Chapter XV

THE COMBAT IN SPACE.

I recall that my first emotion was one of utter amazement. There was no sense of movement. I was motionless, while things moved around me—all very slowly, hastelessly. In the midst of them I seemed poised, unmoving!

There were the distant motionless stars—blazing points of white light in the dead-black velvet of the void; there was the great ball of Earth; the Moon; the flame-enveloped Sun. All visually motionless. I had gone head first through the air-lock door. I hung level, with no axial rotation.

But there was some movement. The helmeted figures of Rowena and Croat lay near me—twenty feet away, perhaps. They were clinging together and rotating slowly end over end. Croat had lost his weapon. It floated fifty feet behind us. We were falling toward the Earth, undoubtedly; falling with a steady acceleration of velocity which soon would be meteorite swiftness. But none of it was apparent in the vastness of Space.

The cube was over me. In all the glittering scene, the cube now was endowed with the most obvious motion, a hundred feet or so above me, and slowly sailing past. It was turning on a vertical axis: from its corners faint etheric blue rocket-streams were visible.

Then far to one side, off by the Moon, I saw another object—the Mercutian Space-ship! A great white bird-like shape. I twisted my head to see through the lower lens of the helmet visor. It magnified the image, showing Croat's vessel speeding upward at us; its rocket-streams were behind it, fan-shaped like a comet-tail.

How long I hung there I cannot guess. Time, like movement and like all these astronomical bodies of which I now was one, seemed hanging poised. And I think my mind, too, functioned differently—a detached, far-away haze of thought.

I recall that I was helpless to move, save that I could kick and flounder. Celestial forces were upon me now, irrevocable, inexorable beyond all puny human influence.

It penetrated to my consciousness that the Mercutian ship was only a few miles away; and that Grenfell was manipulating the cube around me—and around Croat and Rowena. I saw the yawning, opened air-lock door. Grenfell was trying to get us back in it.

If only I could reach Croat I would try to strangle him with my grip, rip and tear at his bloated garment with the knife which I had in my belt, and rescue Rowena.

The bulk of the passing cube pulled at me. I began rotating; the heavens turned over.

The cube momentarily moved away to take a new position. I suddenly realized I was drawing nearer Croat, or else he and Rowena drifting slowly toward me; the gravitational attraction of our bulk was pulling us together. But it seemed, at first, desperately slow movement.

The heavens again stopped rotating. I found the Mercutian ship directly under me. I gazed numbly down at it. A mile away? Ten miles? Distance could not be calculated here. But through the visor's magnifying lens I saw it clearly, and across this airless void saw details with microscopic, undistorted clarity.

But my brain hardly encompassed what I was seeing. There was a commotion on the Mercutian ship's upper deck under its bell-like dome. There were figures there, fighting! Hot flashes of blue-green were visible. Men were fighting. And I thought I saw a winged girl; and other girls—Earth-girls?

It was a vague impression. Now there was a rush of figures into a round object standing on the deck. A man's figure, fighting, holding back other men as the girls crowded behind him.

Tumultuous, silent events were happening swiftly down there on that ship's deck. There was one great blue-green flash. I know now that it must have ripped the ship's dome. The air rushed out with a great explosion. I recall seeing the dome lift apart. The figures of men were blasted out—dead instantly as they struck the airless frigid void of Space.

The Mercutian ship was wrecked, and slowly turned over. But its mass held most of the mangled figures rotating in narrow orbits around it. Gruesome satellites! A broken litter of wreckage, it began slowly falling toward the far-distant Earth.

And with the explosion, I saw the round object catapulted out from the deck. A small silver metal ball, with tiny door and a row of windows, it hurled free; and instead of falling, seemed to rise.

I was suddenly aware that Croat and Rowena were within reach of me! My outflung hand reached him; I touched a metal plate of his sleeve with my metal-fabric glove. It gave us audiphone contact. I heard his breathing his muttered oath. And then, as he realized that he could hear me, his words:

"And you think you can save her? You—cannot!"

We locked together. He had seen the wreck of his ship—knew it was the end for him. His wild laugh sounded in my ear-grids with an eerie jangle.

"Death! A fitting death for Croat and his Earth-woman—twin stars, falling!"

And I heard Rowena's voice as I touched her. "Jack! Get away! Let me push at you! Don't let him hold you!"

His great arms seized me. Our bloated suits pressed together. Weightless adversaries scrambling in a weightless void! He caught my wrist that held the knife and twisted it. But despite his giant size, I found that I was the stronger. The knife was above him. I forced it slowly down against all his efforts to stop me.

He gave a last wild laugh. Tried to rip at Rowena's garment. Then my blade punctured his suit. With the out rush of its air, I felt it go flat against me. Felt his grip tighten convulsively; and his last human scream, with all the irony gone out of it, jangled at my ears.

His grip loosened, I kicked him free. Like a log shoved violently in water his body floated away.

I clung to Rowena; became aware of the Cube over us; the yawning lock-opening coming with true aim this time to swallow us.

We struck the lock interior, fell in a heap on its metal floor, and the outer slide closed upon us.