Chapter 4: The Hawk Prepares a Surprise

Hawk Carse’s icy poise in times of emotional stress never failed to amaze friends and enemies alike. Most of them swore he had no nerves, and that in that way he was not human. This estimate, of course, is foolish; Carse was perhaps too human, as was proved by the all-consuming object of his life. It was rather, probably, an inward vanity that made him stand composed as a statue while death was gnawing near; that had, once, led him actually to file his nails when apparently trapped and hotly besieged, with the wicked hiss of ray-guns all around.

And so he stood within his suit now--calm, quite collected, his face graven, while the yellow tendrils carpeted the whole cabin, penetrated between the twin banks of instruments on each side and clouded the bow windows, visi-screen and positionals until the two living men aboard that ship of death were completely shut off from outside vision. Friday, his large white eyes never for a moment still, and waiting as the Hawk was waiting to find whether or not their suits, too, harbored the fungus, could quite easily have been scared into a state of panic; but the sight of the steely figure near him eased his nerves and brought a vague kind of reassurance.

Minutes went by. Presently the Hawk said softly into his microphone:

“We’re safe, now, I think. You’d better go aft and see what state the ship’s in. Come right back.” And as Friday left, wading through the clinging growth, the trader went to the eye-piece of the electelscope.

He brushed the puffy covering of yellow silt away and adjusted the instrument’s controls as best he could, centering it on where Judd’s craft had last been. Then he peered through--and saw that which made him start.

The Star Devil was rolling round and round, like a ball!

Carse looked out on a star-studded panorama that was sweeping crazily by. Now the cloudy globe of Iapetus, which had just before lain far behind, came swinging into view, sliding rapidly from the bottom of his field of view to the top, and so out of sight again, to quickly give place to the flaming, ringed sphere of Saturn, which in turn passed away and left the star-spangled blackness of space. Then Iapetus once more. He snapped the electelscope off abruptly, and turned from it to see Friday come clumping back.

“Swept everything clean, suh,” the negro reported gloomily. “That fungus’s thick; cain’t even see the men’s bodies, it’s so deep. It’s that way, all over.”

“It’s down in the gravity propulsion plates too,” Carse said shortly. “Their adjustment’s been ruined by it, and we’re out of control, turning over and over. I couldn’t possibly see Judd. Well, we’ve got to go down to the plates and try and clean them.”

It was a weird scene that faced him in the engine room. The complex instruments and machinery were draped with straggling ferns of yellow; up above, a solid clump some ten feet thick hung on the platform where the engineer usually stood--a living tomb. The usual purr of the mechanisms was muffled and hushed. So fecund was the fungus that the path Friday had cleared in his passage aft was already filled, and Carse had to clear a new one. The growth was deep there, but still deeper in the next compartment.

It was practically a solid mass of yellow, for in it their invader had found food. It had fed well on the lockers of supplies and devoured all but the bones and clothing of the two men whom it had caught--radio-operator and cook. Carse fought on through this tough, clinging sea and came at last to the cargo hold, where, in the deck, was the man-hole that gave passage down to the ‘tween-decks compartment where the rows of gravity propulsion plates were located.

Friday raised the cover with a wrench: then, preceded by the rays of their hand-flashes, they climbed down and wormed forward as best they could in their hampering suits, to the plates. They found they had lost their customary glitter beneath powdery coatings of yellow, sufficient to disturb their faint electric currents and microscopically adjusted angles. On hands and knees--for the compartment, though as wide as the ship’s inner shell, was only three feet in height--the Hawk stopped and said:

“We might be able to get some use out of these plates if we can keep the fungus brushed off. It’s thin: let’s try it.”

But the yellow growth’s vitality baulked them. Sweating from their awkward exertions inside the hot space-suits, they again and again brushed clean the plates with pieces of waste--only to see the feathery particles regather as quickly as they were cleared away. There wasn’t more than an inch of the fungus, but that inch stuck. There was no removing it.

“No use, boss,” gasped the negro, pausing breathless. “Cain’t do it. Nothin’ to do, I guess, but wait an’ see what de Kite does. He’ll sure want this ship and the horn.”

“I know,” his captain answered slowly. “He’ll want this ship, for it’s the fastest in space--but I can’t understand how he’ll board us. I’m going up and see what I can find out. You stay here. Try cleaning the plates again.”

Up through the man-hole he went, and forward to the control cabin. And, as before, the electelscope’s eye-piece held a surprise for him.

Somehow, the Star Devil’s speed of wild tumbling had lessened. A moment later the reason appeared. As her bow dipped down and down, there slid across the field of view, about a mile away, the lighted ports of another ship; and, from this other ship’s nose there winked a spot of green, the beginning of a ray-stream which stabbed across the gulf to impinge on the Star Devil’s bow. Carse could feel his craft steady as it struck. It was a gravital ray, with strong magnetic properties, which Judd was using to stop her turnings so he and his men could board!

Again and again the beam flashed across the Hawk’s field of view, and he knew it was raying its mark neatly each time her bow swung abeam, for soon she was hardly turning at all. Then Judd evidently was satisfied. The port-lights of his ship veered aside; drew to a position abreast of the other. The two cold gray eyes that watched saw the outer port-lock door of the pirate open, revealing six figures, clad in space-suits and connected by a rope, that stepped out, pushed, and came floating towards the Star Devil.

Swiftly Carse moved. For many reasons it was useless, he rapidly decided, to try and surprise them as they boarded; there was a better and surer way. And, as always, he attended to every little detail--details that to others might have seemed trivial--of this preferred way.

With quick, strong fingers he removed the fungus-choked body of Harkness from its space-suit, and threw the suit into a nearby locker. From another locker he selected a loop of yellow-encrusted rope. Holding this over one arm, he made his way back rapidly to the aft man-hole, closed it carefully behind him and crept forward to the anxious negro who was still futilely dusting the plates. He told what he had seen, but nothing else.

Friday noted the rope, and he twisted his whole body to get a sight of Carse’s gray eyes, through the face-shield.