"Now passing Phobos, the second moon of Mars. From this point to the orbit of Jupiter we are in the planetoid belt, the most dangerous portion of our voyage. This ship's armor of twenty-inch beryll-steel may be perfectly adequate to keep meteorites out, but let just one of those planetoids, little worlds, hit us and this broadcast would end right now. Here we are! Phobos at our left and down, if there is any up or down out here in empty space. It's a little red moon, cracked and seamed, all rock; it has no atmosphere and no weather. The rocks stand up, jagged and sharp. There she goes! Good-bye Phobos—we're making 9,250 miles an hour past Phobos, according to a message from Captain McCausland which has just been handed to me. The Captain doesn't look well this morning. He seems depressed and the difficulties of this expedition are weighing on him. That's all for today. This is 7-LOP, the interplanetary expedition ship Goddard, on the exploring expedition to Pluto. Your reporter, Paulette de Vries speaking. Interplanetary time 0-six-0-0, May 24, 2432."
The girl snapped the key of her microphone off and turned angrily to the young man who had tapped her on the shoulder. "What do you mean by interrupting my broadcast, Adam Longworth?"
The tall young man was frowning at her. "You know the crew listens in on these broadcasts, don't you?"
"Well, what am I supposed to do about that? Give three cheers?"
"Listen, Paulette. On an expedition as dangerous as this, is it right to let the crew know the Captain is feeling depressed or doubtful? I didn't mean to make you sign off, though."
"I signed off because I was through. Don't flatter yourself! Trouble with you is you try to run everybody's business. I thought you might have got over that in the ten years since I knew you in school, but you haven't. Trying to keep me out of the control room so I wouldn't hurt myself! Wake up, Mr. Longworth, this is 2432; you're still living back in the nineteen-hundreds when woman's place was in the home."
Longworth glanced at a bandage around the girl's left wrist. Paulette reddened.
"All right, I slipped and sprained my wrist. So what? So you have my things moved to another cabin, where I'll be more comfortable. You're an interfering old woman, Mr. Longworth. You're hopeless!"
Longworth reddened uncomfortably.
"Very well, Paulette, I'll stop interfering as you call it. But really, you ought to stop referring to the Captain in such a manner as to break down the morale of the expedition."
The girl glared at him. "I'll take orders about that kind of thing from Captain McCausland and nobody else. And I don't think the man I'm going to marry will censor what I have to say."
Adam Longworth's face set as he stood for a moment irresolute. Then, as Paulette said nothing more, he turned and left the cabin. Outside he paused, gazing down the long main corridor of the space ship toward the open fo'castle lock, where the crew lolled in the month-long idleness of space-voyaging. He frowned, strode off to find Captain McCausland.
Captain McCausland—"Old Steel-Wall" as he was known in the League of Planets Space Service—was poring over the course plotted on the chart table. The handsome, saturnine face and straight back were those of a youth; but he was forty-five and had twenty years of service behind him and had won the honor medals of three planets. He was so absorbed that he did not notice the Mate till Longworth touched his arm.
"Yes?" he said, turning round with a pair of dividers in his hand.
"It can wait sir, if you're busy."
McCausland looked at him out of cold, efficient eyes. "Speak up."
"It's the crew, sir. You know how these long runs are. Months with nothing to do, nothing to see."
There was a flicker around the Captain's mouth that might have been amusement. "Trouble?"
Adam looked startled. "Oh, no, nothing yet. I just wanted to head off trouble before it started, sir. You heard Miss de Vries broadcast just now?"
Captain McCausland nodded, and this time the smile of amusement was definitely present. "I think the word was 'depressed' wasn't it? And you're afraid it will throw the crew into a panic, and they'll turn the ship around on us and head for home. Is that it, Mr. Longworth?"
Adam, wishing he were anywhere but just there, and wilting visibly under the sarcastic gaze of the Captain, plunged desperately ahead. "Well, sir, I took the liberty of asking her not to do it again.... She said she was taking orders only from you ... that is ... I'm sorry, sir, I didn't know you were going to...."
"To be married, you mean? Well, why not?" He smiled again. "The ceremony will take place as soon as we come back from this expedition. That gives her a certain amount of privilege you understand." His face turned suddenly grave and his voice a trifle sharp. "Moreover, Miss de Vries is here as radio reporter for the Interplanetary broadcasting. I want you to understand, Mr. Mate, that I'll have no interference with her. Instead of chasing bugaboos, suppose you check the course through the planetoid belt. I'll leave you with it; that will give you something real to worry about for a change."
Adam stared hopelessly after his retreating back. Damnation! Everything had seemed to go wrong since the beginning of this voyage. The harder he tried to prove himself worthy of the appointment as second-in-command to "Old Steel-Wall" the worse things went. With a shrug he turned doggedly to the chart work.
Two hours later he stepped over to the chart-room port and gazed out into the velvet blue-black of space where the thousand suns of the Milky Way burned across the horizon. It was no use. He was going to have to make a fool of himself again.
But could he help it? Captain McCausland had certainly asked him to check the course through the planetoid belt. Perhaps he would forget now, and not ask about the checking operation. But if he did? Certainly Walter McCausland couldn't have been wrong. Yet the figures—? Adam studied his work sheet again, shaking his head.
"Finished the checking, Longworth?" The voice startled him so that he jumped.
"Yes, sir. Shall I take over the watch, sir?"
"Little early, aren't you? What do you think of the course, Mister?"
Adam hesitated.
"It seems ... likely to get us there, sir."
McCausland's eyes became points. "Are you by any chance evading my question? I'll repeat it. It was—what do you think of the course? What is your opinion?"
Adam gulped. Here it was.
"There seems to be a fault in it, sir. I'm sorry."
"Indeed?" The tone was sarcastic. "Elucidate, Mister Mate."
"It takes us up out of the plane of the ecliptic, then back again beyond the planetoid belt. That's very good, sir, and quite safe, but didn't you omit the fuel consumption factor? The course as plotted gives two shifts of forty-five degrees each, or half a complete stop, as far as fuel is concerned. It would cut down the amount of fuel available for exploration on Pluto to—well, here are the figures as I've worked them out. We'd have about enough for two or three landings. But if we went right through the danger belt of the planetoids as originally planned, we would save enough fuel to really explore the planet. We have to explore thoroughly if we're going to find beryllium there. It won't lie on the surface. Why, it's hardly worth going on at all if we can't do any more exploring than that.... That's my opinion, sir, and I didn't volunteer it, and I ask your pardon in advance."
The great space captain smiled easily. "No need to beg my pardon at all. At first glance one would think you had the right of it, but I just happen to have gone into the matter a little deeper. You understand the reasons behind this voyage? Well, suppose that after having been away for two years we come back right on schedule, but without a load of beryllium, without having found any trace of it. What will happen? The League of Planets simply orders out another expedition, better equipped, and we go down as having failed."
"But Captain! In two years there may not be enough light alloys left on the three planets to build another ship as big as this! The service to Mars will have to be stopped long before that. The lithium mines there can't operate unless the water supply from Venus is maintained."
"Well, what of it? Nobody likes to work in that Martian colony."
Adam caught his breath.
"But how are the atomic motors that do all the work going to operate without the lithium from Mars?"
"And what of that, even? It would be temporary. Just a few months or years till another expedition could be sent out. You take things too seriously. What is there to prove that some other method of armoring space-ships won't be found? Beryllium may not be necessary after all."
"Perhaps you're right." Adam was still skeptical. "But is it likely, sir? You've been on the space run so long you haven't kept up with chemistry. The armor against meteorites now is so thick that any metal but beryllium would double the weight of the vessel, and even with these seven million horsepower Buvier-Manleys we couldn't make the run from Venus to Mars. Why, sir, it would mean the end of the lithium mines, it would mean the end of atomic power, and we'd have to go back to the barbarism of the twentieth century, when they ran everything by electricity from waterfalls!"
Captain McCausland raised an athletic hand. "Spare me that, Mister Mate! I have heard it at approximately a hundred banquets before starting out on this expedition. Yes, we carry the fate of the world and all that. We have to find beryllium or else the Mars mines can't be run and the atomic motors stop. I could sing it in my sleep. But suppose we do take chances and get this ship wrecked. Won't the world have to go back to 'barbarous' electric power after all? For my part, I think some of those people in the twentieth century probably had a good time."
Adam was silent. There was something in the Captain's reasoning, he felt. Yet he, Adam Longworth, could not but feel that the issue was a desperately serious one for every inhabitant of the three worlds—Earth, Venus and Mars—belonging to the planetary league. The entire known supply of beryllium, the precious light, strong metal that was alone suitable for the armor of space ships, had been exhausted. All that remained was in the hulls of the few dozen ships carrying water from Venus to Mars, and from the arid deserts of Mars, bringing to Earth the equally precious lithium which was the only material with which atomic motors could be powered.
Every year, in spite of the best of care, one or two space ships would be wrecked—caught in the sun's gravitational field, or lost through some small error of navigation. Soon there would be no more space ships; and no more could be built. Each of the outer planets had been explored in turn—each but the last, the outermost and most distant; Pluto. They were on their way there now; if they could not make it—
"Very well, sir," he said aloud. "I see your point. Will you take over the controls at the change of course?"
"I'll take over now. Report in two hours.... One more thing, Longworth. You're young, damn young, to be first mate on this expedition. You know you were a last-minute choice, because of an accident to a much more experienced, and from what I've seen so far, a much better man. Make the most of your chance, but don't forget I'm captain here. I can't go into my reasons for everything I do. That's all, Mister Mate."
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