Part 5 (1/2)
”Jimmy, me bhoy, kape away! Kape away, I'm tellin' you, or ye'll have me Irish temper disturbed, and I'm a divil whin I'm roused! What do I know about your twin ingineers? Wan of thim makes trouble enough for me! Now take yourself away, and don't step on the tail of this s.h.i.+p or we'll go down to glory together!--unless we go to another terminal and find oursilves in h.e.l.l, and us all covered wid snow. Think how divilish conspicuous you'd be feelin'--”
A discord of voices silenced his laughing banter; on the instrument board the warning light was flas.h.i.+ng imperatively. Above the bedlam of voices one stood out, and all other commands went silent before the voice of authority.
”Silence! This is the Commander of Air! Orders for O--sixteen--L: seize that s.h.i.+p! Your magnets!--disregard damage!--get your magnets on that s.h.i.+p and hold her. We are coming down--”
Chet reached for the transmitter switch and opened it that their voices might not go beyond the control room.
”Lots of company; they seem pretty certain that they're on the right track. And the big boss himself is coming down to call. Can't you hurry those 'chutes?”
The control room door was flung open as the figure of a young man stumbled through and dropped two bundles of cloth and webbing upon the floor. He clung to the door-frame as Chet threw the big freighter into a totally unexpected maneuver that rolled them down and away from a silver-bellied s.h.i.+p above. Then the levers moved again, and the s.h.i.+p went hard-a-port as Chet caught again one fleeting glimpse of shadow below that could only be the markings of a building he had known well.
”Hold her there, Spud!” he shouted. ”He'll be back in a minute or two!
He'll get us next time!”
Chet was reaching for the straps of a 'chute. He had the webbing about him when he stopped to waste precious seconds in wide-eyed staring at the figure of Spud O'Malley.
Spud was pulling at a recalcitrant buckle. He had motioned the relief pilot to take the controls, and now the bulk of a parachute pack hung awkwardly behind him.
”Spud!” Chet shouted. ”You're not stepping out too! It's no sure thing with these old 'chutes; they're probably rotten! Stay here! Tell 'em I stuck you up with a gun!--tell 'em I made you bring me--”
”If you must talk,” said Spud O'Malley calmly, and pulled a strap tight across his chest, ”do ye be tryin to work while you talk. Get that harness on! If I let you stow away on my s.h.i.+p you can do no less than take me along on yours!”
A cras.h.i.+ng impact drove the men to the floor in a sprawling heap; Chet pulled the last strap tight as he lay there. The lookouts were black above where the belly of a Patrol s.h.i.+p clung close.
”Jimmy knows how to obey orders,” said Chet as he came to his feet. ”No cable magnets for Jimmy! He just smashed down on top of us, ripped off our fans and grabbed hold.” He was helping Spud to his feet as he spoke.
”Mac, me bhoy,” the pilot told his a.s.sistant, ”the log has it all, the whole story. There'll be no trouble for you at all.”
He yanked quickly at the port-opening switch, and the big steel disk backed slowly out of its threaded seat and swung wide.
Chet drew back one involuntary step as a blast of icy wind drove stinging snow into his face. Then, without a word, he gave Spud O'Malley a joyous grin and threw himself out into the void....
And, later, as he released the 'chute where a wind was dragging him violently across an icy expanse, he was laughing exultantly to see another 'chute whirled into the enshrouding drifts, while the chunky figure of a man came scrambling to his feet that he might shake a fist into the air toward some hidden enemy and shout into the storm epithets only half-heard.
”--and be d.a.m.ned to ye!” Chet heard him conclude; then was close enough to throw one arm about the figure and draw him after where he made his way toward a building that was like a mountain of snow.
Spud must have marveled at the craft within; at her sleek, s.h.i.+ning sides; the flat nose that ended in a black exhaust port. He was examining the other exhausts that ringed her round when Chet pulled out a lever from the streamlined surface and swung open an entrance port.
He motioned Spud into the brilliantly lighted interior, where nitron illuminators were almost blinding as they shone of gleaming levers and dials of a control room like none that Spud O'Malley had ever seen.
Chet had thrown the building's doors open wide; a whirling motor had drawn them back on hidden tracks. Now he closed the entrance port with care, then glanced at his instruments before he placed his hand on a metal ball.
It hung suspended in air within a cage of curved bars. It was a modification of the high-liner ball-control, and it was new. Walt Harkness had had it installed to replace a more crudely fas.h.i.+oned subst.i.tute that had brought them safely back from the Dark Moon. The name of that new satellite was on Chet's lips as his thin hand rested delicately upon the ball.