SPACE-LINER X-87
By RAY CUMMINGS
The X-87 was a red shambles. It roared the
starways, a renegade Venusian at the controls,
a swaggering Martian plotting the space-course.
And in an alumite cage, deep below-decks, lay
Penelle, crack Shadow Squadman—holding the
fate of three worlds in his manacled hands.
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Planet Stories Summer 1940.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
I am sure that none of you have had the real details of the tragicvoyage of last year, which was officially designated as Earth-MoonFlight 9. The diplomacy of Interplanetary relations is ticklish atbest. Earth diplomats especially seem afraid of their own shadowsif there is any chance of annoying the governments of Venus orMars, so that by Earth censorship most of the details of thatill-fated voyage of the X-87 were either distorted, or whollysuppressed. But the revolution at Grebhar is over now. If those VenusRevolutionists—helped perhaps by Martian money and supplies—hadbeen successful, they would have been patriots. They lost, so they aretraitors, and I can say what I like.
My name is Fred Penelle. I'm a Shadow Squadman, working in Great-NewYork and vicinity. Ordinarily I deal with the tracking of comparativelypetty criminals. Being plunged into this affair of Interplanetarypiracy which threatened to involve three worlds, Heaven knows wasstartling to me. I had never before even been on any flight into thestarways. But I did my best.
My part in the thing began that August evening when an audiphoned callcame to my home. It was my superior, Peter Jamison, summoning me toCity Night-Desk 6.
"I've a job for you," he said. "Get here in a hurry, Fred." Theaudiphone grid showed his televised face; I had never seen it so grim.
I live at the outskirts of Great-New York, in northern Westchester. Icaught an overhead monorail; then one of the high-speed, sixth levelrolling sidewalks and in half an hour was at the S.S. Building, inmid-Manhattan. We S.S. men work in pairs. My partner, as it happened,was ill.
"You'll have to go in on this alone," Jamison told me. "And you haven'tmuch time, Fred. The X-87 sails at Trinight."
"X-87?" I murmured. "What's that got to do with me?"
Jamison's fat little figure was slumped at his desk, almost hidden bythe banks of instruments before him. Then he sat up abruptly, pushed alever and the insulating screens slid along the doors and windows toprotect us from any possible electric eavesdropping.
"I can't tell you much," he said with lowered voice. "This comesfrom the Department of Interplanetary Affairs. The X-87 launches atTrinight tonight, for the Moon. They want me to have a man on it. Anobserver." Jamison's face went even grimmer, and he lowered his voicestill further. "Just what they know, or suspect, they didn't tell evenme. But there's something queer going on—something we ought to knowabout. Quite evidently there's some plot brewing against the BlakeIrite Corporation. They even hinted that it concerned perhaps bothVenus and Mars—"
You all know the general history of the Moon, of course; but still itwill do no harm to sketch it here. It was scarcely twenty years agowhen Georg Blake established the first permanent Moon Colony, erectingthe first practical glassite air-domes under which one might live andwork on the airless, barren surface of our satellite. Two years later,it was the same G