Salvage in Space, Page 2

could expect nothing from the ship save aheliographed warning to keep clear.

  But how came a rocket-flier here, in the perilous swarms of the meteorbelt? Many a vessel had been destroyed by collision with an asteroid,in the days before charted lanes were cleared of drifting metal.

  The lanes more frequently used, between Earth, Mars, Venus andMercury, were of course far inside the orbits of the asteroids. Andthe few ships running to Jupiter's moons avoided them by crossingmillions of miles above their plane.

  Could it be that legendary green ship, said once to have mysteriouslyappeared, sliced up and drawn within her hull several of the primitiveships of that day, and then disappeared forever after in the remotewastes of space? Absurd, of course: he dismissed the idle fancy andexamined the ship still more closely.

  Then he saw that it was turning, end over end, very slowly. That meantthat its gyros were stopped; that it was helpless, drifting, disabled,powerless to avoid hurtling meteoric stones. Had it blundered unawaresinto the belt of swarms--been struck before the danger was realized?Was it a derelict, with all dead upon it?

  * * * * *

  Either the ship's machinery was completely wrecked, Thad knew, orthere was no one on watch. For the controls of a modern rocket-flierare so simple and so nearly automatic that a single man at the bridgecan keep a vessel upon her course.

  It might be, he thought, that a meteorite had ripped open the hull,allowing the air to escape so quickly that the entire crew had beenasphyxiated before any repairs could be made. But that seemedunlikely, since the ship must have been divided into severalcompartments by air-tight bulkheads.

  Could the vessel have been deserted for some reason? The crew mighthave mutinied, and left her in the life-tubes. She might have beenrobbed by pirates, and set adrift. But with the space lanes policed asthey were, piracy and successful mutiny were rare.

  Thad saw that the flier's navigation lights were out.

  He found the heliograph signal mirror at his side, sighted it upon theship, and worked the mirror rapidly. He waited, repeated the call.There was no response.

  The vessel was plainly a derelict. Could he board her, and take her toMars? By law, it was his duty to attempt to aid any helpless ship, orat least to try to save any endangered lives upon her. And the salvageaward, if the ship should be deserted and he could bring her safe toport, would be half her value.

  No mean prize, that. Half the value of ship and cargo! More than hewas apt to earn in years of mining the meteor-belt.

  With new anxiety, he measured the relative motion of the gleamingship. It was going to pass ahead of him. And very soon. No more timefor speculation. It was still uncertain whether it would come nearenough so that he could get a line to it.

  Rapidly he unslung from his belt the apparatus he used to capturemeteors. A powerful electromagnet, with a thin, strong wire fastenedto it, to be hurled from a helix-gun. He set the drum on which thewire was wound upon the metal at his feet, fastened it with itsmagnetic anchor, wondering if it would stand the terrific strain whenthe wire tightened.

  Raising the helix to his shoulder, he trained it upon a point wellahead of the rushing flier, and stood waiting for the exact moment topress the lever. The slender spindle of the ship was only a mile awaynow, bright in the sunlight. He could see no break in her polishedhull, save for the dark rows of circular ports. She was not, by anymeans, completely wrecked.

  He read the black letters of her name.

  _Red Dragon._

  The name of her home port, below, was in smaller letters. But in amoment he made them out. San Francisco. The ship then came from theEarth! From the very city where Thad was born!

  * * * * *

  The gleaming hull was near now. Only a few hundred yards away.Passing. Aiming well ahead of her, to allow for her motion, Thadpressed the key that hurled the magnet from the helix. It flung awayfrom him, the wire screaming from the reel behind it.

  Thad's mass of metal swung on past the ship, as he returned to therocket and stopped its clattering explosions. He watched the tinyblack speck of the magnet. It vanished from sight in the darkness ofspace, appeared again against the white, burnished hull of the rocketship.

  For a painful instant he thought he had missed. Then he saw that themagnet was fast to the side of the flier, near the stern. The linetightened. Soon the strain would come upon it, as it checked themomentum of the mass of iron. He set the friction brake.

  Thad flung himself flat, grasped the wire above the reel. Even if themass of iron tore itself free, he could hold to the wire, and himselfreach the ship.

  He flung past the deserted vessel, behind it, his lump of iron swunglike a pebble in a sling. A cloud of smoke burst from the burnedlining of the friction brake, in the reel. Then the wire was all out;there was a sudden jerk.

  And the hard-gathered sphere of metal was gone--snapped off intospace. Thad clung desperately to the wire, muscles cracking, torturedarms almost drawn from their sockets. Fear flashed over his mind; whatif the wire broke, and left him floating helpless in space?

  * * * * *

  It held, though, to his relief. He was trailing behind the ship.Eagerly he seized the handle of the reel; began to wind up the mile ofthin wire. Half an hour later, Thad's suited figure bumped gentlyagainst the shining hull of the rocket. He got to his feet, and gazedbackward into the starry gulf, where his sphere of iron had long sincevanished.

  "Somebody is going to find himself a nice chunk of metal, all weldedtogether and equipped for rocket navigation," he murmured. "As forme--well, I've simply _got_ to run this tub to Mars!"

  He walked over the smooth, refulgent hull, held to it by magneticsoles. Nowhere was it broken, though he found scars where smallmeteoric particles had scratched the brilliant polish. So no meteorhad wrecked the ship. What, then, was the matter? Soon he would know.

  The _Red Dragon_ was not large. A hundred and thirty feet long, Thadestimated, with a beam of twenty-five feet. But her trim lines bespokedesign recent and good; the double ring of black projecting rockets atthe stern told of unusual speed.

  A pretty piece of salvage, he reflected, if he could land her onMars. Half the value of such a ship, unharmed and safe in port, wouldbe a larger sum than he dared put in figures. And he must take her in,now that he had lost his own rocket!

  He found the life-tubes, six of them, slender, silvery cylinders,lying secure in their niches, three along each side of the flier. Nonewas missing. So the crew had not willingly deserted the ship.

  He approached the main air-lock, at the center of the hull, behind theprojecting dome of the bridge. It was closed. A glance at the dialstold him there was full air pressure within it. It had, then, lastbeen used to enter the rocket, not to leave it.

  * * * * *

  Thad opened the exhaust valve, let the air hiss from the chamber ofthe lock. The huge door swung open in response to his hand upon thewheel, and he entered the cylindrical chamber. In a moment the doorwas closed behind him, air was hissing into the lock again.

  He started to open the face-plate of his helmet, longing for a breathof air that did not smell of sweat and stale tobacco smoke, as that inhis suit always did, despite the best chemical purifiers. Then hehesitated. Perhaps some deadly gas, from the combustion chambers....

  Thad opened the inner valve, and came upon the upper deck of thevessel. A floor ran the full length of the ship, broken with hatchesand companionways that gave to the rocket rooms, cargo holds, andquarters for crew and passengers below. There was an enclosed ladderthat led to bridge and navigating room in the dome above. The hullformed an arched roof over it.

  The deck was deserted, lit only by three dim blue globes, hanging fromthe curved roof. All seemed in order--the fire-fighting equipmenthanging on the walls, and the huge metal patches and welding equipmentfor repairing breaks in the hull. Everything was clean, bright withpolish or new paint.

  A
nd all was very still. The silence held a vague, brooding threat thatfrightened Thad, made him wish for a moment that he was back upon hisrugged ball of metal. But he banished his fear, and strode down thedeck.

  Midway of it he found a dark stain upon the clean metal. The black oflong-dried blood. A few tattered scraps of cloth beside it. No morethan bloody rags. And a heavy meat cleaver, half hidden beneath a bitof darkened fabric.

  Mute record of tragedy! Thad strove to read it. Had a man fought hereand been killed? It must have been a struggle of peculiar violence, tojudge by the dark spattered stains, and the indescribable condition ofthe remnants of clothing. But what had he fought? Another man, or something? And what had become of victor and vanquished?

  He walked on down the deck.

  The torturing silence was broken by the abrupt patter of quick littlefootsteps behind him. He turned quickly, nervously, with a hand goinginstinctively to his welding arc, which, he knew, would make a fairlyeffective weapon.

  * * * * *

  It was merely a dog. A little dog, yellow,