If the worst came to the worst there was still a way of escape! Still a way open to them. A doorway it would take courage to cross, but it was there. A doorway to another way, to another form of life, to a life that might be better than the one they had. Old Ben said he was happy … and that was all that mattered. Just strip off their suits and walk unprotected into the full glare of the light.
He cursed at himself, savagely. That wasn’t the way to do things. If it happened and one couldn’t help it … all right. But to do it deliberately … that was something else. Perhaps, if all else failed, if there was no other way …
They found the box containing the strange musical instrument and between them they lugged it out. Despite the lesser gravity it was heavy and hard to handle.
Outside, in front of the lock, they pried up the lid. Instantly, music filled all of space. Not music in the sense that it was sound, but a rhythmic pulse and beat that one could sense. Music that filled the heart with yearning, music that made one want to dance, music that plucked and pulled at the heartstrings with tripping, silvery fingers. Sobbing notes and clear, high notes that rang like the gladsome clanging of a bell, rippling music like wind across the water and sonorous chords like the bellowing of a drum. Music that swelled and swelled, reaching out and out, appealing to all emotions, crying for understanding.
Johnny saw the astonished oval of Karen’s face through the helmet plate.
She saw him looking at her. “How lovely!” she cried.
“It’s the radiations again,” said George, breathlessly. “Old Ben was right. The thing plays by radiation.”
“Look at the Beasts!” Johnny shouted.
The Beasts were shuffling toward them, hopping and running, sliding down from their perches on the soaring pinnacles, racing across the boulder jumbled valley floor.
George and Johnny lifted their guns from the holsters and waited. The Beasts advanced and stopped, forming a half circle in front of the wrecked ship. Every line of their gruesome bodies had assumed a pose of rapt attention. They did not even seem to see the Earthmen. Motionless, as if carven from stone, they listened to the swelling paean that swept up and out of the metal box.
Johnny let out his breath, slowly. But he still kept a tight grip upon the gun. The Beasts seemed to be hypnotized, held entranced by the music that poured from out the radiation instrument.
Johnny spoke softly to the others: “As long as the music lasts it will keep them quiet. Keep in the lock and watch. Don’t take any chances.”
“What are you going to do?” asked Karen, sharp anxiety in her voice.
“There’s one emergency boat left,” said Johnny. “All the others are smashed. I’m taking it up and see about the ships. They are our only chance.”
“I’ll help you,” offered George.
Johnny turned to face Karen. “Please take care of yourself.”
She nodded. “And you, Johnny. You take care of yourself, too.”
The ship was old … a thousand years at least, but it seemed to be serviceable. The hull appeared in good shape. The rocket tubes were intact. A meteor had drilled a hole as big as a man’s hand through the pilot cabin. But it had missed the instruments and it would not be too big a job to patch the holes. Probably there were other similar holes through the rest of the ship but they wouldn’t matter unless the rocketing projectiles had smashed the machinery. The machinery in a ship of this sort was elemental. Mostly fuel tanks, combustion chamber and tubes. No niceties.
Johnny walked to the control board and grinned as he looked over the instruments and controls. Not much to them. In the days when this craft had set out to sail the void a space ship was a rocket pure and simple … nothing else.
But the ship was the best he had found so far. He had visited three others and all three were damaged beyond repair. The fuel tanks had been smashed in one. In another the control panel had been shattered by a tiny bit of whizzing stone and the third had one of the rockets sheared off.
Johnny walked back to the open lock and peered down at the asteroid. The valley where the pyramid was situated was just coming over the horizon and the light from the flame made it appear that dawn had just arrived on the little world.
He whirled from the lock and went to the door communicating with the stern of the ship. He’d have to look over the fuel tanks and other machinery, make sure that everything was all right. And he had to hurry. Johnny could imagine what was going on in the minds of the two he had left in the flame-lit valley. The speculation and apprehension, the pitting of hope against hope.
The door creaked open and Johnny stepped through into the living quarters.
The room looked lived in. After all these years it appeared as it must have that day nearly a thousand years before when the men who drove the ship had dared come into the Belt, had left their course to investigate the Flame in Space. They had been trapped, exactly as the crews of all those other ships had been trapped. Caught by radiations that turned them into something that didn’t have human form, although human thoughts and aspirations and human hope might still remain. Adventurers all … men who felt within them the lure of the unknown, men who had dared to come and see and hadn’t been able to get back again.
Broken dishes and crockery lay on the floor, where they had been swept off the table or hurled from the shelving by the rocking of the ship, by the shock of hammering debris. The bunks were unmade, exactly as they had been left when the men had tumbled out to rush forward and look out through the vision plate at the mystery which loomed ahead.
A strange tingle of fear rippled along Johnny’s spine. He stopped and listened, looking around.
His hand slid down to the butt of his blaster.
Then he laughed, a throaty laugh. Getting jittery in an old ship. There wasn’t anything here. There couldn’t be anything here. Nothing except the ghosts of the men who had manned the craft ten centuries ago. He shuddered at the thought. Could it be possible that the ghosts of the old crew were still here? Was it possible that the things they had been turned into by the radiations still hovered in this room, keeping eternal watch?
He cursed at his fears and strode forward but fear still rode upon his shoulder, a little jeering fear that taunted him and yelped in hideous glee.
The fuel tanks were intact, the combustion chamber seemed undamaged. His inspection of the ship from the emergency boat had assured him that the tubes were unhurt. The ship could be navigated.
Back in the living quarters he stopped momentarily, his eyes lighting on a desk. The ship’s log would be kept there. He had just time for a peek. Find out something about the ship. The name of its captain, the identity of the men who had served under him, its ports of call, its home port back on Earth.
He hesitated. The desk drew him like a magnet. He took a swift step forward and slammed into something. Something that yielded to the touch, but with a sense of terrible strength.
Heart in his throat, he backed away. He felt his legs and arms grow cold as ice, the muscles of his abdomen squeezing in, the sudden surge of fear hazing his brain. But his reflexes were at work. Like an automaton, he reacted to the spur of danger. His right hand swept the blaster free and he paced backward, on the alert, like a retreating cat, poised for instant action.
He felt his way through the door into the pilot cabin, backed warily for the open port. But there he stopped. Maybe he had imagined he ran into something back there in the living quarters. Maybe there wasn’t anything at all. Space sometimes did queer things to a man. He needed this ship … Karen and George back on the asteroid needed it. He couldn’t let himself be scared away by wild imaginings.