Lester del Rey - The Mysterious Planet

Bob groaned, trying to estimate a speed that would let them escape the closing of the domes without hitting the jib. But Jakes apparently was one of the so-called “natural” flyers.

He’d done well in the Academy until they demanded he use instruments. He depended mostly on the feel and what he could see. Now he hit the throttle quickly, cutting on the side rockets to throw the Icarius sharply away from the near-by wall.

It was a crazy way to take off, but it worked. They sank back into the seats while the ship jerked upward. Simon hit the braking rockets in the nose, slowing it just before it touched the gig. Then he gunned it forward again. The closing outer dome must have missed them by inches, but his judgment had proved sound enough.

“See what they kicked out of the Academy!” he boasted. Then his face sobered. “Don’t say it, Bob. I just can’t take routine and discipline. Ten years getting my father to let me go in—and two years getting kicked out in spite of his pull! But I might have stuck it out if all the other guys hadn’t hated me for my money. Could I help it if I had private tutors? And don’t answer that Cut off the radio, will you?”

A red light was flashing in the panel before Bob and he cut it quickly. There wasn’t much chance they’d be fired on from the ground. The trouble would come when word was sent out and they weren’t allowed to land anywhere, except at a military prison for unauthorized departure from a closed port.

“Dad said you might get back in the Academy in a couple more years,” Bob told him. Simon swung his face part way around in the mask that held back the cushioning liquid. “That is, if you stuck to rules awhile first.”

“Aw. Rules! Like rotting down there and putting this venture through red tape, eh?” Simon’s face had grown sour again, and he turned back to his piloting, cutting on the top power of the rockets. It brought a groan from Juan, and the strain told on the other two, but he didn’t let up. “Who wants the blamed Academy, anyhow. I’m too old for that stuff.”

He was flying by the seat of his pants again, now, and Bob began to wonder how well he had estimated where the little moonlet would be. But he seemed to know what he was doing. He flipped the little Icarius over a while later, and began decelerating. It was about the sweetest-handling ship Bob had ever seen; at what it had probably cost, it should have been.

Then the rear screen showed the little hunk of rock coming toward them, right in the cross hairs. It was a feat of navigation that would have made Hoeck blink in surprise. They began slowing down and matching the orbital speed of the moon, which was spinning fairly rapidly on its axis. As they came down, something rose over its steep horizon, and Juan pointed.

Without question, it was the hull of a black ship from Planet X.

“No place beside it to land,” Simon grumbled. “Guess we’ll have to set down up ahead of it.

Tow cable will reach, though.”

He kicked the Icarius around with the steering rockets, and kept coming down without apparent change in deceleration. A high-gravity landing was always dangerous, but he seemed not to know it. Then he flipped the throttle off. They were down, and Bob had hardly felt the contact.

“Sweet,” he commented.

“I always make ‘em sweet,” Jakes answered. “I told you, I’m good with a ship. I was going to use this for a racing entry until Planet X came along. Here, you’ll find suits in that locker.”

Bob began helping Juan into one of them. The smaller boy had trouble with the adjustable straps, and Bob realized he’d probably never really seen a Navy suit before. Then Bob began slipping into another. Jakes was already in his, and was pulling out the heavy drill and towing equipment required to be carried to give aid to a ship in distress, or for seeking aid oneself. The cable was obviously the best grade of silicone fabric, and would stand strain in the cold of space without trouble.

The lock showed the only disadvantage of a smaller ship. It was barely big enough for one to leave at a time, and had to be pumped out carefully after each use. They killed several minutes getting through it.

Juan came out last. “No sign of ships in the radar screen,” he reported. “No black ships are following us.”

It didn’t mean too much, since searchers could have been on the other side of the little moon, but it was some comfort. The three began to advance carefully over the jagged surface. Here they were so light that a normal step would have bounced them up a hundred feet into space, and have wasted a good many minutes before they floated down. They had switched the suit shoe-soles to automatic grapples, but it still took a good deal of care to travel over the surface of little worlds like this.

They came around a huge, rough boulder finally. Jakes stopped to run the towline carefully along where it would not snag, and then joined the others.

The nose of the black ship lay fifty feet away. It was smaller than the others they had seen, hardly more than three hundred feet in length. But it was an impressive sight here. Bob stirred uneasily as he remembered that there might be living beings still aboard. Then he breathed easier as he saw that it must have struck the surface a terrific blow, since it seemed to have been driven into the rock.

Something looked wrong, though. He moved forward cautiously, and stopped.

The hull hadn’t been driven into the ground. It was cut off sharply, just below the center, as if someone had taken a giant cleaver and sliced the ship down one side.

A few feet more, and he knew they had been tricked.

It was no ship, but a mere mock-up. Someone had put it here deliberately, and tried to make it look like a Planet X ship. But it wasn’t even built of metal.

It was a thin frame of light metal that rested on the ground. Over that, fabric had been stretched tightly. Bob’s hand tore at it, throwing it up out of the way, and he stood looking into what might have been a huge tent.

But it was from Planet X, without much question. The fabric was completely soft, though the temperature must have been near absolute zero. Nobody in the Solar Federation had learned to make stuff like that yet.

JAKES STOOD BESIDE BOB NOW, staring at the fake ship which had lured them there.

“Well, I’ll be…” It was the first indication Bob had had that these suits were all equipped with built-in radios, though he should have expected it.

“We’ll all be,” he agreed hotly. “This thing wasn’t just put here to improve the landscape.

They must have slipped in here with it pretty well ready and put it up while the moon was facing away from Outpost. But it was put here to be seen and to draw a sucker down. It’s a trap!”

Jakes muttered to himself. “Yeah,” he agreed finally. “And we’ve sprung it. Now I suppose the hunters are coming to hunt us up. We’d better get back to the Icarius fast! Of all the dopey ideas, coming out here for this.”

Juan shrugged. “It was your idea, Simon.”

“You mean it was yours,” Jakes told him angrily. “You didn’t yell it out in front of Smedley.

You waited until we were alone, and then told me. Naturally I figured you wanted to come for it, and I offered to take you.”

“You suggested it, though, Simon. I did, it is true, have the idea. But you were the first to put it into words.”

“We’re all guilty,” Bob said. He was completely disgusted with himself. Wallingford had told him that a smart man always looks suspiciously at strange objects and suspects they might be faked.

He knew this himself. But he’d come running here just to get out of the boredom at Outpost—and probably to be a hero, just as Jakes had done!