Griffith sat back, apparently satisfied, and the rest of the questioning was done more quietly, though it didn’t bring as much information as the Commander obviously wanted.
The ship had been carrying drugs to Neptune, as they had guessed. Juan’s mother had just died, and his father took him along. He had the run of the ship and was generally enjoying it, before the attack came. Then, out of nowhere—because either their radar was defective or their operator was careless—the black ship had swung in ahead of them. Bartolomeo Roman had let out a cry about pirates and had begun, too late, to try to fight back. But at first the black ship had done nothing. It had just hung there in space, keeping half a mile ahead of them, and apparently waiting.
They had sent out a signal, but then something strange happened. The black ship had opened a tiny window, and something blue had floated back to the Ionian and straight through the walls into the radio room; after that, the radio was dead. They had waited, too, until his father could wait no more. He had fired his few torpedoes. Then the strange ship had melted their nose and the crew had come aboard.
“And my father, he had put me in my space suit and had made me hide in a closet just beside the control room,” Juan finished. “He went to meet them, and I heard him cry out. I wanted to go down, but I could not disobey him. Then there was no air, and I waited and waited. And at last I went to the radio room. The blue stuff was gone then. I called. You came. That is all.”
“You never saw the men from the black ship?” Griffith asked, frowning.
“No. Only what I have told you.”
Further questioning revealed that Juan had felt the men from the Lance moving about—carried as faint sounds through the floor and his suit—but had thought they were still the pirates. Commander Griffith finished at last and sent him down with Anderson to a spare bunk. From the sleepy way he acted, Bob guessed that the tea had held a mild sedative to quiet him down.
“Sound asleep,” Anderson reported ten minutes later. Then he glanced out. “Hey, we’re back with the Wing!”
Griffith nodded. “We caught up five minutes ago. I wish that boy had seen them!”
“What good would it have done?” Bob asked. “Pirates don’t look much different from anyone else, do they?”
“These might—since they’re no pirates!” The Commander nodded, sucking thoughtfully on his pipe, a dark cloud of gloom on his face. “No human being designed that ship. And no human science could do what it did. That leaves just one place for them—Planet X! It’s inhabited, all right, and by a race of some kind that’s centuries ahead of us. I’d like to know what they look like.”
He sucked on his pipe again, and frowned more deeply. “Well, we know one thing.
Whatever form of life is out there, it’s unfriendly and it’s dangerous! Maybe too dangerous!”
CHAPTER 5
Outpost of Neptune
A LITTLE LESS than two days later they turned over and began decelerating toward Neptune, needing the same time to cut their speed that had been required to build it up. But aside from that and the worry that hung over the ship, there was little for Bob to watch or do.
The tradition of keeping him running errands had been dropped, probably because the Commander was too busy trying to think things through and make his report on Outpost carry the weight he felt it should. At present he was refusing to radio problems of the situation ahead, on the grounds that information might be picked up by people outside the Fleet, which would lead to a panic that could only cause harm.
Bob spent most of the time with Juan Roman. The boy seemed to have buried his grief somewhere deep inside himself, and to be resigned to whatever happened. He was strangely serious and naive, with little of the gaiety for which his people were famed. This may have been partly due to his recent tragedy, but Bob had the feeling that much of Juan’s seriousness was basic to his character.
He obviously didn’t want to talk about his past, and Bob and the others respected his wishes. With a somewhat reluctant permission from Bob’s father, they wandered about the ship. There Juan showed an amazing ability to pick up details quickly. He admitted that he had wanted to be an engineer and that he had spent most of his time as a boy hanging around the shops where the big freighters were repaired.
But Navy ships were different, and he absorbed everything he saw.
Ten days after taking off from Mars they landed on the little moon of Neptune known as Outpost. Scarcely two hundred miles in diameter, it circled the big planet at a distance of five million miles. It was the farthest port of the Space Navy, more than two and one-half thousand million miles from the sun, and usually staffed with the minimum number of men and ships. But now, with the expedition to Planet X scheduled from there, and with the pirates active throughout the outer planets, it was filled.
The big dome of the landing field opened for Wing Nine, and they found hangar space reserved for them, as well as a celebration, which Griffith at first started to cancel, but changed his mind. Stopping it would cause more comment than anything else, while a few wild tales of a remarkable pirate from the crews would be put down to nothing more than their imaginations.
Housing for the officers was provided at the edge of the field, just beyond the dome that covered it. Here there was no air, of course, and any air would have frozen solid, in any event. Plastic domes covered everything, with passages connecting them together into a sprawling city of bubbles.
Commander Griffith installed Juan and Bob in their quarters in his apartment and then disappeared on the official report he had been sweating out during the trip. He was hardly gone before Simon Jakes knocked on their door. He looked tired and drawn, but about as close to being happy as Bob had ever seen him. To Bob, remembering the gruelling drive at top cruising acceleration, he looked like an illusion; he couldn’t possibly be on Outpost.
“Surprised to see me?” he asked needlessly. “I told you the Icarius had heels. Got here yesterday, and been waiting for you. Hey, who’s he?”
Bob introduced Juan, with a quick and careful account of how he happened to be along. Simon shook his head and Juan’s hand. For his part, Juan seemed to see nothing ridiculous in the appearance of Jakes. Simon must have sensed it, for he softened and relaxed a little in the general introductory conversation, while Bob’s curiosity continued to grow.
Finally, Jakes grinned again, and got back to the subject. “I came at a straight four gravities, except for a few rest hours. I brought a letter from your mother, too. Never thought I could take that kind of pressure, did you?”
“I still don’t,” Bob answered flatly. Then something flashed into his mind from their few talks while Jakes had been at the Academy. “Your liquid cushion!”
Simon swelled out more than ever, nodding vigorously. Pride made him look more foolish than ever, but at that moment he didn’t mind his appearance. “That’s it. I got it—a seat made of a new elastic and filled with salt water, just about the same density as my body. When the pressure builds up, I sink into it—except that I wear a mask that lets me see out. Liquid equalizes pressure in all directions. And I can really pile on the pressure. Your precious Navy’s already radioed Outpost—after I had Dad give them the dope and they checked my time—and they want my invention. And I’ll bet now they let me go along to Planet X!”
Bob didn’t have the heart to disillusion him about his present chances of reaching Planet X.
If Simon had finally done what no one had succeeded in doing—even with the help of a new plastic elastic —he deserved a little boasting. Bob couldn’t help wondering, though, how many experts had been hired by the Jakes family to do the real work on the problem.
Tired as he was, he went along to inspect the new seat, with Juan trailing them. It was simple enough in principle. By sinking down into the elastic-covered liquid, the pressure was equalized on all sides, instead of merely trying to force a man’s stomach flat against his backbone. But the metal framework and suspension that made the
