Lester del Rey - The Mysterious Planet

Juan shook his head. “They weren’t there before.”

“Then maybe they’ve just arrived,” Bob guessed, and hoped he was right. “In that case, if we can just wait without being seen until we’re on the other side of the moon, we might get away without being spotted. Besides, we can’t take off now. We’re pointing away from Outpost.

Those ships must be using this moon as a shield to keep them out of the spotting screens at Communications.”

The black shapes seemed to rise slowly, higher as the moon rotated, and then to begin sinking. Each second took longer than any second Bob had experienced, and his stomach was sick with the strain of waiting. But he forced himself to seem as cool as he could.

“Nice picture,” Simon broke the silence. “We probably get wiped out. If we don’t, we go back under arrest.”

“What will they do to us, in this being under arrest?” Juan asked.

Bob shook his head. “Nothing much. Don’t listen to Simon. When Wallingford told us to consider ourselves under arrest, but to get back as soon as we could, he was trying to pass on the word that we didn’t have to worry. We broke the rules, but we did keep Navy ships from spotting this and walking into a trap. So we’ll probably get a bawling out and be confined to quarters for a while.”

Bob hoped he was right, at least. But still he wasn’t entirely sure. The warning they’d radioed back would count in their favor, of course. But the Navy during wartime was different from the Navy he knew.

He glanced nervously at the screen, where the ships were almost gone from sight.

Apparently they hadn’t

moved. If the Icarius hadn’t been spotted, all might yet go off as it should. And it seemed the ships hadn’t seen them. The logical tune to strike would have been while they were turned away from Outpost.

Now the radar screen began to register the marker pip broadcast from the base. They were swinging around to face Outpost. Jakes fingered the controls nervously, but he knew it was still too soon. He licked his lips, and kept his eyes glued on the screen as the beacon pip crossed it slowly toward the center.

Juan seemed more nervous than Bob or Jakes, but he managed to smile and shrug in a pretense of courage. It was Simon who finally admitted the truth. “I’m scared silly.”

“Me too,” Bob admitted, glad for the chance to stop pretending. His throat was dry, and his breath ached from holding it in. Then, amazingly, the admission of his fright seemed to make him feel better.

“Dead center,” Jakes said suddenly. His fingers bit down on the throttle, and the Icarius seemed to jump into the air as if thrown from a catapult.

It was hard to see the screen, but Bob somehow kept his eyes focused on it. It showed nothing but the mark from the beacon. “Better overshoot than reverse too soon,” he suggested thickly.

Simon’s muffled grunt was mixed with blood roaring in Bob’s ears. “Yeah… yeah, I figured on that. If we get that far. Maybe we will.”

They were half a minute off the moon when the first of the pips hit the screen, just at the edge. Juan cried out at the same tune Bob saw them increase from one to three. The black ships were coming out from behind the moonlet, probably deciding to search it thoroughly.

Their course didn’t look as if they had spotted the little Icarius, though that seemed hard to believe.

“Maybe there’s time to drop back,” he gasped.

Jakes hit the switches, and snapped the Icarius over sharply, then cut on the throttle again.

But they’d built

up enough speed to keep drifting outward for some time before the Icarius began moving back toward the moon. There wouldn’t be time for them to land where they had been, even if the ships didn’t see the small blue flame of their exhaust, or spot them in some electronic device.

Only one thing was left to do, and that was to try to dart around to the side, and somehow get the moon between them again. Jakes was working the controls, his face covered with sweat. This close to a body even the size of the little moon was no place for comfortable navigation, and the three ships on the screen made it a lot harder. He was trying to keep his jets from blasting toward them as much as possible, to increase the chance of not being seen.

Even over the fear that gripped him, Bob felt a sudden thrill of admiration at the way Jakes handled the ship. He’d seen the crack pilots of the Fleet on fancy maneuvers, but he hadn’t seen stunting to equal what Jakes was going through. It would be a shame if it was all useless in the end. Shame? It’d be a lot more than that. Bob could remember the way the blue balls of lightning had exploded inside the ships of Wing Nine.

They seemed about to make it, though. The three pips were going down on the screen again, and the Icarius was reaching some sort of balance that didn’t take constant juggling with the steering jets. If the ships didn’t spot them for a few seconds more they might have a chance.

“Find me some kind of rough valley down there,” Simon gasped. “Just big enough to bury us in. I’ll set her down in anything, if you can spot a good cover.”

The little telescreen showed a wild jumble under them, but nothing in which they could hide.

Bob seemed to remember one big crevasse visible before they first landed and which would do, but he couldn’t spot it.

Then another grunt from Jakes snapped his eyes back to the radar screen. It was too late.

The black ships must have spotted them, since they were now heading straight toward the Icarius, though without the impossible speeds of which they were capable.

They didn’t need to rush. The three inside the little ship were sitting ducks for them.

“ONLY ONE CHANCE,” Simon gasped. The strain of trying to maneuver under such an acceleration pressure was telling on him. But his hands were still in complete mastery of the controls.

He flipped the ship further over, using the full strength of the steering jets, and went skimming over the little moon, forcing the Icarius into a power curve that shot her out of the sight of the three ships. There would, however, be no time for a careful landing before they caught up. Bob couldn’t see any chance.

Simon’s eyes were glued to the screen, though, and he was cutting almost entirely around the moon. It required a constant turning with the steering rockets to swing the main jet off course enough to keep the circle going.

Ahead of them, the mock-up ship suddenly appeared. Simon headed straight for it. As it came near, he forced the Icarius down until she was almost skimming the ground, and began braking furiously. The mock-up swelled in the screen—and behind it lay a mass of ugly boulders. Bob ducked instinctively—or tried to; the pressure in the cushion kept him from doing more than nodding his head.

Something flipped across the observation port. There was a simultaneous blast from the braking rockets, and the Icarius gave a screech as her bottom scraped rock. Then she was still.

They were inside the mock-up, placed there almost as if Simon had been a hand and the ship a ball to be dropped into a pocket. Bob sighed, and almost relaxed. It was logical—and the last thing in the world he would have thought of doing. But it was the only really good cover on the whole moon—and perhaps the last place where the aliens would look for them.

Now some of Simon’s cockiness came back. “How was that for a landing, boy? Did the Academy make or not make a mistake?”

“Maybe they did,” Bob had to admit. “I don’t care. What I want to know is how we’re going to get out.”

“No trouble, I think. That stuff stuck to metal, but it didn’t seem to bother anything else. And the Icarius has a porcelain glaze all over her. Anyhow, I don’t think the stuff is tough enough to worry a set of hydrogen rockets.”