The sudden acceleration hit him in the pit of the stomach. Olcott had braced himself, but was almost torn loose from his grip. For a moment the plane bucked and jolted madly, rocket fighting rocket, both fighting the gale. Then, without warning, they were above the storm, in air almost too thin for the prop, leveling off at an easy keel.
Duncan set the course due south and turned to Olcott for instructions. The latter was at another keyboard, carefully studying a visiplate before him. It showed the sky, dark blue and empty. After a moment Olcott made a few adjustments and came back to take over the controls.
“Nice work. You’re a better pilot than I’d hoped. But you’ll need to be—” Olcott didn’t finish.
Duncan was rubbing his skin with ice. “I know rockets. Say, isn’t this dangerous? We may be spotted from below.”
“We won’t. This plane’s a chameleon. The man we’re going to see invented the trick for me. We’ve a double hull, and the outer skin’s transparent plastic. The space between the skins can be filled with certain colored gases—I’ve a wide range of colors. On the snowfield I used white, to blend with surroundings. Here it’s a blue gas. From below we’re invisible against the sky.” Olcott rose to make an adjustment. “I’d better lighten the color a bit. We’re going south fast, and the sky’s not so dark now.”
Duncan nodded appreciatively. He had heard stories about Brent Olcott, few of them savory, but all hinting at the man’s intelligence and power. He was one of those who, in the Twenty-first Century, made money without being too scrupulous about his methods. Technically Olcott owned a firm named “Enterprises, Ltd.” Unlimited would have been more suitable. His finger was in plenty of pies, but he had always managed to pull out plums without getting his hands soiled. Legally his record was clean.
But he was dangerous. When Duncan had accepted Olcott’s offer of help, he had known what that meant—a job, and a dirty one. Nevertheless, it would pay plenty—and it would mean freedom from Transpolar, and being with Andrea again.
Duncan dressed in the clothes Olcott had provided, an unobtrusive dark fabricoid blouse and trousers, gathered at the ankles in the conventional fashion. In the heated cabin no more clothing was necessary.
“There’s a bottle over there,” Olcott suggested.
Duncan gulped whiskey, feeling the hot tingling of the liquid spread out from his stomach. He felt better, though there was a curious air of unreality about the whole thing. A port, showed him the storm cloud, below and behind now. Somewhere in that troubled darkness lay the grim fortress of Transpolar Penitentiary, the hell that had swallowed five years of Duncan’s life, and drained him of hope and ideals.
There was hope again. But ideals—
He upended the bottle.
Olcott looked up from the controls. The air was clear, and the tremendous power of the engines hurled them southward at fantastic speed.
“Sit over here, Duncan,” he invited. “I want to talk to you.”
“Okay. Let’s have it. You’ve got a job lined up for me, I know that. The question is—why me?”
Olcott picked his words carefully. “There aren’t many qualified space pilots in the system. And those are well paid; I couldn’t get at any of ’em. I tried, I’ll admit—but not after I heard about you. Would you like to make half a million credits?”
“Keep talking.”
“With that many credits, you’d never need to work again. I know a good surgeon who’d remold your face and graft new fingers on your hands, so you wouldn’t have to worry about prints. You probably couldn’t be convicted even if they arrested you—not without complete identification.”
Duncan didn’t answer, but his lips had gone pale and thin. One is seldom transported instantly from hell to heaven. Yet Olcott’s offer was—well, it meant everything, including Andrea.
“Go on,” Duncan said hoarsely. “What d’you want me to do?”
Olcott’s cool, watchful eyes met his own.
“Go into space,” he said, “without a Varra Helmet.”
The plane thundered on, and miles had been left behind before Duncan spoke again.
“Suicide.”
“No. There’s a way.”
“When I was piloting, no one was allowed to space-travel without a Helmet. Even with the Varra convoys, people were sometimes killed by the Plutonians. I remember a few screwballs tried to slip out without the Varra, but they didn’t live.”
Olcott said, “I’ve found a way of leaving Earth without a Helmet, and without being detected by the Plutonians. It isn’t sure-fire, but all the chances are in your favor. Shall I go on?”
“Yeah,” Duncan said tonelessly.
“I need money. I need it bad, just now. And there’s a ship heading for Earth now that’s got a pound of Martian radium aboard.”
“A pound!”
“A hell of a lot, even considering the big radium deposits on Mars. With my connections, I can sell the stuff. You’re going to hijack the Maid of Mercury, Duncan, and get that radium.”
“Hijacking a spaceship? It’s crazy.”
“It’s never been done, sure. Nobody’s dared go into space without a Helmet. And the government issues the Helmets. But look at the other side of it. We’ve got a few patrol boats—the Interplanetary Police. Which is a loud, raucous laugh. Rickety tubs with no real armament. You won’t have to worry about them.”
Duncan took another drink. “It still sounds like suicide.”
“Hartman will explain—the man we’re going to see now. Take my word for it that you can go into space without a Helmet and be safe. Fairly safe.”
“Half a million credits—”
“The only danger,” Olcott said carefully, “is that the Maid might send out an SOS. The I.P. ships are rickety, but they’re fast, and they might stay on your trail. We can’t have that. So we’ve planted somebody on the Maid who’ll smash the radio apparatus just before you make contact. You can pick her up with the radium and head back to Earth.”
“Her?”
“You know her, I
