“Exactly. And our animal friends must have seen you do it. They came for the knife last night—I figured they would, and sure enough, it’s missing.”
Chuck searched for it, but without success. It had been in his pouch, and the pouch had been snapped shut. He hadn’t opened it since they left the “canal.” But the knife was gone.
Clever, those Martians. Too clever.
CHAPTER 13
On Guard
Breakfast was just being served as Sokolsky and Chuck
walked into the mess hall. Vance glanced at them and nodded approval. “Good. You both look better too. Tell the next vacationers how you did it so quickly.”
Then he swung back to the other men. “I don’t care what happened. If one of you lost it—though it seems a little crazy—or even if you found native girls and used it to bribe them into selling you coconuts, tell me what happened to it. A fully equipped welding torch and outfit just doesn’t vanish into the air. I’m puzzled.”
There was a good deal of heat in his voice. Chuck looked at Sokolsky quickly, and met the other’s warning headshake. “What’s all this, anyway?” he asked.
Steele answered. “One of the torches is missing—along with a few other tools we’ve lost here and there, but not really thought much about. But a torch is something that doesn’t get lost—and we’re sunk without it.”
Chuck was amazed at how depressed the group seemed after his hike. He stared from one tired, glum face to another, and back to the desperation on Vance’s.
“Okay,” the captain said finally. “I know nobody stole it—there’d be no reason. I know the men who have been doing the welding aren’t the type to hide it to keep from working—none of you is. And I know it isn’t lost. Where does that leave us?”
Rothman shrugged. “Minus one welding torch, two pairs of pliers, one spade, one sheet of aluminum, four cans of corned beef…”
The men stood up and began moving wearily out to their work. Vance put his head between his hands, shaking it back and forth. The welding torch was as necessary as he thought, of course. But there was nothing he could do, about it.
“We’ve got an air leak,” he announced, as-calmly as he could. “Not the ripped seam. That was welded tight yesterday, and the leak is in the wrong section. We spent half the day going around with the smoke candles—and there is hardly a spot on the hull that doesn’t have some leak; popped rivets, unwelded welding, and everything else. Our pressure has been dropping. We can make it up with Martian air—but we can’t go out into space until its all sound. We need that torch more than we ever did. But I guess you’ll have to take the little electric torch. Chuck, and go around, using it on all the small places we’ve marked with smoke and chalk.”
Sokolsky touched him on the shoulder. “Maybe I know what happened to the torch. We aren’t the only life on this planet. Miles. There’s a native brand of thief around.” He began a carefully toned-down version of the incidents of the gun and knife, stressing his magpie theory. Whatever the creatures saw being used, they wanted. And they were clever.
“Store everything inside, and keep it sealed” he suggested. “You can at least prevent anything else being lost.”
Vance shook his head. “Better yet, set a trap. If we can find where they took that torch, we can get it back. I’ll bait the trap tonight, and put Ginger to watch over it. It’s worth losing a few days’ work for.”
Chuck went off to his welding, amazed at how thoroughly the crash had opened the ship. There were some of the larger patches that could not be handled with the small electric welder, but he moved along as fast as he could, testing each job with the smoke candle. It would be at least two days of hard work, if he was lucky enough to do it in that time.
By the time night came around, most of the benefits of the hike had worn off. He watched Vance place Ginger outside the ship with a couple of shiny wrenches that had been carefully used during the day, but which weren’t essential. The man had slept most of the afternoon, and was now in good shape for the watch.
Vance made his announcement at the table again. “We’re laying off most of the welding, except what we have to do. We’re going to start unloading the ship—everything that’s portable has to come out, and we’ll even move the hydroponics and the fuel. With it lightened—and I figure we can get down to around five tons of weight here—we’ll undermine the rear, and set winches to work on the rest of it. It’s going to be a job getting leverage, but if we sink the rear fairly well, we can make it. The front’s a lot lighter, unloaded than the rear, and that win help.”
A groan went up, though not in protest. It was the job they had all dreaded, but one which had to be done. The ship had no chance of taking off and continuing, except with her nose up. But while unloading wouldn’t prove too difficult, reloading up through the entrance would be nearly impossible.
Vance’s point was that as long as there was any chance of recovering the welder, it was possible. They could strip part of the hull away, and reweld it later. If the welder turned up, they would have saved time by doing work where everyone could be used; if it didn’t, there was no loss.
Chuck went to bed without much thought to that His work with the little torch would go on. After that, he’d probably have to get out and dig with the others, but he’d worry about that when he came to it.
He wondered once how Ginger was doing. There was more envy in his thoughts than anything else. Ginger had the softest job in the place, right now. . In the morning, Ginger reported in disgust that nothing at all had happened. He’d thought something was staring at him once, but it had probably been pure imagination. The tools were still there, untouched. And should he keep guard again that night?
Vance nodded, concerned with other problems. Ginger fished into his pouch and drew out a .45 automatic. ‘“This yours, Captain? I found it fifty feet from me this morning, and figured maybe it slipped out of your pouch last night”
“Thanks. I wondered what happened to it.” Vance picked it up without a muscle of his face moving. “Sokolsky, Chuck, stick around.”
When they were alone, Sokolsky grinned. ‘They don’t like that brand of monkey wrench. Miles. Or else they’ve got a cockeyed sense of humor. Bringing back the automatic was a nice touch.”
“Sure.” Vance opened the gun, and looked at the empty chamber and magazine. “They kept the bullets!”
He turned it over in his hands, and shoved the magazine back in. “Intelligent—but why not keep the gun and use it for a weapon?”
“Intelligent,” Sokolsky admitted with a grimace. “The evidence is convincing. And interesting. Suppose you refill that and let me have it. I’d like to stand watch with Ginger tonight—and I’d better if we’re going to start moving the contents of the ship out. At that, it might be wiser to move out the fuel and the unused hydroponic first. They’re bulky, and shouldn’t be of much interest. The rest of the stuff— well, we can worry about that when we see how tonight turns out.”
Vance nodded. He lifted his eyebrows when Sokolsky began to put on his space suit to go out to work with the others, and nodded again. Obviously, he’d expected Sokolsky to use the watch as an excuse not to work a full day.
There was more tension that day than ever. The work was grueling, and difficult. The tanks were small enough to jockey through the air lock since experience had proved that bigger tanks of corrosive fluid failed too often under acceleration. But the inter-connections and valves made them a mess to handle, and they insisted on dripping. The outer coating of the suits gave the men protection enough, but they had to be careful in handling to see that nothing else was damaged. In addition, some of the story behind the missing tools had leaked out somehow, and they were worried about an inimical native race of some intelligence.
Chuck came across them as he moved about, finishing the spot welding and repair work, helmets touching. It kept their talk private, where everything on the radio could be tapped by finding the right setting, even when supposedly on a private channel.
Sokolsky was looking worried too, for the first time since he’d started considering the life on the planet. But
