CHAPTER V

Brigg's Story

CLIFFORD had no doubt BB spoke the truth. Rothberg must certainly be in the steel satellite. Of course they must make a desperate effort to get him out—no expense or peril would be spared. But unless Briggs had provided some means for him to live up there, only the frozen body would be their reward, if they succeeded at all. Hundreds of miles above the earth the ship was as unattainable as though it were at the moon or Mars.

The rockets, of course had been constructed to make contact with the hull, and these rockets were the first things that came into Clifford's mind as he bent over the stricken girl. And still they seemed to offer little hope. They were to be discharged by gases with gradual acceleration, as the ship had been, but constructed of only plate steel they provided little protection against the absolute cold of space (accepting as fact the prevailing opinion that the temperature of space was minus 273 degrees Centigrade, or thereabouts). Even if one could survive in a specially constructed rocket the steel walls of the ship and the hull of the rocket would form a barrier no one knew how to pass.

As Clifford pondered these problems, the girl pulled herself together and got to her feet. She said something, but Clifford could not make it out, for beyond the open doors the street and city was aroar. The whole town seemed turned upside down. The strident honking of auto horns underscored the wild shouting of men and boys. The wail of distant sirens and the low bellow of factory whistles added to make such a bedlam as only a startled city can make.

Clifford pressed the switch and the big doors slid together and muffled the clamor outside. The girl touched his arm and he looked around to see Briggs running back from the dim recesses of the laboratory. As he came nearer, Clifford thought he detected a poorly concealed elation in his bearing as he barked at them.

"I told you not to meddle. There is not a chance in the world of rescuing him alive!" Crystal ran down the aisle between the grotesque machinery and caught Briggs by the arm.

"BB! What do you mean? Is he still alive?"

"How do I know?" I never sent him off!" he evaded brutally.

"Listen to me!" she cried pulling at him with nervous little jerks. "What was he doing inside the ship?" Briggs did not seem in the least upset. His smutty eyes rested upon her slight figure with a contemptuous composure that seemed to torment her.

"It won't do any harm to tell you, now," he finally answered. "The governor and I were working on the idea of carrying passengers at some time in the future. I discovered a method of rinsing the carbon from respired air, so that it might be breathed again; a simple little process that will make oxygen tanks unnecessary."

"BB!" she cried, tugging at him again, "Can you stand there and talk of experiments at a time like this?"

"Well, why not?" he resumed and then as though she had not interrupted at all, "The contraption seemed a success, and to prove it, I volunteered to let myself be sealed inside. The old sport refused and insisted on trying it out himself, and since he was boss, I had to let him have his way. He was doing splendidly the last peep I got at him through the plate glass port hole."

"BB!" she cried again, "we're wasting time. Let us all forget everything but him and his peril and get together to find some way to get him back."

"How?" he asked with exasperating doubt in his tone. "All hell can't bring down that ship now!"

"How?" she repeated mechanically and looked at Clifford.

"The mail rockets," he answered, not because he knew a way, but because he wanted to give her hope.

BRIGGS laughed ironically. Crystal whirled on him and Clifford thought she was going to attack him with her small strength. Instead she caught his arm again, then let it go. She shrank away covering her face in the bend of her white elbow.

"You planned it," she whimpered, "You didn't care what became of him just so you got him out of your way. Oh, BB how could you?"

Briggs remained stiffly composed.

"Cut out that sob stuff," he snapped, "I told you not to meddle, and this is what you get?" She straightened and her arm came down from her face and held stiffly at her side. Clifford saw that her hand was clenched tightly. She faced Briggs as though a wall was at her back and she was determined to be brave.

"BB," she said slowly, "We would have loved you and given you all that you desired if you had let us. Daddy knew what he was about. He made his fortune by seeing opportunities before any one else saw them, and yet, you were so afraid he'd lose what he had, you—killed him!" Briggs eyes opened slightly and then contracted. He shifted them from the dauntless little figure and glared at Clifford. Then he looked back again and growled.

"If you ever want to see him again, get busy and quit trying to put the blame onto me."

"Yes, BB," she agreed, "Give me something to do!"

"Get Marks on the phone. Ask him to come down here. Phone Shaffer to roust out a crew for the shops. I'll build a special rocket and go up after him myself. Cut him out with a fusing rod and oxygen flame. Now get hold of yourself and help undo what you have done."

He turned on Clifford again. "You get out of here!"

Clifford stood his ground and stared at him, with a hard glaze upon his eyes.

"Are you going or shall I have you thrown in the hoosegow?" Clifford boiled. How he wanted to paste Briggs one on his curling lips. But he knew that would not do. If Briggs had him arrested on any pretext whatever he would be unable to form any plan of rescue, so he walked away slowly, despising himself for being in a position that Briggs could bluff him. Before he left the laboratory he heard the girl call for Marks. Briggs flooded the place with light as he reached the stairs and the buzz of machinery began vibrating over the room. He left the dark house wondering why Briggs had gone to work so quickly to try effect a rescue. Did he have some sinister plan of his own in wanting to be the first to reach the ship?

Out into the street he found it swarming with people who rushed here and there and tossed every kind of a rumor about. He lighted a cigarette and leaned heavily against the gate. With his mind busy with the stupendous problem confronting him he tried to devise some means of rescue as an hour passed and then another.

A dim star rose above the horizon and mounted swiftly toward the zenith, moving against a galaxy of ancient stars. The ship! The newest satellite of the universe! While he had been standing there he knew it had crossed the Atlantic, met the sun and the broad light of day over the cities and villages of Europe and Asia, crossed the day and night areas of the Pacific, the Western Coast of the United States, the Rockies, the Middle Western States, and was now racing toward the Atlantic coast again!

Speed! Could man never find its limit? Forever and forever that ship would be on time, even when the earth had grown ancient and old and tottered in its orbit like a drunken top, it would race on and on. Earth folks hailed it now with the same joy they hailed every new discovery, but in a day or two the miracle would become commonplace, and men would think it undignified to pull back their heads to regard its meteorlike flight.

He knew he was fortunate. It was given to few men to both dream and accomplish. Yet the glory of his triumph was gone by the thought of Rothberg sealed inside the ship. As far as rescue was concerned he might just as well have been stranded on the moon.

Desperate Plans

CLIFFORD did not trust Briggs for an instant. If Rothberg went into that ship voluntarily why had he not first submitted the plan to his board of scientists? Or at least taken his daughter into his confidence before submitting himself wholly to Briggs' power.

With the vague idea of asking the girl to hinder rather than help Briggs with the rocket, he turned back to the house and found the front door partly open, as he had left it. It seemed that servants, and everyone else, were too upset to carry on the regular routine of life. He threaded his way through the dimly lighted hall and on back to the laboratory.

Briggs and Crystal were at a desk under an electric light. Before them were papers and blueprints. Briggs saw him and scowled. The girl did not look up until he stood beside them, then she said bravely. "BB's great. He has planned a vacuum tube rocket which shall be warmed chemically and supplied with oxygen from tanks!"

"How is he going to do any good sealed inside the tube?" Clifford asked.

"Meddling again," Briggs growled.

"Not meddling. I have a sincere interest in rescuing Rothberg, you know that."

"Oh, yes, I know that. You've been spending a lot of his jack of late."

"BB!" Crystal exclaimed, "I thought we were all to work together!" Briggs put down some figures in a small cramped hand. Clifford watched him.

"What are you going to do when you get there?" Crystal asked Briggs.

"The devil!" he exploded, "One thing at a time. You two won't give me a chance to think." He let his pencil drop to the table. "If it will make you any easier, I'll tell you that the warm rocket is to be only a refuge. I go out for a few minutes and work swiftly and return when the cold becomes unbearable."

"You know you can't do that!" Clifford objected. "You know that scientists believe that space has a temperature of minus two hundred and seventy-three degrees Centigrade."

"Applesauce," Briggs growled. "Scientists now believe, at least some of them do, that space is not much colder than the arctic zone in wintertime, possibly not more than fifty degrees minus. I think they are right too!"

"Maybe," Clifford agreed, "but what will happen should you be wrong?" He glanced at the girl for approval, but she frowned. Evidently she thought he was trying to discourage Briggs. Clifford did want to discourage him for he did not trust him at all, so he asked in spite of her distress: "Do you have any idea how cold minus two hundred and seventy-three degrees is, Mrs. Briggs?"

"No," she said with despair in her eyes.

"Perhaps I can give you an idea. I saw a rubber ball dropped into a basin of liquid air once. You know liquid air is much warmer than absolute zero. When I recovered the rubber and dropped it, it shattered like rotten glass!"

"Then there is no hope?" she asked, her eyes begging for encouragement.

"There has to be," he said emphatically, "but to have hope one must be fortified against such temperatures, if one intends leave the rocket."

"I'll manage that," Briggs growled.

"How?" Clifford insisted.

Briggs pushed back his sketches and glared.

"Didn't I tell you to keep out of this. Now, get this straight, we don't need your help!" Clifford looked straight at Crystal expecting her to deny that Briggs was authorized to speak for her father, but she sat very silent and stared at the paper as though she wished he would go. Feeling uncomfortable he turned and left the laboratory, wondering whether she really wanted him to go or not. He was still determined to go ahead with plans of his own, regardless of whether they were appreciated or not.

HE took a taxi and sped to the University and called Professor Mullin from his class hall.

"Professor," he began before Mullin was within ten feet of him, "Did you know Rothberg is in that ship?"

"What? Not the satellite?"

"Yes and probably suffocating by now. I'll tell you how he got there later, but right now I want your help to get him out!"

"My! My!" the Professor ejaculated, "A very desperate situation." He drew his head back and looked skyward as though looking for proof of that which he had heard.

"We haven't a minute to lose," Clifford continued.

"But we can't do anything at all," Mullin exclaimed with widening eyes. "It will require years, maybe centuries of experiment to solve such a problem! Are you sure he is in the ship?"

"Not sure, professor, but I intend to go up and look it over."

"Go up? How?"

"The mail rockets!"

"But—"

"Yes, and that is why I need your help and that of the Board. We must construct a rocket at once, one with special features so that one may live to make the trip up and back."

"But, my boy, no one could take him out of the satellite. Open the port hole and the pressure of air inside would hurl him out to be frozen and lost in space! That chamber was sealed at sea level and contains a pressure of fifteen pounds to the square inch! More than a ton to the square foot! You'd never find his body afterwards, even with a telescope!"

"I know," Clifford answered calmly, "That is just what I have been worrying about. One can't go about rescue that way, and still Briggs is at work trying to do that very thing! I really believe he is trying to finish Rothberg to save his own hide."

"What are you talking about?" Professor Mullin asked puzzled. "Be plain and don't get excited. "Let's go over there and sit down and you can tell me all you know."

"Very well," Clifford agreed. He knew there was no time to be lost if Rothberg was to be rescued alive, but he knew too that he must explain fully if he expected Mullin's help. He followed the tall figure of the professor across to a stone bench and stood while Mullin seated himself. Then with one foot on the bench and his fingers working impatiently, he told him all that had happened the night before.

"So Briggs tried to gas you, eh? Well, well well. I'm really not surprised. A short-sighted man and a dangerous one. He loves money, but he shuts it up too tight to let it grow. I suspected he was anxious for Rothberg to die, but I never thought he'd murder him."

Mullin rose abruptly. "We must get busy. Briggs is already hours ahead of us. Wait here a minute. I'll run back to the office and phone Marks and call the board together." Clifford watched the tall, dignified man do his first sprint in years. He waited, his mind racing through calculations, devising and rejecting plans for the new rocket. When Professor Mullin came back, the talk with Marks and the other members of the board seemed to have influenced him a good deal.

"Marks has absolute faith in Briggs and his rocket," he said soberly, "And the Board has not only expressed faith in him but an admiration for his willingness to risk his life going up."

"I'd advise you to go over the thing with Crystal. She knows a good deal about Briggs and is rather keen on what her father might wish to be done?"

A little exasperated with Professor Mullin he left and went again to the Rothberg place, but she was not at home, at least to him. There were two strange guards at the gate who followed him to the street gate when he was refused admittance.