No Hiding Place

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  _Turnabout may not always be fair play in the gulfs between the stars. But so destructive and malicious are the Agronians of this story that we can readily forgive Richard Smith for filling their ship with an unexpected reversal of a victory technique almost too ghastly to contemplate. We have no sympathy for them--and neither has Mr. Smith. Still, we're rather glad he decided to make human heroism the cornerstone of a most exciting tale of conflict in space._

  no hiding place

  _by ... Richard R. Smith_

  The Earth was enveloped in atomic fire and the ship was a prize of war. But disaster may make victory mandatory.

  The ship leaped toward the stars, its engines roaring with a desperateburst of energy and its bulkheads audibly protesting the tremendouspressures.

  In the control room, Emmett Corbin listened to the screech of tormentedmetal and shuddered. The heat was suffocating, and acrid fumes assailedhis nostrils and burned his eyes until he almost cried out in pain.

  Despite the agony, his gaze did not waver from the video set across theroom. In the screen, Earth was a rapidly diminishing orb, charred andmottled with glowing atomic fires.

  _Everything_, a far corner of his mind whispered. _Everything on Earthis dead!_

  He was a carpenter and luckily, he had been working inside thebarricades of an Army spaceport when the news came that the enemy hadbroken through the defense ring beyond Pluto. He had continued nailingthe cedar siding on the building, knowing that if he stopped his workand waited, he would start screaming.

  An MP running by the building several minutes later had shouted at him,urging him to board one of the ships on the landing field. In those lasthours, they had loaded the few remaining spaceships as quickly aspossible, ignoring the importance of the passengers. He reflected thatmany millionaires and influential politicians were now dead simplybecause they hadn't been close enough to the spaceports when theunexpected news came. Watching the pilots as they sat tense before thecontrols, he felt overcome with helplessness.

  The passenger on his right was a girl--red-haired and undeniablyattractive. He remembered her name. It was Gloria White, and she was thedaughter of Colonel White who had led the expedition to Venus. Herfather had died months before but his friends had used their influenceto establish her as a secretary on the spaceport where it was assumedshe would be comparatively safe.

  He had seen her frequently but almost always at a distance. She had beenfriendly enough, but she had never exchanged more than a few casualwords with him. He had often paused in his work to admire her. But now,aboard one of the last ships to leave Earth, he evaluated her only asanother passenger.

  The man on his left was dressed expensively. His general appearanceradiated prestige although his fleshy face was filled with disbelief asif he were witnessing a fantastic nightmare.

  _Rinnnng! Rinnnng!_ Corbin's thoughts were interrupted by a clamoringalarm bell declaring by its volume and insistence that the danger wasstill acute. _That bell will ring until the ship is destroyed_, hethought wildly. _It could very well mean that the ship will bedestroyed!_

  The pilots leaped away from the controls as if they had abruptly becomewhite hot. "_Rocket_," one of them screamed. "Enemy rocket on our tail!"

  Corbin turned suddenly and ran across the room in sudden, blind panic."We can't shake it! Nobody can shake one!" Mumbling incoherently, hegrabbed a spacesuit and began to don it.

  The room was suddenly a seething mass of confusion. The pilotsdistributed spacesuits and helped passengers into them while the cabincontinued to sway and lurch. Fear-crazed passengers ran aimlessly incircles. Some fainted and others were shocked into immobility.

  Emmett had barely finished securing his helmet when the ship shookviolently and he was knocked to the floor. The lights fluttered, thenwent out.

  When the trembling at last subsided, he struggled to his feet and lookedabout the room. His eyes gradually adjusted to the faint light from theluminous paint on the walls and he was able to make out two shadowyfigures moving hesitantly about the wreckage.

  He remained motionless as one of the two men approached him, reached outand adjusted the dials on his spacesuit controls. The earphones in hishelmet blared with a familiar voice, "Are you all right?"

  "Y-Yeah. Just a little shaken."

  The man walked toward the third passenger and presently Emmett heard aquick, sobbing breath through the earphones.

  "Are you hurt?" the man asked.

  "No." Even under the abnormal conditions Gloria White's calm voice camethrough clearly.

  They wandered aimlessly about the room, each engrossed in his privatemental turmoil. Finally the pilot broke the silence, "Since we'reprobably the last ones alive on the ship, we should know each other. Myname is George Hartman."

  "Emmett Corbin."

  "Gloria ... Gloria White."

  The pilot said with grim urgency: "We've got to do something. There's nosense in just standing here--waiting for the enemy to come."

  "Come?" Emmett inquired. "You mean that the Agronians will actuallyboard our ship?"

  "They always examine disabled ships. They are determined to learn asmuch as they can about us."

  "Well, let's get some weapons and be ready. I'm no hero, understand. ButI agree with you that there's no sense in just waiting."

  The pilot said: "There are no hand weapons on the ship. Our onlypossible course of action would be to _hide_." His emphasis conveyed tothe others how much he disliked the thought.

  "But where?" Gloria asked. "If they make a thorough search--"

  "We can't hide _in_ the ship," George said, with absolute conviction."Our reports indicate that they examine every square foot inside abombed vessel. We'll have to conceal ourselves outside."

  "_Outside?_"

  "We can use the magnetic shoes on our spacesuits to walk on the ship'shull. If luck favors us they may never even think of searching theforward section of the hull."

  Emmett shrugged his shoulders, not realizing that in the faint light noone could see the gesture. Gloria said, "It's better than making noattempt at all to save ourselves."

  George led the way from the control room, and across a passengercompartment that was filled with the crumpled, lifeless forms of almosta hundred men and women.

  "There were no spacesuits in this room," he explained simply.

  They operated the air lock by utilizing the emergency manual controls,and were soon standing on the hull of the ship. For several seconds theyremained motionless and silent, grimly surveying their awesomesurroundings. The billions of stars above were terrifyingly vividagainst the dark emptiness of space. The ship's hull was fantasticallytwisted and pitted, and the enemy ship--it hovered a few milesdistant--had been transformed into a brilliantly burning star by thereflected sunlight.

  "We've got to find cover," George said quickly. "If they're watching theship with telescopes we'll stand out like fireflies in a dark room!"

  Cautiously sliding their feet across the hull, Gloria and Emmettfollowed the pilot. Presently he pointed to a spot where a large sectionof the hull had been twisted back upon itself, forming a deep pocket."This should be good enough," he said.

  They followed his example as he knelt and crawled through the smallopening. To Emmett it was like crawling into a sardine can. The spacewas barely large enough to accommodate the three of them, and throughthe spacesuit's tough fabric, he could feel faint, shifting pressuresthat indicated he was leaning against someone's back and sitting onsomeone's legs. They shuffled about in the total darkness until theyreached a fairly comfortable position and then crouched in silence untillight flashed all about them.
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  "Look!" Gloria whispered. Emmett stared through a narrow gash in themetal near his head and saw a group of Agronians approaching the ship.The starlight, glittering on their strange spacesuits, transformed theminto weird apparitions.

  Emmett closed his eyes and breathed a silent prayer. When he opened themagain he could see only the unwinking stars and the enemy ship, whichwas still hovering nearby like a huge glaring eye.

  "They're inside the ship analyzing our navigational instruments," Georgesaid as if he could somehow see through the solid metal. "They're a verythorough race. They probably know far more about us than we know aboutthem."

  "What are we going to do?" Gloria asked. "We can't just sit here untilbreathing becomes a torment--"

  "What _can_ we do?