The Giants From Outer Space Part 1

The Giants From Outer s.p.a.ce.

by Geoff St. Reynard.

CHAPTER I

"Okay, make another check on the reading."

"I've made four checks already--"

"d.a.m.n it, make another!"

"It's no use, Pink. The life-scanner's never wrong."

"No possibility of a monkey wrench dropped into its innards? It couldn't be seeing things that aren't there?"

"Not in a million years."

"Then there's no water, no air, no gravity worth mentioning, and still--"

"That's right. There's life on that silly-looking little apple. _There's somebody sitting on it!_"

In the ninetieth star system to be explored by the insatiably curious men of Earth, there were seven planets. Between the fourth and fifth from the star there was a belt of asteroids: some three or four thousand tiny planetary bodies traveling in vast ellipses around the star. At one time they had probably const.i.tuted a single planet, but some unimaginable explosion far back in time had scattered the great ball broadcast, and the largest of the resulting planetoids was now no more than 440 miles across. In the gargantuan belt of them, many were no bigger in diameter than the s.p.a.ceship _Elephant's Child_ herself.

When the instruments of the ship detected this belt of asteroids, Captain Pinkham turned aside as a matter of course, to cruise through it and let his cartographer map it, his organicus officer check it for signs of life, and all his other crewmen turn their inquisitive eyes and machines upon it. It was the seventh asteroid belt to be discovered by man, if you included the one between the orbits of Jupiter and Mars, back home, incredible light-years behind....

No life had ever been discovered on an asteroid, except for the vegetable-animal s.p.a.ce-eating bacteria on Pallas. No life--

Until now.

Captain Pinkham headed for the tiny bit of planet, let his ship's screens pick it up and relay its presence to the automatic recoil engines, which slammed the _Elephant's Child_ to a stop about twelve feet away from the k.n.o.bbly slate-gray surface. The energy testers, having come into play simultaneously with the screens, at once flashed the green "Not Radioactive" sign; a fairly useless gesture, since a positive reaction would have turned the ship away at an angle before it entered the danger zone.

The senior officer; said, "Jerry, let's take a look at that critter you think is perched on this thing."

The organicus officer grinned with one corner of his mouth. He pulled down a platinum lever, and a thirty-inch screen above his control board sprang to life. The black of s.p.a.ce showed the b.u.mpy planetoid like a ball of cold lava, and seated in the center of the screen, a man in a s.p.a.cesuit.

Captain Pinkham licked his lips. "Okay," he said, "I owe you a shot of rye. You were right." Then he blinked his gray eyes. "My G.o.d!" he roared. "What's a human being doing out here in System Ninety?"

The outburst, he felt, was quite justified; in fact, he might have gone stark raving crazy with justification. There seemed no possibility that his s.p.a.ce armada could have been preceded to this star system by another from Earth. The ancient Martians might have made it this far, but their s.p.a.cesuits were nothing like those of Terra. So he and Jerry were now staring at a hopeless absurdity. It couldn't be there.

Pinkham leaned sideways and bellowed into the intercom. "Get in here!

Everybody! On the double!"

The crew came running, from the engine rooms, the astrogatium and astrolab, from the sleeping quarters and the mess hall. The ship was gigantic; it took twenty minutes, for the ship's complement to a.s.semble in the captain's control hall. There were fifty-seven men, eighteen officers. They stood in casual formation and gaped at the life-scanner's screen.

The s.p.a.cesuited figure had not moved.

Captain Pinkham said, "One question. Which of you gadget-happy jokers gimmicked up the scanner on us? Who did this?"

n.o.body said anything. Only one man smiled: Lieutenant Joe Silver, a very bright, very ambitious big cub who was on his second extragalactic expedition and obviously had visions of earning his captain's bronze comets within the year. Joe was a rather unpleasant young piece of beef, thought Pink; but he wouldn't pull practical jokes. He was too b.l.o.o.d.y serious. If he smiled, it was probably because he was enjoying the Captain's evident bewilderment.

"Then it isn't a joke," said Pinkham. "Three of you outside repairmen get into your suits and bring _that_ in." He gestured at the silent figure on the motionless little world of the scanner. "Jerry says it's alive. Handle with care." He waved them his dismissal.

Some twenty minutes later he watched the screen as the three crewmen descended to the surface of the planetoid, pried loose the double anchor which the unknown Earthman had sunk into the ball's crust to hold him steady on the almost-gravityless world, lifted the bulky figure and leaped upward, like thick but weightless panthers carrying their prey, into the open air-lock.

The s.p.a.cesuited stranger had not moved in the slightest.

Yet the scanner, which was never wrong, said that within the armor of the suit was life.

Pinkham sat staring at the blanked-out screen, and a queer chill began to crawl up his neck. An old slang phrase came to his mind, and wouldn't leave.

How come? How come? _How come?_

CHAPTER II

Pink and Jerry and Joe Silver walked around and around the s.p.a.cesuit.

Bill Calico, the astrogator, and Washington Daley, the senior lieutenant, sat in front of it on stools covered with Venusian joerg-hide, going through a routine of flippant gags that thinly disguised their bafflement. Finally Pinkham said, "When were these suits invented?"

"2144," said Joe Silver.

Bright kid, thought Pink with irritation. "Thirty-odd years ago. That's my guess, too."

"October 1st, 2144, is the patent date," said Joe Silver smugly.

"Click, click, click," said Daley. "Your mind is a d.a.m.n file room, Silver. It gives me the jitters."

Joe Silver looked at him expressionlessly.

"I just read the date on the instruction plate," he said.

Captain Pinkham bent down and read aloud from the nayrust plate set into the back of the s.p.a.cesuit.

"'Bernard Patent Slugjet Suit, size 24-B patented' ... here it is.

'Instructions for reviving occupant. The man in this suit is alive if the translucent face plate is tinted orange.'"

"It is," said Bill Calico with eagerness.

"'Unscrew the seven small x-screws around face plate. Depress lever Z on right side of chest plate. Loosen gorget, shoulder pieces, pallettes, bra.s.sarts, cuisses....'" They were following the instructions as he read. He thought, these suits were terrific, they were the best. But you had to have a billion dollars behind your expedition or you couldn't afford 'em. Each one cost half as much as a regular-size moon rocket!

They shouldn't have stopped making them, though. They ought to have tried bringing down the cost. One of these could save a man's life when nothing else in G.o.d's universe could; and a man's life is surely worth as much as half a moon rocket?

The Bernard Slugjet Suit. Guaranteed to keep a guy alive for a minimum of 250 years in free s.p.a.ce. Guaranteed to let him emerge healthy and--miraculously--sane, provided he was picked up within the time limit.