Chapter 5: Cantrell's Comet

Far out in space, Jupiter, a tiny moon and its satellites mere pin-points of light, Stevens turned to his companion with a grin.

"Well, Nadia, old golf-shootist, here's where we turn spacehounds again. Hope you like it better this time, because I'm afraid that we'll have to stay weightless for quite a while." He slowly throttled down the mighty flow of power, and watched the conflicting emotions play over Nadia's face in her purely personal battle against the sickening sensations caused by the decrease in their acceleration.

"I'm sorry as the dickens, sweetheart," he went on, tenderly, and the grin disappeared. "Wish I could take it for you, but..."

"But there are times when we've got to fight our own battles and bury our own dead," she interrupted, gamely. "Cut off the rest of that power! I'm not going to be sick--I won't be a--what do you spacehounds call us poor earth-bound dubs who can't stand weightlessness--weight-fiends, isn't it?"

"Yes; but you aren't..."

"I know I'm not, and I'm not going to be one, either! I'm all x, Steve--it's not so bad now, really. I held myself together that time, anyway, and I feel lots better now. Have you found Cantrell's Comet yet? And why so sure all of a sudden that they can't find us? That power beam still connects us to Ganymede, doesn't it? Maybe they can trace it."

"At-a-girl, ace!" he cheered. "I'll tell the world you're no weight-fiend--you're a spacehound right. Most first-trippers, at this stage of the game, wouldn't be caring a whoop whether school kept or not, and here you're taking an interest in all kinds of things already. You'll do, girl of my heart--no fooling!"

"Maybe, and maybe you're trying to kid somebody," she returned, eyeing him intently. "Or maybe you just don't want to answer those questions I asked you a minute ago."

"No, that's straight data, right on zero across the panel," he assured her. "And as for your questions, they're easy. No, I haven't looked for the comet yet, because we'll have to drift for a couple of days before we'll be anywhere near where I think it is. No, they can't trace us, because there is now nothing to trace, unless they can detect the slight power we are using in our lights and so on--which possibility is vanishingly small. Potentially, our beam still exists, but since we are drawing no power, it has no actual present existence. See?"

"Uh-uh," she dissented. "I can't say that I can quite understand how a beam can exist potentially and yet not be there actually enough to trace. Why, a thing has to be actual or not exist at all--you can't possibly have something that is nothing. It doesn't make sense. But lay off those integrations of yours, please," as now armed with a slate-pencil, Stevens began to draw a diagram upon a four-foot sheet of smooth slate. "You know that your brand of math is over my head like a circus tent, so we'll let it lie. I'll take your word for it. Steve--if you're satisfied, it's all x with me."

"I think I can straighten you out a little, by analogy. Here's a rough sketch of a cylinder, with shade and shadow. You've had descriptive geometry, of course, and so know that a shadow, being simply a projection of a material object upon a plane, is a two-dimensional thing--or rather, a two-dimensional concept. Now take the shade, which is, of course, this entire figure here, between the cylinder casting the shadow and the plane of projection. You simply imagine that there is a point source of light at your point of projection: it isn't really there. The shade, then, of which I am drawing a picture, has only a potential existence. You know exactly where it is, you can draw it, you can define it, compute it, and work with it--but still it doesn't exist; there is absolutely nothing to differentiate it from any other volume of air, and it cannot be detected by any physical or mechanical means. If, however, you place a light at the point of projection, the shade becomes actual and can be detected optically. By a sufficient stretch of the imagination, you might compare our beam to that shade. When we turn our power on, the beam is actual; it is a stream of tangible force, and as such can be detected electrically. When our switches here are open, however, it exists only potentially. There is no motion in the ether, nothing whatever to indicate that a beam had ever actually existed there. With me?"

"Floundering pretty badly, but I see it after a fashion. You physicists are peculiar freaks--where we ordinary mortals see actual, solid, heavy objects, you see only empty space with a few electrons and things floating around in it; and yet where we see only empty space, you can see things 'potentially' that may never exist at all. You'll be the death of me yet, Steve! But I'm wasting a lot of time. What do we do now?"

"We get busy on the big tube. You might warm up the annealing oven and melt me that pot of glass, while I get busy on the filament supports, plate brackets, and so on." Both fell to work with a will, and hours passed rapidly and almost silently, so intent was each upon his own tasks.

"All x, Steve." Nadia broke the long silence. "The pyrometer's on the red, and the oven's hot," and the man left his bench. Taking up a long paddle and an even longer blowpipe, he skimmed the melt to a dazzlingly bright surface and deftly formed a bubble.

"I just love to talk at you when you've got your mouth full of a blowpipe." Nadia eyed him impishly and tucked her feet beneath her, poised weightless as she was. "I've got you foul now--I can say anything I want to, and you can't talk back, because your bubble will lose its shape if you do. Oh, isn't that a beauty! I never saw you blow anything that big before," and she fell silent, watching intently.

Slowly there was being drawn from the pot a huge, tapering bulb of hot, glistening glass, its cross-section at the molten surface varying as Stevens changed the rate of draw or the volume of air blown through the pipe. Soon that section narrowed sharply. The glass-blower waved his hand and Nadia severed the form neatly with a glowing wire, just above the fluid surface of the glass remaining in the pot. Pendant from the blowpipe, the bulb was placed over the hot-bench, where Stevens, now begoggled, begloved, and armed with a welding torch, proceeded to fuse into the still, almost plastic, glass sundry necks, side-tubes, supports and other attachments of peculiar pattern. Finally the partially assembled tube was placed in the annealing oven, where it would remain at a high and constant temperature until its filaments, grids, and plates had been installed. Eventually, in that same oven, it would be allowed to cool slowly and uniformly over a period of days.

Thus were performed many other tasks which are ordinarily done either by automatic machinery or by highly skilled specialists in labor--for these two, thrown upon their own resources, had long since learned how much specialization may be represented by the most commonplace article. Whenever they needed a thing they did not have--which happened every day--they had either to make it or else, failing in that, to go back and build something that would enable them to manufacture the required item. Such setbacks had become so numerous as to be expected as part of the day's work; they no longer caused exasperation or annoyance. For two days the two jacks-of-all-trades worked at many lines and with many materials before Stevens called a halt.

"All x, Nadia. It's time for us to stop tinkering and turn into astronomers. We've been out for fifty I-P hours, and we'd better begin looking around for our heap of scrap metal," and, the girl at the communicator plate and Stevens at their one small telescope, they began to search the black, star-jeweled heavens for Cantrell's Comet.

"According to my figures, it ought to be about four hours right ascension, and something like plus twenty degrees declination. My figures aren't accurate, though, since I'm working purely from memory, so we'd better cover everything from Aldebaran to the Pleiades."

"But the directions will change as we go along, won't they?"

"Not unless we pass it, because we're heading pretty nearly straight at it, I think."

"I don't see anything interesting thereabouts except stars. Will it have much tail?"

"Very little--it's close to aphelion, you know, and a comet doesn't have much of a tail so far away from the sun. Hope it's got some of its tail left, though, or we may miss it entirely."

Hours passed, during which the two observers peered intently into their instruments, then Stevens left the telescope and went over to his slate.

"Looks bad, ace--we should have spotted it before this. Time to eat, too. You'd better..."

"Oh, look here, quick!" Nadia interrupted. "Here's something! Yes, it is a comet, and quite close--it's got a little bit of a dim tail."

Stevens leaped to the communicator plate, and, blond head pressed close to brown, the two wayfarers studied the faint image of the wanderer of the void.

"That's it, I just know it is!" Nadia declared. "Steve, as a computer, you're a blinding flash and a deafening report!"

"Yeah--missed it only about half a million kilometers or so," he replied, grinning, "and I'd fire a whole flock of I-P check stations for being four thousand off. However, I could have done worse--I could easily have forgotten all the data on it, instead of only half of it." He applied a normal negative acceleration, and Nadia heaved a profound sigh of relief as her weight returned to her and her body again became manageable by the ordinary automatic and involuntary muscles.

"Guess I am a kind of a weight-fiend at that, Steve--this is much better!" she exclaimed.

"Nobody denies that weight is more convenient at times; but you're a spacehound just the same--you'll like it after a while," he prophesied.

Stevens took careful observations upon the celestial body, altered his course sharply, then, after a measured time interval, again made careful readings.

"That's it, all x," he announced, after completing his calculations, and he reduced their negative acceleration by a third. "There--we'll be just about traveling with it when we get there," he said. "Now, little K. P. of my bosom, our supper's been on minus time for hours. What say we shake it up?"

"I check you to nineteen decimals," and the two were soon attacking the savory Ganymedean goulash which Nadia had put in the cooker many hours before.

"Should we both go to sleep, Steve, or should one of us watch it?"

"Sleep, by all means. There's no meteoric stuff out here, and we won't arrive before ten o'clock tomorrow, I-P time," and, tired out by the events of the long day, man and maid sought their beds and plunged into dreamless slumber.

While they slept, the "Forlorn Hope" drove on through the void at a terrific but constantly decreasing velocity; and far off to one side, plunging along a line making a sharp angle with their own course, there loomed larger and larger the masses which made up the nucleus of Cantrell's Comet.

Upon awakening, Stevens' first thought was for the comet, and he observed it carefully before he aroused Nadia, who hurried into the control room. Looming large in the shortened range of the plate, their objective hurtled onward in its eternal course, its enormous velocity betrayed only by the rapidity with which it sped past the incredibly brilliant background of infinitely distant stars. Apparently it was a wild jumble of separate fragments; a conglomerate, heterogeneous aggregation of rough and jagged masses varying in size from grains of sand up to enormous chunks, which upon Earth would have weighed millions of tons. Pervading the whole nucleus, a slow, indefinite movement was perceptible--a vague writhing and creeping of individual components working and slipping past and around each other as they all rushed forward in obedience to the immutable cosmic law of gravitation.

"Oh, isn't that wonderful!" Nadia breathed. "Think of actually going to visit a comet! It sort of scares me, Steve--it's so creepy and crawly looking. We're awfully close, aren't we?"

"Not so very. We'd probably have lots of time to eat breakfast. But just to be on the safe side, maybe I'd better camp here at the board, and you bring me over something to eat."

"All x, Chief!" and Stevens ate, one eye upon the screen, watching closely the ever-increasing bulk of the comet.

For many minutes he swung the Forlorn Hope in a wide curve approaching the mountain of metal ever and ever more nearly, then turned to the girl.

"Hold everything, Nadia--power's going off in a minute!" He shut off the beam; then, noting that they were traveling a trifle faster than the comet, he applied a small voltage to one dirigible projector. Darting the beam here and there, he so corrected their flight that they were precisely stationary in relation to the comet. He then opened his switches, and the Forlorn Hope hurtled on. Apparently motionless, it was now a part of Cantrell's Comet, traveling in a stupendous, elongated ellipse about the Master of our Solar System, the Sun.

"There, ace, who said anything about weight-fiends? I was watching you, and you never turned a hair that time."

"Why, that's right--I never even thought about it--I was so busy studying that thing out there! I suppose I've got used to it already?"

"Sure--you're one of us now. I knew you would be. Well, let's go places and do things! You'd better put on a suit, too, so you can stand in the air-lock and handle the line."

They donned the heavily insulated, heated suits, and Stevens snapped the locking plugs of the drag line into their sockets upon the helmets.

"Hear me?" he asked. "Sound-disks all x?"

"All x."

"On the radio--all x?"

"All x."

"I tested your tanks and heaters--they're all x. But you'll have to test..."

"I know the ritual by heart, Steve. It's been in every show in the country for the last year, but I didn't know you had to go through it every time you went out-of-doors! Halves, number one all x, two all x, three all x..."

"Quit it!" he snapped. "You aren't testing those valves! That check-up is no joke, guy. These suits are complicated affairs, and some parts are apt to get out of order. You see, a thing to give you fresh air at normal pressure and to keep you warm in absolute space can't be either simple or fool-proof. They've worked on them for years, but they're pretty crude yet. They're tricky, and if one goes sour on you, out in space, it's just too bad--you're lucky to get back alive. A lot of men are still out there somewhere because of the sloppy check-ups."

"'Scuse it, please--I'll be good," and the careful checking and testing of every vital part of the space-suits went on.

Satisfied at last that the armor was spaceworthy, Stevens picked up the coils of drag-line, built of a non-metallic fiber which could retain its flexibility and strength in the bitter cold of outer space, and led the girl into the air-lock.

"Heavens, Steve! It's perfectly stupendous, and grinding around worse than the wreckage of the Arcturus was when I wouldn't let you climb up it--why, I thought comets were little, and hardly massive at all!" exclaimed the girl.

"This is little, compared to any regular planet or satellite or even to the asteroids. There's only a few cubic kilometers of matter there, and, as I said before, it's a decidedly unusual comet. You know the game?"

"I've got it--and believe me, I'll yank you back here a lot faster than you can jump over there if any one of those lumps starts to fall on you! Is this drag line long enough?"

"Yes, I've got a hundred meters here, and it's only fifty meters over there to where I'm going. So long," and with a light thrust of his feet, he dove head foremost across the intervening space, a heavy pike held out ahead of him. Straight as a bullet he floated toward his objective, a jagged chunk many yards in diameter, taking the shock of his landing by sliding along the pike-handle as its head struck the mass.

Then, bracing his feet against one lump, he pushed against its neighbor, and under that steady pressure the enormous masses moved apart and kept on moving, grinding among their fellows. Over and around them Stevens sprang, always watching his line of retreat as well as that of his advance, until his exploring pike struck a lump of apparently solid metal. Hooking the fragment toward him, he thrust savagely with his weapon and was reassured--that object was not only metal, but it was metal so hard that his pike-head of space-tempered alloy steel did not make an impression upon its surface. Turning on his helmet light he swung his heavy hammer repeatedly but could not break off even a small fragment.

"Found something, Steve?" Nadia's voice came clearly in his ears.

"I'll say I have! A hunk of solid, non-magnetic metal about the size of an office desk. I can't break off any of it, so I guess we'll have to grab the whole chunk."

He hitched the end of his cable around the nugget, made sure that the loops would not slip, and then, as Nadia tightened the line, he shoved mightily.

"All x, Nadia, she's coming! Pull in my drag line as I said over there, and I'll help you land her."

Inside the Forlorn Hope the mass of metal was urged into the shop, where Stevens clamped it immovably to the steel floor, before he took off his space-suit.

"Why, it's getting covered with snow, and the whole room is getting positively cold!" Nadia exclaimed.

"Sure. Anything that comes in from space is cold, even if it's been out only a few minutes, and that hunk of stuff has been out for nobody knows how many million years. It didn't get much heat from the sun except at perihelion, you know, so it's probably somewhere around minus two hundred and sixty degrees now. I'll have to throw a heater on it for half an hour before we can touch it. And since this is more or less new stuff to you, I'll caution you--don't try to touch anything that has just come in. That hammer or pike would freeze your hand instantly, even though they've been out only a little while. Before you touch anything, blow on it, like this, see? If your breath freezes solid on it, like that, don't touch it--it's cold."

Under the infra-beams of the heater, the mass of the metal was brought to room temperature and Stevens attacked it with his machine tools. Bit by bit the stubborn material was torn from the lump. Through heavy goggles he watched the incandescent mass in a refractory crucible, in the heart of the induction furnace.