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Ebook has 139 lines and 7538 words, and 3 pages

MESSAGE from VENUS

by R. R. WINTERBOTHAM

The Venusians had one admirable characteristic. When they set out to do a thing, nothing could stop them. Captain Paul Bonnet had said something to this effect to Major Rogers and it made the old man so angry that he almost court-martialed the youth.

"We're going to stop them!" the major roared.

Captain Bonnet glanced up into the sky, already dark with the ballooned bodies of the Venusian bipeds. The creatures looked like huge sausages, except that there was something deadly about them.

On the approaches to Outpost 53, sweating men labored on the caissons of twelve batteries of Amorg twenty-fives, pouring atomic destruction into a solidly packed mass of Venusians advancing through the wire entanglements.

Captain Bonnet nodded to the major. "You're right, sir!" He turned to the members of his crew who were manning an anti-rocket gun. "Did you hear that? Knock 'em out of the sky!"

The gun coughed Amorg vapor into the sky. A gaping hole appeared directly overhead where the bodies of at least a hundred Venusians were disintegrated. Before the gun could be recharged the hole disappeared, filled by more bulging Venusians.

Lieutenant Bill Riley wiped the sweat from his face with his soiled coat sleeve.

"It's like bailing a boat with a sieve!" he said.

Major Rogers looked as though he were going to have apoplexy.

"We'll get 'em," Captain Bonnet announced, winking at his lieutenant.

Both officers were young and husky. Both had seen action on the Martian canals and this wasn't the first meeting they had had with Venusians.

"If they had any sense they'd know they were licked," the captain added, casting his steely blue eyes at the entanglements. The place was a grisly sight, strewn with parts of thousands of long-bodied Venusians.

But the captain knew and the lieutenant knew--perhaps even the major knew--that Outpost 53 was worth any sacrifice the Venusians were willing to make. If this post were captured, the Venusians could control their planet again. There were any number of reasons why it was best that the planet be governed by terrestrials, and not all of them were commercial. The Venusians were murderous, evil, destructive creatures who hated every other living thing in the universe.

Captain Bonnet checked his casualties. Of his crew of sixty, three were dead and twelve paralyzed by the poisoned darts the Venusians used. The other forty-five were half dead from exhaustion. Three days of fighting was about all any man could stand.

The radio power house had been destroyed first of all. Then the space ship had been wrecked. The outpost was cut off from communication with the earth. Reinforcements who could attack the Venusians from above and disperse them would not be due for two months. If Outpost 53 lasted three weeks, it would mean fighting to the last man.

Lieutenant Riley reached into his bag between coughs of the Amorg gun. He brought out a slender bottle and pulled the cork. He pressed the bottle into Captain Bonnet's hand.

"Martian Zingo," the lieutenant said. "A friend of mine gave it to me for a little service in the Canal campaign on Mars. I've been saving it for a special occasion and it looks like this is it. Here's to our short and merry lives, Captain!"

Night brought some relief, although the poisoned darts still rained on the outpost and the ground was lighted with flashes of the atom guns.

Major Rogers, his face drawn with weariness, stomped to the spacemen's battery.

"We've got to get a man through to earth, Captain," the major said. "Can't your ship be fixed?"

The captain shook his head. "No, sir."

"Doesn't your ship carry a lifeboat?"

"It does, but you couldn't make the earth in that--and survive. The lifeboat carries just enough fuel to land on a planet. That fuel would be used on the takeoff."

"But if you got off Venus and aimed the boat toward the earth, nothing would keep it from getting there, would it?"

"No, I suppose not, sir."

"Then we've got to do it. Yes, yes, I know. It's suicide. But it's suicide not to try it. We simply must get a message through to the earth. We'll ask for volunteers."

"No need of that, Major," the captain said. "I'll make the trip."

"One man couldn't do it," broke in Lieutenant Riley. "I'm going along."

"You know what it means?" the captain asked his friend.

"Any spaceman knows what a forty-five million mile trip in a lifeboat means, you mug," the lieutenant replied. "But I'd rather die quickly in a crash landing than to face what the Venusians probably have thought up for us when they whittle us down to their size."

"Umph!" said Captain Bonnet, who had been a hero before.

"What's that?"

"I was about to say: we'd better get started. It's getting late."

"Good! Take a detail to your ship and get the lifeboat ready. Then you and the lieutenant get some rest. I'll call you in an hour for the takeoff."

Attempted was the correct word, for lifeboats of space ships were never the last word in navigable machines. They were to be used only as a last resort under desperate circumstances. No lifeboat had ever been built as a machine for lengthy interplanetary travel. But the universe is foolproof to a certain extent. Any piece of matter is sure to obey the laws of the universe. Captain Bonnet supposed that if the lifeboat succeeded in taking off, and if it were put on the right orbit, it could reach the earth in time to send reinforcements back to Venus.

As Captain Paul Bonnet and Lieutenant Bill Riley took their places in the ship, Major Rogers explained that the craft had been equipped with a small parachute to be used just before the lifeboat crashed in dropping a message to authorities that Outpost 53 had been attacked and that reinforcements were needed.

"After you drop the message, you men are on your own," the major explained.

"You mean we're to try to get out of it, if we can?" asked Captain Bonnet dryly. "Humph!"

A few minutes later the lifeboat's rockets roared and the craft soared upward through Venusian clouds to deliver a message to Terra.

Captain Bonnet watched the rockets drain the fuel tank on the takeoff. His gravity gauge told him that he was going to make it. Once beyond Venus and nosed toward the earth, which was approaching conjunction, no more fuel would be needed. The ship would be seized by terrestrial gravity and brought home. There would be a period of uncomfortable warmth as the sides of the ship became red hot in the earth's atmosphere. A few moments of frantic work dropping the parachute over some populous region of the earth, and then a crash that would mean the end.

Each man had gone over the details of what he was to do. Each man had told himself that there was no end to this trip except death, yet each man hoped that in some way he could avoid the final disaster. If there were only some way a space ship could be landed without fuel!

"It's no use," Captain Bonnet said. "Up to the end of the Twentieth Century, when all problems dealing with space navigation were worked out, excepting space flight itself, all of the experts agreed that there was no practical way of landing a space ship. It wasn't until the Twenty-first Century that the spiral landing orbit was discovered and it took another century to discover the Rippler force method of landing a ship intact."

"At least the Rippler method's out," Lieutenant Riley said dryly. "We'd have to have fifty gallons of fuel to land a fourteen-valve lifeboat on its rocket jets."

"Even the spiral landing orbit would require twenty-five gallons," Captain Bonnet pointed out. "Both methods are out. We've got about two gallons of rocket fuel in the tank and we'll need most of it in the cooling system to keep us from burning up until we can drop the message."

Hours ticked swiftly away as the space ship moved closer to the earth. The craft had reached the middle of its course, where terrestrial and Venusian gravities neutralized, with speed to spare. From now on it would accelerate slowly under the pull of the earth's attraction and it could be expected to enter the earth's atmosphere at a speed greater than 200 miles a second. The entire trip from Venus to the earth would take about 72 hours. The job of decelerating from 200 miles a second to less than ten would be taken care of in the 1,000 miles of atmosphere lying above the earth. It could be accomplished with no more discomfort than a passenger in a car experiences in a sudden stop. But the last ten miles per second deceleration would mean the overcoming of the force of gravity itself.

Captain Bonnet considered the danger of the moon interfering with the ship's flight to earth. He discovered, to his relief, that the moon was out of the way, on the opposite side of the earth. At least he would not have to use precious fuel to keep the craft from landing on the moon.

He checked the cooling apparatus. It seemed in perfect working condition and should keep the two passengers from roasting alive until the ship crashed. At least this was a comfort.

Lieutenant Riley, who had been sleeping, opened his eyes.

"Say, Paul, I've an idea!"

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