A. Van Vogt - Rogue Ship

'But that's ridiculous,' Hewitt protested. 'That metal drilled easily enough six years ago when the ship was built.'

Mardonell said, 'We've had two extra drills brought up. Diamonds don't mean a thing to that metal.' He added, 'It's been calculated that she'll crash somewhere in the higher foothills of the Rockies. We've been able to pin it down pretty accurately, and people have been warned.'

Hewitt said, 'What about those aboard? What about-' He stopped. He had been intending to ask, 'What about the human race?' He didn't say it. That was a special madness of his own, which would only irritate other people.

Trembling, he walked over to a porthole of the rescue ship. He guessed they were about fifteen miles above the surface of Earth. Less than two hours before crashing.

When that time limit had dwindled to twenty minutes, Hewitt gave the order to cast off. The rescue ship withdrew slowly from the bigger host, climbing as she went. A little later, Hewitt stood watching with an awful, empty feeling, as the huge round ship made its first contact with Earth below, the side of a hill.

At just under a thousand miles an hour, horizontal velocity, it plowed through the soil, creating a cloud of dust. From where Hewitt and his men watched, no sound was audible, but the impact must have been terrific.

'That did it,' said Hewitt, swallowing. 'If anybody was alive aboard, they died at that moment.'

It needed no imagination to picture the colossal concussion. All human beings inside would now be bloody splotches against a floor, ceiling, or wall.

A moment later, the sound of the impact reached him. It arrived with all the power and sharpness of a sonic boom, and the salvage vessel itself shuddered with its blow. The noise was louder by far than he had anticipated.

Somebody shouted, 'She's through the hill!'

Hewitt said, 'My God!'

The small mountain, made of rock and packed soil, thicker than a score of ships like the Hope of Man, was sheared in two. Through a cloud of dust, Hewitt made out the round ship skimming the high valley beyond. She struck the valley floor, and once again, there was dust. The machine did not slow; showed no reaction to the impact.

It continued at undiminished speed on into the earth.

The dust cleared slowly. There was a hole, over twelve hundred feet in diameter, slanting into the far hillside. The hole began to collapse. Tons of rock crashed down from the upper lip of the cave.

The rescue ship had sunk to a point nearer the ground, and Hewitt heard plainly the thunder of the falling debris.

Rock and soil were still falling when a radio report arrived. A mountain had collapsed fifty miles away. There was a new valley, and somebody had been killed. Three small earthquakes had shaken the neighborhood.

For twenty minutes, the reports piled up. The land was uneasy. Fourteen more earthquakes were recorded. Two of them were the most violent ever recorded in the affected areas. Great fissures had appeared. The ground jumped and trembled. The last temblor had occurred four hundred miles from the first; and they all lined up with the course of the Hope of Man.

Abruptly, there came an electrifying message. The round ship had emerged in the desert, and was beginning to climb upward on a long, swift shallow slant.

Less than three hours later, the salvage ship was again clinging to the side of the larger machine. Its huge magnets twisted stubbornly at the great lock-door. To the half-dozen government scientists who had come aboard, Hewitt said, 'It took an hour to turn it one foot. It shouldn't take more than thirty-five hours to turn it thirty-five feet. Then, of course, we have the inner door, but that's a different problem.' He broke off. 'Gentlemen, shall we discuss the fantastic thing that has happened?'

The discussion that followed arrived at no conclusion.

Hewitt said, 'That does it!' The outer door had been open for some while, and now, through the thick asbesglas, they watched the huge magnet make its final turn on the inner door. As they waited behind the transparent barrier, a thick metal arm was poked into the airlock, and shoved at the door. After straining with it for several seconds, its operator turned and glanced at Hewitt. The latter turned on his walkie-talkie.

'Come on back inside the ship. We'll put some air pressure in there. That'll open the door.'

He had to fight to keep his anger out of his voice. The outer door had opened without trouble, once all the turns had been made. There seemed no reason why the inner door should not respond in the same way. The Hope of Man was persisting in being recalcitrant.

The captain of the salvage vessel looked doubtful when Hewitt transmitted the order to him. 'If she's stuck,' he objected, 'you never can tell just how much pressure it'll take to open her. Don't forget we're holding the two ships together with magnets. It wouldn't take much to push them apart.'

Hewitt frowned over that. He said finally, 'Maybe it won't take a great deal. And if we do get pushed apart, well, we'll just have to add more magnets.' He added swiftly, 'Or maybe we can build a bulkhead into the lock itself, join the two ships with a steel framework.'

It was decided to try a gradual increase in air pressure. Presently, Hewitt watched the pressure gauge as it slowly crept up. It registered in pounds and atmospheres. At a fraction over ninety-one atmospheres, the pressure started rapidly down. It went down to eighty-six in a few seconds, then steadied, and began to creep up again. The captain barked an order to the engine room, and the gauge stopped rising. The man turned to Hewitt.

'Well, that's it. At ninety-one atmospheres, the rubber lining began to lose air, and didn't seal up again till the pressure went down.'

Hewitt shook his head in bewilderment. 'I don't understand it,' he said. 'That's over twelve hundred pounds to the square inch.'

Reluctantly, he radioed for the equipment that would be needed to brace the two ships together. While they waited, they tried several methods of using machinery to push open the door. None of the methods worked. It was evident that far higher pressures would be needed to force an entrance.

It required a pressure of nine hundred and seventy-four atmospheres.

The door swung open grudgingly. Hewitt watched the air gauge, and waited for the needle to race downward. The air should be rushing through the open door, on into the ship, dissipating its terrific pressure in the enormous cubic area of the bigger machine. It could sweep through like a tornado, destroying everything in its path.

The pressure went down to nine hundred and seventy-three. There it stopped. There it stayed. Beside Hewitt, a government scientist said in a strangled tone, 'But what's happened? It seems to be equalized at an impossible level. How can that be? That's over thirteen thousand pounds to the square inch.'

Hewitt drew away from the asbesglas barrier. 'I'll have to get a specially designed suit,' he said. 'Nothing we have would hold that pressure for an instant.'

It meant going down to Earth. Not that it would take a great deal of time. There were firms capable of building such a suit in a few days. But he would have to be present in person to supervise its construction. As he headed for a landing craft, Hewitt thought: 'All I've got to do is to get aboard, and start the ship back to Centaurus. I'll probably have to go along. But that's immaterial now.' It was too late to build more colonizing ships.

He was suddenly confident that the entire unusual affair would be resolved swiftly. He had no premonition.

It was morning at the steel city when he landed. The news of his coming had preceded him; and when he emerged from the space-suit factory shortly after noon, a group of reporters were waiting for him. Hewitt told them what he knew, but left them dissatisfied.