Питер Филлипс - In Space No One Can Hear You Scream

“The whole base of the hangar will be scalloped like a pie crust at this rate,” he gritted. “What can I—”

Crash!

He had inadvertently stopped near a rack filled with spare power bulbs. With its ensuing attack the blind fury had knocked the rack down onto the floor.

Hartigan’s jaw set hard. Whatever he did must be done quickly. And it must be done by himself alone. He could not stay at the Bliss transmitter long enough to get New York and tell what was wrong, without giving the gigantic thing outside a fatal number of minutes in which to concentrate on one section of wall.

He moved slowly around the hangar, striving to keep the invisible fury too occupied in following him to get in more than an occasional charge. As he walked, his eyes went from one heap of supplies to another in search of a possible means of defense.

There were ordinary weapons in plenty, in racks along the wall. But none of these, he knew, could do material harm to the attacking fury.

He got to the great inner doors of the main airlock in his slow march around the hangar. And here he stopped, eyes glowing thoughtfully.

The huge doors had threatened in the early days to be the weak points in the Spaceways hangars. So the designers, like good engineers, had made the doors so massive that in the end they were stronger than the walls around them.

Bang!

A bulge near the massive hinges told Hartigan that the thing outside was as relentless as ever in its efforts to break through the wall and get at him. But he paid no attention to the new bulge. He was occupied with the doors.

If the invisible giant could be trapped in the main airlock between the outer and inner portals—

“Then what?” Hartigan wondered.

He could not answer his own question. But, anyway, it seemed like a step in the right direction to have the attacking fury penned between the doors rather than to have it loose and able to charge the more vulnerable walls.

“If I can coop it in the airlock, I might be able to think of some way to attack it,” he went on.

He pushed home the control switch which set the broadcast power to opening the outer doors. And that gave him an idea that sent a wild thrill surging through him.

A heavy rumble told him that the motors were swinging open the outer doors.

“Will the thing come in?” he asked himself tensely. “Or has it sense enough to scent a trap?”

Bang!

The inner doors trembled a little on their broad tracks. The invisible monster had entered the trap.

“Trap?” Hartigan smiled mirthlessly. “Not much of a trap! Left to itself, it could probably break out in half an hour. But it won’t be left to itself.”

He reversed the switch to close the outer portals. Then, with the doors closed and the monster penned between, he got to work on the idea that had been born when he pushed the control switch.

Power, oceans of it, flooded from the power unit at the touch of a finger. A docile servant when properly channeled, it could be the deadliest thing on the Moon.

He ran back down the hangar to the stock room, and got out a drum of spare power cable. As quickly as was humanly possible, he rolled the drum back to the doors, unwinding the cable as he went.

It was with grim solemnity that he made his next move. He had to open the inner doors a few inches to go on with his frail plan of defense. And he had to complete that plan before the thing in the airlock could claw them open still more and charge through. For all their weight the doors rolled in perfect balance, and if the unseen terror could make dents in the solid wall, it certainly was strong enough to move the partly opened doors.

Speed! That was the thing that would make or break him. Speed, and hope that the power unit could stand a terrific overload without blowing a tube.

With a hand that inclined to tremble a bit, Hartigan moved the control switch operating the inner doors, and instantly cut the circuit again.

The big doors opened six inches or so, and stopped.

Hartigan cut off the power unit entirely, and dragged the end of the spare power cable to it. With flying fingers he disconnected the cable leading from the control switch to the motors that moved the portals, and connected the spare cable in its space.

He glanced anxiously at the doors, and saw the opening between them had widened to more than a foot. The left door moved a little even as he watched.

“I’ll never make it.”

But he went ahead.

Grabbing up the loose end of the cable, he threw it in a tangled coil as far as he could through the opening and into the airlock. Then he leaped for the power unit—and watched.

The cable lay unmoving on the airlock floor. But the left door moved! It jerked, and rolled open another six inches.

Hartigan clenched his hands as he stared at the inert cable. He had counted on the blind ferocity of the invisible terror, had counted on its attacking, or at least touching, the cable immediately. Had it enough intelligence to realize dimly that it would be best to avoid the cable? Was it going to keep working at those doors till—

The power cable straightened with a jerk. Straightened, and hung still, with the loose end suspended in midair about six feet off the airlock floor.

Hartigan’s hand slammed down. The broadcast power was turned on to the last notch.

With his heart hammering in his throat, Hartigan gazed through the two-foot opening between the doors. Gazed at the cable through which was coursing oceans, Niagaras of power. And out there in the air-lock a thing began to build up from think air into a spectacle that made him cry out in wild horror.

He got a glimpse of a massive block of a head, eyeless and featureless, that joined with no neck whatever to a barrel of a body. He got a glimpse of five legs, like stone pillars, and of a sixth that was only a stump. (“That’s what got caught in the doors a month ago—its leg,” he heard himself babbling with insane calmness.) Over ten feet high and twenty feet long, the thing was a living battering ram, painted in the air in sputtering, shimmering blue sparks that streamed from its massive bulk in all directions.

Just a glimpse, he got, and then the monster began to scream as it had that first day when the door maimed it. Only now it was with a volume that tore at Hartigan’s eardrums till he scremed himself in agony.

As he watched, he saw the huge carcass melt a little, like wax in flame, with the power cable also melting slowly and fusing into the cavernous, rocky jaws that had seized it. Then with a rush the whole bulk disintegrated into a heap of loose mineral matter.

Hartigan turned off the power unit and collapsed, with his face in his hands.

The shining ball of the full Earth floated like a smooth diamond between two vast, angular mountains. The full Earth.

Hartigan turned from the porthole beside the small airlock and strode to the Bliss radio transmitter.

“RC3, RC3, RC3,” he droned out.

There was no answer. As usual, Stacey was taking his time about ansering the Moon’s signal.

“RC3, RC3—”

There he was.

“Hartigan talking. Monthly report.”

“All right, Hartigan.”

A hurried fretful voice. Come on, Moon; report that, as always, nothing has happened.

“Lunar conditions the same,” said Hartigan. “No ships have put in, or have reported themselves as being in distress. The hangar is in good shape, with no leaks.”

“Right,” said Stacey, in the voice of a busy man. “Supplies?”

“You might send up a blonde.”

“Be serious, please. Supplies?”

“I need some new power bulbs.”

“I’ll send them on the next ship. Nothing irregular to report?”

Hartigan hesitated.