Part 14 (1/2)

”He can't stay where he is; there's no protection up here! When that stern bulkhead goes....”

It was breaking. I could see it bending sternward under the pressure.

And at best it was leaking air, so that the decks were a rush of wind.

Already Drac and I were gasping with the lowered pressure.

”Drac, get out of here. Go get Waters; bring him forward. The h.e.l.l with his transmitter: this is life or death!”

”But you?”

”I'm coming down. From the forward deck, call the hull control rooms.

Order everybody forward and to the deck.”

”What about the pressure pumps?”

”I can keep them going from here.”

I set the circulating system to guide the fresh air forward, but it was futile against the sucking rush of wind toward the stern. As the pumps speeded up I saw, with the little added pressure, the great cross panel of the stern bulkhead straining harder. It would go in a moment.

Drac was clinging to me. ”Tell me what to do!”

”I've told you what to do!” I shoved him to the catwalk. ”Get out of here. Get Waters forward. Get the men out of the hull.”

His anguished eyes stared at me; then he turned and ran forward on the catwalk. I saw him forcibly dragging the bald-headed Waters from the helio cubby. It was the last time I ever saw either of them.

A buzzer was ringing in the turret, and I plunged back for it. The exertion put a band of pain across my chest, a panting constriction from the lowering pressure.

Fanning, a.s.sistant engineer, was still at the pressure pumps. His voice came up: ”Pumps and renewers working. Will you use the gravity s.h.i.+fters?”

”h.e.l.l, no! Get out of there, Fanning. We're smashed. Air going. It's a matter of minutes--abandoning s.h.i.+p. Get forward!”

Suddenly the stern bulkhead cracked with a great diagonal rift. I waited a moment to give them all time to get forward; then I slid all the cross 'mids.h.i.+p bulkheads.

It was barely in time. The stern bulkhead went out with a gale of wind, but the barrier amids.h.i.+ps stemmed it. Half of the vessel sternward was devoid of air, but here in the bow we could last a little longer. Beneath me I could see Grantline's men--some of them, not all--and a few of the stewards, crew and officers, crowding the deck, donning s.p.a.ce-suits. The two side chambers were ready; half a dozen men crowded into each of them. The deck doors slid closed. The outer ports opened; helmeted, goggled, bloated figures were blown by the outgoing air from the chamber into s.p.a.ce. Then the outer slides went closed. The pumps filled up the chambers; the deck doors opened again. Another batch of men....

I saw Grantline, suited but with his helmet off, das.h.i.+ng from one side of the deck to the other, commanding the abandonment.

The central bulkheads seemed momentarily holding. Then little red lights in the panel board before me showed where in the hull corridors the doors were leaking, cracking, giving away, breaking under the strain. The whole ribbed framework of the vessel was strained and slued. The bulkhead sides no longer set true in the cas.e.m.e.nts. Air was whining everywhere and pulling sternward.

It was the last stand; I was aware that the alarm siren had ceased.

There was a sudden stillness, with only the shouts of the remaining men at the exit-ports mingling with the whine of the wind and the roaring in my head. I felt detached, far-away; my senses were reeling.

I staggered to the gauges of the Erentz system, the system whereby an oscillating current, circling within the double-sh.e.l.led walls of hull and dome, absorbed into negative energy much of the interior pressure.

The main walls of the vessel were straining outward. The _Cometara_ could collapse at any moment. I started for the catwalk door. The electro-telescope stood near it and I yielded to a vague desire to gaze into the eyepiece. The instrument was still operative. I swept it sternward.

The enemy s.h.i.+p had not vanished. By what strange means, I cannot say, its velocity had been checked. A few thousand miles from us, it was making a narrow, close-angle turn. Coming back? I thought so.

I suddenly realized my intention of having all the gravity-plates in neutral before abandoning the s.h.i.+p. I seized the controls now. An agony of fear was upon me that the s.h.i.+fting valves would fail. But they did not. The plates slid haltingly, reluctantly.

I recall staggering to the catwalk. It seemed that the central bulkhead was breaking. There were fallen figures on the deck beneath me. I stumbled against the body of a man who had tangled himself in the stays of the ladder rail and was hanging there.