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And at last, “Go!” shouted Jimmy eagerly. “Let her blast!”
With a deep reverberating roar, the rockets fired. The Helios trembled from stem to stern. The pilots felt the acceleration press them back into their seats and were happy. In a matter of minutes, the sun would shine again and they would be warm, feel the blessed heat once more.
It happened before they were aware of it. There was a momentary flash of light and then a grinding and a click, as the sunward portholes closed.
“Look,” cried Roy, “the stars! We’re out of it!” He cast an ecstatically happy glance at the thermometer. “Well, old boy, from now on we go up again.” He pulled the blankets about him closer, for the cold still lingered.
There were two men in Frank McCutcheon’s office at the Venus branch of the United Space Mail: McCutcheon himself and the elderly, white-haired Zebulon Smith, inventor of the Deflection Field. Smith was talking.
“But Mr. McCutcheon, it is really of great importance that I learn exactly how my Deflection Field worked. Surely they have transmitted all possible information to you.”
McCutcheon’s face was a study in dourness as he bit the edge off one of his two-for-five cigars and lit it.
“That, my dear Mr. Smith,” he said, “is exactly what they did not do. Ever since they have receded far enough from the sun to render communication possible, I have been sending requests for information regarding the practicability of the Field. They just refuse to answer. They say it worked and that they’re alive and that they’ll give the details when they reach Venus. That’s all!”
Zebulon Smith sighed in disappointment. “Isn’t that a bit unusual; insubordination, so to speak? I thought they were required to be complete in their reports and to give any requested details.”
“So they are. But these are my ace pilots and rather temperamental. We have to extend some leeway. Besides, I tricked them into going on this trip, a very hazardous one, as you know, and so am inclined to be lenient.”
“Well, then, I suppose I must wait.”
“Oh, it won’t be for long,” McCutcheon assured him. “They’re due today, and I assure you that as soon as I get in touch with them, I shall send you the full details. After all, they survived for two weeks at a distance of twenty million miles from the sun, so your invention is a success. That should satisfy you.”
Smith had scarcely left when McCutcheon’s secretary entered with a puzzled frown on her face.
“Something is wrong with the two pilots of the Helios , Mr. McCutcheon,” she informed him. “I have just received a bulletin from Major Wade at Pallas City, where they landed. They have refused to attend the celebration prepared for them, but instead immediately chartered a rocket to come here, refusing to state the reason. When Major Wade tried to stop them, they became violent, he says.” She laid the communication down on his desk.
McCutcheon glanced at it perfunctorily. “Hmm! they do seem confoundedly temperamental. Well, send them to me when they come. I’ll snap them out of it.”
It was perhaps three hours later that the problem of the two misbehaving pilots again forced itself upon his mind, this time by a sudden commotion that had arisen in the reception room. He heard the deep angry tones of two men and then the shrill remonstrances of his secretary. Suddenly the door burst open and Jim Turner and Roy Snead strode in.
Roy coolly closed the door and planted his back against it.
“Don’t let anyone disturb me until I’m through,” Jimmy told him.
“No one’s getting through this door for a while,” Roy answered grimly, “but remember, you promised to leave some for me.”
McCutcheon said nothing during all this, but when he saw Turner casually draw a pair of brass knuckles from his pocket and put them on with a determined air, he decided that it was time to call a halt to the comedy.
“Hello, boys,” he said, with a heartiness unusual in him. “Glad to see you again. Take a seat.”
Jimmy ignored the offer. “Have you anything to say, any last request, before I start operations?” He gritted his teeth with an unpleasant scraping noise.
“Well, if you put it that way,” said McCutcheon, “I might ask exactly what this is all about-if I’m not being too unreasonable. Perhaps the Deflector was inefficient and you had a hot trip.”
The only answer to that was a loud snort from Roy and a cold stare on the part of Jimmy.
“First,” said the latter, “what was the idea of that filthy, disgusting cheat you pulled on us?”
McCutcheon’s eyebrows raised in surprise. “Do you mean the little white lies I told you in order to get you to go? Why, that was nothing. Common business practice, that’s all. Why, I pull worse things than that every day and people consider it just routine. Besides, what harm did it do you?”
“Tell him about our ‘pleasant trip,’ Jimmy,” urged Roy.
“That’s exactly what I’m going to do,” was the response. He turned to McCutcheon and assumed a martyr-like air. “First, on this blasted trip, we fried in a temperature that reached 150 but that was to be expected and we’re not complaining; we were half Mercury’s distance from the sun.
“But after that, we entered this zone where the light bends around us; incoming radiation sank to zero and we started losing heat and not just a degree a day the way we learned it in pilot school.” He paused to breathe a few novel curses he had just thought of, then continued.
““In three days, we were down to a hundred and in a week down to freezing. Then for one entire week, seven long days, we drove through our course at sub-freezing temperature. It was so cold the last day that the mercury froze.” Turner’s voice rose till it cracked, and at the door, a fit of self-pity caused Roy to catch his breath with an audible gulp. McCutcheon remained inscrutable.
Jimmy continued. “There we were without a heating system, in fact, no heat of any kind, not even any warm clothing. We froze, damn it; we had to thaw out our food and melt our water. We were stiff, couldn’t move. It was hell, I tell you, in reverse temperature.” He paused, at a loss for words.
Roy Snead took up the burden. “We were twenty million miles away from the sun and I had a case of frost-bitten ears. Frost-bitten, I say.” He shook his fist viciously under McCutcheon’s nose. “And it was your fault. You tricked us into it! While we were freezing, we promised ourselves that we’d come back and get you and we’re going to keep that promise.” He turned to Jimmy. “Go ahead, start it, will you? We’ve wasted enough time.”
“Hold it, hoys,” McCutcheon spoke at last. “Let me get this straight. You mean to say that the Deflection Field worked so well that it kept all the radiation away and sucked out what heat there was in the ship in the first place?” Jimmy grunted a curt assent.
“And you froze for a week because of that?” McCutcheon continued.
Again the grunt.
And then a very strange and unusual thing happened. McCutcheon, “Old, Sourpuss,” the man without the “risus” muscle, smiled. He actually bared his teeth in a grin. And what’s more, the grin grew wider and wider until finally a rusty, long-unused chuckle was heard louder and louder, until it developed into a full-fledged laugh, and the laugh into a bellow. In one stentorian burst, McCutcheon made up for a lifetime of sour gloom.
The walls reverberated, the windowpanes rattled, and still the Homeric laughter continued. Roy and Jimmy stood openmouthed, entirely non-plussed. A puzzled bookkeeper thrust his head inside the door in a fit of temerity and remained frozen in his tracks. Others crowded about the door, conversing in awed whispers. McCutcheon had laughed!
Gradually, the risibilities of the old General Manager subsided. He ended in a fit of choking and finally turned a purple face towards his ace pilots, whose surprise had long since given way to indignation.
“Boys,” he told them, “that was the best joke I ever heard. You can consider your pay doubled, both of you.” He was still gri
The two pilots were left cold at the handsome proposal. “What’s so killingly fu
McClutcheon’s voice dripped honey, “Now, fellows, before I left I gave each of you several mimeographed sheets containing special instructions. What happened to them?”
There was sudden embarrassment in the air.
“I don’t know. I must have mislaid mine,” gulped Roy.
“I never looked at mine; I forgot about it.” Jimmy was genuinely dismayed.
“You see,” exclaimed McCutcheon triumphantly, “it was all the fault of your own stupidity.”
“How do you figure that out?” Jimmy wanted to know. “Major Wade told us all we had to know about the ship, and besides, I guess there’s nothing you could tell us about ru
“Oh, isn’t there? Wade evidently forgot to inform you of one minor point which you would have found on my instructions. The strength of the Deflection Field was adjustable. It happened to be set at maximum strength when you started, that’s all.” He was now begi
And now the chuckle was becoming louder. “And you froze for a week because you didn’t have the brains to pull a lever. And then you ace pilots come here and blame me. What a laugh!” and off he went again while a pair of very sheepish young men glanced askance at each other.
When McCutcheon came around to normal, Jimmy and Roy were gone.
Down in an alley adjoining the building, a little ten-year-old boy watched, with open mouth and intense absorption, two young men who were engaged in the strange and rather startling occupation of kicking each other alternately. They were vicious kicks, too.
When I wrote “Ring Around the Sun” I was much taken by the two protagonists. Turner and Snead. It was in my mind, I recall, to write other stories about the pair. This was a natural thought, for in the late 1930s there were a number of “series” of stories about a given character or characters. Campbell himself had written some delightful stories featuring two men named Penton and Blake, and I longed to do a Penton-Blake imitation.