"How in the name of thirty spacedevils did we run into a meteor storm here, below the ecliptic?" demanded Phath, switching the controls to manual and sending the Jolly Roger arching through the void in a steep curve designed to carry the trim little craft out of the path of the storm of hurtling rock and ice.
"More to the point, why didn’t our repellor fields stop the meteorite before it hulled us?" said Star flatly, scanning the dials. Fortunately for their mission, remarkably little damage had been done, although they were not yet out of the path of danger.
"I think I can answer that one, my boy," said Dr. Zoar, waddling into the control room. He had been lying down in his bunk catching a well-deserved nap, until the clangor of the alarms had roused him from his rest. "It’s the new drive—we’re traveling so fast, the meteor went right through the repellor fields before they had time to deflect it."
He scratched his chin reflectively. "If travel by my super-drive should ever become common, we shall have to do something to beef up the standard repellor field generators ... a pretty little problem, by the Twin Moons! I suppose we could use an overlapping, heterodyning electromagnetic barrier with ..." His voice trailed off into an indistinguishable mumble as he became lost between equations.
"Yeah?" queried Phath in startled tones. "Well, we're not goin' so fast now, you Martian hop-toad! In fact, we're losing velocity rapidly. That new thingummy of yours has blown a fuse or something—"
Star sprang to the control board to study the new velocitometer. With a sinking heart he saw that Phath spoke the truth—the superdrive was no longer functioning, and the impact of being hulled had slowed the craft until she was virtually adrift. He jiggled the controls, but could not spark the new rocket-tubes into roaring life—neither did the conventional drive work.
"Looks like that blasted meteor did more than just cost us a little air, chief," muttered the Venusian. Star looked grim.
"It must have severed some of the wiring that runs through the hollow hull," he said tensely. "We can't get at the conduits from inside; break out the suits, Phath. We'll have to go outside to repair the damage—where are we exactly, Doc?"
Zoar scrutinized the dials. "Just passing Jupiter's orbit," said the little scientist. "Luckily, we're too low on the ecliptic to have a chance of getting pulled in by Jupiter's gravitational field. Or Saturn's either, for that matter."
Once they had suited up and snapped shut their faceplates, the two adventurers went through the tail airlock and clambered out on the hull, tethered to the safety of the ship by their space-lines and gripping the outer hull with their magnetic space-boots. They left the navigation to the tender mercies of Dr. Zoar; while the green-skinned dwarf was no space-pilot—and certainly not in a class with Star Pirate or his Venusian sidekick—the little scientist could operate the controls of a space rocket if necessary .
Time crawled past, slow minute by minute, as the tall redhead and his pale-skinned comrad toiled at repairing the control circuits, which had been severed by the meteorite. Within the cabin, Zoar watched as the ship—now helplessly adrift in space and unable to control her flight—floated past the orbit of Jupiter and began to approach that of the other giant planet, Saturn. The ringed planet loomed dead ahead, or so it seemed in the screens, and the diminutive scientist began to find the odd difference in perspective alarming.
Finally, he called Star Pirate and Phath on the ship-to-suit intercom circuit.
"What’s up, Doc?" inquired the redhead. Zoar groused and grumbled, then admitted—
"We’re drifting above our former position, lad, and reentering the plane of the ecliptic again. I have no doubt that this is the result of the gravitational fields of the nine moons of Saturn."
"In other words, we’re drifting into danger, you think?" asked Star Pirate.
"Well ... it is possible," said Zoar. "We still have a very long way to go before we are in any immediate and genuine danger, but still ... how are you two lads coming with the repairs on the severed control circuits?"
Star Pirate's voice was heavy and grim. "Did you ever try to do any delicate repair-work, while wearing clumsy space-mittens, Doc?" he asked.
"Fortunately, no, never ..."
"Well, then, all I can say is—we’re working as fast as we can, but it’s a tough job. Keep on the screens, and give us plenty of warning when we are really drifting into danger."
Zoar agreed, switched off the communicator, and returned to his post before the control board. And the minutes crawled by, and the hours. From time to time, worn out and in need of food and drink and rest, Star or the Venusian clambered back into the Jolly Roger for a breather, but not for long. There was a job to do—a job that must be done—and there were only the two of them to do it.
And in the forefront of Star Pirate's mind was a danger of which neither Phath nor Dr. Zoar had apparently recollected, as yet. He hoped it would not be needful to speak of it, but only time would tell.
It was some two days later, and all three of the adventurers were at the end of their endurance, to say nothing of their patience. The repairs were still advancing, but slower than Star could have wished ... when the danger he had feared struck suddenly and without the slightest warning.
The redheaded adventurer and his Venusian sidekick were on- the outside of the hull, relaying the damaged circuits with fresh lines, when the ship-to-suit intercom crackled into life.
"Lad! Lad! We're in the grip of some sort of turbulence—no idea just what—but the craft is being sucked into a mid-region between Saturn and Jupiter, where there seems to be a stationary meteor-swarm, or what appears to be that, at least in the ’scopes," came Zoar's voice, crackling with excitement.
Star stiffened: what he had been dreading was about to come true. He looked up to see the puzzled expression on the white-skinned face of his Venusian friend.
" 'Turbulence,' chief? What sort of turbulence could there be in space?" murmured Phath bewilderedly.
Star tightened his lean jaw tensely.
"You've forgotten the Vortex," he said tonelessly.
Phath’s pink eyes blinked—then widened. They were shadowed with a faint and ominous premonition.
"Swamp-devils of Venus! You're right, chief! Yaklar help us all—the Vortex!"
6. Vortex of Doom
Both men had forgotten that their suit radios were still switched on, and that Dr. Zoar could hear every word they spoke to each other. His puzzled voice came rasping through the crackle of cosmic-ray static.
"Vortex? What Vortex, my boy? Unless you mean that old space legend ... the Sargasso of Space ... the graveyard of lost ships ... but surely—"
"It’s no legend, Doc, believe me," grated Star Pirate in ringing tones. "I’ve not only seen the swarm of lost rockets drifting forever at the heart of the Vortex, but I almost got caught up in the gravity tides on the edge of the Vortex once, years ago."
Phath stared at him blankly, and Star Pirate forced a mirthless chuckle to his lips.
"That was before you joined forces with me," he remarked. "And how I could have used you at my side that day!" His memory hearkened back to days and nights of ceaseless toil, without sleep, food and water and even his supplies of air running low, as he had battled the remorseless suction of the gravity tides that had been pulling the Jolly Roger deeper and deeper into the tangle of dead, long-deserted and abandoned space vessels at the Vortex’s mysterious heart.