Part 1 (1/2)
The Bluff of the Hawk.
by Anthony Gilmore.
[Sidenote: ”A trick? Ca.r.s.e was famed for them. A trap? But how?”]
Had not old John Sewell, the historian, recognized Hawk Ca.r.s.e for what he was--a creator of new s.p.a.ce-frontiers, pioneer of vast territories for commerce, molder of history through his long feud with the powerful Eurasian scientist, Ku Sui--the adventurer would doubtless have pa.s.sed into oblivion like other long-forgotten s.p.a.cemen. We have Sewell's industry to thank for our basic knowledge of Ca.r.s.e. His ”s.p.a.ce-Frontiers of the Last Century” is a thorough work and the accepted standard, but even it had of necessity to be compressed, and many meaty episodes of the Hawk's life go almost unmentioned. For instance, Sewell gives a rough synopsis of ”The Affair of the Brains,”
but dismisses its aftermath entirely, in the following fas.h.i.+on (Vol.
II, pp. 25O-251):
”... there was only one way out: to smash the great dome covering one end of the asteroid and so release the life-sustaining air inside. Captain Ca.r.s.e achieved this by sending the s.p.a.ce-s.h.i.+p _Scorpion_ cras.h.i.+ng through the dome unmanned, and he, Friday and Eliot Leithgow were caught up in the out-rus.h.i.+ng flood of air and catapulted into s.p.a.ce, free of the dome and Dr. Ku Sui. Clad as they were in the latter's self-propulsive s.p.a.ce-suits, they were quite capable of reaching Jupiter's Satellite III, only some thirty thousand miles away.
”Then speeding through s.p.a.ce, Captain Ca.r.s.e discovered why he had never been able to find the asteroid-stronghold. He could not see it! Dr. Ku Sui had protected his lair by making it invisible! But Ca.r.s.e was at least confident that by breaking the dome he had destroyed all life within in, including the coordinated brains.
”So ended The Affair of the Brains.[1]
”The three comrades reached Satellite III safely, where, after a few minor adventures, Captain Ca.r.s.e....”
[Footnote 1: See the March, 1932, Issue of Astounding Stories.]
Sewell's ruthless surgery is most evident in that last paragraph. Of course his telescoping of the events was due to limited s.p.a.ce; but he did wish to draw a full-length, character-revealing portrait of Hawk Ca.r.s.e, and with ”... reached Satellite III safely, where, after a few minor adventures, Captain Ca.r.s.e ...” learned old John Sewell slid over one of his greatest opportunities.
The resourcefulness of Hawk Ca.r.s.e! In these ”few minor adventures” he had but one weapon with which to joust against overwhelming odds on an apparently hopeless quest. This weapon was a s.p.a.ce-suit--nothing more--yet so brilliantly and daringly did he wield its unique advantages that he penetrated seemingly impregnable barriers and achieved alone what another man would have required the ray-batteries of a s.p.a.ce-fleet to do.
But here is the story, heard first from Friday's lips and told and re-told down through the years on the lonely ranches of the outlying planets, of that one dark, savage night on Satellite II and of the indomitable man who winged his lone way through it. Hawk Ca.r.s.e! Old adventurer! Rise from your unknown star-girdled grave and live again!
Thirty thousand miles was the gap between Dr. Ku Sui's asteroid and Satellite III, the nearest haven. Thirty thousand miles in a s.p.a.ce-s.h.i.+p is about the time of a peaceful cigarro. Thirty thousand miles in a cramped awkward s.p.a.ce-suit grow into a nightmare journey, an eternity of suffering, and they will kill a good number of those who traverse them so.
For, take away the metal bulkheads and walls, soft lights and warmth of a s.p.a.ce-liner, get out in a small cramped s.p.a.ce-suit, and s.p.a.ce loses its mask of harmlessness and stands revealed as the bleak, unfeeling torturer it is. There is the loneliness, the sense of timelessness, the sensation of falling, and above all there is the ”weightless” feeling from pressure-changes in man's blood-stream--changes sickening in effect and soon resulting in delirium. Nothing definite; no gravity; no ”bottom,” no ”top”; merely a vacuum, comprehended by the human mind through an all-enveloping nausea, and seen in confused spectral labyrinths as the whole cold panorama of icy stars staggers and swirls and the universe goes mad. Such a trip was enough to churn the resistance of the hardiest traveler, but for Hawk Ca.r.s.e, Friday and Eliot Leithgow there was more. On Ku Sui's asteroid they had gone through hours of mental and physical tension without break or relaxation, and they were sleep-starved and food-starved and their brains f.a.gged and dull. What would have been a strong reaction on land hit them, in s.p.a.ce, with tripled force.
So Friday--our ultimate authority--remembered little of the transit.
He had bad short periods of wakefulness, when the recurring agony of his body woke and racked him afresh, and only during these did he see the other two grotesque figures, sometimes widely separated, sometimes close, dazzlingly half-lit by Jupiter's light. But he was conscious that one of the three was keeping them more or less together, though only later did he know that this one was Ca.r.s.e--Ca.r.s.e, who hardly slept, who drove off unconsciousness and fought through nausea to keep at his task of shepherding, failing which they would have drifted miles apart and become hopelessly separated. He was able to maintain them in a fairly compact group by his discovery of a short metal direction rod on the breast of the suit, which gave horizontal movement in the direction it was pointed when its b.u.t.ton was pressed.
But though it seemed endless, the journey was not; Satellite III grew and grew. Its pale circle spread outward; dark blurs took definition; a spot of blue winked forth--the Great Briney Lake. The globe at last became concave, then, after they entered its atmosphere, convex. This last stretch was the most grueling.
Friday remembered it in vivid flashes. Time after time he dropped into confused sleep, each time to be awakened by Ca.r.s.e jarring into him, shouting at him through the suits' small radio sets, keeping him--and Leithgow--attentive to the job of decelerating. The man's efforts must have been terrific, taxing all his enormous driving power, for he at that time was without doubt more exhausted than they. But he succeeded, and he was a haggard-faced, feverish sh.e.l.l of himself when at last he had them in a dangling drunken halt in the air a hundred feet from the surface.
Primal savagery lay stretched out below, and there seemed to be no safe spot whereon to land. The foul, deep swamp that reached for miles on every side, the towering trees that sprouted their spiny trunks and limbs from it, the interlaced razor-edged vines and creeper-growths--all was a stirring welter of tropic life, life varied and voracious and untamed. From the tiny poisonous bansi insects layers deep on the nearest tree to the monster gantor that crouched in a clump of weeds, gently sawing his fangs back and forth, all the creatures of this world were against man.
Ca.r.s.e scanned the scene wearily. They had to land; had to sleep under normal conditions, and eat and drink, before they could go further.
But where? Where was haven? He snapped out the direction rod, moved away a short distance, and then glimpsed, below and to the left, a small peninsula of firm soil which seemed safe and uninhabited. And there was a pool of fairly clear water before it, containing nothing but an old uprooted stump. He came back to the others, shook them, and led them down to the place he had discovered.
They landed with a thump which seemed to shake all life from two of them. Friday and Eliot Leithgow collapsed into inert heaps, asleep immediately. Ca.r.s.e extracted a ray-gun from the belt of Leithgow's suit and prepared to stand watch. But that was too much. He over-estimated his capacity. He had come through thirty hours of h.e.l.lish sleep-denied delirium, and he could not stave sleep off any longer. He staggered and went down, and his eyelids were glued in sleep when his body hit the ground.
But mechanically, with an instinct that sleep could not deny, his left hand kept clasped around the b.u.t.t of the ray-gun....