GENTLEMEN, THE SCAVENGERS

One thing you had to admit about Captain Southby. He was an efficient senior officer, commanding our company of twenty with an iron hand. Also, he was a gentleman and a scholar.

You saw it in his eyes as he entered the double doors of the ship’s dining room, strode to the head of the table, and stood surveying us. While the clock pulsed away thirty seconds, he remained there motionless, noting with satisfaction the spotless linen, gleaming silverware, and the impeccable white uniforms of the twenty. Then he nodded.

“Gentlemen, be seated.”

Once those words were spoken, laughter and casual talk began abruptly. But not once in the three years I had served on OB-5 had I seen any variation of that evening formality. Oddly enough, Southby never seemed to consider the fact that he officered a gang of scavengers.

Ever since the Conference of Nine, Asteroid OB-5—the letters stood for “obsolescence”—had been relegated as a dumping ground for all types of space vessels which were labeled out-of-date. It was part of a carefully formulated plan to stabilize the shipping lanes and the System’s armament situation. In simple words it meant that no new ship could legally be constructed until an obsolete predecessor had taken its place on the asteroid.

There were twenty gangs—or as Southby preferred to call them, companies—on OB-5, and ours had the cream of the pickings. That is to say, we were nearest the arrival-docks. From the docks a ship was towed in-country by tracto-car. In swift succession, gangs of men swarmed through her, removing furnishings, engines, and all movable items, until finally the disemboweled hulk was broken into sections and taken to the melting mill. All usable material was marked and catalogued and sent to the salvage depot on the far side of the asteroid.

As I said, Company A had the cream of the pickings. It was our job to take the luxury items from liners, paintings, tapestries, visiscreens, and the various control devices from war vessels. Freighters and discarded mail ships went right past us without stopping.

Company A was also the only gang that could boast the upper deckhouse of an old liner for living quarters. Southby had wangled that concession from the government somehow and had fitted out the ship as he would have his own baronial manor. There were rich carpets, draperies, and bric-a-brac, all of which had once graced the lounge of some space vessel.

As usual, talk that night centered around the salvage work of the day. And, as usual, it was the Rebel who started the trouble.

“Did any of you see those pictures I took out of the Vega this afternoon?” the Rebel said. “Worst bunch of daubings I’ve ever seen.” There was a malicious gleam in his eyes as he glanced across at Southby.

“I wouldn’t call them daubings,” the captain said slowly. “Two of them are Tricardis. One is an Olivant. Anyone who appreciates the old masters would be glad to get them.”

The Rebel set down his water glass deliberately. “Are you saying I’m too dumb to understand them?” he demanded.

Southby shrugged. “I didn’t say that.”

“You implied it.”

It was fortunate that Faulkner took that moment to reveal his personal find of the day, a new type Setlor compass, and as the instrument passed from hand to hand, some of the tension was relieved.

The Rebel was Clifton Barrow, and he had a brain that was as keen as a razor. But he was self-educated, whereas Southby was a graduate of Martian Tech. It was not that, however, that continually put them at swords’ points.

The trouble stemmed from their opposite social outlooks. Southby was a conservative and belonged to the old school. He liked old things, accepted scientific progress as a necessity, but hated change. Barrow, on the other hand, reveled in everything that was modern. He read all the latest philosophical treatises, and he made no effort to conceal his disdain for the feudalistic caste system which Southby seemed to represent.

Dinner over, we retired to the ship’s lounge where the captain began another formality, his evening talk.

“Gentlemen, as you know,” Southby began, “my latest lecture experiments have to do with molecular waves. Last week I described to you how I beamed radio microwaves into a balloon filled with ammonia gas. The ammonia absorbed those waves and turned them into molecular energy which was transmitted to the balloon skin. The result was that the balloon skin acted as a loudspeaker diaphragm and gave off sound.”

He paused to light a cigar. “Today I tried something different. I fired heat pulses into liquid helium. The helium registered a minus two hundred and seventy-three degrees Centigrade and of course didn’t vibrate. But the heat came off its surface as sound. In other words, the heat waves had gasified its pent-up molecules in rhythmic bursts.”

There were a few idle comments, but it was clear we were all waiting to hear from the Rebel. He didn’t disappoint us.

“Old stuff,” he said deprecatingly. “The Earth scientists invented talk-beam lamps ages ago. Why, last year Horn Vey, the Martian physicist, produced an infrared detector with an almost unlimited range by using lead sulphate with impurities of sulphur, oxygen, and crystallized carponium.”

“I made no claim that it was an original experiment,” Southby replied stiffly. “And incidentally, in the future I would prefer that you confine your comments to something other than ridicule.”

All of which is by the way and has no part in the mystery that settled over OB-5. The mystery began on the twelfth of November when the “Great White Ship” blasted under her own power into Cradle 3 of the arrival-docks.

Our suspicions began when no release certificate was issued to Southby for this ship. Without such a certificate, of course, no dismantling could begin. For five days the ship lay in the docks, an unheard-of procedure. Then a small cutter without serial markings dropped in and disgorged a company of thirty troopers, all heavily armed but also without identification.

Under guard of the troopers, six tracto-cars towed the Great White Ship inland, and they did it as carefully as if they were balancing eggs in a basket. About two miles from the salvage depot they placed it on a narrow outcropping shelf, inaccessible from three sides. Then came the Headquarters’ bulletin:

All workers are hereby advised that the cruiser, White Star, will not be dismantled until a future date. All workers will consider an area of five hundred yards surrounding this vessel as out-of-bounds.

Rumors ran wild among the men of Company A. The ship was said to carry a cargo of valuable jewels and bullion and was being held as some kind of secret war indemnity. It was loaded with atomic explosives, designed to destroy this entire asteroid. It housed some monstrous, alien form of life, found spawned in outer space and brought here to be watched, scientifically, in its growth and development.

Even Southby didn’t know the truth, or if he did, he was a better actor than I gave him credit for. But Headquarters should have known that this lack of explanation was bound to cause dissension. In this case that dissension centered upon us, for the simple reason, I suppose, that we were the envy of all other harder worked gangs.

The Captain of Company B, our nearest-neighbor, complained to Southby that someone in our group had tampered with hold cargo. Twelve bottles of imported Venusian wine, still listed on the manifest, were missing. Now I had seen Barrow, the Rebel, drinking out of one of those bottles in our lounge only the night before, and so too, I was sure, had Southby. Yet Southby calmly told the Company B officer to go to blazes.

Next day the Company B men raided our camp. Six quartzite windows were broken in our liner-house; Faulkner received a nasty burn in the left leg from a delayed heat gun charge; and our rotating search lamp was shattered beyond repair.

Headquarters promptly cancelled all terminal leaves and issued five salary demerits to each member of the two companies. But Headquarters said nothing more about the Great White Ship.

Meanwhile Barrow showed no appreciation for Southby’s taking his defense in this conflict. Instead he continued to criticize the captain’s nightly talks, and he made it a point to insert sly innuendoes in the dinner conversation, all of them aimed at arousing the chief officer.

The mystery of the Great White Ship grew deeper. As always, when faced by the unknown, the men became sullen and irritable. After all, why couldn’t Headquarters take them into its confidence? Weren’t conditions bad enough on this barren asteroid without having a hands-off enigma dropped into their midst?

Among the men of Company A the situation was perhaps worse than elsewhere, for ours was not the body-tiring work of the other gangs, and we had plenty of leisure time. Discussions pro and con concerning the mystery ship passed across the table, and more than once only a quick intervention on the part of Southby prevented us from coming to blows. It was perhaps an outgrowth of this tension that accounted for the Rebel’s unexplainable conduct on the night of the seventeenth.

That night Southby approached the table and surveyed us as usual before uttering his customary “Gentlemen, be seated.” He ran his eye over the company, then drew in his breath sharply.

Nineteen of our group stood there at attention. The twentieth, Barrow, was already seated and, apparently oblivious to us all, was calmly eating. Southby’s eyes glinted, but his face remained expressionless. He spoke his introduction and sat down. When the meal was over, he went straight to his room, and we didn’t see him for the rest of the evening.

“Who does he think he is?” the Rebel demanded. “All that formal rubbish! It’s time somebody put a stop to it.”

The following night there were only nineteen chairs about the table. The twentieth, Barrow’s, had been removed by Southby’s orders.

Barrow came whistling into the room, took the situation in at a glance, and calmly and deliberately took advantage of it. He seated himself in the captain’s chair.

The explosion resulting from this act would have been far greater, of course, had not several events occurred at this time, events which were destined to change our entire lives.

First, there was the affair of the Company B man who submitted to curiosity and attempted to learn the secret of the Great White Ship. He was caught and, without the slightest suggestion of a trial, executed. The entire asteroid was stunned.

Next day came the Headquarters’ bulletin:

Any worker overheard discussing any subject relating to the cruiser, White Star, will be subject to immediate arrest.

If there had been excitement before, there was nerve-wracking tension now. The Company A men went about their duties during the day with grim faces. Nights, they sat about in small groups, conversing in low whispers.

Even Southby, to whom Headquarters represented his one god—authority—wore a worried look, and he undoubtedly would have spoken his mind on the matter if he had not finally completed at this time his personal brain-child, a device which he proudly called his “star symphonizer.”

This gadget was the result of several years’ spare-time labor. Composed of a spectroscope, a screen, and an odd sort of timing arrangement, it would receive light from stars up to the fourth magnitude, pass that light through a diffraction grating and play the resulting spectrum on a screen. Each color band was keyed to a certain note of sound, since there were seven primary colors and seven basic notes of the musical scale, Southby had thus constructed a kind of stellar color organ.

Despite his initial remarks of ridicule, Barrow displayed more than ordinary interest when Southby gave his first demonstration of the symphonizer.

“Do you want to say that the music we hear will vary as the lens is focused on different stars?”

“That’s exactly what I mean,” Southby replied. “In my machine each color wave length has a corresponding wave length of sound. Now you know, of course, that the light emanating from a distant star reveals, through the spectrum, the elements which compose that star. As the composition of the stars vary, so will the spectroscopic band vary, and likewise the sound tones.” Barrow frowned slowly. “But where does your motion, your rhythm, come in?”

“That,” replied Southby, “is my secret. I might tell you, however, that the device is so fashioned as to rotate the color bands past a shutter in ratio with the approximate distance the selected star lies from OB-Five.”

Southby left his symphonizer in the lounge, saying that anyone who wished could operate it. But the device ran a poor second to the mystery that hung over the asteroid. The whispering and the strained talk continued, and curiously enough, Barrow was the only one who seemed to show any interest in the captain’s invention. Hour after hour he stood before its carponium panel, twisting the dials, tuning in one stellar obbligato after another. One night he caught my arm as I entered the lounge.

“Care to try some of your wages with the fortunes of Lady Luck?” he asked. “No,” I said. “You know I hate poker.”

He smiled. “This is better than poker. Come over here.”

The Rebel’s game soon became apparent. He tuned Southby’s star symphonizer to a third magnitude star, Melaris—A. Next he brought out a small sympathetic vibrator and placed it on the table.

“Bet you two to one that middle C sharp or its color equivalent doesn’t sound more than twice in the next twenty seconds.”

By the end of the week Barrow had a lively gambling “concession” operating in the lounge. The game offered a welcome diversion from the brooding mystery that oppressed us all. The fact that he lost more times than he won didn’t seem to concern the Rebel at all. He appeared, in fact, to glory in our uneasy anticipation of what Southby would say when he discovered what was going on.

But Southby had other things on his mind. On November 22, he delivered his bombshell. In simple words it amounted to this:

Southby feared something was amiss at Headquarters. The strange activities of recent weeks, the unprecedented bulletins, and the entire attitude of the “government” had convinced him that the rightful persons were no longer in power.

He pointed out that the Salvage-Governor’s term of office had been up a month ago, and as yet nothing had been said about the arrival of a successor. He revealed also that the daily official reports sent to all gang leaders were not being signed in the usual manner and did not carry the customary Council of Nine seal.

“You know, gentlemen,” he said, “that I would be the last person to suggest any activity of a mutinous nature. But in view of the facts, I think an investigation is our patriotic duty.”

Southby then called for a volunteer to go out to the Great White Ship. For, as he said, “—therein would seem to lie the crux of the mystery.”

Before anyone had opportunity to speak, however, Barrow stepped forward and switched on the star symphonizer.

“Choose your sound notes,” he said quietly. “The first double tone that sounds after I strike the table wins. Or loses,” he added, “depending on your viewpoint.”

Barrow was gone two days, and still there was no sign of him. If no one else suspected, I for one knew that he had arranged his name to be chosen for the one to go. Southby paced the floor nervously. And as the hours snailed past, gloom settled over the liner-house.

Then suddenly the door banged open, and there he was, alert and showing little sign of lack of sleep. We clustered around him, filling the air with questions. He smiled grimly and waited until we had quieted.

“Yes,” he said, “I got through to the ship. I was nearly discovered trying to enter the after-hatch and had to lie under the gangway for six hours. I—”

“Did you learn anything?” Southby interrupted. “Did you find out what was in the Great White Ship?”

The Rebel nodded and paused for the right effect.

“Yes,” he said, “I did. Gentlemen, there’s a woman there.”

For a long moment none of us spoke. Then Southby uttered a puzzled exclamation. “What woman? Talk up, man!”

Barrow smiled quietly. “The woman is Dorna Duhalla!”

Had a ray gun blasted into our midst, the effect could have been no greater. Dorna Duhalla, the almost legendary mystic, the self-appointed feminine apostle of peace who spent her life touring the spaceways, traveling from one planet to another, preaching the golden rule!

Duhalla, worshipped by the masses for her philanthropic aid to the poor and downtrodden! It was she who had made a dramatic appearance before the Council of Nine four years ago and by her masterful oratory prevented a System-wide conflict which was brewing. Since that time she had had carte blanche to all ports and she had gone about her mysterious way.

What was this woman doing on OB-5? Southby thought a long time and at length had the answer.

“It’s clear,” he said, “that the trouble between Venus and Mars is coming to a head. So far the one thing that has held off open conflict has been the general feeling of security advanced by the knowledge that there was a definite balance of power in space armament.

“Destroy that balance, by forming a fleet of reconstructed ships here on OB-5 and adding them to one planetary ensign, and the powder keg would be ignited. And if”—and here Southby’s eyes took on a hard glitter—“the common man citizenry of one planet could be convinced that that courier of peace, Dorna Duhalla, was the guiding genius behind this move on the part of their adversary—then the war could begin in earnest.”

“But what’s to be done, sir?” Barrow asked.

Southby chewed his cigar slowly. “Well,” he said, “two can play at their game. Mr. Barrow, what ship is scheduled for dismantling tomorrow?”

“The Venusian Queen, sir,” the Rebel replied.

“How long would it take to put her in working condition?”

Barrow stared; then his smile widened into a grin. “I see what you mean, sir.”

On the twenty-fifth, Barrow again went on a scouting expedition to the Great White Ship. He returned with disheartening news.

No force of men, certainly not the twenty of Company A, could hope to take the ship. One man alone might reach the Duhalla woman, but only if aided by Providence.

“And since I’m the only one who knows the lay of the land, it’ll be my job,” Barrow said.

Southby made no comment. He had sent word to Headquarters that because of the unusually large amount of furnishings left in the Venusian Queen, the initial dismantling work of Company A would take longer. Meanwhile we were working like mad to put the discarded ship into operating condition.

Twelve men were assigned the almost superhuman task of repairing her motors, while the rest of us labored with the control wiring, most of which has been torn out when the ship was designated for the scrap pile.

Two Headquarters inspectors came down to investigate the work, and for an hour we held our breath. But Southby invited them to the lounge and kept them there with a line of smooth talk and a bottle of equally smooth Scotch while the rest of us did everything we could to mask our recent activities.

Finally the night came. At eleven o’clock Barrow left. He carried a short-nosed heat pistol, equipped with a flame-darkener, a length of rope, and a tiny but powerful quartzite-cutter.

At eleven-five, ten men under command of Faulkner headed for Cradle 5 of the arrival-docks where the Venusian Queen was warped. That left Southby, myself, and seven others. Quickly Southby divided the seven into two groups, set them at patrolling duty outside the liner-house. Then he strolled over to his star symphonizer.

“Lorimer,” he said to me, “what would you say is the most important thing on this asteroid?”

“The most import—” I stared at him. “Why, the salvage depot, I suppose, sir.”

Southby nodded as he fondled the symphonizer controls. “Exactly. The salvage depot contains all the extra parts, tools and equipment which would be necessary to organize a war fleet. But the salvage depot also contains something else. An improved Courtney atomic pile and the accompanying isotopes. Am I right?”

“Of course,” I said. “It’s the source of power of the entire asteroid—the dock cradles, the tracto-cars, the lighting—everything.”

He nodded again. “And if I remember correctly, the Courtney pile is encased in arelium-darkite, a substance which, even light in weight and thin in texture and possessing great shielding powers, also happens to have a vibration pitch in the ultrasonic scale of ninety thousand cycles.”

“What are you getting at?” I demanded impatiently.

“Suppose I utilized this symphonizer to send an ultrasonic wave of ninety thousand cycles into that pile?”

And then it hit me. “Good Lord!” I cried, “you can’t—!”

Calmly Southby consulted his watch. “Barrow should be at the Great White Ship by now,” he said. “Give him a quarter of an hour to make an entrance, fifteen minutes more to contact and convince the Duhalla woman, and say another quarter of an hour to get out. If we start now, we should meet him at the halfway point.” He turned suddenly, all efficiency.

“Lorimer, get the tracto-car out of the storage shed and help me load the symphonizer in it.”

For ten minutes we went careening down the uneven rock roadway, winding around the black escarpments. Only above was there light, the incandescent glory of the cosmos. Abruptly Southby brought the tracto-car to a stop. “Something’s gone wrong,” he said. “Barrow should be here.”

We sat there, staring into the darkness. Ahead, far to our left, a vague glow marked the power plant of the salvage depot. Suddenly a squad of running figures appeared in the gloom, and a brittle voice said:

“Don’t move. You’re under arrest.”

Ten troopers swarmed down upon us, heat guns leveled. In a matter of seconds they had pinioned our arms, clamped steel bands about our wrists and ankles. The leader surveyed us and smiled sardonically.

“It might interest you to know that we’ve got another of your men at Headquarters. The fool was crazy enough to try to get into the White Star.”

* * * *

They threw us in the rear compartment of the car and posted two guards over us.

“Go to the Company A liner-house,” the officer directed the rest of the men. “Place the entire gang under arrest.”

Then we were moving down the roadway once again, this time with the car’s ato-light boring a hole through the darkness. Looking across at Southby I saw that he, too, was in the depths of despair. The car jounced on monotonously, eating up the miles. It was the captain’s fault, I told myself bitterly, that we were in this predicament. With his usual flare for the dramatic, he had to play a lone hand. Why hadn’t we taken off in the Venusian Queen and headed for Earth, there to report to the Council the conditions we suspected?

In the darkness Southby seemed to read my mind. “It was our only chance,” he said bitterly.

A mile from Headquarters the car suddenly skidded to a halt. Ten yards ahead, squarely blocking the roadway, a huge boulder lay in the glare of the ato-light. The officer leaped from the car and clutched at his heat pistol.

But he got only half way. From the blackness beyond the ato-light a faint tracer of flame lanced across the intervening space. The officer collapsed without a sound.

The remaining three troopers vaulted out of the car as one man. Twice again that sliver of flame sped to its mark, leaving two of the men writhing on the ground. The last guard was no coward. He ripped free one of the car’s side panels, and holding it before him as a shield, began to run forward toward the source of those ray charges.

And then Barrow came leaping out of the shadows to meet him. They struck like blocks of wood, began hammering each other mercilessly there in the roadway in the ato-beam glare. While Southby looked on helplessly, Barrow warded off a series of savage blows, then feinted with a peculiar weaving backstep. The trooper rushed in for the kill. But Barrow swiveled and drove his right arm forward like a piston. The trooper went down in a heap.

Barrow darted back into the shadows and reappeared a moment later, leading a young woman. Even through her plastic helmet I could see a face of loveliness, tempered by a resolute mouth and strong dominating eyes. It was a face that lured and radiated power, and it was framed by a cascade of blue black hair.

“This is Dorna Duhalla,” Barrow said. “They caught us as we were making our escape from the Great White Ship, but we managed to escape.”

He saw the clamps on our wrist and ankles then, quickly slipped a reducer on his heat pistol and in rapid succession placed the muzzle against the locks. The shackles fell free.

“I’m afraid the jig’s up,” he went on grimly. “By now Headquarters will have notified the docks and spread the word over the entire asteroid.”

“Not the docks,” replied Southby. “Our men had instructions to throw an interference shield between their televisors and Headquarters’ transmitters.” He turned to the Duhalla woman. “We’re going to try and get you off OB-5. There’ll be considerable danger. Are you game to try?”

Of course,” she said. “Anything is better than submitting to those war lords.” Her voice was low and throaty with just a suggestion of a Venusian drawl.

The Captain nodded. “We’ll cross overland through the Divide. They won’t expect that, and we may be able to pick up another tracto-car at the Company C diggings.”

He drove the car off the roadway, hiding it under a shelf of overhanging rock. A moment later the four of us were striding rapidly along the plateau.

Of that mad cross-over trek I remember little. Through the darkness, over razor-edged rock that cut our shoes to ribbons, we raced against time, spurred on by the tireless Southby. As he paced along, the captain told Barrow of the failure of his plan to destroy the atomic power plant by means of the symphonizer. Suddenly we reached the Company C camp.

Silent as shadows, we ran the tracto-car out of the lean-to shelter. Then we were speeding toward the arrival-docks.

The docks were in darkness when we reached them. Southby flashed a pencil zet-light three times, the pre-arranged signal, then led the way cautiously toward the massive shadow that was the Venusian Queen. Inside the ship, behind darkened ports, everything was in readiness for a take-off. From below decks came the muted throb of the rebuilt engines. Faulkner stood at the manual pilot, awaiting orders to cast off. In the forward-cuddy two men raced to set up a twenty-pound, short-range genithoid gun which had been discovered at the last moment in the lower hold.

Southby made a rapid but careful inspection, then turned to Barrow. “It is now two thirty-five A.M.,” he said. “Set your watch. In exactly five minutes blast off.”

Barrow looked puzzled. “Where are you going, sir?”

The captain passed a hand wearily over his eyes and smiled. “I’m a little done up,” he said. “Guess that hike across the Divide was too much for me.”

There was an odd glitter in the Rebel’s eyes as he saluted and nodded. Two slow minutes ticked by on my wrist watch. The lights were extinguished, and the cover-panels slid back on the stern ports. From below decks came a singing whine as the engines jockeyed to full power.

The Rebel touched my arm. “Take over, Lorimer,” he said. “I’m worried about the Old Man. Going to see if he’s all right.”

I say now that it was the excitement of the moment that hid the significance of his words. Watching the illuminated hand of my watch, I waited. Hollow and muffled sounded the metallic clang of the after-hatch as it was opened and closed.

“Cast off!”

There was a roar of a thousand thunders and a violent lurch that sucked the breath out of our bodies. For an instant a wave of blind vertigo swept over us as the great ship knifed upward into space.

Then the overhead lights went on again. Faulkner burst into the cuddy.

“Barrow and Southby!” he cried. “They’re not aboard, sir!”

I stared. “What do you mean?”

“They knocked out our man posted at the after-hatch and went ashore a minute before we took off!”

An hour later we stood on the Venusian Queen’s bridge deck and gazed through the massive observation-shield at the orange-sized globe that was Asteroid OB-5 far below us. “Why did they do it?” I said. “Why, why?”

No one replied. At my side Faulkner spoke through the mike to the control-cuddy. “Drop five thousand, reduce speed to one-quarter forward and circle on a number three parabolic.”

The Venusian Queen dipped back toward OB-5. Down there two men were racing against time, fighting to cross a darkened expanse of razor-edged rock and reach the star symphonizer, hidden in a concealed tracto-car. The odds were against them, for even if they did reach the symphonizer unopposed, they must still wheel it across a mile of guarded and heavily mined roadway to the salvage depot. There were the impenetration walls to pass, the automatic ramp to navigate—

We were closer in now, and through the infrared filter that Faulkner dragged over the observation-shield, we could see the barren contours of the asteroid. Faulkner squinted through the magnascope.

“Two cruisers making ready to take off, sir,” he said. “They’ll be after us in a moment.”

But still the Venusian Queen did not change her course. And then suddenly it came! Below us a titanic orange-colored ball of fire appeared, to outline tumbling rock crags against black escarpments. It was gone in an instant, to be replaced by a mounting grey-black cloud. Then the smoke slowly diffused, and there was only a dull glow like light seen through a blank negative.

“That was a glorious thing to do,” Dorna Duhalla said.

Faulkner nodded. “You know,” he said, “they were both gentlemen.”