The Invisible Man
: Gold In The SkyCrouching back into the shadow, Tom Hunter waited as the heavy footsteps
moved up the corridor, then back down, then up and down again. He peered
around the corner for a moment, looking quickly up and down the curving
corridor. The guard was twenty yards away, moving toward him in a slow
measured pace. Tom jerked his head back, then peered out again as the
footsteps receded.
The guard was a big man, with
of his elbow. He paused, scratched himself, and resumed his pacing. Tom
waited, hoping that something might distract the big man, but he moved
stolidly back and forth, not too alert, but far too alert to risk
breaking out into the main corridor.
Tom moved back into the darkened corridor where he was standing, trying
to decide what to do. It was a side corridor, and a blind alley; it
ended in a large hatchway marked HYDROPONICS, and there were no
branching corridors. If he were discovered here, there would be no place
to hide.
But he knew that he could never hope to accomplish his purpose here....
A hatch clanged open, and there were more footsteps down the main
corridor as a change of guards hurried by. There was a rumble of voices,
and Tom listened to catch the words.
"... don't care what you think, the boss says tighten it up...."
"But they got them locked in...."
"So tell it to the boss. We're supposed to check every compartment in
the section every hour. Now get moving...."
The footsteps moved up and down the corridor then, and Tom heard hatches
clanging open. If they sent a light down this spur ... he turned to the
hatch, spun the big wheel on the door, and slipped inside just as the
footsteps came closer.
The stench inside was almost overpowering. The big, darkened room was
extremely warm, the air damp with vapor. The plastic-coated walls
streamed with moisture. Against the walls Tom could see the great
hydroponic vats that held the yeast and algae cultures that fed the crew
of the ship. Water was splashing in one of the vats, and there was a
gurgling sound as nutrient broth drained out, to be replaced with
fresh.
He moved swiftly across the compartment, into a darkened area behind the
rows of vats, and crouched down. He heard footsteps, and the ring of
metal as the hatchway came open. One of the guards walked in, peered
into the gloom, wrinkled his nose, and walked out again, closing the
hatchway behind him.
It would do for a while ... if he didn't suffocate ... but if this ship
was organized like smaller ones, it would be a blind alley. Modern
hydroponic tanks did not require much servicing, once the cultures were
growing; the broth was drained automatically and sluiced through a
series of pipes to the rendering plant where the yeasts could be
flavored and pressed into surrogate steaks and other items for spaceship
cuisine. There would be no other entrances, no way to leave except the
way he had come in.
And with the guards on duty, that was out of the question. He waited,
listening, as the check-down continued in nearby compartments. Then
silence fell again. The heavy yeast aroma had grown more and more
oppressive; now suddenly a fan went on with a whir, and a cool draft of
freshened reprocessed air poured down from the ventilator shaft above
his head.
Getting into the orbit-ship had been easier than he had hoped. In the
excitement as the new prisoners were brought aboard, security measures
had been lax. No one had expected a third visitor; in consequence, no
one looked for one. Huge as it was, the Jupiter Equilateral ship had
never been planned as a prison, and it had taken time to stake out the
guards in a security system that was at all effective. In addition,
every man who served as a guard had been taken from duty somewhere else
on the ship.
So there had been no guard at the airlock in the first few moments after
the prisoners were taken off the Ranger ship. Tom had waited until the
ship was moored, clinging to the fin strut. He watched Greg and Johnny
taken through the lock, and soon the last of the crew had crossed over
after securing the ship. Presently the orbit-ship airlock had gone dark,
and only then had he ventured from his place of concealment, creeping
along the dark hull of the Ranger ship and leaping across to the
airlock.
A momentary risk, then, as he opened the lock. In the control room, he
knew, a signal light would blink on a panel as the lock was opened. Tom
moved as quickly as he could, hoping that in the excitement of the new
visitors, the signal would go unnoticed ... or if spotted, that the
spotter would assume it was only a crewman making a final trip across to
the Ranger ship.
But once inside, he began to realize the magnitude of his problem. This
was not a tiny independent orbit-ship with a few corridors and
compartments. This was a huge ship, a vast complex of corridors and
compartments and holds. There was probably a crew of a thousand men on
this ship ... and there was no sign where Greg and Johnny might have
been taken.
He moved forward, trying to keep to side corridors and darkened areas.
In the airlock he had wrapped up his pressure suit and stored it on a
rack; no one would notice it there, and it might be handy later. He had
strapped his father's gun case to his side, some comfort, but a small
one.
Now, crouching behind the yeast vat, he lifted out the gun, hefted it
idly in his hand. It was a weapon, at least. He was not well acquainted
with guns, and in the shadowy light it seemed to him that this one
looked odd for a revolver; it even felt wrong, out of balance in his
hand. He slipped it back in the case. After all, it had been fitted to
Dad's hand, not his. And Johnny or Greg would know how to use it better
than he would.
If he could find them. But to do that, he would have to search the ship.
He would have to move about, he couldn't just wait in a storage hold.
And with all the guards that were posted, he would certainly stumble
into one of them sooner or later if he tried leaving this spot....
He shook his head, and started for the hatch. He would have to chance
it. There was no way to tell how much time he had, but it was a sure bet
that he didn't have very long.
In the spur corridor again, he waited until the guard's footsteps were
muffled and distant. Then he darted out into the main corridor, moving
swiftly and silently away from the guard. At the first hatchway he
ducked inside, waited in the darkness, panting....
The guard had stopped walking. Then his footsteps resumed, but more
quickly, coming down the corridor. He stopped, almost outside the
hatchway door. "Funny," Tom heard him mutter. "I'd have sworn...."
Tom held his breath, waiting. This was a storage hold, but he didn't
dare to move, even to take cover. The guard stood motionless for a
moment, then grunted, and resumed his slow pacing.
When he had moved away Tom caught his breath in huge gasps, his heart
beating in his throat. It was no use, he thought in despair. Once or
twice he might get away with it, but sooner or later a guard would be
alert enough to investigate an obscure noise, a flicker of movement in
the corner of his eye....
There had to be another way. His eye probed the storage hold,
hopelessly, and then stopped on a metal grill in the wall.
For a moment, he didn't recognize what it was. Then there was a
whoosh-whoosh-whoosh as a fan went on, and he felt cool air against
his cheek. He held out his hand to the grill, found the air coming from
there.
A ventilation shaft. Every space craft had to have reconditioning units
for the air inside the ship; the men inside needed a constant supply of
fresh oxygen, but even more, without pumps to move the air in each
compartment they would soon suffocate from the accumulation of carbon
dioxide in the air they breathed out, or bake from the heat their bodies
radiated. On the other hand, the yeasts and algae required carbon
dioxide and yielded copious amounts of oxygen as they grew.
In Roger Hunter's little orbit-ship the ventilation shafts were small, a
loose network of foot-square ducts leading from the central pumps and
air-reconditioning units to every compartment in the ship. But in a ship
of this size....
The grill was over a yard wide, four feet tall. It started about
shoulder height and ran up to the overhead. The ducts would network the
ship, opening into every compartment, and no one would ever open them
unless something went wrong.
And then he was laughing out loud, working the grill out of the slots
that held it to the wall, trying to make his hands work in his
excitement.
He knew he had found his answer.
The grill came loose, lifted down in a piece. He stopped short as
footsteps approached in the corridor, paused, and went on. Then he
peered into the black gaping hole behind the grill. It was big enough
for a man to crawl in. He shinned up into the hole, and pulled the grill
back into its slot behind him.
Somewhere far away he heard a throbbing of giant pumps. There was a rush
of cool fresh air past his cheek, cold when it contacted the sweat
pouring down his forehead. He could not quite stand up, but there was
plenty of room for him to crouch and move.
Ahead of him was a black tunnel, broken only by a patch of light coming
through the grill that opened into the next compartment. He started into
the blackness, his heart racing.
Somewhere in the ship Johnny Coombs and Greg Hunter were
prisoners ... but now, Tom knew, there was a way to escape.
* * * * *
It was a completely different world, a world within a world, a world of
darkness and silence, of a thousand curving and intersecting tunnels,
some large, some small. For hours it seemed to him that he had been
wandering through a tomb, moving through the corridors of a dead ship,
the lone surviving crewman. There was some contact with the other world,
of course, the world of the spaceship outside ... each compartment had
its metal grill, and he passed many of them. But there were like doors
that only he knew existed. He met no one in these corridors, there was
no danger of sudden discovery and arrest in these dark alleys....
His boots had made too much noise as he started out, so he had slipped
them off, hanging them from his belt and moving on in his stocking feet.
As he went from duct to duct, he had an almost ridiculous feeling of
freedom and power. In every sense, he was an invisible man. Not one soul
on this great ship knew he was here, or even suspected. He had the run
of the ship, complete freedom to go wherever he chose. He could move
from compartment to compartment as silently and invisibly as if he had
no substance at all.
* * * * *
He knew the first job was to learn the pattern of the ducts, and
orientation was a problem. He had heard stories of men getting lost in
the deep underground mining tunnels on Mars, wandering in circles for
days until their food gave out and they starved. And there was that
hazard here, for every duct looked like every other one.
But there was a difference here, because the ducts curved just as the
main ship's corridors did. He could always identify the center of the
ship by the force of false gravity pulling the other way. Furthermore,
as the ducts drew closer to the pumps and reconditioning units, they
opened into larger vents, and the noise of the pumps thundered in his
ears. After an hour of exploration, Tom was certain that from any place
in the ship he could at least find his way to the outer layer, and from
there to one of the scout-ship airlocks.
Finding Greg and Johnny was quite a different matter.
He could not see enough through the compartment grills to identify just
what the compartments were; he was forced to rely on what he could hear.
The engine rooms were easily identified. In one area he heard the
banging of pots and pans, the steaming of kettles ... obviously the
galley. He found the control area. He could hear the clatter of typing
instruments, the click-click-click of the computers working out the
orbits and trajectories for the scout-ships as they moved out from the
orbit-ship or came back in. In another compartment he heard a dispatcher
chattering his own special code-language into a microphone in a
low-pitched voice. He passed another grill, and then stopped short as a
familiar voice drifted through.
Merrill Tawney's voice.
Tom hugged the grill, straining to catch the words. The company man
sounded angry; the man he was talking to sounded even angrier. "I can't
help what you want or don't want, Merrill, I can only report what we've
found, and that's nothing at all. Every one of those claims has been
searched twice over. Doc and his boys went over them, and we didn't find
anything they missed. I think you're barking up the wrong tree."
"There's got to be something," Tawney said, his voice tight with
anger. "Hunter couldn't have taken anything away from there, he didn't
have a chance to. You read the reports..."
"I know," the other said wearily, "I know what the reports said."
"Then what he found is still there. There's no other possibility,"
Tawney said.
"We went over that rock with a microscope. We blew it to shreds. Assay
has gone through the fragments literally piece by piece. They found low
grade iron, a trace of nickel, a little tin, and lots of granite. If we
never found anything richer than that, we'd have been out of business
ten years ago."
There was a long silence. Tom pressed closer to the grill. Then he heard
Tawney slam his fist into his palm. "You know what Roger Hunter's doing,
don't you?" he said. "He's making fools of us, that's what! The man's
dead, and he's making us look like idiots. If we hadn't been so sure we
had the lode spotted ..." He broke off. "Well, that's done, we can't
undo it. But this brat of his...."
"Any luck there?"
"Not a word. He's playing coy."
"Maybe he doesn't know anything. Doc made a bad mistake when he blasted
the other one ... suppose he was the only one that knew."
"All right, it was a mistake," Tawney snapped. "What was he supposed to
do, let him get back to Mars? We've got a good front there, but it's not
that good. If the United Nations gets a toehold out here, the whole Belt
will go into their pocket, you realize that. They're waiting for us to
make one slip." He paused, and Tom heard him pacing the compartment.
"But I think we've got our boy. This one knows. We've been spoiling him
so far, that's all. Well, now we start digging. When I get through with
him, he'll be begging us to let him tell. You just watch me, as soon as
the okay comes through...."
Tom drew back from the grill, moving on in the darkness. So far he had
not rushed his exploration ... there was a chance to use the ducts for
escape, he wanted to know them well. But now he knew the hour was
getting late. So far Greg and Johnny had been stalling Tawney ... but
Tawney was getting impatient.
He moved quickly and he thought again of what Tawney had said. Tawney
was right about one thing ... there was no way that Dad could have
hidden a Big Strike so nobody could find it. It had to be there....
And yet it wasn't. He and Greg hadn't found it. Tawney's men hadn't
found it, either. Why not? There must be a reason.
But he could not put his finger on it.
Half an hour later he was seriously worried. Half the compartments in
the area were deserted, the men leaving for the cafeteria. The thought
reminded Tom how hungry he was, and thirsty. His small emergency ration
kit was empty. He toyed with the thought of sneaking into a food storage
compartment, then thrust it out of his mind as too risky. He had to find
Greg and Johnny before anything.
He passed a grill, and heard a murmur of voices; something in the deep
bass rumble caught his ear, and he stopped, listened.
The voices stopped also.
He waited for them to begin, pressing against the grill. Johnny Coombs
was not the only man with a deep bass voice, he might have been
mistaken. He listened, but there was no sound. He heard the whir of a
fan begin, still no sound, not even footsteps.
And then it happened, so fast he was taken completely off guard. The
grill suddenly gave way, pitching him forward into the compartment.
Something struck him behind the ear as he fell; there was a grunt, a
sharp command, and he was pinned to the floor in the semi-darkness of
the compartment.
Then he heard a gasp, and he opened his eyes. He was staring into his
brother's startled face. Greg was pinning his shoulders to the carpeted
deck, and behind him Johnny Coombs had a fist raised....
But they had stopped in mid-air, like a tableau of puppets. Greg gaped,
his jaw falling open, and Tom heard himself saying, "What are you trying
to do, kill a guy? Seems to me one time is enough."
He had found them.
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The panels had closed on this dreadful vision, but light had not returned to the saloon: all was silence and darkness within the Nautilus. At wonderful speed, a hundred feet beneath the water, it was leaving this desolate spot. Whither was it goi... The Legend Of Old Silfax
Six months after these events, the marriage, so strangely interrupted, was finally celebrated in St. Giles's chapel, and the young couple, who still wore mourning garments, returned to the cottage. James Starr and Simon Ford, henceforth free from ... The Leprechaun
The shell carried us straight back to the house of Yolara. Larry was awaiting me. We stood again before the tenebrous wall where first we had faced the priestess and the Voice. And as we stood, again the portal appeared with all its disconcerting, m... The Lion Wakes
At daybreak on the nineteenth, to the utter amazement of everyone who was not "in the know," the Imperial yacht, Hohenzollern, was found off Tilbury, flying the Imperial German Ensign and the Naval flag, as well as a long string of signals orderin... The Locked Door
THE reader will perhaps understand that at first everything was so strange about me, and my position was the outcome of such unexpected adventures, that I had no discernment of the relative strangeness of this or that thing. I followed the llama ... The Looting Of Zodanga
As the great gate where I stood swung open my fifty Tharks, headed by Tars Tarkas himself, rode in upon their mighty thoats. I led them to the palace walls, which I negotiated easily without assistance. Once inside, however, the gate gave me con... The Lord Of The Dynamos
The chief attendant of the three dynamos that buzzed and rattled at Camberwell, and kept the electric railway going, came out of Yorkshire, and his name was James Holroyd. He was a practical electrician, but fond of whisky, a heavy red-haired brute... The Luminous Speck
I awake suddenly. It is still dark. I turn over, once or twice, in my endeavors to sleep again; but I cannot sleep. My head is aching, slightly; and, by turns I am hot and cold. In a little, I give up the attempt, and stretch out my hand, for the ma... The Lusion Plain
Maskull awoke before the others. He got up, stretched himself, and walked out into the sunlight. Branchspell was already declining. He climbed to the top of the crater edge and looked away toward Ifdawn. The afterglow of Alppain had by now completel... The Machine Breakers
It was just before Ernest ran for Congress, on the socialist ticket, that father gave what he privately called his "Profit and Loss" dinner. Ernest called it the dinner of the Machine Breakers. In point of fact, it was merely a dinner for business... The Machine That Saved The World
They were broadcasts from nowhere--sinister emanations flooding in from space--smashing any receiver that picked them up. What defense could Earth devise against science such as this? The first broadcast came in 1972, while Mahon-modified mach... The Madness Of Olaf
Yolara threw her white arms high. From the mountainous tiers came a mighty sigh; a rippling ran through them. And upon the moment, before Yolara's arms fell, there issued, apparently from the air around us, a peal of sound that might have been the ...