Read Online Fletcher Pratt by Alien Planet - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Alien Planet
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muscular and nervous fatigue of the day. A whirling universe of sparks danced before my eyes, and I lost consciousness.
V
My first sensation was one of extreme annoyance that it should be morning before I had half the sleep I wanted. Dreamily I turned over to gather the covers about me for that last delightful five minutes of doze before clambering out into a cold world. My hands met neither blanket nor sheet and, startled into consciousness, I looked up to see above me not the beams of the shack but the tapering, tan-colored interior of the Shoraru, lined with its rows of racks and apparatus. Then I remembered.
I sat up with difficulty. I was in the central chamber of the car, on the floor, and beside me was Ashembe, locking tight the joints of the interior door and closing the cracks with atotta. A dull tapping sound, like the racket of a distant woodpecker, filled the place.
"Hello!" I remarked rather fatuously. (I could think of nothing else to say.)
"You are revivified," he said, turning from his task with a smile. "I am happy. You do not objection to journeying with me? I can return you here after a trip to your interior planets."
I became aware of the pain in my knee, and memory rushed in upon me. "Why, yes," I said, rubbing the injured member. "There's nothing else for me to do. I'm afraid you killed that policeman, and they'd probably hang me if I went back now."
"Hang you? Oh, you signify execution. But you did not do it."
"I know," I said. "But I was present. That makes me an accessory or something. What's that noise?"
"Your police anxious to enter herein. However, no matter. We depart upon the instant."
I realized that the police were trying to batter down the outer door of the car—that massive steel and iridium door. Ashembe turned to the control keys of the car. Then— "But won't the explosion when you start injure some of them?" I asked.
He looked up in perfectly genuine surprise. "Certainly," he said. "But no matter of that. They would do us harm." And this extraordinary individual, who would not give us information, unless we promised to altruistically surrender it to the whole world, calmly turned the keys that would very likely blow half a dozen men to bits.
Nothing happened. The hammering on the distant periphery of the car did not even stop. There was only a gentle hissing. It rose to a rattle, and then, just as I was about to speak, a tremendous explosion burst that sent me caroming off the side wall of the chamber to the floor of the car. We were off.
After that first burst of sound, however, there was neither noise nor perceptible motion. I raised myself somewhat cautiously to my hands and knees, then to my feet, and looked around. Everything in the car was the same as before; the soft daylight radiance from Ashembe's quartz flooded the interior of the narrow chamber; the various pieces of apparatus and metal cylinders of liquefied gases stood firmly in their racks. Below them others held materials that remained in the cases sent from New York, removed to the car in that state during our last hasty moments of flight.
Ashembe had seated himself cross-legged on the floor and was gazing intently into the workings of one of his mercury motors, which apparently had something wrong with it. Everything was perfectly serene, almost monotonously so, as though instead of sitting in a cometary car bound across those vast wildernesses of space, which even light takes centuries to cross, we might have been back in the shack. In the shack, but for the shape of the room and —a thought struck me suddenly.
"Why, how can you tell where we're going?" I asked. "There aren't any windows."
Ashembe smiled up at me. "Gramercy," he said. "I forget you are a novice. Perceive." He fumbled a minute with keys, making adjustments. A little ring-shaped heater around the hole at the center of the base of the car, the one he had windowed with nickel, sprang into activity. There was a snap as though a shutter
V
My first sensation was one of extreme annoyance that it should be morning before I had half the sleep I wanted. Dreamily I turned over to gather the covers about me for that last delightful five minutes of doze before clambering out into a cold world. My hands met neither blanket nor sheet and, startled into consciousness, I looked up to see above me not the beams of the shack but the tapering, tan-colored interior of the Shoraru, lined with its rows of racks and apparatus. Then I remembered.
I sat up with difficulty. I was in the central chamber of the car, on the floor, and beside me was Ashembe, locking tight the joints of the interior door and closing the cracks with atotta. A dull tapping sound, like the racket of a distant woodpecker, filled the place.
"Hello!" I remarked rather fatuously. (I could think of nothing else to say.)
"You are revivified," he said, turning from his task with a smile. "I am happy. You do not objection to journeying with me? I can return you here after a trip to your interior planets."
I became aware of the pain in my knee, and memory rushed in upon me. "Why, yes," I said, rubbing the injured member. "There's nothing else for me to do. I'm afraid you killed that policeman, and they'd probably hang me if I went back now."
"Hang you? Oh, you signify execution. But you did not do it."
"I know," I said. "But I was present. That makes me an accessory or something. What's that noise?"
"Your police anxious to enter herein. However, no matter. We depart upon the instant."
I realized that the police were trying to batter down the outer door of the car—that massive steel and iridium door. Ashembe turned to the control keys of the car. Then— "But won't the explosion when you start injure some of them?" I asked.
He looked up in perfectly genuine surprise. "Certainly," he said. "But no matter of that. They would do us harm." And this extraordinary individual, who would not give us information, unless we promised to altruistically surrender it to the whole world, calmly turned the keys that would very likely blow half a dozen men to bits.
Nothing happened. The hammering on the distant periphery of the car did not even stop. There was only a gentle hissing. It rose to a rattle, and then, just as I was about to speak, a tremendous explosion burst that sent me caroming off the side wall of the chamber to the floor of the car. We were off.
After that first burst of sound, however, there was neither noise nor perceptible motion. I raised myself somewhat cautiously to my hands and knees, then to my feet, and looked around. Everything in the car was the same as before; the soft daylight radiance from Ashembe's quartz flooded the interior of the narrow chamber; the various pieces of apparatus and metal cylinders of liquefied gases stood firmly in their racks. Below them others held materials that remained in the cases sent from New York, removed to the car in that state during our last hasty moments of flight.
Ashembe had seated himself cross-legged on the floor and was gazing intently into the workings of one of his mercury motors, which apparently had something wrong with it. Everything was perfectly serene, almost monotonously so, as though instead of sitting in a cometary car bound across those vast wildernesses of space, which even light takes centuries to cross, we might have been back in the shack. In the shack, but for the shape of the room and —a thought struck me suddenly.
"Why, how can you tell where we're going?" I asked. "There aren't any windows."
Ashembe smiled up at me. "Gramercy," he said. "I forget you are a novice. Perceive." He fumbled a minute with keys, making adjustments. A little ring-shaped heater around the hole at the center of the base of the car, the one he had windowed with nickel, sprang into activity. There was a snap as though a shutter
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