Space Trap

by Thornton Bell, Lionel Fanthorpe, Patricia Fanthorpe

Genres: Science Fiction; Sci-fi Action & Adventure; Space Opera

Synopsis

They were trying out a new drive when a cosmic accident took them incalculable light years off course. A miracle of courage and astrogation meant than there were some survivors from the inevitable crash. The ship itself did not escape unscathed. What had been their vehicle became their prison. The buckled lock could not be opened from the inside and they had no other means of getting free. The air was slowly running out.

The planet they had hit was raw and primitive by their own standards, but it did hold intelligent life. One of the natives found the ship. Dare the trapped space travellers hope for a miracle? If they go out what kind of strange life forms would they be involved with? Could they hope to find the kind of raw materials which would get their crippled ship into space again? If not, could they face life sentences on this strange, unknown, primitive world . . . ?

Faced by a thousand fantastic difficulties the astronauts battled untiringly for their right to survive.

Release date: January 1, 1966

Publisher: Arcadia House

Print pages: 320

Sample

CAPTAIN RAZON took the capsule which had just arrived by the hyperspace transmission lock, and unscrewed its enigmatic plastic sheathing. Razon was not enamoured of hyperspace capsules. There was no knowing what they contained, he reflected, particularly at a time like this, when Alfax and Bornak were at war.

The peculiar intergalactic war in which the planets were involved was ‘strange’ insofar as two worlds as distant and dissimilar as Alfax and Bornak could have had sufficient real contact to quarrel with one another. But they had indeed made the contact and they had certainly quarrelled. Alfax, as it was officially designated, planet 5 of star 219 in galaxy 1117, had begun the quarrel, as far as Razon could understand, over trade disputes. He wondered just how trade disputes arose between races as different as his own and the Bornakians. Bornak was planet 7 of star 408, in galaxy 6492. It was as though a microbe on one end of their star ship had picked a quarrel with another microbe on the opposite extremity. He supposed there were other places as far apart as Alfax and Bornak, but it would not have been easy to think of them off-hand.

He read the dispatch. It was not good. Apparently Alfaxian Intelligence had got hold of the information that a Bornakian ship was pretty close on the “Dordon’s” trail. Razon was angry, partly with himself, partly with the peculiar circumstances which had led to this weird and, somehow, grimly unnecessary war. The “Dordon” was a good ship. Razon was proud of her. He didn’t want her involved in the kind of senseless destruction that was all war amounted to, as far as he could see.

He put the empty capsule back in the storage locker beside the hyperspace capsule transmitter. He wondered whether the detector screens would show any sign of the Bornakian craft that was supposed, at that very moment, to be somewhere in the vicinity.

He wondered whether the Bornakians had got hold of the information about the new drive which the “Dordon” was using, experimentally. If the new drive was a success, then the “Dordon” would become a prototype, a pioneer ship, and it could well mean that, from the Alfaxian point of view, the war with Bornak was moving towards a satisfactory termination. Razon decided that the time had come to use the new drive in other than experimental moves. He communicated the information swiftly to his crew, and watched as they scurried to their emergency positions. Just as he flung the activator into position, he thought that the stern warning screen was giving him a flash, that could have indicated the presence of a Bornakian vessel. Blast Galaxy 6492! he thought. Confusion and destruction to Star 408! And a thousand things worse than that to Planet 7!

At that moment the new drive went into operation. Razon was quite pleased with the way it was functioning. There was hardly a jolt as the switch-over took place. Next moment he was no longer complacent—let alone satisfied!

The “Dordon” was rolling over and over like a minute asteroid with a variable density. Razon applied the stabilisers and then realised they could have no effect once the new drive was in. He and his crew were hanging on desperately to the antigrav bunks, and the rails above and around them.

Razon felt his grip slipping a little as the gyrations and weird movements of the ship became more pronounced. He felt his senses leaving him.

Everything went black, as black as the blackest night home on Alfax, and on Alfax the nights could be very dark indeed. …

When Razon finally recovered consciousness, he found that he had somehow become wedged under one of the rails of the protective framework surrounding the Captain’s antigrav bunk. If the rail had not been there, he hated to think what might have happened. The idea of being spread out thinly on the bulkhead of a gyrating space vessel was not Razon’s idea of the most desirable, or peaceful, ending to what had, up to now, been a reasonably pleasant life.

He staggered into something akin to a vertical position and began to consult the instrument panels as best he could. His first thought was that the instrument panels had been knocked senseless by the peculiar movements which had overtaken the ship. His second thought was that he had been knocked senseless. His third thought—which subsequently proved to be correct—was that the instrument panels were all right, that he was all right, but that the ship was all wrong! He called his crew, anxiously, urgently. They gathered round. One look at them told him that they were as bewildered by the incredible events that had overtaken the ship as he was himself. The “Dordon” could not be where her instruments said she was. Or could it?

Razon turned to Hiphi, his second in command. Hiphi was looking a little battered as a result of the peculiar cosmic accident which had overtaken the “Dordon”. Captain Razon pointed to the distance indicator dial.

“Tell me, Hiphi,” he said, “do you read as I read?”

“I read as you read,” replied Hiphi.

“We have been thrown incalculable light years off course,” said Razon.

“What are we to do?” asked the mate.

Razon looked a little bewildered for a moment.

“The only thing we can do,” he said at last.

“And that, sir?” Hiphi looked hopeful. He sounded hopeful.

Razon hoped he would not dispel the mate’s optimism when he made his suggestion, for as a suggestion Razon knew that it was almost hopelessly inadequate.

“We must look for a planet and try to land,” he replied.

“Is that all, Captain?” Hiphi did sound disappointed.

It hurt Razon, deep down. “That is all,” he answered, trying to keep the hurt that he felt out of his voice, and realising he had not succeeded.

The crew got to work with a number of astrogational instruments. The peculiar cosmic accident that had hurled them incalculable light years off course had also knocked out a number of essential drive units and storage units. The hyper-space drive itself had been very severely damaged. There would not be more than a thin chance of repairing it, even if they could get the ship down anywhere. There would be no chance at all of repairing it in space. Vital components had burned and fused themselves out. The essential matter-energy equater could not be expected to work again until it had been extensively recharged and tested on a safe piece of planetary surface.

“Can you explain what happened?” asked Hiphi.

Razon made a bewildered gesture.

“I cannot,” he said slowly. “We have been in space a long time, we know that these things happen, we know that from time to time cosmic accidents occur, some are immediately fatal, some have serious, indelible effects on those who are involved in them. We are lucky. So far as we know, this accident has only thrown us a long, long way off course and damaged certain important gear. It has not killed us; it has not crippled our ship so hopelessly that there would be no chance of some of us surviving.”

The crew member who had been searching for the nearest habitable planet by means of the ship’s detection gear, drew their attention suddenly to the information which had appeared on the dials he was using. Razon and Hiphi looked at the dials carefully, and Hiphi made a gesture of commendation in the direction of the crew member responsible.

“You have done well,” said Razon. “You have done very well indeed.”

A miracle of courage and astrogation began edging the ship closer and closer to the planet which the vigilant observation of their subordinate had discovered. It was the third world of a nine-world system. Its parent star was by no means large, and this far from their own galaxy, neither Razon nor Hiphi were expecting too much in the way of civilization.

“Of course there may be no civilization at all,” said Razon.

“The higher the level of culture we find, the greater our chances of getting back,” commented Hiphi. His voice held a mixture of hope and fear. It was a mixture that was reflected by the thoughts in his heart. The miracle of courage and astrogation continued. As best they could, they nursed the crippled ship closer and closer to that third planet which the detector gear had indicated would at least be habitable.

“She’s coming down,” announced Razon, at last.

The “Dordon” was indeed coming down.

“Too fast, too fast!” exclaimed Hiphi, desperately.

“Can’t he helped,” replied Razon, grimly. “Emergency stations,” he ordered in a flat, emotional voice.

The crew got to their emergency stations with well-trained rapidity, facility and efficiency. Hiphi and Razon checked that all their crew members were as safe as they could possibly be in the circumstances, and then, having arranged their own bodies as best they could on their antigrav bunks, and bracing themselves against the protective rails around those bunks, they waited for the inevitable crash.

It came!

There were seconds that seemed an eternity while the ship hovered between life and death, then the “Dordon” was down, and down heavily. She landed not on her landing gear, but on her lock side. There was an awful vibration, and the sound of tortured, buckled alloy. Then most of the crew lost consciousness, despite the padding of the antigrav bunks, and the protection of the rails around them.

When Razon regained consciousness—for he had been among those who had been stunned by the impact—he looked around and gave a sigh of relief; he saw that Hiphi was moving about among the crew, checking who was uninjured, who was unhurt, and who was—deal …

There were dead. Too many dead, from Razon’s point of view. Like any good captain, he felt a strong sense of responsibility to his crew, but he consoled himself by realising that the percentage of survivors was a great deal higher than it might have been. The gamble had paid off. He went over the incidents of the last few time units. They had been trying out a new drive and a cosmic accident had driven them incalculable light years off course. It had also damaged the ship, but somehow courage and astrogational skill, a miraculous combination of the two, perhaps, had meant that some had survived the inevitable crash. They had been lucky, he thought that there had been a world to crash on. … They might have been doomed to drift in the broken hulk of a ship that was once the proud and beautiful “Dordon”.

As soon as Hiphi had finished checking to see who was or who was not injured, Captain Razon got his engineering crew surveying the damage as far as was possible. He soon discovered that “as far as was possible” was not very far at all. Two or three of them had got into pressure suits and were on the point of disembarking when they discovered that the lock was hopelessly buckled! It did not look as though it was going to be possible to open it without a great deal of effort. They abandoned that particular field of endeavour and continued to examine the rest of the ship.

The radio crew were checking to see whether there were any native broadcasts taking place on this peculiar planet which they had discovered in a remote corner of the universe. So far the radio operators had drawn a complete blank. Then one of them hastened towards Razon, waving a message sheet and looking decidedly worried. Hiphi was with Razon when the radio operator handed the message sheet across.

The Captain and Mate exchanged worried glances.

“Hostiles?” commented Razon.

“Very hostile. Do you recognise the frequency at all?”

The Captain turned to the radio operator.

“No, Captain.”

“You identified the transmitter?” Hiphi sounded both optimistic and interrogative.

“That is so,” replied the radio operator.

“What is it?”

‘It is the ‘Vebdug,’ Captain.”

“The ‘Vebdug’?” Razon echoed the word with a certain feeling of revulsion. Hiphi looked at him and made a gesture which expressed his endorsement of the Captain’s apparent sentiment.

“That must be Shalmanazar’s vessel,” commented Hiphi.

“I fear so.” Razon’s voice was flat, low, emotionless. He was remembering the space capsule which had arrived over the hyperspace message unit, the capsule from their own Intelligence headquarters on Alfax, warning them that one of the Bornakian vessels was close on their ail. Razon was also remembering the flash he had seen on the screen immediately prior to trying out the new drive the new drive which he had just been operating when that cosmic accident overwhelmed the “Dordon” and swept them incalculable light years off course. If the peculiar misadventure which had hurled them into this remote corner of the universe had involved the “Vebdug, the Bornakian vessel that had been on their tail, then the situation looked . . .