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Ebook has 136 lines and 12957 words, and 3 pages

MOMENTUM

Just because an event "has to" happen, some people think that, of course, it will happen. It ain't necessarily so!

Ballard had but a few hours to solve the problem, and he knew that the answer was there, before his eyes--if he could see it in time!

Suddenly the clanks and rustles stopped, and Walton's voice muttered: "Must have left the number three flux; better go back for it."

"What?" Ballard caught himself asking rhetorically, apprehension flooding through him.

"I said I left something. Have to go back and get it." There was a faint tremor in Walton's voice.

With a hard calm he wouldn't have recognized six weeks ago, Ballard considered the consequences of making an excuse to go with Walton. But the excuse would destroy the pose of innocence he'd so carefully acted since his first suspicions of Walton's intention. And he could be wrong. No sense in antagonizing Walton, particularly with the frayed condition both their nerves were in. "Ok," he grunted. "Bring back another 5R bit; this one I've been using chitters."

There were the sounds of Walton bounding down towards the ship in the peculiar dancing glide demanded by the low gravity. Methodically, without looking up, Ballard continued his job, following Walton with his earphones. Only when the foundation fill was laid would it seem natural for him to stop working for a moment and go to the ship.

Gradually, layer on layer, the plastic melted, coated the walls and hardened. He heard Walton reach the ship, then there was a slight ringing noise as the man touched his key-magnet to the airlock. As Walton entered the lock, his mike registered the pressure of air by suddenly picking up all the sounds of the ship; the throbbing of the generators, the intermittent rush and sigh of the air conditioner, and the close curved walls echoing back the scrape of his shoes on the locker room floor.

Four minutes to go. Ballard finished melting the plastic onto the walls, resisting the urge to hurry and risk botching the work. Walton had no reason to kill him--except for the rotenite. And since its discovery, Walton had shown nothing but a surface friendship covering a hidden hatred and fear that was growing into surreptitious maneuverings towards murder. But with a pretense at normality, Ballard hoped Walton would get over his obsession and forget it, never knowing that he'd seen anything suspicious. And meanwhile Ballard had only to stay out of the way of accidents without seeming suspiciously careful.

He tried again, yanking it with the same futile results. Apprehension flooded through him. "Walton!" he called. "Walton, the panel's stuck! Open it from the inside!"

For an instant he was aware of Walton's nervous breathing, then it stopped--there was a low chuckle. "Listen, Ballard! I'd be crazy to let you in. Don't you think I've seen you watching me like a hawk ever since we found the rotenite, just waiting for a chance to catch me off guard! I should have done this weeks ago, but it didn't occur to me how clean and easy it would be until I thought of the airlock jamming with you outside. So--the lock is jammed and you have left little over two hours of suit oxygen. And while you're out there suffocating to death, I'll be waiting in my sleep-tank on a nice euphoriac jag. It's going to be nice being the richest man in the--"

"Wait! Walton, listen! You're all wrong! I--"

Walton had cut his radio. For a moment, Ballard dumbly stood there, his mind racing around like a pin-wheel. Slowly it stopped, as numbing fear coursed through his nervous system. He'd under-concealed his suspicions, after all; Walton had suspected him of the very same thing he'd suspected Walton of.

Suddenly, in spite of his predicament, in spite of death waiting for him only a few hours in the future, Ballard smiled. He really couldn't hate Walton for what he'd done; it was the old cliche again of too much greed and suspicion.

He realized that this didn't alter the fact that he was going to die--unless he could think of something fast. Ballard looked at his chronometer; he now had less than two hours.

Ballard smiled at the stars as he bounded back to the hill where the tools lay. Walton had been a fool to lock him out here with cutting, burning, and pounding equipment--and almost two hours in which to use them. Things weren't so bad after all.

He decided to try the welding torch first. He crossed over to the almost-completed blinker tower and picked up the torch and power-pack, then from a tool box he selected a cutting nozzle.

After the first five minutes he turned the nozzle away and examined the spot where it had been applied. Not a mark.

Six minutes went by. Then seven, eight, nine--

Again he looked at the skin; still no change.

Stunned, he finally noticed that the power-pack read empty. Walton had nearly exhausted it on the blinker tower.

Ballard glanced at his wrist. He still had an hour and fourteen minutes.

He didn't smile at the stars this time as he went back up the hill. Things didn't seem ironic any more, merely dangerous. He loaded the heat-beam with its larger power-pack onto the equipment platform and slowly dragged it behind him down to the ship.

An hour and two minutes left. He went to work adjusting the beam to its maximum intensity; then, moving it as close to the hull as possible, he turned it on full force.

Time seemed to have stopped. Twice in one minute Ballard glanced at his wrist, expecting to see a lapse of ten or fifteen minutes. Only five minutes had dragged by; he now had just fifty-seven left. His spacesuit suddenly began reminding him of a coffin. With superhuman effort he jerked his thoughts away from suffocation and back to the job.

He got the jackhammer all the way down to the ship before a devastating thought struck him. He'd forgotten that the hammer had a cracked 5R bit; it would fly to pieces on the diamond hardness of the hull.

He sat down, stunned at the fact that he'd run out of things to try. The ship lay before him like some impenetrable fortress. Several precious minutes dragged by before Ballard could again calm his spinning brain. He still had forty minutes. Had he overlooked any other possibility of getting into the ship?

Half-bounding and half-running, he returned from the hill with the tool box. After selecting several likely wrench sizes, he grabbed a flashlight and crawled up the tube. He wasted five minutes unscrewing the first bolt holding the plate in place. The second bolt was so corroded he couldn't budge it. Cursing he crawled out and dragged in the jackhammer, hoping the cracked 5R bit would hold until the bolt was knocked out.

He went out and grabbed a crowbar and pried the plate off, recoil cylinder and hydraulic fluid following like a jack-in-the-box. After cleaning out the drive tube he almost lost his reason when he discovered the cable connecting the beam to the power-pack wasn't long enough to reach the bulkhead. Fortunately he found an extension in the bottom of the tool box.

That should be just long enough. He switched on the beam. Now time seemed to race by. At ten minutes to go the bulkhead turned a cherry-red. At five minutes it was almost white. At four, the steel started to buckle. At three--the heat-beam suddenly went dead. The power-pack was empty.

Ballard's reason reeled. He grabbed the crowbar and jabbed at the fast cooling metal.

In the one minute he had left to live, Ballard suddenly became calm, reconciling himself to his end. Wearily he crawled out of the tube. At least Walton would be in for a nasty surprise, with the main drive recoil plate gone. And to make sure, he would push it off into space. With one last surge of fury he dragged up the foot thick plate he could never have lifted back on Earth, and started shoving to give it momentum.

Just one thing could save him now--momentum. Ballard glanced at his wrist. Twenty seconds to go. Then maybe another twenty from the oxygen in the connecting tube. Not much time--

He bounded off after the still-drifting plate, then began forcing it around in a semi-circle back toward the ship. The recoil plate sluggishly began to move faster as it gained momentum. It started getting ahead of him so he gave it one last push, and it slowly crept away heading straight for the hull. It floated edge-wise into the aft section--and kept on going. A three foot stream of light poured out from the side of the ship.

Ballard started crawling into the hull and the light wavered and brightened. He couldn't understand it. Then it dimmed altogether--

Dizzily he tried to squeeze through the rip. He kept slipping back ... back. There was a roaring darkness all around him, but he could still crawl.

For ages he seemed to be crawling over polished glass--His head crashed into something that clanged hollowly. Some fading portion of his consciousness told him he was inside the ship--and the clang had been the spacelocker. Automatically, as though by instinct, he reached up and fumbled with the handle--Then he was clumsily trying to fit a new oxygen cylinder into place....

Ballard awoke feeling cramped and tired, as though he'd slept all night in a bird cage. He looked at his chronometer, then at his suit air-gauge. No. He'd been out only a few minutes. He got up and crawled into the sleep-tank compartment and disconnected Walton's awakener. Then he went into the control room and looked up the nearest space-freighter lane in the radio call book, and set up an automatic distress signal. He felt as if he were going to pass out again--this time from sheer fatigue. There was still one thing more he wanted to do.

Out of the nose compartment he hauled a small case containing what had caused all the trouble--

Then he crawled back out through the torn hull skin, opened the case and flung every single one of the rotenite nuggets far out into space.

The meal was now over, the dusk had deepened as they lingered about the table, and Goodwife Pepperell rose to light a bayberry candle and set it on the chimney-piece.

"Sit ye down by the fire again, while Nancy and I wash the dishes," she said cordially.

"Thank ye kindly," said the Captain, "but I must budge along. It 's near dark, and Timothy--that 's my mate--will be wondering if I 've been et up by a shark. It 's going to be a clear night after the storm."

The children slept so soundly after the adventures of the day that their mother called them three times from the foot of the ladder in the early dawn of the following morning without getting any response. Then she mounted to the loft and shook Daniel gently. "Wake thee," she said. "'T is long past cock-crow, and Saturday at that."

Daniel opened his eyes feebly and was off to sleep again at once. "Daniel," she said, shaking him harder, "thy father is minded to take thee to Plymouth."

Before the words were fairly out of her mouth Daniel had popped out of bed as if he had been shot from a gun. "Oh, Mother," he shouted, "am I really to go? Shall I go clear to Providence? Doth Captain Sanders know? When do we start?"

"Thy father arranged it with the Captain last night," answered his mother. "He will come for thee in the little boat on Monday morning and will row thee and thy father to the sloop, which will sail at high tide. While thy father makes the journey across the Cape thou wilt go on to Provincetown with the Captain, or mayhap, if visitors are now permitted in the Colony, my aunt, the Governor's lady, will keep thee with her until thy father returns. She would like well to see my son, I know, and I trust thou wilt be a good lad and mind thy manners. Come, Nancy, child, I need thy help!" Then she disappeared down the ladder to stir the hasty pudding, which was already bubbling in the pot.

When she was gone, Nancy flung herself upon the mattress and buried her face in the bed-clothes. "Oh, Daniel," she cried, smothering a sob, "what if the p-p-pirates should get thee?"

Daniel was at her side in an instant. "Give thyself no concern about pirates, sister," he said, patting her comfortingly. "I have thought how to deal with them! I shall stand by the rail with my cutlass in my hand, and when they seek to board her I will bring down my cutlass so,"--here he made a terrific sweep with his arm,--"and that will be the end of them."

"Oh," breathed Nancy, much impressed, "how brave thou art!"

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