Page:Wonder Stories Quarterly Volume 2 Number 2 (Winter 1931).djvu/82

 Comet. The ship lay as though cradled in water. A vague pang shot past him. He had loved this ship. It had throbbed beneath him for so many hours, so many voyages. It lay now wrecked; dying. Unbreathing, save up there in the one bulkhead area which encompassed his own tiny cubby where Alma was imprisoned; the catwalk where Kol the Martian lurked; and the Captain's quarters.

Graham's gaze went to the bow. It was mangled. The dome was bashed in where the asteroid had struck it a crushing blow. A great hole was there out of which had rushed all the precious air of the ship.

The side-deck porte-windows had held intact. The side and stern, as viewed from Graham's position now seemed almost as though the ship were unhurt and upon her course.

Relative to Graham, the Comet was not moving. It hung there with the great star-field behind and around it. Yet he knew that it was falling. The forces of every remote star of the Universe blended here now upon it had determined some movement. It was following some path; moving, somewhere—

Graham for that moment had been so absorbed he had forgotten himself. He was suddenly aware of an object passing close to him—slowly passing. He twisted to view it. Gruesome horror! The body of a man! One of the ship's crew, flung out here with the outrushing air through the break in the bow at the time of the collision. The body floated quietly past. It was twisted; huddled. He saw for an instant, its face. Gruesomely bloated; crimson-skinned where the blood had welled out through the pores—

The body went calmly by, down the length of the Comet in a circular path, and around the ship's end. It was a satellite now! Doomed forever to encircle the greater mass of the ship. And it had acquired a slow axial rotation of its own, turning end over end—

Graham was for a moment almost motionless. Soon, he knew, he would pick up some movement relative to the Comet. Himself a little world, acquiring now its orbit. He had calculated his dive. He could not see the captain's cabin nor the catwalk from here, nor could the Martian see him—He found presently that he was lagging behind the ship as it fell. He began floating toward the stern, and moving slightly inward upon what seemed a narrow ellipse—

It was what he wanted. If he had not chanced that, like the gruesome body, he too would have become a satellite. He was not quite helpless of movement. The pressure suit had a tiny rocket wavestream. It would endow him with motion, though when used, its slight charge would be soon exhausted.

Graham used it sparingly now. The natural orbit took him elliptically around the Comet's stern. He watched his opportunity, and shot from his shoulder-pouch the tiny blue-white vibratory beam. Its thrust was slight, but enough. He found himself moving inward; the Comet seemed coming toward him. And then, with its nearness, his newly acquired orbit was broken. The ship's side pulled him with a swift acceleration—

He was turning end over end; the ship now above him, now beneath—A moment or two. Dizzying; confused. He was aware that he glimpsed the catwalk in the dome-peak, with the figure of Kol standing there. Had the Martian seen him? Graham could only hope not. Or, if so, his floating body, briefly seen, could be mistaken for those other bloated figures—

RAHAM was aware of the Comet's side beneath him, and he was falling upon it—He saw it rushing up at him. There was an impact, broken by his metal suit. He struck against one of the deck's glassite window portes, slowly bounded away a few feet and then dropped back. This time he clung. Almost weightless; but he found that by holding to the outer protuberances of the ship's sides he could maintain his position.

He gained his feet. He was standing now on the side windowpane, his body sticking straight from it like a fly. He was standing upright and the wrecked ship lay on its side beneath him—He stooped and gazed down through the window. The deck-passage was a litter of wreckage. He could see the torn and broken doors of the superstructure's public rooms; the shattered panes of the interior cabin-windows. A myriad separate explosions and implosions had occurred in every portion of the ship with that first sudden rush of unequal pressures. He saw the strewn human bodies, lying where they had been stricken when the air left them—A woman clinging to a little girl lay in the Salon doorway where they had staggered gasping for air and had been suddenly overcome.

Graham started carefully walking. He had to turn away frequently at the sight of the lifeless figures—He was now not more than twenty feet from the upper pressure porte, which gave access to the chart room adjoining the Captain's cabin He knew every foot of the ship, inside and out. The little superstructure containing the Captain's rooms was between him and the catwalk. Kol would not see him—unless he had seen him already Graham reached the side of the chart room. The upper dome, still intact, bulged out under him. Alma was down in here

Graham suddenly realized that all this had occupied at least a half hour. Or more? He prayer that it had been no more. The air in his cubby must be horribly fouled by now. He must hurry Had Alma been able to hold out? Would he find her unconscious? Dead perhaps? Or, at the last, had her instinct for life been too great—had she opened the door for the Martian?

Graham's bloated gloved fingers trembled at the thought as he stooped for the outer control button of the chart room emergency porte. The panel slid aside. The half-exhausted air of the pressure-lock came up with a puff of wind. Graham saw, down in the darkness of the small room,