assembled tube was placed in the annealing oven, where it would remain at a high and
constant temperature until its filaments, grids, and plates had been installed. Eventually,
in that same oven, it would be allowed to cool slowly and uniformly over a period of
days.
Thus were performed many other tasks which are ordinarily done either by
automatic machinery or by highly-skilled specialists in labor—for these two, thrown upon
their own resources, had long since learned how much specialization may be
represented by the most commonplace article. Whenever they needed a thing they did
not have—which happened every day—they had either to make it or else, failing in that,
to go back and build something that would enable them to manufacture the required
item. Such setbacks had become so numerous as to be expected as part of the day’s
work; they no longer caused exasperation or annoyance. For two days the jacks-of-all-
trades worked at many lines and with many materials before Stevens called a halt.
“All x, Nadia, it’s time for us to lay off of the tinkering and turn into astronomers.
We’ve been out for fifty I-P hours, and we’d better begin looking around for our heap of
scrap metal,” and, the girl at the communicator plate and Stevens at their one small
telescope, they began to search the black, star-jeweled heavens for Cantrell’s Comet.
“According to my figures, it ought to be about four hours right ascension, and
something like plus twenty degrees declination. My figures aren’t accurate, though,
since I’m working purely from memory, so we’d better cover everything from Aldebaran
to the Pleides.”
“But the directions will change as we go along, won’t they?”
“Not unless we pass it, because we’re heading pretty nearly straight at it, I think.”
“I don’t see anything interesting thereabouts except stars. Will it have much tail ?”
“Very little—it’s close to aphelion, you know, and a comet doesn’t have much of a
tail so far away from the sun. Hope it’s got some of its tail left, though, or we may miss it
entirely.”
Hours passed, during which the two observers peered intently into their
instruments, then Stevens straightened up and stretched.
“Looks bad, ace—we should have spotted it before this. Time to eat, too. You’d
better . . .”
“Oh, look here, quick!” Nadia interrupted. “Here’s something! Yes, it is a comet,
and quite close—it’s got a little bit of a dim tail.”
Stevens leaped to the communicator plate and, blonde head pressed close to
brown, the two wayfarers studied the, faint image of the wanderer of the void.
“That’s it, I just know it is!” Nadia declared. “Steve, as a computer, you’re a
blinding flash and a deafening report !”
“Yeah—missed it only about half a million kilometers or so,” he replied, grinning,
“and I’d fire a whole flock of I-P check stations for being four thousand off. However, I
could have done worse—I could easily have forgotten all the data on it, instead of only
half of it.” He applied a normal negative acceleration, and Nadia heaved a profound sigh
of relief as her weight returned to her and her body again became manageable by the
ordinary automatic and involuntary muscles.
“Guess I am a kind of a weight-fiend at that, Steve— this is much better!” she
exclaimed.
“Nobody denies that weight is more convenient at times; but you’re a
spacehound just the same—you’ll like it after a while,” he prophesied.
Stevens took careful observations upon the celestial body, altered his course
sharply, then, after a measured time interval again made careful readings.
“That’s it, all x,” he announced, after completing his calculations, and reduced
their negative acceleration by a third. “There—we’ll be just about traveling with it when
we get there,” he said. “Now, little K. P. of my bosom, our supper’s been on plus time for
hours. What say we shake it up?”
“I check you to nineteen decimals,” and the two were soon attacking the savory
Ganymedean goulash which Nadia had put in the cooker many hours before.
“Should we both go to sleep, Steve, or should one of us watch it?”
“Sleep, by all means. There’s no meteoric stuff out here, and we won’t arrive
before ten o’clock tomorrow, I-P time,” and, tired out by the events of the long day, man
and maid sought their beds and plunged into dreamless slumber.
While they slept the Forlorn Hope drove on through the void at a terrific but
constantly decreasing velocity and far off to one side, plunging along a line making a
sharp angle with their own course, there loomed larger and larger the masses which
made up the nucleus of Cantrell’s Comet.
Upon awakening, Stevens’ first thought was for the comet, and he observed it
carefully before he aroused Nadia, who hurried into the control room. Looming large in
the shortened range of the plate their objective hurtled onward in its eternal course, its
enormous velocity betrayed only by the rapidity with which it sped past the incredibly
brilliant background of infinitely distant stars. Apparently it was a wild jumble of separate
fragments; a conglomerate, heterogenous aggregation of rough and jagged masses
varying in size from grains of sand up to enormous chunks which upon Earth would
have weighed millions of tons. Pervading the whole nucleus a slow, indefinite movement
was perceptible —a vague writhing and creeping of individual components working and
slipping past and around each other as they all rushed forward in obedience to the
immutable cosmic law of gravitation.
“Oh, isn’t that wonderful!” Nadia breathed. “Think of actually going to visit a
comet! It sort of scares me, Steve—it’s so creepy and crawly looking. We’re awfully
close, aren’t we ?”
“Not so very. We’d probably have lots of time to eat breakfast. But just to be on
the safe side, maybe I’d better camp here at the board, and you bring me over
something to eat.”
“All x, Chief!” and Stevens ate, one eye upon the screen, watching closely the
ever-increasing bulk of the comet.
For many minutes he swung the Forlorn Hope in a wide curve, approaching the
masses of metal ever and ever more nearly, then turned to the girl.
“Hold everything, Nadia—power’s going off in a minute!” He shut off the beam;
then, noting that they were traveling a trifle faster than the comet, he applied a small
voltage to one dirigible projector. Darting the beam here and there, he so corrected their
flight that they were precisely stationary in relation to the comet. He then opened his
switches, and the Forlorn Hope hurtled on. Apparently motionless, it was now a part of
Cantrell’s Comet, traveling in a stupendous, elongated ellipse about the Master of our
Solar System, the sun.
“There, ace, who said anything about weight-fiends ? I was watching you, and
you never turned a hair that time.”
“Why, that’s right—I never even thought about it—I was so busy studying that
thing out there! Suppose I’ve got used to it already?”
“Sure—you’re one of us now. I knew you would be. Well, let’s go places and do
things! You’d better put on a suit, too, so you can stand in the air-lock and handle the
line.”
They donned the heavily-insulated, heated suits, and Stevens snapped into their
sockets the locking plugs of the drag line.
“Hear me?” he asked. “Sound-disks all x?”
“All x.”
“On the radio—all x?”
“All x.”
“I tested your tanks and heaters—they’re all x. But you’ll have to test . . .”
“I know the ritual by heart, Steve. It’s been in every show in the country for the
last year, but I didn’t know you had to go through it every time you went out-of-doors!
Valves, number one all x, two all x, three all x . . .”
“Quit it!” he snapped. “You aren’t testing those valves! That check-up is no joke,
guy. These suits are complicated affairs, and some parts are apt to get out of order. You
see, a thing to give you fresh air at normal pressure and to keep you warm in absolute
space can’t be either simple or foolproof. They’ve worked on them for years, but they’re
pretty crude yet. They’re tricky, and if one goes sour on you out in space it’s just too
bad—you’re lucky to get back alive. A lot of men are out there somewhere yet because
of sloppy check-ups.”
” ‘Scuse it, please—I’ll be good,” and the careful checking and testing of every
vital part of the space-suits went on.
Satisfied at last that the armor was spaceworthy, Stevens picked up the coils of
drag-line, built of a non-metallic fiber which could retain its flexibility and strength in the
bitter cold of outer space, and led the girl into the air-lock.
“Heavens, Steve! It’s perfectly stupendous, and grinding around worse than the
wreckage of the Arcturus was when I wouldn’t let you climb up it—why, I thought comets
were little, and hardly massive at all!” exclaimed the girl.