Clifford Simak - The Shipshape Miracle - And Other Stories

There was just one thing—and he had to face it—death within his suit when his air gave out. Four hours. Plenty of time to get to Gus’ dome.

His mind snagged and held, revolved around one idea. Time to get to Gus’ dome. Follow the tracks left by the tanks. Scale the canyon walls and cut southward to intersect the tank tracks.

The site of the Venusian’s machinery was a scant quarter mile from Gus’ dome. Two hours would do it, less than two hours. Two hours to go there—two hours to come back.

He wondered grimly what a dozen jugs of hydrofluoric acid, dropped into the canyon, would do to the dome. He chuckled and the chuckle echoed ghastly inside the suit. “We go out together, Smith,” he whispered.

Climbing the canyon wall had been no child’s play. Several times he had nearly fallen when the mighty grip of the suit’s steel hands had slipped on slimy rock. Not that such a fall would have been fatal, although it might have been.

But now Grant was near the top. Slowly, carefully, he manipulated the right arm of the suit toward a projection, hooked the fingers around it, tightened them savagely with a vicious thrust of a lever. The motors droned as the arm swung the suit, scraping along the rocky face of the looming wall. Now the left arm and the fingers hooked upon a ledge, anchored there. Grant jerked on the arm several times to make sure of the grip, then applied the power. The arm bent, mechanical muscles straining, and the suit moved upward.

Time was valuable, but he must be careful. One slip now and he would have to do it all over again—if he could, for the fall might crush him to death on the rocks below, might crack his visor, might damage the suit so it wouldn’t operate.

It had taken him longer than he thought to reach the top, but there was still time enough. Time to reach the Venusians’ camp and get the acid. Time to get back and hurl jug after jug out into the canyon. Time to watch the jugs settle and break on the glowing dome down on the canyon floor. Time to watch the yellow-greenish liquid creep over the quartz. Time to see the quartz walls crumple inward beneath the terrific pressure of the deep.

“A message, Hellion?” he shrieked into the watery canyon. “I’ll have one for you. I’ll have a dozen of them—in jugs!”

But maybe he was just kidding himself. Playing at dramatics. Jousting with windmills. Maybe that much acid wouldn’t touch the dome—maybe it would take hundreds of gallons of the stuff, dumped into the canyon, before it would affect the quartz. Maybe the jugs would collapse under the pressure before he could get them down this deep. That was funny stuff they and the cylinders were made of—neither steel nor quartz, and steel and quartz were the only two materials that would stand up even at five hundred feet. In the laboratories on the surface hydrofluoric acid was kept in wax containers, but that, of course, would be just as crazy at this depth as quartz containers.

Those jugs must be made of some new material, some material unknown to Earthmen, but developed by the Venusians. The Venusians, naturally, would have developed materials of that kind—materials that were immune to acid action, could withstand tremendous pressures.

The oxygen jet, hissing warningly, roused Grant from his speculations. His eyes went to the reserve-tank pressure gauge and what he saw was like a blow between the eyes. Of the two tanks, one was empty—or almost empty, just enough for a few more minutes. The second tank was at full pressure—but something had happened to that first tank. He had counted on it carrying him almost to the Venusians’ camp—on not being forced to call upon the second tank until he was ready for the return trip to the canyon’s edge. Some imperfection, perhaps a faulty gauge—it didn’t matter now, for the damage was done. The hissing of the jet ebbed lower and lower and Grant snapped on the second tank.

Well, that settled it.

He’d never live to get to the Venusians’ camp and back to the canyon. Two hours—that was all that was left to him of life—perhaps not even that much. And that wasn’t long enough.

Someone else would have to get Hellion Smith. Perhaps Old Gus, if Old Gus were still alive. Perhaps some stony-eyed veteran of the Undersea Patrol—perhaps one of the government submarines, nosing around to find other camps of the Venusian invaders.

“The last story,” said Grant Nagle, staring out over the canyon, down into the depths where the dome gleamed dimly. “The last story and I won’t write it.”

Grant swung the right arm of the suit upward, found a handhold with his spotlight, hooked the steel fingers on it, tested their grip and geared the motors. The suit bumped and scraped against the rock as the arm levered it up a few feet.

Only a few feet more and he would reach the top of the canyon wall. What would he do then? What was there to do? What does a man do when he had just an hour or two to live?

He shifted the spotlight to find a hold for the fingers of the left arm and, as he did so, a shadowy, ghostly thing leaped over the canyon’s lip and plunged out into the watery space behind him. An oblong thing, a tubelike thing, that seemed to be spinning as it fell. A thing that plunged down, straight at the dome below.

Grant twisted the periscopic lenses to watch and, as he recognized it, he sucked in his breath. That falling thing was one of the cylinders from the Venusians’ camp! One of the great cylinders to which the motor had been connected! The cylinder was falling faster now, faster and faster, still spinning along its axis.

From above came a coughing hiss, as if someone had uncorked a bottle, and down toward the spinning cylinder flashed a shimmering projectile. Someone had fired an airgun!

In the split second before the projectile struck, Grant found a handhold for the left hand of the suit, clamped the steel fingers into it savagely. The concussion of the exploding projectile as it blasted against the spinning cylinder battered his suit against the wall. But the fingers held and, hanging there against the canyon rocks, he saw the cylinder split open as if a man had sliced it with a knife. Saw it spill a flood of curling greenish-yellow substance down upon the dome.

With little regard for safety, Grant swarmed up the wall those few remaining feet, pulled himself over the edge and turned to stare down into the depths.

The dome was gone—flattened out—shattered into a million shards as the acid had weakened it, allowed the pressure to get in its deadly work.

Hellion Smith was dead. So was the Rat and all the others. Except for a few, perhaps, who might be guarding the tanks.

The waters of Robber’s Deep were painted a ghastly yellow—a yellow that swirled and crawled and eddied like fiendish, writhing arms.

“Who the hell are you?” asked a voice.

Grant whirled. “Gus,” he cried. “Gus, you old devil, you did it!”

The suited figure stood stolidly in the gloom, a gun clutched in one hand. Behind it bulked the outline of an underwater tank.

“I kind of got my dander up,” Old Gus explained. “First they knocked over my dome and that put me out of sorts, and then they took my pearl and that made me downright sore.”

He turned his spotlight on Grant’s vision plate. “It’s Nagle,” he said. “I was wondering where you were.”

“It’s a long story,” said Grant.

“You can tell it to me in the tank,” said Gus. “I got to be getting back.”

“Where are you going?” asked Grant.

“I got to get Butch,” said Gus. “When I went up to the Venusians’ camp and got ready to haul the cylinder down here, Butch was bound to follow me. I told him the pressure would be too much for him and I tried to make him stay. But he got stubborn, so I had to stake him out.”