"Ah, now we'll end this tale," murmured Rory McConnell, "an' faith, ye've been a worthy foeman an 'tis not I that will stint ye when we meet ag'in in some friendly pub after the glorious redemption of Gaelic La —Oops!"
For a horrible moment, he thought that some practical joker had pulled the seat out from under him. He fell toward the floor, tensing his gluteal muscles for the crash … and fell, and fell, and after a few seconds realized he was in free fall.
"What the jumpin' blue hell?" he roared and glared at the control board meters, just as the lights went out.
A thousand stars leered through the viewport. McConnell clawed blindly at his harness. He heard the ventilator fans sigh to a halt. The stillness became frightful. "Emily!" he shouted, "Emily, where are ye?" There was no reply. Somehow he found the intercom switch and jiggled it. Only a mechanical clicking answered; that circuit was also dead.
Groping and flailing his way aft, he needed black minutes to reach the engine room. It was like a cave. He entered, blind, drifting free, fanning the air with one invisible hand to keep from smothering in his own unventilated exhalations, his heartbeat thick and horrible in his ears. There should be a flashlight clipped somewhere near the door—but where? "Mother of God!" he groaned. "Are we fallen into the devil's fingers?"
A small sound came from somewhere in the gloom. "What's that?" he bawled. "Who's there? Where are ye? Speak up before I beat the bejasus out of yez, ye—-" and he went on with a richness of description to be expected when Gaelic blood has had a checkered career.
"Rory!" said an offended feminine voice out of the abyss. "If you are going to use that kind of language before me, you can just wipe your mouth out and not come back until you are prepared to say it in Greek like a gentleman! I mean, really!"
"Are ye here? Darlin", are ye here? I thought—"
"Well," said the girl, "I know I promised not to hit you any more, and I wouldn't, not for all the world, but I still have to do what I can, don't I, dear? I mean, if I gave up you'd just despise me. It wouldn't be British."
"What have ye done?"
After a long pause, Emily said in a small voice: "I don't know." "How's that?" snapped McConnell.
"I just went over to that control panel or whatever it is and started pulling switches. I mean to say, you don't expect me to know what all those things are for, do you? Because I don't. However," said Emily brightly, "I can parse Greek verbs."
"Oh … no!" groaned McConnell. He began fumbling his way toward the invisible board. Where was
it, anyhow?
"I can cook too," said Emily. "And sew. And I'm awfully fond of children."
Herr Syrup noted on his crude meters that the first-stage beer barrel was now exhausted. He pulled the switch that dropped it and pushed himself up into the spacesuit to make sure that that had actually been done. Peering through the helmet globe, he saw that one relay had stuck and the keg still clung. He popped back inside and told Sarmishkidu to hand him some sections of iron pipe through the stovepipe valve; this emergency was not unanticipated. Clumsy in gauntlets, his fingers screwed the pieces together to make a prod which could reach far aft and crack the empty cask loose.
It occurred to him how much simpler it would have been to keep his tools in a box fastened to the outer hull. But of course such things only come to mind when a model is being tested.
He stared aft. The Mercury Girl was visible to the unaided eye, though dwindling perceptibly. She still floated inert, but he could not expect that condition to prevail for long. Well, a man can but try. Herr Syrup wriggled out of the armor torso and back into the cabin. Claus was practicing free-fall flight technique and nipping stray droplets of beer out of the air; sometimes he collided with a drifting empty bottle, but he seemed to enjoy himself.
"Resuming acceleration," said Herr Syrup. "Give me a pretzel."
Suds gushed from the second barrel. The boat wobbled crazily. Of course the loss of the first one had changed its spin characteristics. Herr Syrup compensated and ploughed doggedly on. The second cask emptied and was discharged without trouble. He cut in the third one.
Presently Sarmishkidu crawled "up" into the spacesuit. A whistle escaped him. "Vat?" asked Herr Syrup.
"There—behind us—your spaceship—und it is coming ver-dammten fast!"
Having strapped his fiancée carefully into the acceleration chair beside his own, Rory McConnell resumed pursuit. He had lost a couple of hours by now, between one thing and another. And while she drifted free, the Girl had of course orbited well off the correct track. He had to get back on it and then start casting about. For a half hour of strained silence, he maneuvered.
"There!" he said at last "Where?"asked Emily.
"In the 'scope," said McConnell. His ill humor let up and he squeezed her hand. "Hang on, here we go. I'll have thim back aboard in ten minutes."
The hazy cloud waxed so fast that he revised his estimate upward. He had too much velocity; it would be necessary to overshoot, brake, and come back—
Then crash! clang-ng-ng! His teeth jarred together. For a moment, his heart paused and he knew naked fear.
"What was that?"asked Emily.
He hated to frighten her, but he forced out of suddenly stiff and sandy lips: "A meteor, I'm sure. An' judging from the sound of it, 'twas big an' fast enough to stave in a whole compartment." You could not exactly roll your eyes heavenward in free space, but he tried manfully. "Holy St. Patrick, is this any way to treat your loyal son?"
He shot past the wallowing beer boat at kilometers per second, falling free while he ripped off his harness. "The instruments aren't showin" damage, but belike the crucial one is been knocked out," he muttered. "An' us with no engine crew an' no deckhands. I'll have to go out there meself to check. At
least this section is unharmed." He nodded at the handkerchief he had thrown into the air; when the ventilators were briefly turned off, it simply hung, borne on no current of leakage. "If we begin to lose air elsewhere, sweetheart, there'll be automatic ports to seal yez off, so ye're all right for the next few hours."
"But what about you?" she cried, white-faced now that she understood. "What about you?"
"I'll be in a spacesuit." He leaned over and kissed her."'Tis not the danger that's so great as the delay. For somethin' I'll have to do, jist so acceleration strain don't pull the damaged hull apart. I'll be back when I can, darlin'."
And yet, as he went aft, there was no sealing bulwark in his way, nowhere a wind whistling toward the dread emptiness outside. Puzzled and more than a little daunted, Rory McConnell completed his interior inspection in the engine room, broke out his own outsize space armor from his pack, and donned it: a slow, awkward task for one man alone. He floated to the nearest airlock and let himself out.
It was eerie on the hull, where only his clinging bootsoles held him fast among streaming cold constellations. The harshness of undiffused sunlight and the absolute blackness of shadow made it hard to recogize anything for what it was.
He saw a goblin and crossed himself violently before realizing it was only a lifeboat tank; and he was an experienced spaceman.
An hour's search revealed no leak. There was a dent in the bow which might or might not be freshly made, nothing else. And yet that meteor had struck with such a doomsday clang that he had thought the hull might be torn in two. Well, evidently St. Patrick had been on the job. McConnell returned inside, disencumbered himself, went forward, reassured Emily, and began to kill his unwanted velocity.
Almost two hours had passed before he was back in the vicinity of the accident, and then he could not locate the fugitive boat. By now it would have ceased blasting; darkly painted, it would be close to invisible in this black sky. He would have to set up a search pattern and—He groaned.