Chapter IV

I gasped, listening to Irene. I didn't know what surprised and confused me most--her being alive and safe, or what she'd done about old Art Haynes. Could I trust old Art? I had no way of telling. Had Irene told him about his nephew, or had she kept silent? Did he know he was opposed to Norman Haynes, or did he think it was somebody else who had sabotaged the project? Where would his loyalties be, if he found out? It was a ticklish situation.

As soon as Irene's ragged, excited breathing died away in the speaker, Norman Haynes took it upon himself to clarify his own stand, and my uncertainties. He looked at Geedeh and Pa and me, tense and suffering in the grip of the gravity, and tortured with doubt.

"Uncle Art is an old fool," he said. "So he thinks he'll come back to the asteroids, and replace me in the business, does he? Well, he should have died long ago, and now is as good a time as any! He might as well be part of the accident, too, along with those space bums of yours. Nobody'll ever know!"

It was tragic that old Art couldn't have heard that. But his nephew wasn't broadcasting. He was just listening quietly. And now his uncle's voice was coming through:

"We're blasting in to land, Wallace, if you're listening. There won't be any more trouble, now. I'll see to that! We'll find out who's back of this sabotage. We'll put an end to it!"

For me it was bitter, black irony--old Art proving himself our friend, now! He didn't know his enemy. He was nearly ninety--a grim old fighter, with real vision. Irene too, who meant everything to me. She didn't know that with the intensified gravity those incoming ships would be smashed and blazing!

My mind was growing a bit dim in the strangling pressure of the artificial gravitation. Sweat was streaming from me in the smothering heat that added to the oppressiveness of the heavy air. Pa Mavrocordatus was groaning the name of his daughter. Geedeh's great eyes were fixed on me in helpless suffering.

Through the shrill sounds of the engines I listened for more words from Irene and old Art. But none came. They must know their doom by now. They must be fighting savagely and hopelessly to get away. Still some distance from 487, they were already caught, deep in the web of invisible force.

After some moments, I heard a distant crash, a roll of sound. What was it? A huge rocket, hitting the jagged crags above, at meteoric speed? Crumpling, destroying itself and those inside it? I thought my heart would burst with the added weight of my anxiety.

The first crash was only the beginning. Others followed in quick succession--inexorably. And there was a faint, far-off roar, coming down from ten miles above.

And that roar was the roar of titanic rain. Of floods of water coming down this shaft, where the gravity machine was! All the countless tons of water that we'd baked from ancient rocks, and which had been mostly suspended as vapor in our synthetic atmosphere, was condensing now, coming down in torrents!

* * * * *

Norman Haynes kept grinning satanically, while he and his aides attended to the gravity machine. Triumph showed in his eyes. But presently he began to look puzzled, as that soughing roar that accompanied the crashing din, increased. It was a little early for the space ships to be smashing up, anyway.

I could feel a grim smile coming over my lips, against my will. Had my guesses and hopes, which had seemed so unsubstantial, been correct? Norman Haynes was glancing doubtfully at the reproducer. I could see that he was wondering why his surface watchers didn't communicate any more--and tell him what was happening up there on the crust of 487.

I knew the answers, now! Geedeh did, too. The excitement of knowledge was in his withered, pain-wracked face. Those distant crashes were not what I'd feared they might be, but part of what I'd hoped for. They were gigantic thunder-claps--the noise of terrific lightning bolts! Norman Haynes had made a simple oversight in his plan to destroy those incoming space craft. There was a fearsome electrical storm going on above--one of inconceivable proportions--utterly beyond the Earthly! Doubtless all of Norman Haynes' surface watchers, up above, had been killed by that sudden deluge of electricity! The multiplied gravitation up there, had pinned them down, so that they could neither escape, nor warn their chief!

Before Norman Haynes understood what was happening, foam-flecked muddy water was at the door of the machinery room, rushing and gurgling past the threshold! He and his helpers stared at it stupidly, and I laughed at them.

"You didn't realize it, did you, Haynes?" I grunted. "You didn't realize that increased gravity would increase the weight of the atmosphere, as well as of everything else! And increased weight of the air, means increased atmospheric pressure, too, pushing molecules together, creating greater density. And what happens? Go back to your high school physics, Haynes! It's like when you store air in the tank of a compressor pump. The moisture in it liquifies. And in the case of an atmosphere as big as 487 has now, static electricity would be suddenly and violently condensed, besides."

Norman Haynes stared at me, stunned with consternation. But his recovery was fairly prompt. His sudden sneer had a rattish desperation. "Hell," he said. "Just a thunder storm. A lot of rain. What of it? The gravity machine still works. The ships will still be destroyed."

I knew that that was true--unless what I'd planned happened. Those rockets, manned by our old construction crew, and Irene, and old Art Haynes, had been too close to asteroid 487 for the last couple of minutes, to effect an escape, even if the sudden dark clouds had warned them that something dangerous was afoot.

"Watch this--Haynes," Geedeh panted, and it was hard for the acting head of the Haynes Shipping Company to guess what the little Martian meant, at first.

* * * * *

Under the pull of that terrific gravity, the water was coming into that room like an avalanche. Geedeh and Pa and I were floundering in it feebly, held to the floor by that awful weight. I was sure we'd drown. But as we coughed and sputtered, the flood found its way through the hole I'd kicked, low down in the side of the crystal dome that covered that gigantic machinery. There was a flash of electrical flame, as the water interfered with the functioning of the apparatus.

It was pandemonium, then. Every man for himself. Geedeh, the scientist, and I, who, under the force of grim need, had somehow contrived to plan this finale, had the advantage of knowledge. We'd figured out a little of what to do.

The gravity winked off suddenly--reaching the low of practically nothing, here at the center of this tiny world, whose normal attraction, even at the surface, was very small. We struggled to our feet, in a muddy swirl that was now a yard in depth. But before we could take advantage of our sudden lightness, and leap clear, the gravity machines gave a last gasp of power, and we were pulled down again, smothering. Then, with a grating roar, the apparatus stopped. The bedlam ceased, except for a low whine of expanding atmosphere, and screams from Haynes and his men.

Presently, I felt all hell stabbing through me. My ears rang as with the after effects of some colossal explosion. My whole body ached. I clutched at Geedeh, who seemed on the point of collapse. Pa Mavrocordatus managed to help me....

But strained by gravity vastly stronger than that of Mars, and now facing a circumstance even more dangerous, tough little Geedeh still had his wits, fortunately for us all. He pointed to an airtight crystal cage at one edge of the chamber. The cage was necessary in routine testing of the machinery here, which called for variations in the output of the gravity generators, and consequent great variations in air pressure.

"Inside the cage--all of us!" Geedeh squeaked. "Quickly! Bends!..."

Do you know what the air pressure is, at the bottom of a ten-mile shaft, even at normal Earth gravity? Yeah, something pretty high! Then you can imagine what it had just been like, here, at six or seven gravities! But when the generators had quit entirely, there had been that sudden loss of weight in the air, sudden expansion, thinning, loss of pressure!

The three of us got inside the cage, and sealed the door. I spun valves. There was a hiss of entering atmosphere, and the pressure rose again, far above the norm of sea-level, on Earth. I felt better at once, but I knew it had been a close call.

We looked out at Norman Haynes and his henchmen. They weren't drowning, now. Tottering, they stood with their heads well above the flood. It was something else that was killing them. Not suffocation, either. Their faces were bloated and congested in the glow of illuminators. Their bodies seemed to swell.

Norman Haynes raised his blast tube, as did several of the others, trying to fire at the crystal shelter where we had taken refuge. Norman Haynes must have known his failure, then. Why had it happened. How we had won. It may be that he even realized some justice in his hideous punishment. He had tried to obstruct progress and fair play.

The blast tube dropped from his fingers. He opened his mouth to shriek in his agony. But dark blood gushed forth, and, with his henchmen, he toppled back into the water.

* * * * *

"Bends!" Geedeh said again. "Haynes had a worse case of bends than any deep-sea diver ever experienced."

The flood had almost stopped, now, outside the cage. We waited. Vengeance was complete. And it wasn't quite as satisfying as I might once have thought.

Presently they were with us. Irene. And old Art--proving that the Haynes name was still great, even though one who bore it had soiled it some. We emerged from our sealed cage, after the pressure around us was gradually lowered to normal.

"I didn't think it was Norman who was guilty," old Art breathed sadly when he spoke to us. "I knew he was high-handed, but I didn't realize it was as bad as it was. I guess Norman got what he deserved," he finished, and there were tears in his heavy voice.

We went to the surface in the elevator. We needed space suits again, up there, with the air as expanded as it was. A lot of the atmosphere was leaking away from 487, being held down only by the tiny natural gravity. But there was nothing that couldn't be repaired and replaced.

"We must have pumps rigged to draw the water out of the vault, so that we can dry and repair the gravity machinery, and start it again," Geedeh stated.

We started again, almost as we had done at the first, for quite a bit of the air and water had been whisked into space. We lived in space-suits for days, rebuilding and repairing the damaged machinery. Then with the aid of Art Haynes, and with extended credit now that our plans were made fully known and approved, we imported machinery to pump the water from the vault.

We hired specialists to come in, each of them with a trained crew of men to do the work that our old crews lacked the technical skill to do. Slowly, our planet of hope grew again, and there were bulletins sent through the asteroid belt that workers were wanted again on Paradise Asteroid.

The specialists left, replaced by the crews that had worked on the asteroid before. With unlimited credit, our great freighting ships piled materials in regular formation, and the returning crews set their ships down on the landing fields, the men pouring eagerly forth, ready to set up the buildings that would be the nucleus of another Earth in space.

With our old crews returned, it took about a hundred hours to accomplish this. Asteroid 487 was almost the same as before the final trouble with Norman Haynes, now, except that the air was a little thinner. But that could be quickly taken care of. Pa Mavrocordatus was working with his vineyards and trees, and his tomato and cabbage patches, again. The big trouble was all finished, now. The dream was coming true. A little Earth, fresh and green, for tired miners of the Path of Minor Planets. Space madness could never be so common now. And cheap, fresh products would be theirs.