Spacehounds of IPC

ys Upon

y-armored edge of their small section, which she had promptly christened "The Forlorn Hope," between them and the grinding, clashin

utely necessary. We'll need it all, and besides, they can probably detect anything we can use. There's probably enough leakage from the ruptured

s left of this lifeboat? I

mulators are left intact to give them anywhere nearly full power, we can get an acceleration that will make a lifeboat look sick. Those main dirigibles, you know, are able to swing the whole mass of th

other fragments which, by means of a space-suit, he could reach without too much difficulty. From the battery rooms of those fragments-open shelves, after being sliced open by the shearing ray-he helped himself to

mself short on sleep and snatched his meals in passing; and Nadia, when not busy at her own tasks of observing, housekeeping, and doing

announced, after making an observation. "It looks a

do, but they're the hardest of the lot

rom the point where they reversed their power

robably Ganymede-which is fine for our scheme. All four of the major satellites have water and atmosphere, but Ganymede, being lar

. It's too dangerous-isn

for a get-away. I'm pretty sure I can do it-but if I should happen to get nipped, just use enough power t

gainst one of the larger fragments and held it there with a gentle, steady pressure, while Stevens, a light cable paying out behind him, clambered carefully over

, and installing the relays wasn't a bad job at all. Believe me, girl, there'l

n't be so bad seeing you go into the others

cells were available through sensitive relays, all of which he could close by means of one radio impulse. The long and dangerous task done, he stood at the lookout plate, s

necessary, and you're altogether too apt to be killed trying to get th

special tools, cutting torches, and all the stuff, we'd be

cular section you want is in plain sight of whoever is on watch; and those tools and things are altogether too heavy to handle. You're a husky brute, I know, but even you couldn't begin to handle them, even if you had good going. I couldn't help you very much, ev

less for a while, sometime, if onl

t extent. Our time is about up, too. It's time you worked us back to the tail e

outer edge of the mass, down toward its extremity. Nad

at it would be a crying shame not to be able to go through with it. I'd hate like sin to have to surrender to th

at unfinished sentence. "I couldn't figure out anything that looked par

trongly affected by the gravitational pull of the mass of the satellite, many of the smaller portions of the wreck, not directly held by the tractors, began to separate from the main m

themselves and strained their muscles in order to watch what was happening. As the relays in the various fragments closed, the massed power of the accumulators was shorted dead across the converters and projectors instead of being fed into them gradually through the controls of the pilot, with a result comparable to that of the explosion of an ammunition dump. Most of the masses, whose projectors were fed by comparatively

twin beams of his lookout light out beyond the upper half of the Arcturus-only to see them stop abruptly in mid-space. Even the extre

ation?" Na

e some stuff of our own, one of these days. I sure hope the fireworks we started back there keep those birds amused until

to suit me-I'm so heavy I

watch what's going on back there

rays are shooting around all over the sky. It looks as though they

when the moon

our was necessary in order to reduce it to a safe landing rate. As soon as this could be done, Stevens headed for the morning zone and dropped the "Hope" rapidly toward the surface of that new, strange world. Details could not be distinguished at first because of an all-enshrouding layer of cloud, but the rising sun dispelled the m

ike to have a little seam of coal. We can use wood if we have to, but I think we can find some coal. This is all sedimentary rock-it looks a l

e in a hurry, t

d us long ago, and with all the damage we did with those projectors they won

ody caused all that disturba

time they can land and get checked up and ready to hunt for us, we

heavy trees, opening into a wide, deep gorge upon a level with its floor. A mighty waterfall cascaded into the gorge just above the canyon, and here and there could be seen black outcrops w

where we are, but wherever it is, we're here. We got away clean, and as long as we don't use any

ia answered, and the eager sparkle in her eyes bore out her words. "Can we go out now? How about air? S

is is certainly Ganymede, and it has a diameter of only about fifty seven hundred kilometers. If I remember correctly, Damoiseau estimated its mass at about three one-hundredths that of the Earth,

et's go places

go out until we analyze the air-we're sure lucky there's as much as there is. I'm not exactly the worl

best she could, Stevens manipulated the

red hope for-and analysis all x, I believe. Oxy

to wear the spa

trouble. Good thing, too. I brought along all the air I could get hold of, but as I told you back there, if we had to depend on it altogether, we might be out of luck.

ed medium, Stevens opened the airlock and the outside doors, and for some time cautiously sniffed the atmosphere of the sa

er. Freedom, air, water, power, and coal! Now a

to explore their surroundings had abate

ut quite a while ago, you know. We'll take a look, anyway-we've got to find out about that coal before w

id thing, only one-fifth the diameter of the sun to which they were accustomed, and which could almost be studied with the unshielded eye. From their feet a grassy meadow a few hundred feet wide sloped gently down to the river, from whose farther bank a precipice sprang upward for perhaps a thousand feet-merging into towering hills whose rugged grandeur was reminiscent of the topography of the moon. At their backs the wall of the gorge was steep, but not precipitous, and was covered with shrubs and trees-some of which leaned out over the littl

ike a picture in slow motion, like the kind t

to what we're used to. Remembe

certainly does look funn

f their earthly weight and falling only half as fast as they ought to when you drop them. Well, I don't s

e outcrop of detritus and broke off several samples of the bla

n the other hand, there's lots worse. It'll make good gas, and a kind of a coke. Not

-I'm only the cheap he

he life of the party. Can you m

belonged to an archer

and to do that, we've got to live off the country. I'll fake up something to knock over some of those birds and small game, then we can make real bow-strings

ia. "That's a lot of bow, bi

Robin Hood-I've been known to miss a finger-thick wa

r have used such an old-fashioned word as 'pounds.' I shoot a thirty-five-pound bow ordinarily,

n up against out here. Then, with that much done, it'll be up to you to provide, since I'll have to work tooth and nail at the forges. You'll have to bring home the bacon, do the cooking and

d him, her eyes sparkling. "Have you your job plan

uch with Brandon, so that he'll come after us; the other is to recharge our accumulators

oing back in the 'Hop

we can carry, and I hate even to think of what probably would happen to us. We'd certainly have to drift for months before we could get close enough to any of our plants to radio for help, and we'd be taking awful chances. You see, we'd have to take a very peculiar orbit, and if we should miss connectio

wonderful if we could! I thought, of cour

I'm going to run a penstock up those falls, and put in a turbine, driving a high-tension alternator. Then, while I'm trying to build the ultra-radio, I'll be charging our accumulators, so that n

ow can you build all those thi

ck, I've got to have the pipe-to make which I've got to have flat steel-to get which I'll have to cut some of the partitions out of this ship of ours-to do which I'll have to have a cu

k to the Stone Age? I never thought of

t motors, blowers, and such stuff. That gives me a great big start-I won't have to mine the ores and smelt the metals, as would have been necessary otherwise. However, it'll be plenty bad. I'll have to start out in a pretty crude fashion, and f

ll-trades, to think you can get

I can make a pretty good stab at translating a design into fabricated material. I wouldn't wonder if Brandon's ultra-radio would stop me, since nobody had even started to build one when I saw him last-but I helped compute it, know the forces involved as well as he did at th

ack and back and back, as you s

ng to put a lot of monkey-wrenches into the machinery." And Stevens went to work upon a weapon of

t a bird with a rock, for feathers, and see i

e accumulator cells for arrows. They won't fly true, of course, but with their mass I can giv

ing like a kangaroo, and a couple of round-bodied, plump birds, almost as large as dome

ert," he said when the task was done. "We now have raw

" Nadia declared, with a grimace. "But

we'll have to arrive at the ones we like best by a process of trial and error. Well, here's your job

sun's so far away and Jupiter isn't supposed to be radiating any heat? And how about

urse, is the top of the atmosphere. Our heat here is probably caused by radioactivity-that's the most modern dope, I believe. As for time, it looks as though our days were something better than thirty hours long, instead of twenty-four. Of course I'll

supper ready for y

ong day's work, he was surprised to see Nadia dressed

" she asked, pi

ere'd you make the raise? I didn't know we had anything like that on board. What did y

that there's enough cloth, fur, and leather in one of them to make six ordinary suits, and thread by the kilometer. I was awfully glad to see all that thread-I had an idea that I'd have to unravel my stockings o

what's left of our civilized clothes

bongo, a fried filamaloo bird, and a boiled warple for the meat dishe

, please, into

tem on you today. I've named all the things, so it'll be ea

eartily; then, in the deepening twilight, they sat and talked i

peculiar, but savory vegetable foods in variety and abundance; so that soon she was able to spend some time with Stevens, helping h

t be manufactured by his own hands, from its original sources. He had known that progress would be slow and he had been prepared for that; but he had not pictured, even to himself, half of the maddening setbacks which occurred time after time because of the crudity of the tools and equipment he was forced to use. All too often a machine or part, the product of many hours of grueling labor, would fail because of the lack of some insignificant thing-some item so common as to be taken for granted in all terrestrial sho

he was not resting. His burned and blistered hands were locked savagely behind his head, his eyes were closed too tightly, and every tense line of his body was el

you a minute, Steve

s well if you didn't touch me. You see, I'm

ve said before. You are killing yourself, but it isn't the work, frightfully hard and disheartening as it is, that is doing it-it's your anxiety for me and the uncertainty of everything. You haven't been able to rest be

me seemed to stiffe

now you-and that didn't take long. You know that I love you and you know how I love you-with the real love that a man can feel for only

engaged until then, and our love will be open and sweet. If worst comes to worst, so that we can neither communicate with Brandon and Westfall nor leave here under our own power-even that is nothing to kill ourselves about. And yes, I do know exactly what we are facing. I have been prepared for it ever since I first saw what a perfectly impossible thing you are attempting. You are trying to go from almost the Age of Bronze clear up to year-after-next in a month or two. Not one man in a million could have done as much in his lifetime as you have done in the last few weeks, and I do not see how even you, with what little you have to work with, ca

ce had disappeared, and as she fell silent he straightened up and

little partner a man ever had. You're the world's straightest shooter, ace-you're a square brick if there ever was one. Your sheer nerve in being willing to go the whole route makes me love you more than ever, if such a thing can be possible, and it certainly puts a new face on

uctantly, unwilling ever to let her go. Then he shook himself, as though an

I'm going to smoke it in honor of our engagement." He drew the frag

o far from the Royal and Ancient for you really to enjoy living here permanently, and besides, I can't get my favorite brand of cigarettes around here. Therefore, after due deliberation, I don't believe we'll take the place

attacked with renewed spirit the great forging, white-hot from his soak-pit, which was to become the shaft of his turbo-alternator. Nadia watched him f