Hendricks, his face pressed at an angle against one side of the port, turned toward me, and swung the shutter into place. Kincaide snapped on the lights.
"It"s no longer a theory, sir," he said in a choked, hushed voice, "although it"s still unreasonable. These things--are _eating_ us!"
"Eating us?" Correy"s voice joined Kincaide"s and mine in the exclamation of amazement. He had just entered the navigating room in response to my order.
"Eroding us, absorbing us--whatever you want to call it. There"s one at work close enough to the port so that I could see it. It is feeding upon our hull as an electric arc feeds upon its electrodes!"
"Farewell _Ertak_!" said Correy grimly. "Anything the rays can"t lick--wins!"
"Not yet!" I contradicted him. "Kincaide, what"s the nearest body upon which we can set down?"
"N-127, sir," he replied promptly. "Just logged her a few minutes ago."
He poured hastily through a dog-eared index. "Here it is: "N-127, atmosphere unbreathable; largely nitrogen, oxygen insufficient to support human life; no animal life reported; insects, large but reported non-poisonous; vegetation heroic in size, probably with edible fruits, although reports are incomplete on this score; water unfit for drinking purpose unless distilled; land area approximately--""
"That"s enough," I interrupted. "Mr. Correy, set a course for N-127 by the readings of the television instrument. Mr. Kincaide, accelerate to maximum s.p.a.ce speed, and set us down on dry land as quickly as emergency speed can put us there. And you, Mr. Hendricks, please tell us all you know--or guess--about the enemy."
Hendricks waited, moodily silent, until the ship was coming around on her course, picking up speed every instant. Kincaide had gradually increased the pull of the gravity pads to about twice normal, so that we found it barely possible to move about. The _Ertak_ was an old-timer, but she could pick up speed when she had to that would have thrown us all headlong were it not for the artificial gravity anchorage of the pads.
"It"s all guess-work," began Hendricks slowly, "so I hope you won"t place too much reliance in my theories, sir. I"ll just give you my line of reasoning, and you can evaluate it for yourself.
"These things are creatures of s.p.a.ce. No form of life, as we know it, can live in s.p.a.ce. Therefore, they are not material; they are not matter, like ourselves.
"From their effect upon the charts, we decided they were electrical in nature. Not made up of atoms and electrons, but of pure electrical energy in an unfamiliar form.
"Then, remembering that they exist in s.p.a.ce, and concluding that they were the destroyers of the two ships we know of, I began wondering how they brought about the destruction--or at least, the disappearance--of these two ships. Life of any kind must have something to feed upon. To produce one kind of energy we must convert, apparently consume, some other kind of energy. Even our atomic generators slowly but surely eat up the metal in which is locked the power which makes this ship"s power possible.
"But, in s.p.a.ce, what could these things feed upon? What--if not those troublesome bodies, meteorites? And meteorites, as we know, are largely metallic in composition. And ships are made of metal.
"Here are the only proofs, if proofs you can call them, that these are not wild ideas: first, the disintegrator rays, working upon an electrical principle, reacted upon but did not destroy these things, as might be expected from the meeting of two not dissimilar manifestations of energy; and the fact that I did, from the port, see one of these s.p.a.ce-things, or part of one, flattened out upon the body of the _Ertak_, and feeding upon her skin, already roughened and pitted slightly from the thing"s hungry activities."
Hendricks fell silent, staring down at the floor. He was only a youngster, and the significance of his remarks was as plain to him as it was to the rest of us. If these monsters from the void were truly feeding on the skin of our ship, vampire-like, it would not be long before it would be weakened; weakened to the danger point, weakened until we would explode in s.p.a.ce like a gigantic bomb, to leave our fragments to whirl onward forever through the darkness and the silence of outer s.p.a.ce.
"And what, sir, do you plan to do when we reach this N-127?" asked Correy. "Burn them off with a run through the atmosphere?"
"No; that wouldn"t work, I imagine." I glanced at Hendricks inquiringly, and he shook his head. "My only thought was to land, so that we would have some chance. Outside the ship we can at least attack; locked in here we"re helpless."
"Attack, sir? With what?" asked Kincaide curiously.
"That I can"t answer. But at least we can fight--with solid ground under our feet. And that"s something."
"You"re right, sir!" grinned Correy. It was the first smile that had appeared on the faces of any of us in many minutes. "And fight we will!
And if we lose the ship, at least we"ll be alive, with a hope of rescue."
Hendricks glanced up at him and shook his head, smiling crookedly.
"You forget," he remarked, "that there"s no air to breathe on N-127. An atmosphere of nitrogen. And no water that"s drinkable--if the reports are accurate. A breathing mask will not last long, even the new types."
"That"s so," said Kincaide. "The tanks hold about a ten-hours" supply; less, if the wearer is working hard, or fighting."
Ten hours! No more, if we did not find some way to destroy these leeches of s.p.a.ce before they destroyed the _Ertak_.
During the next half hour little was said. We were drawing close to our tiny, uninhabited haven, and both Correy and Kincaide were busy with their navigation. Working in reverse, as it were, from the rough readings of the television disk settings, an ordinarily simple task was made extremely difficult.
I helped Correy interpret his headings, and kept a weather eye on the gauges over the operating table. We were slipping into the atmospheric fringe of N-127, and the surface-temperature gauge was slowly climbing.
Hendricks sat hunched heavily in a corner, his head bowed in his hands.
"I believe," said Kincaide at length, "I can take over visually now." He unshuttered one of the ports, and peered out. N-127 was full abreast of us, and we were dropping sideways toward her at a gradually diminishing speed. The impression given us, due to the gravity pads in the keel of the ship, was that we were right side up, and N-127 was approaching us swiftly from the side.
""Vegetation of heroic size" is right, too," said Correy, who had been examining the terrain at close range, through the medium of the television disk. "Two of the leaves on some of the weeds would make an awning for the whole ship. See any likely place to land, Kincaide?"
"Nowhere except along the sh.o.r.e--and then we"ll have to do some nice work and lay the _Ertak_ parallel to the edge of the water. The beach is narrow, but apparently the only barren portion. Will that be all right, sir?"
"Use your own judgment, but waste no time. Correy, break out the breathing masks, and order the men at the air-lock exit port to stand by. I"m going out to have a look at these things."
"May I go with you, sir?" asked Hendricks sharply.
"And I?" pleaded Kincaide and Correy in chorus.
"You, Hendricks, but not you two. The ship needs officers, you know."
"Then why not me instead of you, sir?" argued Correy. "You don"t know what you"re going up against."
"All the more reason I shouldn"t be receiving any information second-hand," I said. "And as for Hendricks, he"s the laboratory man of the _Ertak_. And these things are his particular pets. Right, Hendricks?"
"Right, sir!" said my third officer grimly.
Correy muttered under his breath, something which sounded very much like profanity, but I let it pa.s.s.
I knew just how he felt.
I have never liked to wear a breathing mask. I feel shut in, frustrated, more or less helpless. The hiss of the air and the everlasting _flap-flap_ of the exhaust-valve disturb me. But they are very handy things when you walk abroad on a world which has no breathable atmosphere.
You"ve probably seen, in the museums, the breathing masks of that period. They were very new and modern then, although they certainly appear c.u.mbersome by comparison with the devices of to-day.
Our masks consisted of a huge shirt of air-tight, light material which was belted in tightly around the waist, and bloused out like an ancient balloon when inflated. The arm-holes were sealed by two heavy bands of elastic, close to the shoulders, and the head-piece was of thin copper, set with a broad, curved band of crystal which extended from one side to the other, across the front, giving the wearer a clear view of everything except that which was directly behind him. The balloon-like blouse, of course, was designed to hold a small reserve supply of air, for an emergency, should anything happen to the tank upon the shoulders, or the valve which released the air from it.
They were c.u.mbersome, uncomfortable things, but I donned mine and adjusted the menore, built into the helmet, to full strength. I wanted to be sure I kept in communication with both Hendricks and the sentries at the air-lock exit, and of course, inside the helmets, verbal communication was impossible.
I glanced at Hendricks, and saw that he was ready and waiting. We were standing inside the air-lock, and the mighty door of the port had just finished turning in its threads, and was swinging back slowly on its ma.s.sive gimbals.
"Let"s go, Hendricks," I emanated. "Remember, take no chances, and keep your eyes open."