Lester del Rey - The Mysterious Planet

“If they’re putting out landing parties, we have some chance,” he decided. “It may take a few minutes for them to realize what is going on and get all their men— or whatever they are—back.”

Then he saw that his hopes were futile. On the screen, he spotted one of the big ships lifting easily. As he watched, the other two also rose toward them. They were already a fair distance away but that wouldn’t mean much if these ships could travel as the other aliens had done.

At first, it didn’t seem probable, since they came up from the surface at a leisurely clip, and seemed to be moving about in an aimless fashion. “Looking for us,” Jakes guessed. “Either that or making sure we didn’t

leave someone behind.”

It looked more like the latter. The Icarius continued to gain distance, while the black ships moved about over the surface, as if directing some type of searching beam downward. Then they all clumped together, and began moving straight upward, toward the Icarius.

Jakes groaned and tried to nurse another bit of speed out of his straining jets. But they were already at maximum, and nothing more could be done.

The black ships seemed to be thinking things over for a moment more. Then one of them leaped into an acceleration about twice what the Icarius could pull, others seconding the move. The distance began to narrow, more and more rapidly.

They were still less than a fifth of the way to Outpost, and their chances were growing slimmer every second. There was no way to outrun the ships. There was no basis for comparison—it was something like a snail trying to outrun an eagle.

Again the black ships increased their acceleration, until it must have been nearly fifty gravities. Bob hadn’t quite believed his memory of the other tunes, but he believed this. He didn’t want to, but there was no way to deny it. The ships were moving toward the Icarius at a rate which made the result a matter of a minute or less.

Jakes cut his acceleration. The black ships came up behind and matched course and speed instantly. Two of them spread out, and the third suddenly leaped ahead of the Icarius and again matched course. The position of the Planet X ships was an equilateral triangle, with the Icarius dead center.

Jakes hit the controls, and shot downward abruptly, curving off to the side as he did so. The other ships were delayed a split second in following him, but a second later they repeated their maneuver of putting him in the center. Then he tried going up. This time the triangle they formed was smaller.

It grew smaller with each maneuver, until the ships were almost touching the Icarius. Seen through one of the ports, they were huge, without a sign of a break in their smooth hulls.

There were no portholes, though radar had really made these needless for any ships. And there was no evidence of any driving mechanism. They blasted their way through space.

Somehow, they simply moved.

The next time Simon tried to move, he found that nothing happened. One of the big ships was touching the Icarius, and it seemed to be locking them down, though no mechanical contact of magnetic or hooked grapple had been tried.

The leading ship swung over slowly, until the bottom of one end was in line with the Icarius. It began backing up smoothly, while a hatch, twice big enough to engulf the little ship completely, opened in it.

Jakes waited until the sides of the huge opening were at the port, and then cut on his braking rockets. They shot out of the nose of the Icarius, with a blast that should have shriveled anything they touched. But nothing happened. The great ship went on backing around them, until they were completely engulfed.

In the viewing screen from the rear, the boys saw the big doors began to shut again. Bob knew now how Jonah had felt when the whale had swallowed him. This looked exactly like such a huge mouth closing down over them.

Then something seemed to suck them sharply downward and they landed with a shrill clang of metal against what was probably the floor of the huge chamber that had swallowed them.

Jakes cut on the lights of the ship trying to make out something of the place where they had been swallowed. But it seemed to be nothing but a room ten times the size of the whole Icarius, built of black metal, and without any other features.

The jets of the Icarius had obviously been running all along, since Jakes suddenly cut them off. But it made no difference. Then a feeling of weight began to press at their bodies, rising until it had reached about Earth-normal. It stayed there.

“Here we go, bound for Planet X,” Jakes muttered. “And right now, since we can’t do anything, I’m going to sleep. I’m dead.”

He touched the button that turned the seat into a rough couch, and lay back. Bob tried the same, and found it more comfortable than most of the beds in which he had slept. He was surprised to find his own eyes heavy. It didn’t seem possible that he could actually fall asleep. But somehow, after the long flight, the fact that there was now nothing at all they could do seemed to leave him dulled and drowsy.

His last thought was a sudden wonder about what would happen to them if the alien ship ever tried jumping up to her top gravity of acceleration. But there was nothing he could do about that either!

WHEN THEY AWOKE, there was the same feeling of normal gravity as before. Bob got up groggily and located material for a simple breakfast. He had no way of knowing what time it was, but he suspected that the long chase had taken more hours than they had realized.

That would account for some of their sleepiness.

Juan was studying the blackness of the chamber in front of their ship. He took the food from Bob, and began eating listlessly, his eyes still fixed outward. “I have a theory,” he announced.

He dug into the food, then swallowed thoughtfully. “I think that what we feel here is not the pressure of acceleration at all. It doesn’t change, and it is much too slow for the ship’s, if what we have seen is true. What we feel is real gravity—a gravity made right in these ships.

Consider. If they can control gravity, then they are indeed advanced, wouldn’t you say?”

“We know that already,” Bob answered. “But you may be right about the gravity here. I wonder if they move the same way—control gravity and make it pull them toward or away from whatever they like?”

“I have considered that, too,” Juan put in. Then he shook his head. “But it is not so logical. If they can control gravity, they may control inertia. They may be able to say to inertia, go away—and it will go away for them. Then with the slightest effort, they can reach any speed; the mass of this ship will not object to changing

its speed, it will take no work to change it. And because we inside also have no inertia for that change of speed, we do not even feel it. It is as if there had been no change, even though we leap from no speed forward to millions of miles an hour. That way, they can stop dead after any speed and not be hurt.”

It was a good enough theory, though a surprising one. There had been a little theoretical work done which indicated that inertia was not a fixed thing, but nobody had been able to prove it. Still, if the ship could repeal inertia whenever it wanted to, it would explain things fairly well.

“Then where are we now?” Simon asked. His face was dulled with sleep, but seemed somehow less stupid than it had been. Maybe he was developing.

“We are on Planet X, of course,” Juan announced. “We have slept for many hours, and they can travel at any speed. So we have arrived.”

That wasn’t just a theory, they found a few minutes later. The great door at the rear snapped open to show what might almost have been a country meadow back on Earth. Grass grew lushly and there were trees everywhere. Above, the sky was filled with soft clouds. But none of the trees looked exactly like normal Earth ones. There was a subtle difference about everything.