Alliana Girl Of Dragons

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Alliana Girl Of Dragons

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materials.
.
When they were inside, Jim was the first to speak. “This
ship is terrific,” he said simply.

“You admit that?” Bart asked incredulously.

“I’ve never seen a craft stand up so perfectly under 56

extreme heat,” Jim continued. “I think you’ve done it,
Bart. It’s the finest light space ship ever built.”

“An engineer who started out with Dad made this alloy,”
Bart declared. “He told me he thought he had finally
come up with the ideal metal.”

“The Meteor rattled like an old freighter the whole way!”

Jim complained. “We spent a lot of time in the rear
checking on the rocket tubes. We were afraid they’d
shake loose. I guess we must have been back there
when we passed you, for the last time I looked out you
were ahead of us.”

That explained why they hadn’t seen his wave, Steve

thought.

“It sure was a lucky break for us that you brought your
drill along,” Jim went on. “I had so much confidence in
the Meteor I was sure we wouldn’t need it.”

“I felt the same way,” Bart admitted, “but Steve insisted

we bring it. That kid brother of mine always did have
more practical sense than I.”

“I’ve been doing a lot of thinking since we crash-landed,

Bart,” Jim said. “I’ve been thinking that maybe this feud
has gone on long enough and that you must be as sick
of it as I am. Together, we could turn out ships that
would be just about perfect. What do you say, Bart?”
Bart’s face grew stern and thoughtful. Finally he
answered, “I’ll have to think it over first, Dennis.”

“While you’re thinking, we may as well have a look-see,” 57

Jim said. He went over to the panel and checked the
readings. “You seem to be way ahead of my old record,
Bart. You’re still going to try to beat it, aren’t you?”

Steve knew this remark had broken down the last of

Bart’s stubborn pride and reserve. His brother smiled
and thrust out his hand to Jim Dennis. “You’re a good
loser, Jim,” he said.

“I’m no loser,” Jim answered, grinning. “I’m a winner—

we both are.”

Young Steve Condon sighed contentedly. He glanced at

Pete Rogers, who winked at him. Jim and Bart sat down
side by side at the control panel of the Condon Comet.
Steve didn’t doubt for a moment that the long feud was
finally at an end. He was satisfied that his father would
have liked it this way.

58
 FLIGHT OF THE CENTAURUS

Spacemaster Brigger came into the navigation

compartment of the Centaurus, which was thrusting into
the starry night of space far beyond Saturn. Rob Allison,
junior officer, looked up from the desk where he sat,
wondering at the frown on the skipper’s face.

“It’s just as I feared, Allison,” Mr. Brigger said gravely.

“The men are sorry they signed on for Titania and are
grumbling already. They think they’ll be ridiculed when
they get back.”

“Because of Dr. Franz’s being discredited by all the

scientists, I suppose?”

The skipper nodded. “They’re sure they’re on a wild-

goose chase. I’m afraid I’m inclined to agree with
them.”

“I guess you and the crew, sir, are only reflecting the 59
opinion of almost everyone else on Earth,” Rob mused
bitterly.

The spacemaster of the Centaurus dropped onto a

plastic bench beside a port that overlooked the star
fields of the outer solar system. “Exactly why did your
brother Grant authorize this expedition, Allison? Does he
really believe we’ll find animal life on Uranus’ satellite or
is it something else?”

Grant Allison, an illustrious front-rank explorer of several

years before, was now president of Interplanet
Exploration, which controlled research space travel.

Rob relaxed as he prepared to answer. “You probably

didn’t know, sir, that Dr. Franz put my brother through
space school when our father couldn’t afford it. He was
Grant’s teacher in space mechanics in high school and
thought he showed unusual promise.”

“That would explain President Allison’s interest in Dr.

Franz,” Mr. Brigger agreed, “but I can’t understand an
intelligent man like your brother falling for a
harebrained story such as Dr. Franz told.”

The facts of Dr. Franz’s amazing discovery were known 60

to the whole world. While studying the planet Uranus a
distance of two and a half years before, the research
ship blew a rocket tube and was forced down on
Titania, Uranus’ largest moon. While the crewmen
repaired the craft, Dr. Franz went prospecting. After he
returned, he reported that he saw fish life swimming
beneath Titania’s solid ice sheet, where the temperature
was 300 degrees below zero Fahrenheit. The crewmen
were too interested in their work and, not having a
scientific curiosity anyhow, did not bother to verify the
scientist’s claim.

Upon returning to Earth, Dr. Franz, who was in the early

stage of a fatal illness, told the scientific world of his
remarkable discovery. He was totally unprepared for the
rebuff he received from all quarters. No scientist on
Earth would admit that Dr. Franz’s preposterous tale
could possibly be true. Those people who would not go
as far as calling Dr. Franz a dishonest publicity seeker
(as some did) were nevertheless agreed that the ordeal
he had gone through must have been too much for him.
Dr. Franz died six months later of his illness—a
brokenhearted man.

“Grant truly believed Dr. Franz found life on Titania,”

Rob said to the skipper of the Centaurus. “He’s so sure
of it that he has risked his own career on this
expedition. If this fails, he says public sentiment will
force him out of office.”

“Your brother must have a lot of confidence in you,

Allison,” Mr. Brigger said, “making you head of this
research trip which is so important to him. But from
what I hear of your exploits on other planets, he has
reason to trust you.”

“Thank you,” Rob murmured. “I couldn’t do a good job,

though, if I didn’t believe as whole-heartedly in this as
Grant does. I believe, as Grant does, that Dr. Franz
spoke the truth.”

“It will certainly be a revolutionary discovery for science 61

if you find and bring back evidence of that,” the skipper
admitted.

Before leaving the compartment, Mr. Brigger added,

“Let’s hope we don’t have a mutiny on our hands before
this thing is over.”

Alone, Rob got up and stared out of the port into the
perpetual black deeps where the star points glowed like
polished gems.
Some minutes later a young spaceman with sandy,
disordered hair that even space regulations could do
nothing with, came into the compartment. Jim Hawley
was Rob’s best friend and had flighted a number of
expeditions with him. There was a sober look on Jim’s
customarily jovial face.

“The men are complaining like babies, Rob,” Jim said.

“Do you think they’ll be any good to us?”

“They’ll have to be, Jim,” Rob answered grimly. “They’re

all we have.”

Jim looked at his stalwart young friend in admiration.

“You and Grant are all right, Rob. Not many men would
risk their careers on an old man’s whims. Aren’t you
scared—just a little bit?”

“I’m plenty scared,” Rob told him, with a nervous smile.

“I’m only a subofficer of five months, and here I am in
charge of an expedition. Don’t think that isn’t
frightening. In a sense, the lives of all men aboard the
ship will be in my hands after we land.”

“If you need me,” Jim assured him, “here’s one buddy
you can count on.”

Two days later the Centaurus had intercepted the orbit 62

of Titania and was beginning to barrel surfaceward.
Rob, looking outside from the officer’s platform up
forward, saw a huge rocky world filling the port, its
mantle of ice shimmering in the reflected light of the
unseen primary body.

The Centaurus dropped lower over a plateau that Rob

had pointed out to Mr. Brigger as the spot where Dr.
Franz had visited. The underjets threw out pencils of
braking power to check the plunge of the space ship.

Finally the Centaurus touched down on its tail fins and

then Spacemaster Brigger said to Rob, “It’s all yours
now, Allison.”

Looking out over the hoary wilderness, completely

airless because of the little world’s inability to retain an
atmosphere, Rob felt suddenly incompetent. Only now
did he realize fully his youthful inexperience. It was one
thing to be an idle witness on a journey; it was another
to be in charge of a crew of men.

Rob heard footsteps on the platform and turned to see

Jim Hawley walking up. Jim grinned in his engaging
fashion, and it was like a tonic to Rob’s spirits.

“What do you say we get started, Rob?” he said. “We’ve

got a lot to do.”

Rob had the skipper round up the crew in the

orientation compartment as soon as he had made his
own plans. Then he laid before them the order of
procedure. On a flannel board he tacked an enlarged
map he had copied from one owned by Dr. Franz.

“Here’s a sketch of this area,” Rob explained. “Dr. Franz 63

neglected to mark where he had seen the fishlike
animal swimming beneath the ice. He did report that he
was only able to find one after days of searching. They
must be very scarce.”

“So scarce there probably aren’t any at all,” retorted one

of the subofficers in a low voice.
Rob ignored the remark and went on with his
explanation. “We’ll scatter out over the area and begin
searching. It won’t be an easy job because the ice isn’t
completely clear but is streaked through with ammonia
and other opaque solubles.”

“Just how long will we have to keep up this search?”

another crewman demanded. “I don’t want to spend
Christmas in this forsaken place.”

Spacemaster Brigger spoke up then. “We can spend

seven days on searching and still have enough supplies
and fuel to get us home again. If we don’t find anything
in that time, we start back just the same. Is that clear,
Mr. Allison?”

“Yes, sir,” Rob said. Seven days sounded like ample

time, but the area they had to cover was several square
miles. From Dr. Franz’s description of the place, the
liquid medium beneath the ice was wide and deep, a
veritable ocean. Beneath this solution the ice began
again and extended into the core of the small planet.

Explanations over, the majority of the crew, about 64

twenty spacemen, climbed into their space gear, Rob
and Jim with them. Mr. Brigger and a few key personnel
would remain aboard to attend the operational facilities
of the ship. The suits were triple-reinforced against the
exceeding cold and were electrically heated. The
helmets, with inside radio sets, were frost-free types,
and the shoes were doubly weighted and spike-soled for
navigating over the icy, low-gravity surface.

The men descended to the ground on an escalator

dropped from the side of the Centaurus. Rob had the
men spread out, two by two, as safety buddies. He
concentrated on the farther corners of the ice field to
begin with, intending to bring the searchers closer and
closer to the ship each day.

As the men began hiking over the glacier, Rob and Jim
talked together through their helmet radio sets.

“I don’t understand how the water under the ice flows

without freezing in this superlow temperature,” Jim
remarked.

“It can’t be water,” Rob answered. “It’s something else,

probably a liquefied gas with an extremely low freezing
point. Wherever it is, it must contain all the elements
needed to support its strange life forms.”

“Let’s start looking too, Jim,” Rob suggested.

The first “day” passed without success. Then the 65

second. Night was only a relative term, for Uranus,
Titania’s main source of light, was never out of the sky.
On the third day, some of the men complained about
having to spend ten hours at a time in biting cold
weather searching for something they were sure did not
even exist. Despite the men’s heavily insulated suits, the
ultralow temperature that frosted the suits like mold
could not be entirely kept out. Rob sympathized with
the men, but there was no other way to do the job.

It was on the fifth day that one of the searchers spotted

a small thick-bodied shape several feet beneath the ice.
The cordon of searchers had closed in more than
halfway to the ship by now.

“Jim, will you supervise operation of the ice saw?” Rob

asked, when they had joined the men who had made
the discovery.
Jim nodded and left.

“Has it moved yet?” Rob asked one of the crewmen,

trying to curb the almost overpowering excitement he
felt.

“No,” one of them replied. “It seems to be dead and

embedded in the ice.”

Presently the ice saw came trundling up on its ski

runners, being pushed along by Jim and two others. It
was a boxlike machine, heavily insulated against the
cold. Jim dropped the blade and turned on the machine,
guiding it along an invisible outline around the
imprisoned thing. He went over the cuts several times,
lowering the blade each time until a depth of several
feet was reached. Then he gave the saw a side-to-side
motion, and there was a sharp crack as the block of ice
was snapped off beneath the surface.

By now all the searchers had come over. Jim worked the 66
lifters on the machine and the block of ice, containing
its inanimate prisoner, was raised and set down. The
men crowded close and looked. Then Rob looked, and
Jim. Rob felt a sickening disappointment as he realized
their failure. There was no creature inside the ice at all.
It was nothing but a slab of rock.

One of the men snorted contemptuously. Another

laughed openly in scorn.

Rob bit his lips and regretfully ordered the ice saw back
to the ship. Then he sent the men back to their
positions of search.

The young officer felt little hope. The ring was closing in
toward the Centaurus. There wasn’t much more area
that hadn’t already been examined. Rob, realizing the
attitude of the men, knew they hadn’t probed as
diligently as they were supposed to have. Very likely
large areas had been only carelessly examined. But that
couldn’t be helped.

Rob went through the last day with the slow resignation
of defeat settling within him. In only a few hours the
searchers would have covered the entire area, and their
own moment of victory would be at hand.

When the search was finally over and still no one had
found anything moving beneath the ice, Rob knew how
it felt to taste defeat.

Jim clapped Rob sympathetically on the shoulder. “I’m 67

sorry, Rob,” he said. “Perhaps later on there will be
another expedition.”

“There won’t be any more to this place, you can be sure

of that!” Rob blurted. “After this failure, the Space
Command certainly won’t send any more good money
after bad!”

Later, as all on board the Centaurus slept, Rob tossed

restlessly on his cot. He heard the quiet breathing of the
crewmen in the adjoining compartments. They were
happy; their reluctant job was done and they were
going home. The blast-off was scheduled for 0600 the
next morning.

Rob could not stand his plaguing thoughts. He got out

of bed and pulled on his clothes. He looked across the
room at Jim Hawley, breathing deeply in sound slumber.
Rob walked down the corridor to the garb room and
began tugging on space gear. He realized only then how
bone-weary he was, how his head ached from the
tension of the past weeks, how heavily his heart
throbbed in his breast. He couldn’t relax any place now,
he knew, but it would be easier outside, continuing the
search to the very end.

Rob tucked an electron gun in the holster of his suit,

then left the Centaurus. He struck out over the glacier
pack, his head lowered. It came to him then how
difficult it would have been for the men to detect any
moving object in the murky maze below.

Hours passed and Rob found himself far from the ship. 68
He was shivering from the stubborn cold. He turned the
heat in his suit to full strength and pushed his aching
legs faster to speed up the circulation. His eyes never
left the ground, searching, searching....

If he were the only one involved in the failure, it

wouldn’t matter so much, but it was his brother’s
problem too. Grant hadn’t made many mistakes on
research expeditions—that was why he held the highest
office in the organization. After this, though, it would go
hard with him. Then there was the misunderstood Dr.
Franz, who deserved a better fate than being labeled an
old man who in his final days seemed to have lost his
clear, scientific outlook.

“Maybe, though, the public was right,” Rob thought.

“Maybe it was a hoax Dr. Franz pulled in order to gain
public recognition he had never quite made.” But even
now, in the blackest moment, Rob couldn’t really believe
this of the dear friend who had launched his brother’s
career.

Rob’s legs were beginning to feel like stumps as the

time dragged on. He stumbled often on burls of ice that
cluttered the wasteland. Finally he tripped and fell
heavily, and it seemed that he did not even have the
strength to rise again. His helmet was flat on the ice
and his eyes, misted over with sleeplessness, were still
looking downward.

Then he caught a sign of movement in the depths. He

blinked his eyes to clear the glaze out of them.

“There it is again!” he said aloud. “It’s no hallucination 69

either!” It was a long dark shape threading its way
sluggishly down below. Now the thing was rising to the
surface. Cold, bulging eyes peered into his own.

With numb fingers Rob uncached his electron gun and

pressed the barrel against the ice. A moment later the
creature was hanging buoyant and lifeless under the
submerged edge of the ice layer. Rob struggled to his
feet, astounded at the renewed energy he now had. He
memorized the spot as best his dazed faculties would
allow. Then he laid the pistol on the ice for an additional
marker. He began running toward the ship.

From that moment on, Rob’s mind seemed to be in a

dream world. He vaguely remembered the long way
back to the space ship and then nearly collapsing before
reaching it. He dimly remembered Jim, who had missed
him, coming outside and assisting him into the warmth
of the vessel. And he barely recalled pouring out the
story of his find.

Now, much later, he was fully awake and the nightmare

was over. He found himself on his cot, fully dressed. Jim
Hawley was looking down on him. Rob was aware that
the ship was moving. He knew the Centaurus had
already blasted off for home.
“Did you find—!” he exclaimed.

Jim soothed him with a smile. “Yeah, we dug out your

monster and we’ve got him aboard. If you’re through
being a sleepyhead, I’ll take you to see him.”

70
 Cold, bulging eyes peered into his own.

“How long have I been under?” 71

“Twelve hours.”

“Wow!”

“Feel rested?”

“Good as new,” Rob answered.

They went down the corridor to one of the cold-storage

compartments. Several of the crew were inside, as well
as the skipper. But Rob wasn’t noticing the men. He was
looking at a dark alien form lying on the floor. Rob went
over closer and knelt down. The creature was fishlike,
and the strangest thing about it was the glistening dark
skin, similar to metal. Rob touched it and it was like
stroking cold steel.

“No wonder it can live in such frigid temperatures,” Rob

murmured, “with a metallic covering like that! Won’t the
scientists back home have a picnic dissecting him?”

He stood up and found his gaze level with Mr. Brigger’s.

“I never believed in your fantastic theory,” the chief

officer said, “and I still doubt it after I’ve seen it. But I
admired your spirit from the first, Allison. I believe you
would have been as good a loser as a winner and I’m
proud to have flighted with you.”

He smiled and offered his hand to Rob, who shook it. 72

Then the others came forward, and they too offered
congratulations. But Rob’s thoughts weren’t for his own
success this day. They were reaching ahead to when
Grant Allison would be even more of a fabulous figure in
the field of space science, and Dr. Franz would at last
have claimed his well-deserved victory.
73
 EXPEDITION PLUTO

“The lieutenant doesn’t think you’ve got your mind on

navigation, Rob,” Duff Ford was saying, as he and Rob
Allison stood before a port of the rocket ship Rigel
looking out over the sea of space.

“Does it show that much?” the lean young spaceman

answered.

“We’ll find him, Rob,” the redhead answered. “Stop

eating your heart out.”

“You never knew Jim Hawley, did you, Duff?” Rob

asked.

“No, but from what I’ve heard of him, he’s quite a guy.
Always smiling and bursting with friendliness.”

“That’s Jim,” Rob said, a tightness in his throat. “I sure 74

would like to know what happened to him and the
others on Pluto.”

“How come you didn’t get to go along on the first Pluto

expedition?” Duff asked. “I thought you and Jim Hawley
always went together.”

“I’ve been working with my brother in the States,” Rob

replied. “As the new president of Interplanet
Exploration, he’s been awfully busy.”
“There’s a real guy,” Duff said with admiration, “your
brother Grant. I guess he’s the greatest spaceman who’s
been born. And judging by your own record around the
solar system, Rob, you’re not far behind him.”

“Thanks for the flattery,” Rob said, grinning.

It felt good to smile again. He hadn’t smiled since he’d

learned about the break in communication from the
Pluto expedition ship Capella. The breakoff had come
suddenly after landing, and the source of the trouble
was unknown. As soon as Rob had heard that the Rigel
was going in search of the missing explorers, he had
signed up for the trip as assistant to the navigator. He’d
been grateful for the companionship of young Duff Ford,
a likeable fellow he’d met in space school. Duff was a
regular crewman, an air purifier, on the Rigel.

Duff was speaking again. “Think we’ll get by the big boy
there with the halo?”

Rob looked at the giant, glowing pearl of Saturn, which 75

had been growing before their eyes for the past couple
of days. Though placid and beautiful against the velvet
sky, the ringed planet was a real menace to the Rigel.

“Lieutenant Stone said it’s going to be a tight squeeze,”

Rob answered. “We hope we’ve got enough rocket
power to fight off the terrific gravity pull of Saturn and
his moons.”

“I can’t understand why we couldn’t go on a beeline to

Pluto without even coming close to the other planets,”
Duff said. “Pluto is a long ways off the plane of the
outer planets, isn’t it?”
“We could,” Rob answered, “if it weren’t for floating
clouds of explosive hydrogen which have been found to
exist outside of the plane of the ecliptic. That’s why we
have to stay in close until we’re past Neptune.”

“Won’t Uranus and Neptune give us trouble?” Duff

asked. “They’re pretty big too.”

“Uranus is far around on his orbit, and Neptune is

heading away from us. However, we’ll see Neptune at a
distance.”

Hours later Rob was in the navigation compartment with

Lieutenant Stone, his immediate superior. They were
leaning over a level ground-glass screen upon which
were a projected television image and a panel of dials.
In the middle of the scene was poised the oblate sphere
of Saturn and its spinning necklace of millions of
meteoric particles. Scattered about were globes of
varying sizes, which were Saturn’s moons. The screen
surface was roughened to take pencil marks. A tiny dot
represented the Rigel, and arcs were drawn to show the
motions of all the objects.

“Our closest approach to the planet will be here at point 76

‘X’,” spoke the navigator. Glancing at his watch, he
added, “We’ve got about five minutes to go.”

As they waited, Rob went over to the side port where

he could watch the luminous planet directly. He thought
he had never seen a sight so beautiful. Saturn was
banded with color layers something in the manner of
Jupiter, only in softer tints. Riotous masses seethed and
tossed in the cauldron of fury beneath the apparently
paper-thin girdle of shaded bands.
“It’s gorgeous—but deadly too,” Lieutenant Stone
commented.

“Yes, sir,” Rob murmured, “and I’m in no mood for a

bath of methane and ammonia. We’ve got to get to
Pluto; that’s the only thing that’s important!”

At zero hour, all rockets were blowing at full capacity.

Rob could feel the Rigel bending to the implacable will
of the big world. As the ship’s nose was pulled inward,
the young spaceman could see the anxiety on his
superior’s face.

“I hope we’ve calculated this thing correctly, Rob,” the

lieutenant said tightly. “The ship should begin to turn
tail on Saturn in a little while.”

But the Rigel still had not turned after twenty, nor even
forty, minutes.

“We’re losing ground!” Lieutenant Stone said, checking 77

a dial on the screen. “Something’s wrong! But that can’t
be!”

Rob went over to the screen, where the spectroscope

dial showed that the globe was growing closer, although
it was not visibly so. If the Rigel were not checked
within a short time, the space ship would plunge into
Saturn’s poisonous atmosphere! Rob picked up a
clipboard of papers and began studying it.

“I’d give anything if we were on the Procyon which took

you and your brother to Jupiter!” Lieutenant Stone
complained. “The Rigel’s built primarily for distance and
hasn’t a fraction of the Procyon’s rocket thrust!”
“There seems to be something wrong in the figures for
Titan!” Rob suddenly spoke.

Lieutenant Stone looked over his shoulder. Silently the

two went through the figures, inspecting every equation
where the numbers appeared relating to Saturn’s largest
satellite.

“The figures are wrong in two places!” the officer

exclaimed. “No wonder we miscalculated the total
gravity pull! Whoever prepared these notes back at the
base will surely catch it! I guess we can’t blame him too
much, though. These figures were worked up on extra
short notice for us.”

“What’re we going to do, lieutenant?” Rob asked. “The

ship’s on top power drive now!”

Lieutenant Stone explained the new development over 78

the intercom phone to Spacemaster O’Leary. The
skipper verified the fact that the Rigel was on full thrust.
He said that there was no other alternative but to
abandon ship and make for the moon Japetus in the
two space boats and hope to be picked up later from
there.

“We can’t abandon the ship!” Rob burst out

uncontrollably.

“And why not, Allison?” came the skipper’s retort over

the intercom.

“I beg your pardon, sir, but I was thinking of the Capella

and her crew!” Rob said. “What will happen to them?”

“That can’t be helped I’m afraid,” the skipper replied.

“My first duty is to my ship and men. Both of you
prepare to abandon ship.”

When Spacemaster O’Leary had cut off, Lieutenant

Stone said, “I’m sorry, Rob. I know how much you
thought of Spaceman Hawley, but there’s nothing more
to be done. Better get together what stuff you want to
take along.”

However, as the officer began getting up his things, Rob

remained at the screen, poring over it and a little
mathematical machine called an electronic computer.

“Ready to go, Rob?” Lieutenant Stone asked sometime

later.

“I think I’ve found something, sir!” Rob said, holding a

place on the screen with his finger.

“A die-hard, if I ever saw one,” murmured his superior,

with an admiring grin. He came over to see.

“Scylla is known to have a slightly unpredictable orbit,” 79

Rob said. “During the past few minutes I’ve traced it
cutting inward toward the planet. I’ve checked the
moon’s gravity-and-distance ratio on the computer, and
I believe if we delay the abandon-ship for several more
minutes we can pull free of Saturn and its family!”

“Let me see,” the lieutenant said. They checked the

slight movement of Saturn’s tenth satellite, which had
been discovered in 1963. Scylla was tiny, a dense ball of
rock only three miles in diameter. But its diminishing
gravity pull as it moved away could be enough to swing
the balance in favor of the Rigel.

Lieutenant Stone agreed with Rob’s finding in general,

although in the brief time available there was no
opportunity to make a positive measurement. He
phoned the skipper, who was ready to send out the first
space boat. Lieutenant Stone reported to him Rob’s find.

“If you agree it’s worth a chance, lieutenant, I’ll play

ball,” the skipper replied.

As Rob stared apprehensively at the big planet from the

side port, he tormented himself about whether he had
done the right thing in suggesting what he did. Had the
Rigel been abandoned, as was planned, all hands would
have been saved. As things stood now, however, the
entire crew might perish. Still, Rob could not really
regret taking the responsibility. Times before, when
there had been lives at stake, he had stuck by his
convictions and had never failed to accept danger when
that seemed the best move for all concerned.

Rob and Lieutenant Stone kept their eyes glued on the 80

TV screen, particularly the speck that was Scylla and the
slight motion it was describing. Rob felt shudders rock
the space ship as great powers locked in combat.

Some minutes later, Lieutenant Stone checked the dials

and said with a deep sigh of relief, “I think we’ve done
it! Thanks, Rob!”

They had done it. The balance was swung in favor of

the Rigel as Saturn’s tiny companion continued to move
away, giving up the fight. From now on the planet
would appear to diminish in size, but it would be many
hours before its commanding sphere would be lost
among the other millions of lights in the heavens.

For days and days, nothing seemed to change in the

endless depths of black space as the Rigel sped toward
Pluto. There were the same monotonous patterns of
stardust and the eternally broad sweep of the Milky Way
and other remote galaxies. Only the distant planets
grew and shrank in size. As the space ship neared
Neptune, the big green world enlarged importantly. Rob
and Duff, in an off-duty hour, watched the frigid, lonely
planet.

“Neptune reminds me a little of Earth,” Rob said.

Duff’s brows raised questioningly. “I can’t see any

similarity. Why, Neptune is four times Earth’s diameter!”

“But Neptune’s mean surface gravity is the same as 81

Earth’s because of its low density,” Rob replied. “Like
Saturn, another big puffball, Neptune has a small rocky
core surrounded by huge layers of ice and atmosphere.
Both Neptune and Earth have a greenish cast, and each
has a satellite of about the same size and at about the
same distance away.”

“There’s one big difference, though, Rob,” Duff said.

“Neptune’s a zillion times colder.”

“It’s still not as cold as we’re going to find Pluto,” Rob

reminded him, “near absolute zero!”

The redhead made a wry face. “Why did you have to

say that? It’s so warm and comfortable in here!”

As the Rigel drove onward, thousands of miles a minute,

day upon day, Rob grew impatient to reach Pluto. He
was thinking of Jim Hawley and the Capella crew
undergoing unknown hardship and peril. The radio
circuit with the ill-fated space ship had been left open in
case she was able to get a message through. But none
had come during all this time, and Rob was beginning to
doubt that he would ever see his fun-loving friend
again.

The day finally came when the Rigel hovered over the
little planet, which was not quite as large a world as
Mars. Rob and Duff, with some of the other crewmen in
the pilots’ compartment, stared down upon trackless
wastes of incredible frozen beauty. Ever since the ship
had dropped low enough to reveal the dazzling surface
features of the solar system’s most distant planet, no
one had spoken. The bizarre landscape seemed to have
awed everyone into a state of silent fascination.

Suddenly Duff broke the quiet. “Look, what a pretty 82

blue lake!”

Rob saw the small body of water partly surrounded by a

canyon of towering ice cliffs. In the twilight glow of
stars and the weak sun, the lake and peaks sparkled
with a clarity that reminded Rob of great jewels.

“It’s a lake rightly enough,” Spacemaster O’Leary said.

“You can see the ripples, but that’s no water.” He
checked the thermocouple. “It’s 348 degrees below zero
Fahrenheit down there! That’s a lake of liquid oxygen.
I’ve seen them on the dark side of Mercury.”

Rob gasped in astonishment. He had visited most of the

planets, but there was nothing to compare with a
wonder such as this.

Lieutenant Stone then spoke. “Those ice cliffs don’t look

to be frozen water. Do you think they might be chunks
of dry ice, sir?”

“That’s my opinion,” the spacemaster replied, “—solid

carbon dioxide. Notice those other crystal peaks off to
the right. They are probably ammonia. I’ve seen them
on Mercury, too.”

There was a scant, dense atmosphere close to the 83

ground—that had been known. It was a strange-looking
substance, Rob thought. It lay like a blanket of gray-
blue mist between the space ship, which was several
thousands of feet up, and the ground below. The
compressed atmosphere was filled with small clouds of
icelike particles which floated lazily near the surface like
tiny fish in a cosmic ocean. Everything about the scene
suggested a terrible coldness almost beyond human
realization.

“Our bearings indicate this is approximately the area

where the Capella was last heard from,” the skipper
declared. “But I see nothing of the ship. Do any of
you?”

With the others, Rob strained his eyes to pick out a

shiny cigar shape in the bleak stretches below. It
seemed an impossible task, and he was reminded of an
old analogy of the elusive needle in the haystack. There
were broad areas of dark rock between the icebergs,
filmed over lightly with rime. Such dark expanses could
account for Pluto’s weak solar reflection, Rob decided.

The Rigel cut its power to a low cruising speed and

began making a detailed search. Scanning scopes were
used to magnify the view, but the job promised to be a
long and painstaking one.

Perhaps it would even take too long to be of any service

to the Capella, Rob thought gloomily, as his scope swept
the ground. His speculations then took an even grimmer
turn. Perhaps the lake of oxygen had swallowed up the
space ship! Or maybe the craft lay buried under layers
of frost.

The hours of search, many of them, dragged by. At last

the skipper called his crewmen together and make a
pronouncement that shocked Rob.

“There’s no purpose in keeping up the search any 84

longer,” he said decisively. “Even if we should find the
ship now, we don’t have enough fuel to land and blast
off again. I’m afraid the elements have claimed the
Capella and that the first expedition to Pluto will have to
be written off the books.”

“But, sir,...!” Rob burst out.

The spacemaster looked at him levelly.

“I’m sorry, Rob. I realize you’ve got a more personal

interest in the Capella than the rest of us. But we’re
simply licked.”

Rob turned away from him in abject despair and stared

unseeingly out of the port. Filling his inner eye, to the
oblivion of all else, was the sight of a grinning young
spaceman, with a perpetually rumpled shock of blond
hair. He’d never see Jim Hawley again. Knowing this, it
was as though a part of himself had suddenly died.

As the Rigel headed away from the area over which it

had cruised unsuccessfully for so long a time, a burst of
static came over the long-silent, open circuit of the
space ship’s radio. Rob’s heart thrilled with hope. Could
it really be the Capella trying to make contact?

More static followed, then a muffled voice, barely

audible, saying: “Capella to space ship. Can you hear?”