“I always make ‘em sweet,” Jakes answered. “I told you, I’m good with a ship. I was going to use this for a racing entry until Planet X came along. Here, you’ll find suits in that locker.”
Bob began helping Juan into one of them. The smaller boy had trouble with the adjustable straps, and Bob realized he’d probably never really seen a Navy suit before. Then Bob began slipping into another. Jakes was already in his, and was pulling out the heavy drill and towing equipment required to be carried to give aid to a ship in distress, or for seeking aid oneself. The cable was obviously the best grade of silicone fabric, and would stand strain in the cold of space without trouble.
The lock showed the only disadvantage of a smaller ship. It was barely big enough for one to leave at a time, and had to be pumped out carefully after each use. They killed several minutes getting through it.
Juan came out last. “No sign of ships in the radar screen,” he reported. “No black ships are following us.”
It didn’t mean too much, since searchers could have been on the other side of the little moon, but it was some comfort. The three began to advance carefully over the jagged surface. Here they were so light that a normal step would have bounced them up a hundred feet into space, and have wasted a good many minutes before they floated down. They had switched the suit shoe-soles to automatic grapples, but it still took a good deal of care to travel over the surface of little worlds like this.
They came around a huge, rough boulder finally. Jakes stopped to run the towline carefully along where it would not snag, and then joined the others.
The nose of the black ship lay fifty feet away. It was smaller than the others they had seen, hardly more than three hundred feet in length. But it was an impressive sight here. Bob stirred uneasily as he remembered that there might be living beings still aboard. Then he breathed easier as he saw that it must have struck the surface a terrific blow, since it seemed to have been driven into the rock.
Something looked wrong, though. He moved forward cautiously, and stopped.
The hull hadn’t been driven into the ground. It was cut off sharply, just below the center, as if someone had taken a giant cleaver and sliced the ship down one side.
A few feet more, and he knew they had been tricked.
It was no ship, but a mere mock-up. Someone had put it here deliberately, and tried to make it look like a Planet X ship. But it wasn’t even built of metal.
It was a thin frame of light metal that rested on the ground. Over that, fabric had been stretched tightly. Bob’s hand tore at it, throwing it up out of the way, and he stood looking into what might have been a huge tent.
But it was from Planet X, without much question. The fabric was completely soft, though the temperature must have been near absolute zero. Nobody in the Solar Federation had learned to make stuff like that yet.
CHAPTER 10
The Alien Trap
JAKES STOOD BESIDE BOB NOW, staring at the fake ship which had lured them there.
“Well, I’ll be…” It was the first indication Bob had had that these suits were all equipped with built-in radios, though he should have expected it.
“We’ll all be,” he agreed hotly. “This thing wasn’t just put here to improve the landscape.
They must have slipped in here with it pretty well ready and put it up while the moon was facing away from Outpost. But it was put here to be seen and to draw a sucker down. It’s a trap!”
Jakes muttered to himself. “Yeah,” he agreed finally. “And we’ve sprung it. Now I suppose the hunters are coming to hunt us up. We’d better get back to the Icarius fast! Of all the dopey ideas, coming out here for this.”
Juan shrugged. “It was your idea, Simon.”
“You mean it was yours,” Jakes told him angrily. “You didn’t yell it out in front of Smedley.
You waited until we were alone, and then told me. Naturally I figured you wanted to come for it, and I offered to take you.”
“You suggested it, though, Simon. I did, it is true, have the idea. But you were the first to put it into words.”
“We’re all guilty,” Bob said. He was completely disgusted with himself. Wallingford had told him that a smart man always looks suspiciously at strange objects and suspects they might be faked.
He knew this himself. But he’d come running here just to get out of the boredom at Outpost—and probably to be a hero, just as Jakes had done!
“We’re all guilty together, and we’d all better get out of here before they come,” he repeated.
Jakes and Juan started off, and Bob swung to follow them. He tried to hurry over the ground, but something seemed to hold him back. He pushed more strongly, and his feet slipped.
With a slow snap, he found himself back where he had been.
The fabric he had touched was more than soft—it was sticky! He’d let go of it, but it still stuck to his space mitten. He picked up a stone quickly and tried to scrape it off, but it seemed to be glued to the metal. “Jakes,” he called.
“I’m coming. I saw the whole thing,” Jakes said. “Did you have to grab that stuff?”
“No,” Bob admitted. “And if you can’t get it free, I’ll expect you and Juan to leave me here. It was my own blunder.”
Simon had also picked up a couple of rocks and was working, trying to free Bob without touching the stuff. “Aw, come off it. I guess I’d have to see what was underneath, too. Hey, this stuff is really stuck!”
He reached for a knife in the pocket of his suit, but Bob stopped him. “Don’t. The stuff doesn’t stick to rock, so it must grab metal, like the mitten here. You’re going to have to use that knife to cut off my sleeve.”
He was already working his arm out of the sleeve of the suit. His eyes swung up toward the empty space above, instinctively looking for alien ships, and his heart was beating more rapidly than it should. But he couldn’t let the others see that he was scared.
Jakes caught the sleeve at once, and gave it a quick, tight twist. “Hold it,” he told Juan. Then he began sawing at the tough fabric below it. He was sweating, too, and probably as scared as Bob, but his voice was steadier than usual, and his hands didn’t shake.
Finally, the sleeve was cut through. There was a slow leak through it, in spite of the twist, but the tank supply made up for that. Jakes yanked out a patch and adhesive, and doubled it over the cut, smearing it with the gooey adhesive. He waited for it to boil dry in the vacuum, and let go of the sleeve.
Probably it leaked a little now, but it would hold. Bob nodded his thanks, and Jakes shrugged, his face flushing. Then they swung about quickly toward the ship. But managing over the ground with one hand held against his side was worse than Bob had thought. He found that it ruined his balance. Simon watched for a second, and then moved to the other side, locking arms with him.
It seemed to take forever to get back to the Icarius, and probably did take them several minutes. The grapples on their shoes were already dulling a little, making progress more difficult.
Juan was already in when they reached the ship. Jakes shoved Bob toward the lock, and he didn’t argue. By custom, a man with an injury or a defective space suit got all consideration.
He moved through the lock as rapidly as he could and began tearing the suit off quickly. A minute later, Jakes came in, already unzipping. He leaped for the pilot’s seat, and then stopped.
“Bob, maybe you’re right. Maybe we should stop playing a lone hand. Get on the phone and call the Fleet.”
“They can’t get here any faster than we can get back,” Bob pointed out. “While we’re sitting here, we could just as well be heading back to Outpost.”
Juan shook his head. “No, Bob, I think Simon has himself a point. Look, we are a white ship and we are on white ground here—very hard to see. Also, on all sides are boulders almost as tall as we. In space, we could be found by radar, but here I think we might hide.”
“Besides, they probably expect a big Navy tug, and won’t even bother looking for us,” Jakes added.
