The Lost Kafoozalum Read online

in and start to pass up the package. B shakes her head.

  "No, Lizzie. We can't. Don't you remember? If we got caught, it wouldgive everything away. Besides ... there isn't any chance--"

  "Take a look at the screen," I tell her.

  Sharp exclamation from Mr. Yardo. B turns to look, then takes thepackage and helps me back.

  * * * * *

  Mr. Yardo maneuvers out over the sea till the thing is in the middleof the screen; then drops to a hundred feet. It is sticking out of thewater at a fantastic angle and the waves are hardly moving it. Thenose of a ship.

  "The antigrav," whispers B. "The Andite hasn't blown yet."

  "Ten minutes," says Mr. Yardo thoughtfully. He turns to me with suddenbriskness. "What's that, Lizzie girl? A fish-boat? Good. We may needit. Let's have a look."

  "It's mine," I tell him.

  "Now look--"

  "Tailor made," I say. "You might get into it, though I doubt it. Youcouldn't work the controls."

  It takes him fifteen seconds to realize there is no way round it; heis six foot three and I am five foot one. Even B would find it hard.

  His face goes grayish and he stares at me helplessly. Finally he nods.

  "All right, Lizzie. I guess we have to try it. Things certainly can'tbe much worse than they are. We'll go over to the beach there."

  On the beach there is wind and spray and breakers but nothingunmanageable; the cliffs on either side keep off the worst of theforce. It is queer to feel moving air after eighteen days in a ship.It takes six minutes to unpack and expand the boat and by that time itis ten minutes since the missile hit and the Andite has not blown.

  I crawl into the boat. In my protective clothing it is a fairly tightfit. We agree that I will return to this same point and they willstart looking for me in fifty minutes' time and will give up if I havenot returned in two hours. I take two Andite cartridges to deal withall eventualities and snap the nose of the boat into place. At first Iam very conscious of the two little white cigars in the pouch of mysuit, but presently I have other things to think about.

  I use the "limbs" to crawl the last few yards of shingle into thewater and on across the sea bottom till I am beyond the line ofbreakers; then I turn on the motor. I have already set the controls to"home" on _Gilgamesh_ and the radar will steer me off anyobstructions. This journey in the dark is as safe as my trip aroundthe reefs before all this started--though it doesn't feel that way.

  It takes twelve minutes to reach _Gilgamesh_, or rather the fragmentthat antigrav is supporting; it is about half a mile from the beach.

  The radar stops me six feet from her and I switch it off and turn toManual and inch closer in.

  Lights, a very small close beam. The missile struck her about onethird of her length behind the nose. I know, because I can see thewhole of that length. It is hanging just above the water, sloping atabout 30 deg. to the horizontal. The ragged edge where it was torn fromthe rest is just dipping into the sea.

  If anyone sees this, I don't know what they will make of it but no onecould possibly think an ordinary spaceship suffered an ordinary crash,and very little investigation would show up the truth.

  I reach up with the forward set of "limbs" and grapple on to thebreak. I now have somehow to get the hind set of "limbs" up withoutlosing my grip. I can't.

  It takes several minutes to realize that I can just open the nose andcrawl out.

  Immediately a wave hits me in the face and does its best to drag meinto the sea. However the interior of the ship is relatively shelteredand presently I am inside and dragging the boat up out of reach.

  I need light. Presently I manage to detach one of the two from theboat. I turn it down to minimum close beam and hang it round my neck;then I start up the black jag-edged tunnel of the ship.

  I have to get to the nose, find the fuse, change the setting to twentyminutes--maximum possible--and get out before it blows--out of thewater I mean. The fish-boat is not constructed to take explosions evenhalf a mile away. But the first thing is to find the fuse and I cannotmake out how _Gilgamesh_ is lying and therefore cannot find the doorthrough this bulkhead; everything is ripped and twisted. In the end Ifind a gap between the bulkhead itself and the hull, and squeezethrough that.

  In the next compartment things are more recognizable and I eventuallyfind the door. Fortunately ships are designed so that you can getthrough doors even when they are in the ceiling; actually here I haveto climb up an overhang, but the surface is provided with rungs whichmake it not too bad. Finally I reach the door. I shall have to useantigrav to get down ... why didn't I just turn it on and jump? Iforgot I had it.

  The door was a little way open when the missile struck; it buckled inits grooves and is jammed fast. I can get an arm through. No more. Iswitch on antigrav and hang there directing the light round thecompartment. No rents anywhere, just buckling. This compartment isdivided by a partition and the door through that is open. There willbe another door into the nose on the other side.

  I bring back my feet ready to kick off on a dive through that doorway.

  Behind me, something stirs.

  * * * * *

  My muscles go into a spasm like the one that causes a falling dream,my hold tears loose and I go tumbling through the air, rebound from awall, twist, and manage to hook one foot in the frame of the door Iwas aiming for. I pull myself down and turn off the antigrav; then Ijust shake for a bit.

  The sound was--

  This is stupid, with everything torn to pieces in this ship there isno wonder if bits shake loose and drop around--

  But it was not a metallic noise, it was a kind of soft dragging, verysoft, that ended in a little thump.

  Like a--

  Like a loose piece of plastic dislodged from its angle of rest andslithering down, pull yourself together Lizzie Lee.

  I look through the door into the other half of this level. Shambles.Smashed machinery every which way, blocking the door, blockingeverything. No way through at all.

  Suddenly I remember the tools. Mr. Yardo loaded the fish-boat with allit would take. I crawl back and return with a fifteen inch expandingbeam-lever, and overuse it; the jammed trap door does not slide backin its grooves but flips right out of them, bent double; it flies offinto the dark and clangs its way to rest.

  I am halfway through the opening when I hear the sound again. A softslithering; a faint defeated thump.

  I freeze where I am, and then I hear the sigh; a long, long wearysound, almost musical.

  An air leak somewhere in the hull and wind or waves altering the airpressure below.

  All the same I do not seem able to come any farther through this door.

  Light might help; I turn the beam up and play it cautiously around.This is the last compartment, right in the nose; a sawn-offcone-shape. No breaks here, though the hull is buckled to my left andthe "floor"--the partition, horizontal when the ship is in the normaloperating position, which holds my trap door--is torn up; some largeheavy object was welded to a thin surface skin which has ripped awayleaving jagged edges and a pattern of girders below.

  There is no dust here; it has all been sucked out when the ship wasopen to space; nothing to show the beam except the sliding yellowellipse where it touches the wall. It glides and turns, spiralingdown, deformed every so often where it crosses a projection or a dent,till it halts suddenly on a spoked disk, four feet across and standingnearly eighteen inches out from the wall. The antigrav.

  I never saw one this size, it is like the little personal affairs as agiant is like a pigmy, not only bigger but a bit different inproportion. I can see an Andite cartridge fastened among the spokes.

  The fuse is a "sympathizer" but it is probably somewhere close. Theellipse moves again. There is no feeling that I control it; it ishunting on its own. To and fro around the giant wheel. Lower. It haltson a small flat box, also bolted to the wall, a little way below. Thisis it, I can see the dial.

  The ellipse st
ands still, surrounding the fuse. There is something atthe very edge of it.

  When _Gilgamesh_ was right way up the antigrav was bolted to one wall,about three feet above the floor. Now the lowest point is the placewhere this wall joins what used to be the floor. Something has fallendown to that point and is huddled there in the dark.

  The beam jerks suddenly up and the breath whoops out of me; a roundthing sticking out of the wall--then I realize it is an archaicspace-helmet, clamped to the wall for safety when the wearer took itoff.

  I take charge of the ellipse of light and move it slowly down, pastthe fuse, to the thing below. A little dark scalloping of the edge ofthe light. The tips of fingers. A hand.

  I turn up the light.

  When the missile struck the big computer was wrenched loose from thefloor. It careened down as the floor tilted, taking with it anythingthat stood in its way.

  M'Clare was just stooping to the fuse, I think. The computer