Page:Wonder Stories Quarterly Volume 2 Number 2 (Winter 1931).djvu/81

 was it. Now the Martian was persistent—like a wolf.

A dozen times he had pounded on the door in the interplanetary code the message, "Hand over the girl and you can come out. Don't be a fool!"

At first Graham had flown into a rage and had all but opened the door to face the armed Martian. But he had laughed scornfully and had been content to reply, "When Hell freezes!"

But the Martian had persisted. Each half hour as the air in the helio-room became more and more poisoned, the Martian watching their paling faces had repeated with the diabolical unvarying signal, "Hand over the girl—don't be a fool!"

Graham's rage had given way to laughter then a growing despondency. The signals began to appear as sounds coming from another world—incredibly remote—

Then a desire for life would well up in him, and even as his arm tightened about Alma, something in him whispered, "Why die—why not hand her over—I'm young—" But a wave of revulsion for his weakness followed and he would get up to stamp about the room like a caged beast.

Knock—knock, knock—knock—That signal again—"Hand over the girl—" It was luck Alma couldn't understand it—But he must do something—he would go mad—

"I'm going out," said Graham crazily. "We can't stay here."

She clung to him. "Out! No, Graham dear! He'll kill you."

"Not out there, Alma. Out into space!"

"Space! But Graham—"

"I have a pressure suit. Wait, I'll show you. I should have tried it before. Alma, you won't be afraid to stay alone? I must—I must leave you." He told her swiftly.

"I think I can get around outside the ship. Into the pressure porte behind the Captain's cabin. If I can get in there—get another rifle—"

But Kol could see them now through the door-pane. He would be forewarned—Graham took a sheet from his bed. He and Alma draped it over the door; and Kol watched them with a sardonic grin.

"Good!" muttered Graham. "He misunderstands us. Alma, listen—after I've gone you pull aside a corner of this sheet. Cautiously! Make sure he is out there. If he starts away, shout at him. Talk to him. Keep him occupied. And talk to me, Alma! Talk loudly to me, as though I were here with you in this room. Will you—can you do that?"

"Yes! Yes, Graham."

"Your air here will be worse. I'll have to use some of it getting out." He held her for an instant. "Alma—I'lllI'll [sic] do my best. It's the only way—"

The pressure suit covered him from neck to the soles of his feet, like the suit of an ancient sea-diver. Its flexible material was double shelled, and between the shells, was an electrified vacuum. Graham flashed on the oscillatory current. The suit bloated, puffed into a monstrous semblance of human form.

"Now, my helmet, Alma. You're not too afraid to be left alone?"

She smiled bravely at him. "Do your best, Graham. Come back to me safely!"

Alone in Space! The thought of it set Graham trembling. He had never done it! No one had ever done it save in a case of desperate necessity— Alma helped him screw the goggling helmet to the metal collar of his suit. On his back and at his belt the air-renewal boxes and the batteries of the suit's pressure-resisting current stuck out as monstrous lumps.

Through his visor-pane he saw Alma smiling at him. Her lips framed, "Goodbye."

The door to the pressure porte slid open. The porte was a tiny metal room barely large enough for him to squeeze into. He wedged in, and the door slid closed after him. The air here was normal at one atmosphere of pressure. He had taken this much of Alma's precious air to fill it. With his gloved fingers he now felt for the porte's mechanisms— The pumps were working! A thrill of fear rushed at him that they would not operate, but they did.

A moment or two. By the room's dial-indicator, Graham saw the air-pressure lowering. He could feel the outward, explosive tugging of his suit until his own regulators met and resisted it.

A moment. Then, with the air in the tiny porte almost exhausted, Graham slid the outer panel. The great void of star-filled abyss yawned beside him. The last little air in the porte went out with a rush, dissipating into Space.

Graham crouched at the brink. A million million miles of emptiness was beneath him. Great blazing worlds down there in the black darkness. Graham poised, with an unconquerable thrill of fear surging—

And then he hitched himself forward; straightened at the threshold and with careful calculation dove head first into the void!

ND he did not fall! Graham knew he would not, yet every instinct within him was shuddering. For a moment his senses reeled into chaos. Then they steadied. The firmament had swung. All the great shining star-points had shifted; oscillated; but in a moment they stopped; hung motionless.

Graham found himself floating. His forward dive, as he had calculated, flung him slowly out from the Comet. He had moved perhaps two hundred feet, sluggishly retarding—like a log shoved into a lake of placid water.

He had now come to rest. He lay in the void. Weightless. Helpless to move, save that he could futilely kick and twist. A world in himself! He was no longer the inhabitant of a planet; nor the inhabitant of a Space-ship. Himself a world, floating here with all the myriad forces of Celestial Mechanics acting upon him—

Graham twisted and saw, behind him two hundred feet away, the wrecked broken side of the