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“Huh! What do you mean?”
“I’ll explain, and if you listen carefully you may understand me. This ship is built like a vacuum bottle. It gains heat only with the greatest of difficulty and loses it likewise.” He paused and let his words sink in. “At ordinary temperatures this ship is not supposed to lose more than two degrees a day if no outside sources of heat are supplied. Perhaps at the temperature at which we were, the loss might amount to five degrees a day. Do you get me?”
Roy’s mouth was open wide and Jimmy continued. “Now this blasted ship has lost fifty degrees in less than three days.”
“But that’s impossible.”
“There it is.” Jimmy pointed ironically. “I’ll tell you what’s wrong. It’s that damn Field. It acts as a repulsive agent towards electromagnetic radiations and somehow is hastening the loss of heat of our ship.”
Roy sank into thought and did some rapid mental calculations. “If what you say is true,” he said at length, “we’ll hit freezing point in five days and then spend a week in what amounts to winter weather.”
“That’s right. Even allowing for the decrease in heat-loss as the temperature is lowered, we’ll probably end up with the mercury anywhere between thirty and forty below.”
Roy gulped unhappily. “And at twenty million miles away from the sun!”
“That isn’t the worst,” Jimmy pointed out. “This ship, like all others used for travel within the orbit of Mars, has no heating system. With the sun shining like fury and no way to lose heat except by ineffectual radiation, Mars and Venus space-ships have always specialized in cooling systems. We, for instance, have a very efficient refrigeration device.”
“We’re in a devil of a fix, then. The same applies to our space suits.”
In spite of the still roasting temperature, the two were begi
“Say, I’m not going to stand this,” Roy burst out. “I vote we get out of here right now and head for Earth. They can’t expect more of us.”
“Go ahead! You’re the pilot. Can you plot a course at this distance from the sun and guarantee that we won’t fall into the sun?”
“Hell! I hadn’t thought of that.”
The two were at their wits’ end. Communication via radio had been impossible ever since they had passed Mercury’s orbit. The sun was at sunspot maximum and static had drowned out all attempts.
So they settled down to wait.
The next few days were taken up entirely with thermometer watching, with a few minutes taken out here and there when one of the two happened to think of an unused malediction to hurl at the head of Mr. Frank McCutcheon. Eating and sleeping were indulged in, but not enjoyed.
And meanwhile, the Helios , entirely unconcerned in the plight of its occupants, blasted on.
As Roy had predicted, the temperature passed the red line marked “Freezing” towards the end of their seventh day in the Deflection Belt. The two were remarkably unhappy when this happened even though they had expected it.
Jimmy had drawn off about a hundred gallons of water from the tank. With this he had filled almost every vessel on board.
“It might,” he pointed out, “save the pipes from bursting when the water freezes. And if they do, as is probable, it is just as well that we supply ourselves with plenty of available water. We have to stay here another week, you know.”
And on the next day, the eighth, the water froze. There were the buckets, overflowing with ice, standing chill and bluecold. The two gazed at them forlornly. Jimmy broke one open.
“Frozen solid,” he said bleakly and wrapped another sheet about himself.
It was hard to think of anything but the increasing cold now. Roy and Jimmy had requisitioned every sheet and blanket on the ship, after having put on three or four shirts and a like number of pairs of pants.
They kept in bed for as long as they were able, and when forced to move out, they huddled near the small oil-burner for warmth. Even this doubtful pleasure was soon denied them, for, as Jimmy remarked, “the oil supply is extremely limited and we will need the burner to thaw out the water and food.”
Tempers were short and clashes frequent, but the common misery kept them from actually jumping on each other’s throats. It was on the tenth day, however, that the two, united by a common hatred, suddenly became friends.
The temperature was hovering down near the zero point, making up its mind to descend into the minus regions. Jimmy was huddled in a corner thinking of the times back in New York when he had complained of the August heat and wondered how he could have done so. Roy, meanwhile, had manipulated numb fingers long enough to calculate that they would have to endure the coldness for exactly 6354 minutes more.
He regarded the figures with distaste and read them off to Jimmy. The latter Scowled and grunted, ”The way I feel, I’m not going to last 54 minutes, let alone 6354.” Then, impatiently, “I wish you could manage to think of some way of getting us out of this.”
“If we weren’t so near the sun,” suggested Roy, “we might start the rear blasts and hurry us up.”
“Yes, and if we landed in the sun, we’d be nice and warm. You’re a big help!”
“Well, you’re the one that calls himself ‘Brains’ Turner. You think of something. The way you talk, you’d think all this was my fault.”
“It certainly is, you donkey in human clothing! My better judgment told me all along not to go on this fool trip. When McCutcheon proposed it, I refused pointblank. I know better.” Jimmy was very bitter. “So what happened? Like the fool you are, you accept and rush in where sensible men fear to tread. And then, of course. I naturally had to tag along.
“Why, do you know what I should have done,” Jimmy’s voice ascended the scale, “I should have let you go alone and freeze and then sat down by a roaring fire all by myself and gloated. That is, if I had known what was going to happen.”
A hurt and surprised look appeared on Roy’s face. “Is that so? So that’s how it is! Well, all I can say is that you certainly have a genius for twisting facts, if for nothing else. The fact of the matter is that you were unutterably stupid enough to accept and I the poor fellow raked in by the force of circumstances.”
Jimmy’s expression was one of the utmost disdain. “Evidently the cold has driven you batty, though I admit it wouldn’t take much to knock the little sense you possess out of you.”
“Listen,” Roy answered hotly. “On October 10th, McCutcheon called me up on the ‘visor and told me you had accepted and laughed at me for a yellow-belly for refusing to go. Do you deny that?”
“Yes, I do, and unconditionally. On October 10, Sourpass told me that you had decided to go and had bet him that-”
Jimmy’s voice faded away very suddenly and a shocked look spread over his face. “Say-, are you sure McCutcheon told you I had agreed to go?”
A chill, clammy feeling clutched at Roy’s heart when he caught Jimmy’s drift, a feeling that drowned out the numbness of the cold.
“Absolutely,” he answered. “I’ll swear to that. That’s why I went.”
“But he told me you had accepted and that’s why / went.” Jimmy felt very stupid all at once.
The two fell into a protracted and ominous silence which was broken at length by Roy, who spoke in a voice that quivered with emotion.
“Jimmy, we’ve been the victims of a contemptible, dirty, lowdown, doublecrossing trick.” His eyes dilated with fury. “We’ve been cheated, robbed-,” words failed him but he kept on uttering meaningless sounds, indicative mainly of devouring rage.
Jimmy was cooler, but none the less vindictive, “You’re right, Roy; McCutcheon has done us dirty. He has plumbed the depths of human iniquity. But we’ll get even. When we get through in 6300 odd minutes, we will have a score to settle with Mr. McCutcheon.”
“What are we going to do?” Roy’s eyes were filled with a bloodthirsty joy.
“On the spur of the moment, I suggest that we simply tear into him and rend him into tiny, little pieces.”
“Not gruesome enough. How about boiling him in oil?”
“That’s reasonable, yes; but it might take too long. Let’s give him a good old-fashioned beating-with brass knuckles.”
Roy rubbed his hands. “We’ll have lots of time to think up some really adequate measures. The dirty. God-forsaken, yellow-livered, leprous-” The rest verged fluently into the unprintable.
And for four more days, the temperature dove. It was on the fourteenth and last day that the mercury froze, the solid red shaft pointed its congealed finger at forty below.
On this terrible last day, they had lit the oil-burner, using their entire scanty supply of oil. Shivering and more than half frozen, they crouched close, attempting to extract every last drop of heat.
Jimmy had found a pair of ear-muffs several days before in some obscure corner, and it now changed hands at the end of every hour. Both sat buried under a small mountain of blankets, chafing chilled hands and feet. With every passing minute, their conversation, concerning McCutcheon almost exclusively, grew more vitriolic.
“Always quoting that triply-damned slogan of the Space Mail: ‘Our flight through sp-’ “ Jimmy choked with impotent fury.
“Yes, and always rubbing holes in chairs instead of coming out here and doing something like a man’s work, the rotten so-and-so,” agreed Roy.
“Well, we’re due to pass out of the deflection zone in two hours. Then three weeks and we’ll be on Venus,” said Jimmy, sneezing.
“That can’t be too soon for me,” answered Sneed, who had been sniffling for the last two days. “I’m never taking another space trip except maybe the one that takes me back to Earth. After this, I make my living growing bananas in Central America. A fellow can be decently warm out there at least.”
“We might not get off Venus, after what we’re going to do to McCutcheon.”
“No, you’re right there. But that’s all right. Venus is even warmer than Central America and that’s all I care about.”
“We have no legal worries either,” Jimmy sneezed again. “On Venus, life imprisonment’s the limit for first-degree murder. A nice,-warm dry cell for the rest of my life. What could be sweeter?”
The second hand on the chronometer whirled at its even pace; the minutes ticked off. Roy’s hands hovered lovingly over the lever that would set off the right rear blasts which would drive the Helios out away from the sun and from that terrible Deflection Zone.