Chapter III

Ripon was sprawled back at his ease, a smoldering pipe in one hand and his glass in the other. He was smiling at Larry's startled expression, but he seemed to be serious. Vague memories were stirring in Larry Gibson's mind, memories of things he had read and heard in the old days before he became a drifter whose main effort was to avoid thinking at all. Crispin Gillingwater Ripon! He had heard the name before, though it had been in connection with abstract science rather than with practical rocket-ship flying. Somehow, his memory of the name was connected with failure, with public derision, and with rumors of outright charlatanism.

"I think I've heard of you," he said cautiously.

"In that case you have heard no good!" Ripon said cheerfully. "I am at present the problem child of the scientific world. The horrible example! A laughing stock for seedy professors and callow students. Mention of my name produces hoarse guffaws of mirth in scientific circles at the moment, young feller, but it will be different when I return from my successful trip to the Moon. Better come along."

"Why are you going at this time?"

"Because there are radium salts on the Moon, I am convinced. This world hasn't treated me with much respect, young feller, but I've had a good time on it for my sixty-odd years and I'm fond of the old place. I want to make the trip and get back before the Gray Death wipes out our population--including myself!"

"But you can't take a rocket-ship to the Moon," Larry protested. "Professor Staunton's attempt proved that thirty years ago."

"All it proved was that neither Staunton nor his ship were ever heard of again," Ripon said calmly. "I knew Staunton well. He was a good man, a careful man--but he wasn't Crispin Gillingwater Ripon! I'm making some changes of my own in the _Sky Maid_; changes that should spell the difference between success and failure."

When he looked back at it later, Larry had only a hazy recollection of the rest of that evening. The rum got to him. The one thing that did stick in his mind was a snatch of song that he and Ripon had sung over and over again, pounding their glasses on the table while the other men in the dingy little barroom stared at them in good-natured derision.

"There's only a few of us left,
And we never were worth a damn,
But I'll follow my vagrant star,
That's the kind of a guy I am!
(Drink it down!)
That's the kind of a guy I am!"

* * * * *

Larry Gibson awoke the next morning to the sound of many hammers beating on a steel shell. There was also a sharp and comprehensive ache that started at the top of his head, which felt as though someone had been hitting him with the butt of a ray-gun, and spread all down through his body. He groaned and sat up.

He lay in a bunk, in a steel-walled cabin. Evidently the officers' quarters on some strathoship. Across the white painted ceiling, where flakes of red rust were showing through the dirty paint, the word CONDEMNED had been stenciled in black. Sitting upright on the edge of his bunk, Larry momentarily dropped his head in his hands. Then he stood up and left the cabin, grinding his teeth at the ceaseless pound of the hammers on the steel shell.

At intervals, as Larry went slowly down the corridor, he passed the word CONDEMNED stenciled on the walls and bulk-heads. When the government inspectors decided that a a rocket-ship was no longer safe for flights through the vast emptiness of the strathosphere, they made the fact very evident! He climbed a ladder to an open manhole, and emerged into the bright sunlight of a winter morning. For an instant he filled his smoke-tainted lungs with deep gulps of fresh air. Then he looked about him.

He stood atop the red-painted hull of a rocket-ship. It was an old V-39, a type that had been first built some thirty years before and was now obsolete. The weathered paint was badly rust streaked, and the worst spots had been touched up with bright red lead so that they looked like livid scars. The ship was lying in a corner of the airport, and a gang of men were busy at what appeared to be an attempt at general reconditioning. After one look Larry didn't think it would do much good.

Turning forward along the top of the super-structure, Larry met a man in a faded blue uniform that bore the two stripes of a second officer. He was a lean, swarthy-faced man with a meticulously pointed mustache that contrasted strangely with his otherwise down-at-the-heels appearance.

"Morning," he said shortly. "I'm Colton, the second officer. Guess you're the new first mate."

"If so, it's news to me!" Larry said grimly. "Where's the madman that commands this decrepit craft?"

"You'll find the Old Man in the control room. And if you use your head, you won't speak slightingly of the _Sky Maid_ in his presence."

"When I want your advice I'll ask for it," Larry said. Colton's eyes blinked momentarily, but then he smiled and Larry immediately marked him down as a man to be watched. He didn't trust people who smiled when they were insulted.

"Suit yourself," Colton said as he turned away.

Crispin Gillingwater Ripon was bent over a set of strange diagrams spread out on the chart table in the control room. Thick smoke swirled from the short pipe clenched in his teeth. His face was deeply lined this morning, and there were wrinkled hollows under his eyes, but he looked up with a broad grin as Larry came into the dusty control room. His reckless eyes were bright and cheerful in spite of being bloodshot.

* * * * *

"Cheerio, young feller!" he boomed. "How's the pride of the strathosphere this morning?"

"All right," Larry said shortly. "It seems that I owe you thanks for a night's lodging. But what's this about my being first mate of this hulk?"

"Accepting your unspoken apology for having maligned my ship," Ripon said severely, "the statement is correct. You signed on last night. I have your signature to prove it--although it's a bit shaky because I had to guide your hand which seemed unable to hold the pen."

"Do you know who I am?" Larry asked grimly.

"Do I know who you are?" Ripon's lean, brown face suddenly crinkled into a smile. "Good Lord, young feller, you spent two hours last night telling me your life's history while you cried into your beer."

"Then I can't have told you the whole story." The hang-over, and the fact that he had not had any solid food in nearly twenty-four hours, were making Larry slightly dizzy. His voice rose in spite of himself. "I'm Larry Gibson, black-listed in every airport in the world. 'Gibson the Murderer,' the newspapers called me. I'm the man who was master of the rocket-liner _Pegasus_ when she fell into the South Pacific with a loss of a hundred lives. It wasn't really my fault, but the inspectors believed some fools who lied to save their own skins. Now, my friend, do you see why I can't sail on even your shaky old craft? I was drummed out of the service, and ever since...."

"And ever since you've been going around feeling sorry for yourself!" Ripon's voice cut sharply through the mists of Larry's bitterness. "Hell, young feller, I've been disgraced worse than that more than once. I just don't pay any attention to it. Forget it. I need a first officer on this trip, and I believe your story that the disaster wasn't your fault, and there's an end to it! You're coming along."

"But I haven't even a license any more."

"That doesn't matter. Governmental regulations don't apply to a trip to the Moon. They don't license a man for what they think is suicide, you know! Go ashore and get some breakfast to steady you down. Then, when you feel better, come back and I'll go over the details of the trip with you."

For a long moment Larry stared at Ripon. Then he began to laugh.

"By the Lord Harry, I think you're crazy!" he said. The gaunt scientist grinned back at him with complete good humor.

"Better people than you have called me that, young feller," he said cheerfully. "They've been expecting me to get myself killed for years. But Crispin Gillingwater Ripon is still alive and healthy--albeit somewhat battered. Follow my star and you'll have plenty of excitement, even though it may get you nothing more than a broken head."