“Doctor!” Perkins appealed to DuQuesne, who had watched the scene unmoved, a faint smile upon his saturnine
face. “Why don’t you shoot her? You won’t sit there and see me murdered!”
“Won’t I? It makes no difference to me which of you kills the other, or if you both do, or neither. You brought this
on yourself. Anyone with any fraction of a brain doesn’t leave guns lying around loose. You should have seen Miss
Vaneman take them-I did.”
“You saw her take them and didn’t warn me?” Perkins croaked.
“Certainly. If you can’t take care of yourself I’m not going to take care of you. Especially after the way you bungled
the job. I could have recovered the stuff she stole from that ass Brookings inside an hour.”
“How?” Perkins sneered. “If you’re so good, why did you have to come to me about Seaton and Crane?” “Because
my methods wouldn’t work and yours would. It isn’t on planning that you’re weak, as I told Brookings it’s on
execution.”
“Well, what are you going to do about her? Are you going to sit there and lecture all day?”
“I am going to do nothing whatever. Fight your own battles.”
Dorothy broke the silence that followed. “You did see me take the guns, doctor?”
“I did. You have one in your right breeches pocket now.”
“Then why didn’t you, or don’t you, try to take it away from me?” she asked, wonderingly.
” ‘Try’ is the wrong word. If I had not wanted you to take them you wouldn’t have. If I didn’t want you to have a gun
now I would take it away from you,” and his black eyes stared into her violet ones with such calm certainty that she
felt her heart sink.
“Has Perkins got any more knives or guns or things in his room?” Dorothy demanded.
“I don’t know,” indifferently. Then, as both girls started for Perkins’ room DuQuesne rapped out, “Sit down, Miss
Vaneman. Let them fight it out. Perkins has his orders about you; I’m giving you orders about him. If he oversteps,
shoot him. Otherwise, hands off completely-in every respect.”
Dorothy threw up her bead in defiance; but, meeting his cold stare, she paused irresolutely and sat down, while the
other girl went on.
“That’s better,” DuQuesne said. “Besides, it would be my guess that she doesn’t need any help.”
Margaret returned from the search and thrust her pistol back into her pocket. “That ends that,” she declared. “Are
you going to behave yourself or do I chain you by the neck to a post?”
“I suppose I’ll have to, if the doe’s gone back on me,” Perkins snarled. “But I’ll get you when we get back, you-”
“Stop it!” Margaret snapped. “Now listen. Call me names any more and I’ll start shooting. One name, one shot; two
names, two shots; and so on. Each shot in a carefully selected place. Go ahead.”
DuQuesne broke the silence that followed. “Well, now that the battle’s over and we’re fed and rested, I’ll put on
some power. Everybody into seats.”
For sixty hours he drove through space, reducing the acceleration only at mealtimes, when they ate and exercised
their stiffened, tormented bodies. The power was not cut down for sleep; everyone slept as best he could.
Dorothy and Margaret were together constantly and a real intimacy grew up between them. Perkins was for the
most part sullenly quiet. DuQuesne worked steadily during all his waking hours, except at mealtimes when he
talked easily and well. There was no animosity in his bearing or in his words; but his discipline was strict and his
reproofs merciless.
When the power bar was exhausted DuQuesne lifted the sole remaining cylinder into the engine, remarking “Well,
we should be approximately stationary, relative to Earth. Now we’ll start back.”
He advanced the lever, and for many hours the regular routine of the ship went on. Then DuQuesne, on walking, saw
that the engine was no longer perpendicular to the floor, but was inclined slightly. He read the angle of inclination
on the great circles, then scanned a sector of space. He reduced the current, whereupon all four felt a lurch as the
angle was increased many degrees. He read the new angle hastily and restored touring power. He then sat down at
the computer and figured-with that much power on, a tremendous unnerving job.
“What’s the matter, doctor?” Dorothy asked. “We’re being deflected a little from our course.” “Is that bad?”
“Ordinarily, no. Every time we pass a star its gravity pulls us a little out of line. But the effects are slight, do not
last long, and tend to cancel each other out. This is too big and has lasted altogether too long. If it keeps on, we
could miss the solar system altogether; and I can’t find anything to account for it.”
He watched the bar anxiously, expecting to see it swing back into the vertical, but the angle grew steadily larger. He
again reduced the current and searched the heavens for the troublesome body.
“Do you see it yet?” Dorothy asked, apprehensively. “No . . . but this optical system could be improved. I could do
better with night-glasses, I think.”
He brought out a pair of grotesque-looking binoculars and stared through them out of an upper window for perhaps
five minutes.
“Good God!” he exclaimed. “It’s a dead star and we’re almost onto it!”
Springing to the board, he whirled the bar into and through the vertical, then measured the apparent diameter of the
strange object. Then, after cautioning the others, he put on more power than he had been using. After exactly
fifteen minutes he slackened off and made another reading. Seeing his expression, Dorothy was about to speak, but
he forestalled her.
“We lost more ground. It must be a lot bigger than anything known to our astronomers. And I’m not trying to pull
away from it; just to make an orbit around it. We’ll have to put on full power-take seats!”
He left full power on until the bar was nearly gone and made another series of observations. “Not enough,” he said,
quietly.
Perkins screamed and flung himself upon the floor; Margaret clutched at her heart with both hands; Dorothy,
though her eyes looked like black holes in her white face, looked at him steadily and asked, “This is the end, then?”
“Not yet.” His voice was calm and level. “It’ll take two days, more or less, to fall that far, and we have a little copper
left for one last shot. I’m going to figure the angle to make that last shot as effective as possible.”
“Won’t the repulsive outer coating do any good?” “No; it’ll be gone long before we hit. I’d strip it and feed it to the
engine if I could think of a way of getting it off.” He lit a cigarette and sat at ease at the computer. He sat there,
smoking and computing, for over an hour. He then changed, very slightly, the angle of the engine. “Now we look for
copper,” he said. “There isn’t any in the ship itself-everything electrical is silver, down to our flashlights and the
bases of the lamps. But examine the furnishings and all your personal stuff-anything with copper or brass in it.
That includes metallic money-pennies, nickels, and silver.”
They found a few items, but very few. DuQuesne added his watch, his heavy signet ring, his keys, his tie-clasp, and
the cartridges from his pistol. He made sure that Perkins did not hold anything out. The girls gave up not only their
money and cartridges but their jewelry, including Dorothy’s engagement ring.
“I’d like to keep it, but … ” she said, as she added it to the collection.
“Everything goes that has any copper in it; and I’m glad Seaton’s too much of a scientist to buy platinum jewelry.
But, if we get away, I doubt very much if you’ll be able to see any difference in your ring. Very little copper in it
but we need every milligram we can get.”
He threw all the metal into the power chamber and advanced the lever. It was soon spent; and after the final
observation, while the others waited in suspense, he made his curt announcement.
“Not quite enough.”
Perkins, his mind already weakened, went completely insane. With a wild howl he threw himself at the unmoved
scientist, who struck him on the head with the butt of his pistol as he leaped. The force of the blow crushed
Perkin’s head and drove his body to the other side of the ship. Margaret looked as though she were about to faint.
Dorothy and DuQuesne looked at each other. To the girl’s amazement the man was as calm as though he were in his
own room at home on earth. She made an effort to hold her voice steady. “What next, doctor?”
“I don’t exactly know. I still haven’t been able to work out a method of recovering that plating. . . . It’s so thin that