The Makeshift Rocket (10 page)

The execution of this theory had been somewhat more difficult, but Herr Syrup’s years aboard the
Mercury Girl
had made him a highly skilled improviser and jackleg inventor. Now, tired, greasy, and content, he smoked a well-earned pipe as he stood admiring his creation. Partly, he waited for the electric coils which surrounded the boat and tapped the ship’s power lines, to heat the beer sufficiently; but that was very nearly complete, to the point of unsafeness. And partly he waited for the ship to reach that orbital point which would give his boat full tangential velocity toward the goal; that would be in a couple of hours.

‘Er … are you sure we had better not test it first?’ asked Sarmishkidu uneasily.

‘No, I t’ink not,’ said Herr Syrup. ‘First, it vould take too long to fix up an extra barrel. Ve been up here a veek or more vit’out a vord to Grendel. If O’Toole gets suspicious and looks t’rough a telescope and sees us scooting around, right avay he sends up a lifeboat full of soldiers; vich is a second reason for not making a test flight.’

‘But, well, that is, suppose something goes wrong?’

‘Den de spacesuit keeps me alive for several hours and you can stand vacuum about de same lengt’ of time. Emily vill be vatching us t’rough de ships’s telescope, so she can let McConnell out and he can come rescue us.’

‘And what if he can’t find us? Or if we have an accident out of telescopic range from here? Space is a large volume.’

‘I prefer you vould not mention dat possibility,’ said Herr Syrup with a touch of hauteur.

Sarmishkidu shuddered. ‘The things that an honest businessman has got to –
Donnervetter! Was ist das
?’

The sharp crack was followed by an earthquake tremble
through girders and plates. Herr Syrup sat down, hard. The deck twitched beneath him. He bounced up and pelted toward the exit. ‘Dat vas from de stern!’ he shouted.

He whipped through the bulkhead door, Sarmishkidu toiling in his wake, and up an interhold ladder to the axial passageway. Emily Croft had just emerged from the galley, a frying pan in one hand and an apron tied around her classic peplum. ‘Oh, dear, she cried, ‘I’m sure Rory’s cake has fallen. What was that noise?’

‘Yust vat I vould like to know.’ The engineer flung himself down the corridor. As he neared the stern, a faint acrid whiff touched his nose. ‘In de engine room, I am afraid,’ he panted.

‘The engine –
Rory
!’ shrieked the girl.

‘Comin’, macushla,’ said a cheerful voice, and the gigantic red-thatched shape swung itself up from the after companionway.

Rory McConnell hooked thumbs in his belt, planted his booted feet wide, and grinned all over his smoke-blackened snub face. Herr Syrup crashed to a halt and stared frog-eyed. The Erseman’s green tunic hung in rags and blood trickled from his nose. But the soot only made his teeth the more wolfishly white and his eyes the more high-voltage blue, while his bare torso turned out to carry even thicker muscles than expected.

‘Well, well, well,’ he beamed. ‘An’ so here we all are ag’in. Emily, me love, I ask your humble pardon for inny damage, but I couldn’t wait longer for the sight of yez.’

‘Vat have you done?’ wailed Herr Syrup.

‘Oh, well, sir, ‘twas nothin’. I had me cartridges, an’ a can opener an’ me teeth an’ other such tools. So I extracted the powder, tamped it in an auld beer bottle, lay a fuse, fired me last shot to light same, an’ blew out one of them doors. An’ now, sir, let’s have a look at what ye been doin’ this past
week, an’ then I think it best we return to the cool green hills of Grendel.’

‘Ooooh,’ said Herr Syrup.

McConnell laughed so that the hall rang with his joy, looked into the stricken wide gaze of his beloved and opened his arms. ‘No so much as a kiss to seal the betrothal?’ he said.

‘Oh … yes … I’m sorry, darling.’ Emily ran toward him.

‘I
am
sorry,’ she choked, burst into tears, and clanged the frying pan down on his head.

McConnell staggered, tripped on his boots, recovered, and waltzed in a circle. ‘Get away!’ screamed Emily. ‘Get away!’

Herr Syrup paused for one frozen instant. Then he flung out a curse, whirled, and pounded back along the corridor. At the interhold ladderhead he found Sarmishkidu, puffing along at the slow pace of a Martian under Terrestrial gee. ‘What has transpired?’ asked Sarmishkidu.

Herr Syrup scooped him up under one arm and bounded down the ladder. ‘Hey!’ squealed the Martian. ‘Let me go!
Bist du ganz geistegestort?
What do you mean, sir?
Urush nergatar shalmu ishkadan!
This instant!
Versteh’st du
?’

Rory McConnell staggered to the nearest wall and leaned on it for a few seconds. His eyes cleared. With a hoarse growl he sprang after the engineer. Emily stuck a shapely leg in his path. Down he went.

‘Please!’ she wept. ‘Please, darling, don’t make me do this!’

‘They’re gettin’ away!’ bawled McConnell. He got to his feet. Emily hit him with the frying pan. He sagged back to hands and knees. She stooped over him, frantically, and kissed the battered side of his head. He lurched erect. Emily slugged him again.

‘You’re being cruel’ she sobbed.

The bulkhead door closed behind Herr Syrup. He set the
unloading controls. ‘Ve ban getting out of here,’ he panted. ‘Before de Erser gets to de master svitch and stops everyt’ing cold.’

‘What Erser?’ sputtered Sarmishkidu indignantly.

‘Ours.’ Herr Syrup trotted toward the beer boat.

‘Oh, that one!’ Sarmishkidu hurried after him.

Herr Syrup climbed to the top of his boat’s hull and lifted the space armor torso. Sarmishkidu swarmed after him like a herpetarium gone mad. The Dane dropped the Martian inside, took a final checkaround, and lowered himself. He screwed the spacesuit into place and hunched, breathing heavily. His bicycle headlamp was the only illumination in the box. It showed him the bicycle itself, braced upright with the little generator hitched to its rear wheel; the pants of his space armor, seated on a case of beer; a bundle of navigation instruments, tables, pencils, slide rule, and note pad; a tool box; two oxygen cylinders and a C0
²
-H
²
0 absorber unit with an electric blower, which would also circulate the air as needed during free fall; the haywired control levers which were supposed to steer the boat; Sarmishkidu, draped on a box of pretzels; and Claus, disdainfully stealing from a box of popcorn which Herr Syrup suddenly realized he had no wav of popping. And then, of course, himself.

It was rather cramped quarters.

The air pump roared, evacuating the chamber. Herr Syrup saw darkness thicken outside the boat windows, as the fluoro light ceased to be diffused. And then the great hatch swung ponderously open, and steel framed a blinding circle of stars.

‘Hang on!’ he yelled. ‘Here ve go!’

The derrick scanned the little boat with beady photoelectric eyes, seized it in four claws, lifted it, and pitched it delicately through the hatch, which thereupon closed with an air of good riddance to bad rubbish. Since there was no
machine outside to receive the boat, it turned end for end, spun a few meters from the
Mercury Girl
, and drifted along in much the same orbit, still trying to rotate on three simultaneous axes.

Herr Syrup gulped. The transition to weightlessness was an outrage, and the stars ramping around his field of view didn’t help matters. His stomach lurched. Sarmishkidu groaned, hung onto the pretzel box with all six tentacles, and covered his eyes with his ears. Claus screamed, turning end for end in midair, and tried without success to fly. Herr Syrup reached for a control lever but didn’t quite make it. Sarmishkidu uncovered one sick eye long enough to mumble: ‘Bloody blank blasted Coriolis force.’ Herr Syrup clenched his teeth, caught a mouthful of mustache, grimaced, spat it out, and tried again. This time he laid hands on the switch and pulled.

A cloud of beer gushed frostily from one of the transverse pipes. After several rather unfortunate attempts, Herr Syrup managed to stop the boat’s rotation. He looked around him. He hung in darkness, among blazing stars. Grendel was a huge gibbous green moon to starboard. The
Mercury Girl
was a long rusty spindle to port. The asteroid sun, small and weak but perceived by the adaptable human eye as quite bright enough, poured in through the spacesuit helmet in the roof and bounced dazzlingly off his bare scalp.

He swallowed sternly, to remind his stomach who was boss, and began taking navigational sights. Sarmishkidu rolled a red look ‘upward’ at Claus, who clung miserably to the Martian’s head with eyes tightly shut.

Herr Syrup completed his figuring. It would have been best to wait a while yet, to get the maximum benefit of orbital ‘velocity toward New Winchester; but McConnell was not going to wait. Anyhow, this was such a slow orbit that it
didn’t make much difference. Most likely the factor would be quite lost among the fantastically uncertain quantities of the boat itself. One would have to take what the good Lord sent. He gripped the control levers.

A low murmur filled the cabin as the rearmost beer barrel snorted its vapors into space. There was a faint backward tug of acceleration pressure, which mounted very gradually as mass decreased. The thrust was not centered with absolute precision, and of course the distribution of mass throughout the whole structure was hit-or-miss, so the boat began to pick up a spin again. Steering by the seat of his pants and a few primitive meters, Herr Syrup corrected that tendency with side jets.

Blowing white beer fumes in all directions, the messenger boat moved slowly along a wobbling spiral toward New Winchester.

‘Oh darling, dearest, beloved,’ wept Emily, dabbing at Rory McConnell’s head, ‘forgive me!’

‘I love yez too,’ said the Erseman, sitting up, ‘but unliss ye’ll stop poundin’ in me skull I’ll have to lock yez up for the duration.’

‘I promise … I promise … oh, I couldn’t bear it! Sweetheart—’ Emily clutched his arm as he rose – ‘can’t you let them go now? I mean, they’ve gotten clean away, you’ve lost, so why don’t we wait here and, well, I mean to say, really.’

‘What do you mean to say?’

Emily blushed and lowered her eyes. ‘If you don’t know,’ she said in a prim voice, ‘I shall certainly not tell you.’

McConnell blushed too.

Then, resolutely, he started toward the bridge. The girl hurried after him. He flung back: ‘Tell me what it is they’re escapin’ in, an’ maybe I’ll be ready to concede hon’rable defeat.’ But having been informed, he only barked a laugh and said, ‘Well, an’ ’tis a gallant try, ’tis, but me with a regular spaceship at me beck can’t admit the end of the game. In fact, me dear, I’m sorry to say they haven’t a Plutonian’s chance in hell.’

By that time he was in the turret, sweeping the skies with its telescope. It took him a while to find the boat, already it was a mere speck in the gleaming dark. He scowled, chewed
his lip, and muttered half to himself:

‘’Twill take time to extract the polarity reverser, an’ me not a trained engineer. By then the craft will be indeed hard to locate. If I went on down to Grendel to get help, ’twould take hours to reach the ear of himself an’ assimble a crew, if I know me Erse lads. An’ hours is too long. So – I’ll have to go after our friends there alone. Acushla, I don’t think ye’ll betray their cause if ye fix me a sandwich or six an’ open me a bottle of beer whilst I work.’

McConnell did, in fact, require almost an hour to get the geegee repulsors to repulsing again. With the compensator still on the fritz, that put the ship’s interior back in free fall state. He floated, dashing the sweat from his brow, and smiled at Emily. ‘Go strap yourself in, me rose of Grendel, for I may well have to make some sharp maneuvers an’ I wouldn’t be bruisin’ of that fair skin – Damn! Git away!’ That was addressed to the sweat he had just dashed from his brow. Swatting blindly at the fog of tiny globules, he pushed one leg against a wall and arrowed out the door.

Up in the turret again, harnessed in his seat before the pilot console, he tickled its control and heard the engines purr. ‘Are ye ready, darlin’?’ he called into the intercom.

‘Not yet, sweetheart,’ Emily’s voice floated back. ‘One moment, please.’

‘A moment only,’ warned McConnell, squinting into the telescope. He could not have found the fleeing boat at all were it not for the temporary condensation of beer vapor into a cloud as expansion chilled it. And all he saw was a tiny, ghostly nebula on the very edge of vision. To be sure, knowing approximately what path the fugitives must follow gave him a track; he could doubtless always come within a hundred kilometers of them that way; but—

‘Are ye ready, me sugar?’

‘Not yet, love. I’ll be with you in a jiffy.’

McConnell drummed impatient fingers on the console. The
Mercury Girl
swung gently around Grendel. His head still throbbed.

‘Da-a-arlin’! Time’s a-wastin’! We’ll be late!’

‘Oh, give me just a sec. Really, dearest, you might remember when we’re married and have to go out someplace a girl wants to look her best, and that takes time, I mean dresses and cosmetics and so on aren’t classical but I guess if I can give up my principles for you so you can be proud of me and if I can eat the things you like even if they aren’t natural, well, then you can wait a little while for me to make myself presentable and—’

‘A man has two choices in this universe,’ said McConnell grimly to himself, ‘he can remain celibate or he can resign himself to spendin’ ten per cent of his life waitin’ for women.’

He glared at the chronometer. ‘We’re late already!’ he snapped. ‘I’ll have to run off a different approach curve to our orbit an’—’

‘Well, you can be doing it, can’t you? I mean, instead of just sitting there grumbling at me, why don’t you do something constructive like punching that old computer or whatever it is?’

McConnell stiffened. ‘Emily,’ he said through thinned lips, ‘are ye by any chance stallin’ me?’

‘Why, Rory, how could you? Merely because a girl has to-’

He calculated the required locus and said, ‘Ye’ve got just sixty seconds to prepare for acceleration.’