the control room. Looming large in the shortened range of the plate, their objective hurtled onward in its eternal course, its enormous velocity betrayed only by the rapidity with which it sped past the incredibly brilliant background of infinitely distant stars. Apparently it was a wild jumble of separate fragments; a conglomerate, heterogeneous aggregation of rough and jagged ma.s.ses varying in size from grains of sand up to enormous chunks, which upon Earth would have weighed millions of tons. Pervading the whole nucleus, a slow, indefinite movement was perceptible--a vague writhing and creeping of individual components working and slipping past and around each other as they all rushed forward in obedience to the immutable cosmic law of gravitation.

"Oh, isn't that wonderful!" Nadia breathed. "Think of actually going to visit a comet! It sort of scares me, Steve--it's so creepy and crawly looking. We're awfully close, aren't we?"

"Not so very. We'd probably have lots of time to eat breakfast. But just to be on the safe side, maybe I'd better camp here at the board, and you bring me over something to eat."

"All x, Chief!" and Stevens ate, one eye upon the screen, watching closely the ever-increasing bulk of the comet.

For many minutes he swung the _Forlorn Hope_ in a wide curve approaching the mountain of metal ever and ever more nearly, then turned to the girl.

"Hold everything, Nadia--power's going off in a minute!" He shut off the beam; then, noting that they were traveling a trifle faster than the comet, he applied a small voltage to one dirigible projector. Darting the beam here and there, he so corrected their flight that they were precisely stationary in relation to the comet. He then opened his switches, and the _Forlorn Hope_ hurtled on. Apparently motionless, it was now a part of Cantrell's Comet, traveling in a stupendous, elongated ellipse about the Master of our Solar System, the Sun.

"There, ace, who said anything about weight-fiends? I was watching you, and you never turned a hair that time."

"Why, that's right--I never even thought about it--I was so busy studying that thing out there! I suppose I've got used to it already?"

"Sure--you're one of us now. I knew you would be. Well, let's go places and do things! You'd better put on a suit, too, so you can stand in the air-lock and handle the line."

They donned the heavily insulated, heated suits, and Stevens snapped the locking plugs of the drag line into their sockets upon the helmets.

"Hear me?" he asked. "Sound-disks all x?"

"All x."

"On the radio--all x?"

"All x."

"I tested your tanks and heaters--they're all x. But you'll have to test...."

"I know the ritual by heart, Steve. It's been in every show in the country for the last year, but I didn't know you had to go through it every time you went out-of-doors! Halves, number one all x, two all x, three all x...."

"Quit it!" he snapped. "You aren't testing those valves! That check-up is no joke, guy. These suits are complicated affairs, and some parts are apt to get out of order. You see, a thing to give you fresh air at normal pressure and to keep you warm in absolute s.p.a.ce can't be either simple or fool-proof. They've worked on them for years, but they're pretty crude yet. They're tricky, and if one goes sour on you, out in s.p.a.ce, it's just too bad--you're lucky to get back alive. A lot of men are still out there somewhere because of the sloppy check-ups."

"'Scuse it, please--I'll be good," and the careful checking and testing of every vital part of the s.p.a.ce-suits went on.

Satisfied at last that the armor was s.p.a.ceworthy, Stevens picked up the coils of drag-line, built of a non-metallic fiber which could retain its flexibility and strength in the bitter cold of outer s.p.a.ce, and led the girl into the air-lock.

"Heavens, Steve! It's perfectly stupendous, and grinding around worse than the wreckage of the _Arcturus_ was when I wouldn't let you climb up it--why, I thought comets were _little_, and hardly ma.s.sive at all!"

exclaimed the girl.

"This is little, compared to any regular planet or satellite or even to the asteroids. There's only a few cubic kilometers of matter there, and, as I said before, it's a decidedly unusual comet. You know the game?"

"I've got it--and believe me, I'll yank you back here a lot faster than you can jump over there if any one of those lumps starts to fall on you!

Is this drag line long enough?"

"Yes, I've got a hundred meters here, and it's only fifty meters over there to where I'm going. So long," and with a light thrust of his feet, he dove head foremost across the intervening s.p.a.ce, a heavy pike held out ahead of him. Straight as a bullet he floated toward his objective, a jagged chunk many yards in diameter, taking the shock of his landing by sliding along the pike-handle as its head struck the ma.s.s.

Then, bracing his feet against one lump, he pushed against its neighbor, and under that steady pressure the enormous ma.s.ses moved apart and kept on moving, grinding among their fellows. Over and around them Stevens sprang, always watching his line of retreat as well as that of his advance, until his exploring pike struck a lump of apparently solid metal. Hooking the fragment toward him, he thrust savagely with his weapon and was rea.s.sured--that object was not only metal, but it was metal so hard that his pike-head of s.p.a.ce-tempered alloy steel did not make an impression upon its surface. Turning on his helmet light he swung his heavy hammer repeatedly but could not break off even a small fragment.

"Found something, Steve?" Nadia's voice came clearly in his ears.

"I'll say I have! A hunk of solid, non-magnetic metal about the size of an office desk. I can't break off any of it, so I guess we'll have to grab the whole chunk."

He hitched the end of his cable around the nugget, made sure that the loops would not slip, and then, as Nadia tightened the line, he shoved mightily.

"All x, Nadia, she's coming! Pull in my drag line as I said over there, and I'll help you land her."