Part 15 (1/2)

I gazed at the wreck of the _Cometara_. My s.h.i.+p! My first command! So smoothly, confidently rising from the Earth only a few hours ago; and she had come to this. She lay askew in the heavens. The dome was cracked throughout all its length and smashed like a sh.e.l.l at the sterntip.

I could see the interior litter beneath the dome, the twisted and strained lines of the hull. A dead s.h.i.+p now, the mechanisms stilled; dead and silent inside, with all the warmth gone out of it. All the air dissipated, so that in every cubby, every dark corridor of that broken hull there was the coldness and silence of interplanetary s.p.a.ce.

I suppose these thoughts swept me within a few seconds. I saw myself starting to revolve in my orbit. Perhaps my motion would carry me around indefinitely; or I might be drawn down to the vessel as those other survivors had been drawn.

Grantline, with one of the few power suits, was coming toward me now, with tiny fluorescent streams back along his body from his shoulder blades. I switched on my own mechanism. It moved me toward him, and our gravity attracted us. We shut off the power when twenty feet apart; drifted together; contacted; bounced apart like rubber b.a.l.l.s as our inflated suits struck. Then in a moment we had drifted back and clung.

I touched the metal plate of his shoulder. ”Working all right?”

”Yes. Thank G.o.d for this much, Gregg. I wonder how many are alive.”

In the chaos of the abandonment, many of the men's air mechanisms had failed to operate. It is always so in times of disaster. We could see, revolving around the wreck, and motionless against its dome, those horrible flabby, deflated suits where the delicate Erentz mechanism had failed. Within was only a corpse.

”Too many,” I said. ”And not more than four or five of us with power.

What shall we do first? Round them up? We must all get together.”

His answering voice was grim. ”We can tow them from the wreck. Six or seven of us altogether have power. Do you suppose we can get away, Gregg? Get loose from the s.h.i.+p before she falls?”

Only trying it could tell us that. The _Cometara_, and all of us with her, were plunging for the Moon. We would seek out the men who were alive and tow them in a string. If we could break the gravity pull of the s.h.i.+p, and then struggle upward from the Moon, we could maintain ourselves here in s.p.a.ce until some rescue s.h.i.+p from Earth, Venus or Mars would come and pick us up.

”You take one side, Gregg; I'll take the other. Don't go aboard; she might collapse.”

”I'll pick up the men without power and alive. The others with power suits will do the same. Then we'll meet out here, about where we are now?”

”Yes. And hurry, Gregg! Every mile toward the Moon makes it that much harder. We're falling fast.”

”Good luck!” I shoved away from him. And within a minute, as he went in an arc toward the _Cometara_ bow and I toward her stern, I suddenly thought of that returning enemy vessel. My last look through the 'scope had shown that she was returning; and then I had forgotten it.

My gaze swept the firmament now. I had no 'scope instruments within the helmet. With the naked eye the enemy s.h.i.+p was not in sight. But I knew that meant little; within a moment she could come in view and be here if she were going at any great velocity.

There were on the _Cometara_, at the time of the disaster, some sixty-odd men; perhaps forty had gotten away. And I could see very soon that not more than fifteen, or less, out here were alive. Two with power were ahead of me now, slowly floating past the wrecked dome of the stern. One had picked up two others, found them alive and was towing them out. They went past me, moving very slowly so that I could see that two were all that one of us could tow and attain any velocity at all.

I contacted with the leader. He was one of Grantline's men.

”Two or three hundred feet out,” I directed. I gestured. ”Grantline said to meet out there. I'll tow others.”

”Yes. Around the stern you'll find--G.o.d! Haljan, look!”

A mile from us the enemy s.h.i.+p was in view. Pa.s.sing--no! Stopping! With incredible r.e.t.a.r.dation she had plunged into view, was here, and yet had no great forward velocity. She seemed no more rapid than a great air liner winging past, so close that her reddish-tinged bulging hull length showed clearly. The discs were gone. The funnel set on top of her was sloped diagonally toward us as she rolled on her side, so that momentarily I could see down into it. There was some mechanism down there. The bow radiance was a narrow opalescent beam in advance of the bow.

”Slowing, Haljan!”

”Yes, stopping. Don't try to meet Grantline. Tow your men away!”

”Or should we board the _Cometara_ and hide?”

”No. They've come back to bombard her.”

I kicked at him violently. With his two drifting figures clinging behind, he swung past me. I headed behind the stern. Upon its dangling framework several of our men were glued, lying there inert. I caught a glimpse of the interior of the stern, the littered deck; men lying there had been stricken before they had time to get into their suits.