Frank R Kelly - Starship Invincible.pdf

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She paused and bent over him, slowly—and her eyes were shining.
STAR SHIP INVINCIBLE
A novelette of courage and fear, beauty and horror and pathos—evoked by
the dread, unfathom-able menace of the "sink hole of space."
by Frank K. Kelly
Illustrated by Elliot Dold
H E HAD been sitting hunched on the high stool of the operator's chair, elbows on the smooth ledge of
metal that encircled him, when the receptor tube spat a harsh sound in his ears, a sibilant warning note.
He thought, "What now?" but straightened with alacrity, his stiff back shaping a tense angle.
He jerked his head upward in an arc, nostrils widened, his thin nose slightly trembling, as if he could smell
what was vibrating through the receptor channel. He forgot how cold he was, and how his stomach
ached faintly from many days on a diet of compressed-food tablets, and how he wished his relief would
come, because he was lonely, the universe seeming strange and hostile all around him.
He could see too many stars from this round room that bulged in a curve outward from the top of the
Jupiter Dome. It was not good for a man to see too many stars too long.
 
The snapping sound cracked like a whip in his ears again, and a voice roared: "G-16, the Dome!"
"Jupiter Station," he said quietly. "G-16 responding. Graham at the key. Ready."
The hard voice rumbled: "Build for visual projection. S 1. Jan Garth will speak to you."
"Standing by," Graham said. "R tube clear. Projection coming—what chan-nel?"
"A-channel," the voice boomed. "Beam Central, Earth, sending. Set up cross waves for head and
shoulders. Use tight beam on a reverse arc."
"Power?" he asked faintly. "We're low here. The supply ship you were going to send—“
"All the power you've got," the voice cut in, brusque and commanding.
"Right," Graham muttered.
His hands, supple in metal-fabric gloves, caressed the complex panels in front of him as if he was playing
a delicate musical instrument. He kicked a lever attached to one leg of his stool and the tripod chair
began to revolve, slowly and smoothly.
As he turned he touched studs. The power tubes that ringed him in con-centric rows hummed and
howled, then went achingly silent, as the pulsating tight beam passed the wave band of audible reception.
His eardrums hurt: there had been a soundless concussion, and a golden sphere, slightly flattened at the
ends, had come into being directly over his head.
It hung suspended between the four great mirrors over him, spraying his face with lances of swirling light.
He worked his lithe hands, fast.
A blue luminosity grew from his key-board, spurted upward from the power tubes, forming like sapphire
frost on levers and studs. Azure spears pushed at the glowing globe. His fingers danced over the power
panels. The globe was held in balanced suspension in a basket network of crossing rays. It turned on an
invisible axis, revolving with silent speed. Spinning like a dervish, the head and shoulders of a big man
shaped within the hazy edges of the illuminated sphere.
Graham turned his twitching face up-ward. He whispered to himself, a little queerly: "Nice trick. You do
it with mirrors."
He wanted to laugh—or cry. Sweat lay in heavy drops between his fingers. Visual projection always
seemed like magic to him.
After all he was only a flabby little man who knew the motions, the in-cantations, that brought this magic
into being. He handled forces he was ter-ribly afraid of within himself. He was always wondering why the
chained lightning in the tubes didn't turn and rend him ; he thought some day it would refuse to perform its
tricks, would swing and destroy him in a sudden burst of coldly coruscating flame.
The gleaming globe still whirled above him, but the spinning slowed, as he nar-rowed the flow of juice
pouring into the A-channel. There were manacled giants in the tubes, but he could make them weak by
starving them, by throt-tling the leaping flow of power that fed them.
The image in the sphere was at first vague and seemed to be upside down. Then the head and shoulders
of the pro-jected vision came right side around, the shape of face and neck clarifying first, then the line of
lips and jaw slowly sharpening and straightening. Presently Graham had no difficulty at all in recog-nizing
 
the grim countenance of Jan Garth, Administrator of Star Lines.
"Jupiter supply ship left Mars this date, 12:40, Mars time reckoned in Earth -units," Garth said abruptly.
"Watched the blast-off through my v-plate here. Record the time for per-manent preservation."
"Recorded," Graham said, very low. He had taken it on the absorbent tape.
As soon as adequate projection had been built up, he had switched in the recording spool.
GARTH didn't say anything for half a minute after that terse exchange of crisp phrases. It was the first
time the administrator had used the Jupiter beam personally, and for an instant the harsh voice stumbled,
as if the man speaking had suddenly been brought up against reality in his mind; as if he had just
awakened to what he was really doing.
He was talking—no; an image of himself was talking—in a little room high up under the roof of the
inter-planetary dome on Jupiter, a room sepa-rate from where he stood on Earth by an immensity so vast
that the thought of it stunned a man into somber silence.
At last Garth said: "The ship is one of ours. Registered at the Port of Korna, nine thousand tons Earth
weight; carrying pilot, navigator, and twenty-eight passengers. The Star Ship In-vincible. Captain
Moran commanding."
"New ship," Graham said succinctly.
"Maiden voyage. It's the first of the new fleet."
"Carrying supplies for the Dome here?"
"Yes."
"We need plenty," Graham said, bit-ing his words.
He shivered, suddenly realizing that he was very cold. Jupiter's atmosphere didn't hold heat; the Sun was
very far away; and they had only a little more fuel to feed into the atomic converters. Until the supply ship
came, the Dome would be cold.
"I know," Garth said.
"Why did you wait so long to send this ship?" Graham demanded recklessly.
He forgot the power of the other; he forgot that he was only Key Man G-16, Jupiter Station; he thought
of how they had to live, here in the Dome, sleeping restlessly in chilly cells, groping through corridors
kept dim because light took power and you didn't mind not seeing very well if you could stay at least
partly warm. And always the faint ache in their bellies; the ache that came from month after month on the
same diet of compressed synthe-food.
Garth said: "This is only a little later than usual. The ship will be there soon. Hold hard."
Graham hunched his shoulders. "You —you haven't forgotten the Sink Hole?"
Garth said: "No."
"The ship's carrying passengers?"
 
"Yes. Twenty-eight."
"They've been warned?"
"They've been warned."
Graham nodded. "Well, Moran and his navigator know what to expect."
"They're not going to have any trouble."
"You're pretty sure," Graham said softly. "This ship—she's fast?"
The big man shifted his head, raising it with exultance. "I told you; it's the first of the new fleet we've been
building on Mars for the Jupiter run. Since the Sink Hole came, we've been working night and day. Now
we're ready to take a chance."
The little man sat still, his body humped, feeling the sweat gather in the cold palms of his hands. They
were taking a chance, were they? This new ship must be big stuff; at least the lab men thought it was big
stuff.
A picture rose in his brain. He glimpsed strained faces, looked into the worried yet courageous eyes of
the passengers—passengers who were, he knew, friends and lovers of the people already here in the
Dome. They know what might happen, those passengers; yet they went aboard the Star Ship Invincible
because the touch of a friendly hand, the pressure of lips and bodies in the physical contact of love,
meant more to them than living a safe existence full of the emptiness of fading memories.
They were coming unafraid, risking everything, knowing that the Sink Hole might never close again;
because it had closed once before, after an interval of ten yawning years, was no guarantee that it would
close now after this re-opening. They came, knowing they might be put away forever from the good
Earth.
They weren't willing to be cut off from the outer planets for ten years, waiting for the Sink Hole to shut
to-gether in its periodic pulsation. Ten years was a long time; too long, these faithful ones believed, too
long for sepa-ration. So they risked more than life for—
"You're not taking the big chance," Graham said after a minute. "Those people aboard the Invincible are
doing that."
Garth shrugged. "People are always taking chances. That's life, isn't it—taking chances?"
Graham said: "I don't know. Maybe it is."
"They've got everything in their favor," Garth stated. "The Walton Arc is still clear. The Hole's widening
slowly this time. And the ship has the speed to make port at the Dome, before the Hole spreads across
the Walton Arc."
"I hope you're right," Graham mut-tered.
All at once a realization came to him, and he went cold in every part of his body. He thought: God, she
may have decided to come this trip. Even now she may be on the Invincible, not know-ing the danger,
not sensing fully that the ship rides a race with death. The passenger list—the names of those who were
coming on the Invincible. He had to know.
He tried to keep the shivering out of his voice, but it was there when he spoke: "You—you'd better let
 
me have the names of the passengers, chief. The people here will want to know who's aboard that ship."
Garth looked at him closely. "All right; I'll give it to you. I've got the record here. Better take this on the
tape."
"Yes, sir," Graham said, very low. "The names, sir?"
Garth's hand appeared in the pro-jection, holding a strip of metal-fabric, stamped indelibly with a string
of names and numbers; he began to read, his voice low, his eyes now and then glancing at the signal
man's face; since the projec-tion had been built on a tight beam operating along a double arc, Graham's
body was visible to the man on Earth.
THE LIST wasn't long; only twenty-eight passengers. Almost the last in the roll was the name Graham
had hoped and feared might be there. There couldn't be any doubt now. The girl had gone aboard the
Invincible. It all depended now on Moran—on Moran and whatever they had developed in the
experimental laboratories on Mars. This ship—there was something about the way Garth spoke of it that
gave him hope.
"I've got them all," Graham said, as the harsh voice of the administrator faded out. "Thank you, sir."
Garth stared at him keenly. "Any one you know listed there?"
The little man stammered something incoherent.
"Can't hear you," Garth said, indif-ferent now. For a moment he had been amused by the taut anxiety that
had crept into the key-man's gaunt face, but after all it was nothing to him; he didn't care very much what
answer the flabby fellow made.
"Only my wife," Graham said. He choked, and then went on: "Couldn't you tell me what this ship has that
the others hadn't sir? And what—what do you want me to do? There must be something I can do. If I
could help to keep her safe it would mean so much to me."
"I understand." Garth softened for an instant; really, the fellow was quite human, with his pleading eyes
and twitching little face. "Yes; there's something you can do. You'll connect with the Invincible
immediately after I've signed off here. Once you've got them, you'll transfer the channel on relay to my
operator here, but keep your own key open. Moran is under orders to use the automatic time signal, on a
circuit breaker operating every other minute. So long as you hear that signal, you'll know the ship's all
right."
"Sure," Graham said. "But suppose it fades?"
"If you think something's wrong, you'll flash my operator and report."
"That's all I've got to do?"
"That's all."
"It's not much," Graham whispered.
Garth turned. "There isn't much we can do if the Invincible goes under. I can't believe it will go under."
"Yes," Graham said eagerly. "You said it had a lot of new gadgets. You couldn't—couldn't tell me what
they were?"
 

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