Three Survived: A Science Fiction Novel Read online

  “It’s that bright star right in front. That’s what happens when a spaceship’s fuel storage chambers explode. There’s nothing left of that ship but atoms.”

  Leswick shuddered. “We got away just in time!”

  As they watched, the fiery glow dimmed and faded. In a minute or two the explosion was over and nothing could be seen. The air in the cabin was cool again.

  “The computer is gone too, of course,” Rand said. “It can’t work out an orbit now. We’re completely on our own,”

  “Can you land the ship yourself?” Leswick asked.

  Rand shrugged. “I can try.”

  Trying to land a ship without a computer’s help was a tough assignment. The problem was that both you and the place where you wanted to land were in motion. You had to aim your ship at the place where the planet was going to be when you planned to get there.

  It was something like firing a gun at a moving target. It’s important to allow for the ground your target will cover before the bullet reaches it.

  Of course, it’s a much harder trick to aim a spaceship at a planet than to aim a rifle at a rabbit. Even a little lifeship like this one could reach pretty fantastic speeds. Just a tiny error in the calculations, and Rand would fail to connect with the planet. He might miss it and go right on past.

  A different kind of error in the calculations and he’d be traveling too fast when landing time came. The lifeship might slam into the planet at high speed and crack up. A ship in space is different from a rifle bullet, that way. It doesn’t matter how fast the bullet is going, as long as it gets to the right place at the right time. But a spaceship has to slow its speed down to zero miles per hour when it lands. Otherwise — look out!

  Rand found some chart paper on a shelf in the lifeship. He also found a little pocket computer. It wasn’t much more than a sort of adding machine, but he needed all the help he could get.

  He grabbed a pencil and started to write down some numbers.

  “Hand me that chartbook,” Rand said. “Let’s see if I can find out anything useful.”

  The lifeship’s chartbook was a bulky volume that gave information about all the planets that human beings had ever explored. Rand hunted for the star numbered GGC 8788845 and found it quickly. There wasn’t much information there — but it would have to be enough.

  The chartbook said that star GGC 8788845 was about the same size and astronomical type as Earth’s own sun. Good. It wouldn’t have been pleasant to have to land on a planet of a dwarf star, where the temperature would be close to absolute zero. Or to land on a planet of one of the hot blue-white stars, where they might get fried instantly.

  GGC 8788845 had three planets. The middle one was the one that had the rescue beacon. The chartbook said that it was an Earth-type world with an atmosphere that human beings could breathe. That was another headache they would avoid. They wouldn’t need to bundle up in spacesuits while they searched for the rescue beacon.

  Rand got to work.

  It was terribly quiet in the lifeship cabin. The only sound was the scratching of Rand’s pencil as it moved rapidly across the chart paper. Leswick and Dombey were silent, but they looked over Rand’s shoulders, trying to see what he was doing.

  Neither of them had any idea of what was going on, of course. They could never have begun to land the lifeship without him, Rand knew.

  The orbit took shape. Rand’s instruments told him how far it was from the lifeship’s present position to the planet with the rescue beacon. He already knew how fast the lifeship was able to travel. What he needed to figure out was the speed that the planet was going in its own orbit.

  Once he knew that, he could work out an orbit for the lifeship that would match the planet’s orbit. He would bring the lifeship closer and closer to the planet, until ship and planet were traveling in the same orbit. Then he’d make rendezvous and land — if his luck held out.

  The chartbook gave him some figures about the planet’s orbit. He was able to calculate the rest. He made plenty of mistakes as he worked. Soon the chart paper was blurred and smeared and messy from all the erasing he was doing.

  But Rand’s confidence was growing. He felt sure that the orbit he was working out was a good one, and would get them safely down.

  “Okay,” Rand said finally, a long while later. The lifeship had been moving in a big circle through space while he was working. Now he checked out his figures one last time. “We can start our landing approach,” he announced.

  The lifeship’s engine controls were like the keyboard of a typewriter. Rand let his fingers rest lightly on the keys while he looked over the instruction panel. At last he felt ready to begin. He started to tap out his orders.

  “Hand me that chartbook again,” Rand said. “While we’re heading for the planet, maybe I can figure out where that rescue beacon is.”

  The chartbook told him that Earthmen had visited this planet only once — fifty years before. An Exploration Corps team had stopped off there for a quick visit. They had collected information about the three worlds of the star GGC 8788845. They had also taken the time to set up a rescue beacon on one of those worlds.

  The Exploration Corps was trying to set up rescue beacons all through the galaxy. That way, space-wrecked travelers anywhere would have a chance of calling for help.

  Rand was gambling that the beacon would still be there after fifty years, and that it would still work right. But he didn’t really have much choice.

  The lifeship wasn’t stocked with fuel for a long voyage. The planet ahead was just about the only one it could have reached.

  Let’s see, now, Rand thought. The beacon is on the big continent north of the equator and —

  Leswick said, “Tell me, does this planet have a name?”

  “It’s called Tuesday,” Rand said, and went on making calculations.

  “Tuesday? What a strange name!”

  “I didn’t name it,” Rand muttered.

  “But why would anyone call a planet Tuesday?”

  Rand looked up, annoyed. “It’s Exploration Corps rules that every planet has to be named by the survey team that visits it. At first they named the planets for famous men or for cities or countries. That’s how we got planets named Kennedy and Columbus and New Shanghai.”

  “Yes, but —”

  “Let me finish, as long as you asked. There are billions of stars, and most of those stars have planets in orbit around them. All the famous names were used up long ago. So now we get planets named Fred and Joe and Sam. There’s a planet named Death, and one named Hothouse, and one called Lambchop.”

  “And a planet named Tuesday,” Leswick said.

  “Sure. Maybe it’s the day the planet was discovered. Or the day the explorers left to go home. Look, it doesn’t matter what the planet’s called, or why. What matters is making a safe landing.”

  Dombey said, “Hey, today’s Tuesday! Maybe that’s good luck — landing on Tuesday on Tuesday!”

  Rand smiled faintly. He kept on working, and got the lifeship aimed toward the continent where the rescue beacon had been set up. With luck, he thought, we’ll land there.

  After that, the next problem was finding the beacon once they had landed. The Clyde F. Bohmer’s computer could have guided the lifeship to a landing in exactly the right spot. Rand, doing the best he could without the computer, knew he’d be doing well to come down within a thousand miles of the beacon.

  One headache at a time, though, he told himself. And the first job was to land the lifeship without getting killed.

  CHAPTER 6

  THEY WERE getting closer and closer to the planet called Tuesday.

  The lifeship swung around the planet in an orbit that was almost a circle. Each time around, the ship moved in, getting a little nearer to its goal. Before long it would be close enough to pass through Tuesday’s atmosphere. Then Rand would fire the braking jets to slow the ship, and bring it in for a landing.

  He was working hard. He couldn’t relax for
a minute, now. He had to keep checking the orbit, making certain the ship was taking the right path down.

  He glanced back at the two men in the acceleration couches. Dombey was completely relaxed. He was grinning, and he was rocking back and forth in rhythm with the pounding of the engines. He looked like he was enjoying himself.

  Leswick was more nervous. He was peering at the control board with beady eyes, watching everything Rand was doing.

  Rand smiled, but it was a tense smile. The lives of these two men were in his hands. They could never have piloted this lifeship anywhere. What did they know of orbits and thrust, of jet compensation and mass ratios, and all the rest?

  Nothing. Nothing at all.

  Their lives depended on Rand’s ability to turn book-learning into practical skills. His training in spaceship theory had simply been part of his general education as an engineer. But it was turning out to be awfully important knowledge. Leswick and the big jetmonkey were just dead weight on this trip, Rand thought. Just dead weight.

  Leswick said, “How much longer before we reach that planet?”

  “Relax,” Rand said. “We’re on our way.”

  The planet called Tuesday was rapidly growing in the front viewscreen. Rand felt the ice-cold lump of tension inside him beginning to melt. In its place came a sort of quiet joy, as he realized that his know-how and his logical outlook were going to get them there.

  Who said piloting spaceships is tough work, he thought? There’s nothing to it! It’s a cinch!

  Tuesday was close enough now so Rand could see the continent where the rescue beacon was supposed to be. It was a round continent with jagged edges and ocean all around it. A huge river ran on an angle from northwest to southeast. There were some big lakes in the southwest.

  The middle of the continent was a deep green color. As though a dense jungle covered everything.

  In another few minutes, the lifeship would be landing. Rand couldn’t stay at the control panel any longer. He got up and moved across the little cabin toward the empty acceleration couch next to Leswick.

  “What’s the matter?” Leswick asked.

  Rand strapped himself into the acceleration couch. He stretched out on the foamy plastic cushion.

  “We’re about to land,” he said. “I’m letting the automatic pilot bring us down. It may be a bumpy landing, and I want all the padding I can get when we hit.”

  He hoped all his calculations had been right. There was nothing he could do about it at this point, though, if he’d made a mistake. Right now all they could do was hang on tight and pray.

  The lifeship rushed toward the planet.

  Tuesday’s jungles grew on the viewscreen. The television cameras in the lifeship’s nose showed giant trees tightly packed together.

  Down — down —

  “Here we come!” Rand yelled.

  The braking jets were firing now. The lifeship’s engines were trying to slow the ship’s fall toward the planet. Moment by moment the speed dropped.

  Down —

  Down through the treetops. Rand closed his eyes. He felt the impact as the lifeship smashed through the green roof of the jungle. How fast would they be going when they hit solid ground? Too fast, maybe?

  The moment of landing arrived.

  The lifeship swayed wildly as it sliced into the trees. It bounced from tree to tree, nearly flipped over, and somehow managed to come down right side up.

  Hard.

  It cracked into the jungle floor and came to rest.

  Rand opened his eyes one at a time. He wriggled his shoulders. He lifted his legs. His body seemed to be working right, so he hadn’t broken anything. He felt a little shaken up, that was all. For the first time he understood what it might be like to be a scrambled egg.

  “Everybody okay back there?” he called. “Dombey? Leswick?”

  “That was a bumpy one, boss,” Dombey said.

  “We made it, didn’t we?” Rand unstrapped himself and looked around the cabin. “Hey, Leswick! Leswick?”

  The expert on Metaphysical Synthesis looked a little groggy. He seemed a little green in the face, too. Leswick put his hand to his forehead as if trying to wipe away an imaginary spiderweb that covered his eyes. But he said, “I’m still in one piece — I think.”

  “The ship sure ain’t,” Dombey said.

  Rand nodded. The force of the landing had cracked and dented and split the wall of the lifeship in many places. The lifeship’s hatch had popped, and was wide open. Rand swung himself through it and dropped lightly to the ground outside the ship.

  The landing had made quite a mess. Out of the ship, and out of the jungle, too.

  Huge trees had been snapped off and thrown around like twigs. There was fallen timber everywhere. The braking jets had scorched the ground over a wide area. Tangled vines trailed down from trees that hadn’t fallen.

  The lifeship had plowed deep into the soft, spongy ground. It had smashed up its landing fins, ruined its jets, and demolished most of its rear assembly. That was one ship that wasn’t going anywhere ever again.

  But the three passengers had come through the landing in good shape. And that was the important thing, after all.

  Dombey came out of the ship after Rand. He took a deep breath. “It smells pretty good,” the jetmonkey said. He stood leaning against the ship’s battered hull, his legs planted firmly in the turned-up soil, his head thrown back. “Smells just like air — real air. Good place, huh?”

  Leswick peered through the open hatch. He said uneasily, “Isn’t it dangerous? Should we breathe the air of an unknown world without making some sort of test?”

  Rand grinned. “We are making a test. We’re breathing the air, and it isn’t killing us. Risky, but it happens to be the only test we’re equipped to make. We’re not carrying much in the way of scientific instruments on this ship.”

  “Well —”

  “Anyway,” Rand went on, “the ship split open before we had a chance to put spacesuits on. So we were breathing the air right away, and it didn’t hurt us. Why make a fuss now?”

  “Suppose it does some long-range harm to us?”

  “The chartbook says that this planet has air that Earthmen can breathe,” Rand replied. “Which means it’s mostly nitrogen and oxygen and good things like that, with no poisonous stuff like methane thrown in. And besides that, what metaphysical suggestion would you have for going somewhere else, if the air wasn’t good here? The lifeship’s wrecked, you know.”

  Leswick shrugged. “I guess you’re right. I don’t know.”

  Rand turned away. He couldn’t stand illogical people, and Leswick just didn’t like to think logically. Which made Leswick a worse handicap right now than Dombey. Dombey didn’t like to think at all — but, unlike Leswick, he was big and strong. No doubt his strength would come in handy while they were searching for the rescue beacon. Rand figured that that was going to be a long, hard search.

  He surveyed his team. It wasn’t too promising.

  Leswick hardly looked like the type who would do well at jungle exploring. He was a small, thin man with graying hair and deep-set, shiny eyes. He looked like the kind who would be hopelessly lost and confused outside a library or classroom.

  As for Bill Dombey, Rand had privately started calling him Tarzan — King of the Apes. He was simply a huge good-natured animal. Rand stood a solid five-feet-eleven, but Dombey was more than six inches taller. Despite his size, Dombey managed to move gracefully. His face was broad and open, with thick, honest features.

  He looked like a good sort. Just not very bright, that was his only trouble.

  Leswick said, “How are we going to find the rescue beacon?”

  “It ought to be broadcasting a standard signal modulating a thirty-megacycle carrier,” said Rand. “Does that mean anything to you? Well, never mind. What we need to do is rig a detector that will pick up the signal. Then we follow the path the detector points out.”

  “Do we have such a detector?” Leswick
asked.

  “I’m going to build one,” Rand told him. “I’ll use some of the leftover radar parts from the lifeship. We won’t be needing the ship any more, so we can rip out whatever will be handy. Once we know where the rescue beacon is, we’re going to set out on foot. Got that?”

  “And what will we eat?” Leswick asked. “It may take days to reach the beacon! Our food supply —”

  Rand said, “It might even take months. We’ve got some food capsules in the lifeship’s survival kit, but they won’t last long. After that we start living off the land. We eat whatever we find that looks good to eat.”

  “But how will we know if it’s safe?”

  Rand let his breath out in a long angry whoosh. “You’re just overflowing with questions today, aren’t you, Leswick?”

  “I’m sorry. It’s just that I like to be careful in everything I do.”

  “Well, we’ll test the food the same way we tested the air — by trying it. If something doesn’t make us sick the first time, we’ll keep on eating it. Luckily, I know how to build a machine to give us pure water. But we’ll have to feel our way with the meat and the vegetables and take our luck.”

  “If you say so.”

  “I say so, yes. What else can we do? Anyway,” Rand said, “there isn’t all that much danger of catching a horrible disease on a strange planet. It turns out that Earthmen get sick only from type germs. The bugs here will probably have as little interest in us as we would in them.”

  “Very well,” Leswick said.

  “There’s one more thing we ought to settle now,” said Rand. “We’re going to find ourselves in situations where somebody’s going to have to make decisions for the three of us. And fast. We won’t be able to stop to take a vote.”

  “You’re saying we ought to pick a leader, then?”

  “You bet. A man to give orders when orders need to be given. And I think I ought to be the man, since I’m the only one here with any technical skills. What do you say?”

  “It suits me,” said Leswick. “You seem to know what you’re doing. I’ll take your orders.”

  Dombey remained silent.

  “What about you, Tarzan?” Rand asked.