Part 1

The Ordeal of Lancelot Biggs

By NELSON S. BOND

In spite of peace pacts, Earth ships were being attacked on Themis. Could Biggs answer that one?

[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Amazing Stories May 1943. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

Well, like it says in the old adage, "Things equal to the same thing gather no moss."

When the Corporation that under-pays us snatched the _Saturn_ off the freight shuttle and turned it into a trouble-shooter for special assignments, we thought we were getting a break. Huh! We were. "Break" is just another word for "bust." The result of our alleged "promotion" was that for a fractional increase in salary we worked twice as hard at jobs ten times nastier than any we had ever tackled before.

Like for instance the night Cap Hanson and I--I'm Bert Donovan, bug-pounder of the _Saturn_--were at the home of Lt. and Mrs. Lancelot Biggs. Biggs is, of course, the First Mate of our void-mangling jalopy. A year ago he married the skipper's daughter, Diane.

We were sitting around, chatting about this and that and the other inconsequential truffle, trying to look calmer than we actually felt, when the telephone jangled. "Bet it's a wrong number!" I said--and picked it up.

I was right. It _was_ a Wrong Number named Cheeverly, Assignment Clerk at Long Island Spaceport. He said, "_Salujo_, Sparks. Is Captain Hanson there?"

"Present," I said, "but not accountable for. Listen, Dracula, how about calling back tomorrow or next month?"

He snapped, "This is official business, Donovan! Put him on before I report you!"

So I handed the receiver to the Old Man, and for the next few minutes Diane and Lanse and I eavesdropped upon one of those unintelligible half conversations between Hanson and the drip at the other end of the wire.

"Yeah?" said the Old Man. "Yeah, this is Hanson.... Eh? Eh, what's that?... But Cheeverly, I.... What?... But I'm on furlough, man! The staff and crew of the _Saturn_ were granted a three week vaca.... Oh! Oh, I see! Emergency, eh? Well, if we _have_ to. But can't you find some other ship to.... Mmm-hmmm! I understand. Yes. Yes. Very well. I'll get in touch with my men immediately...."

He hung up and turned to us gravely. I think we all knew what he was going to say before he said it. Diane cried, "Oh, _no_, Daddy! No! Not _now_!" And Biggs asked, "What is it, sir? I hope they don't want us to--?"

Hanson fumed, "They do, dingbust 'em to Hades! It's an emergency mission. We're to lift gravs immediately!"

"Lift gravs!" exclaimed Biggs bleakly. His lump of a larynx leaped like a lemon in his scrawny neck. "But, Dad! I can't go _now_!"

His jaw sagged to his wishbone, making him homelier than usual. And, brother, that's saying something! Lancelot Biggs is a lot of things. He's a genius, for one, and he's slightly whacky, for another. Also he's one of the grandest friends a guy ever had. But even his doting mother could not honestly call him good looking.

* * * * *

He's about as tall as an old-fashioned hatrack, and built along the same general lines. He's got more bumps and knobs on his gangling frame than a hyperthyroid cucumber. Of these assorted protuberances, the most prominent is an Adam's-apple which bulges from his throat like a half-swallowed egg, and jiggles up and down when he's excited like a jitter-bug on an innerspring mattress.

He was excited now, and said voice-box was cavorting horribly from N to S and return in non-stop flight.

"I can't go _now_!" he repeated starkly. "Not _now_, of all times, Dad--"

Hanson shook his head regretfully.

"It ain't a case of can or can't, Lancelot. It's a case of _got_ to. There's trouble on Themis again."

I said, "Themis--again! You mean another ship--?"

"That's right," nodded the skipper. "Attacked and smashed to smithereens. Not a man left alive. Yes."

"But that's impossible!" I cried. "Only last month the S.S.P. announced that a peace pact had been signed with the Thagwar of Themis. The natives of that satellite agreed to join the Solar Union--"

"Them Themisites," growled the Old Man, "keep their pledges about as good as them Japanese you read about in the hist'ry books. The little yellow squirts the United Nations had to wipe out a couple hundred years ago. This makes the sixth time the Thagwar has signed a peace pact. And it's the sixth time he's broke it. So--"

"So," I said, "we're elected, eh?"

"That's the ticket."

Lanse Biggs' jaw tightened. He said stiffly, "I'm afraid this is one time I shall not be able to obey orders, sir. I--I can't go with you!"

My heart did a flipflop. I understood, and heartily sympathized with Biggs. He wanted to be on Earth right now. Because--well, like a professional grape-farmer, he had raisins of his own.

But I knew what his outright refusal meant. The IPC is a hardboiled corporation. When it issues an order, it expects obedience--or else. If Lanse refused to make this expedition, he would not only lose his rating and his chance to go up for Master's papers--an examination he was planning to take in the very near future--he might also lose his job!

Furthermore--and if this sounds selfish, pardon my sullen accent!--I hated to think of making a truly dangerous trip without Lieutenant Biggs on the bridge. That brilliant wingding has pulled so many bunnies out of the derby, saving our individual and collective necks with such monotonous regularity, that we'd be utterly lost without his assistance.

But I said nothing. After all, this was a question Biggs must decide for himself.

As it turned out, though, it was not I, nor the Old Man, nor Lancelot, who solved the problem. It was Mrs. Biggs. In a calm, decisive voice she said, "But, Lanse, dear--such commotion! Of course you will go!"

"What!" blurted Lanse. "And leave you? Never!"

"Stuff," sniffed Diane, "and nonsense! Stop talking like a cheap play. What earthly good are you doing here? Not a bit! But out _there_, men have died ... betrayed by a race of scoundrels. Brave men. Spacemen like yourself. Your duty is plain. You must go. You have no choice."

"B-but--" protested Lanse.

"But," interrupted Diane, "nothing! Now, I'm tired. You boys run along and clean up this little job. I'll be here at home, waiting for you."

Biggs asked apprehensively, "And--and you'll be all right while we're gone? You're sure--"

"Certainly I'll be all right," declared Diane. "Now, lift gravs, sailors! And--good luck!"

* * * * *

So we went. It was one hell of a job collecting the _Saturn's_ crew. Some of them were miles away, several of them were--well, let's be charitable and say, "unshipshape"--and _all_ of them were madder than an alizarin dye at having their leaves cancelled.

But none of them were foolhardy enough to refuse the order. So, to make a long story less so, several hours later the _Saturn_ roared from its mooring cradle, all jets blasting. And we were off to Themis.

Well, the planet Saturn is approximately nine hundred million miles from the Sun, and (since it was currently on our side of that central beacon) about 800,000,000 from Earth. In the good old days B.B.--Before Biggs--that would have meant a voyage of weeks. But since our ship was equipped with Lancelot's invention, the V-I (or "velocity-intensifier") unit, which enables spacecraft to attain speeds limited only by the critical velocity of light, we could expect to reach our destination in a trifle more than ten hours.

To forestall cracks from Earthlubber mathematicians who point out that 186,000 x 60 x 60 would give us a cruising speed of almost seven hundred million _m.p.h._, let me explain that you have to let the hypatomics warm for about five hours before you can cut in the V-I unit. Then the unit has to be switched off at least an hour before you reach your objective so you can decelerate without breaking every bone in your head.

Thus we had a ten hour trip ahead of us. So, as the _Saturn_ jogged along outward into space, I sat back and tried to remember everything I'd ever heard about Themis.

It wasn't much. I knew that in 1905, Pickering, the discoverer of Phoebe, had first spotted Saturn's tenth satellite. He had named this tiny body Themis, after the goddess of Law and Order. Which, in view of later events, was a huge and mirthless horselaugh.

Then something queer happened. Themis--disappeared! Yeah, that's right. It got lost! Can you imagine "losing" a cosmic body about 300 miles in diameter? Well, that's exactly what the astronomers of the Bloody Twentieth Century did.

According to their record books, they hunted for it time and time again, but never relocated it. Finally they decided astronomer Pickering must have been sopping up too much _spiritus frumenti_ the night he discovered the satellite, and they expunged its name from the records.

Which was, of course, a terrific boner ... because it was there all the time! It was rediscovered in 1983 by the staff observers of the Goddard Memorial Telescope located in Copernicus Crater on Luna. And in 2031 A.D. it was visited, charted, and claimed in the name of the Interplanetary Union by the Space Patrol rocket _Orestes_ on a settlement investigation flight. Only nobody went to live there.

* * * * *

For one thing, it was too small pickings to bother with. During the Space Rush of 2030-80, everybody who could beg, borrow or steal a ride on a ship was hightailing it to the more important planets. Venus, Mars, Mercury, the asteroids. Later, the Jovian satellites became popular. Slowly the frontiers pushed farther and farther out from Sol. Until now adventurers were willing to take a squint at any body in space which boasted soil, air, and a modicum of gravity.

So at last, after long years of ignoring them, Earthmen were trying to become palsy-walsy with the Themisites. Oh, yes, Themis had natives. Humanoid aboriginals, not terribly unlike Earth's own children, except that they had four legs instead of two.

But our side wasn't getting anywhere, and in a rush! As the Old Man had said, six times a Patrol party had landed on Themis, and six times signed a peace pact with the ruler, or Thagwar, of that globe. But each time the pact had been ignored by the Themisites as soon as a party of colonists attempted to land. The defenseless cruise-ships had been set upon, destroyed, their cargoes stolen, and their passengers brutally slaughtered!

So now here we were, blithely barging in where sensible angels might justifiably hesitate to tread. It didn't make sense. I asked the skipper about it.

"Look, Cap," I demanded, "maybe I'm sort of slow on the intake, but how come _we_ draw this assignment? Since the Themisites seem to want trouble, how come the Space Patrol doesn't go busting out there with rotors primed and a couple battalions to occupy the world?"

"On account," explained Hanson impatiently, "Themis is populated by a race with an intelligence quotient of more than .7 on the Solar Constant scale, Sparks. And also because the race has a recognized form of government.

"Accordin' to interplanetary law, colonization of civilized bodies can only be carried out with the permission of the native inhabitants, and aggressive occupation is forbidden when those inhabitants possess humanoid intelligence."

"Meaning," I asked, "what? We aren't allowed to grab Themis unless the Themisites let us?"

"Meanin'," snorted the Old Man, "that if you was the only inhabitant of Themis, the S.S.P. wouldn't have nothin' to worry about. But the hell with that. I didn't come here to bandage words with you. I come up to ask you if you happened to notice the funny way Lanse is actin'."

I had. I nodded sombrely.

"Moping around," I acknowledged, "like a biddie on a china egg. But you can't expect anything different, Skipper. After all, he didn't want to leave Diane at a time like this."

"Of course not. Neither did I. But since we had to, we might as well buckle down and get the job tooken care of as quick as possible. Anyway, you're keepin' in touch with home, ain't you?"

"Absolutely. Holding an open circuit every minute. But don't worry about Biggs, Skipper. He'll be all right as soon as we actually get to work."

* * * * *

That's as far as I got with my Pollyanna glad-talk. For at that moment the intercommunicating system rasped into life, and in the reflector appeared the baffled pan of Dick Todd, our Second Mate. Dick was so nervous he had to lick his lips three times before he could grease out a word. At last:

"S-s-skipper!" he managed.

"Yeah? What is it?"

"Th-th-themis! We're pulling into Themis--"

The Old Man glanced at his chronometer and nodded.

"O.Q. So we're dropping gravs on schedule? So?"

"N-n-nothing," gulped Todd, "except that Themis has d-d-disappeared! The automatic alarm system is going crazy. According to it, there's a large cosmic body right in front of _us--but we can't see a thing_!"

* * * * *

I said, "Oh-oh!" and groped for my transmitter key. But before I could start pounding the bug, Hanson grabbed my wrist.

"And just what do you think _you're_ doing, Sparks?"

"I don't _think_," I told him, "I _know_! When people see things that aren't there, I know what to do. Hide the bottle. But when they start _not_ seeing things that _are_ there, that's all, folks! I'm calling the S.S.P. base on Luna and asking them to rush a hospital ship out this way, immediately if not sooner. A nice, pretty hospital ship equipped with soft, hemstitched straitjackets--"

"Don't be a dope," roared the Old Man. "Todd don't talk nonsense for no good reason. There's something screwy goin' on around here. I want to know what it is. Come on!"

And he galloped from my turret like a bolt of goosed lightning, hauling me along in his wake by sheer suction. We hightailed it through the corridors, up the ramp, and onto the bridge. There we found both Todd and Biggs. Todd was still a delicate shade of bilious green, but he was hunched over the plot table, scribbling hurried calculations. Biggs was in the pilot's bucket seat, punching away at the studs as cheerfully as if this were a routine test flight in home atmo.

He glanced around as we came in, and his eyes popped out on stalks. He half rose from his seat.

"A--a message, Sparks?" he quavered.

I shook my head.

"No word yet," I reassured him. "I'll let you know. Meanwhile, what's the trouble around here?"

"Trouble?" repeated Lancelot wonderingly.

The Old Man groaned and pawed at what little remains of his hair.

"Don't look now," he rasped, "but didn't Todd call me a couple of minutes ago with some wild-and-woolly tale about Themis disappearing?"

"Oh--_that_!" smiled Biggs gently. "I thought for a second you meant there was something wrong. Why, yes, Dad. Themis _has_ disappeared--temporarily. Oddest thing--"

"Talk sense!" I moaned. "Todd said something about there being a large body in our path, too. Did it--" I took a look at the central vision plate which reflected nothing between us and the far stars--"did it go away?"

"Oh, no," drawled Biggs nonchalantly. "It's still there."

"Still there!" I looked again, more closely, at the vision plate. It was as bare as a debutante's backbone at a ball. "What's still _where_, Lanse? Have you gone off your gravs, or are my optics myopic?"

"The large body," said Biggs blandly. "It's Themis' moon. It's there. Three points to starboard, and one degree to loft."

"Themis' _moon_!" croaked the Old Man. "What in Hades are you talkin' about, Lancelot! Themis _is_ a moon!"

"I know," agreed Biggs. His larynx bobbled pleasantly. "That's the curious part of it. This is the first time in the solar system that any satellite has ever been found to have a satellite of its own! But we've located it, charted its trajectory, and cross-checked our calculations--haven't we, Dick?"

Todd looked up from the plot table.

"That's right," he said hollowly. "Themis _has_ got a moon of its own. An--an invisible moon!"

"_Invisible moon!_" The skipper and I did a twin act.

"Yes," said Biggs. "You know, I believe that's why Themis--er--'disappears' periodically. It is circled by a large, opaque satellite with the peculiar property of being able to bend light waves around itself. Consequently, every time the moon, revolving around its primary, comes between Themis and observers, Themis is occulted--and disappears!"

* * * * *

The Old Man looked at him like he had just grown a second head.

"B-but that's impossible, son!" he gasped.

"Oh, no," said Lanse quietly. "Unlikely, yes. But not impossible. Because--well, because the situation _does_ exist, you see." He clucked thoughtfully. "Strange, isn't it, that we should be the first to find it out? After these many years. But that's the Laws of Chance for you. Every other time a ship visited Themis, the invisible moon must have been on the far side."

Hanson was fidgeting like he had wasps in his weskit. Now he broke in, "That's all very interestin'! But how about the chances of our crackin' up on this aforesaid moon-of-a-moon?"

"Oh," replied Biggs negligently, "that's all taken care of. We've plotted a new trajectory around it. We should see Themis again in a moment--Aaah!" He breathed a sigh of satisfaction. "There she is! Nice looking little satellite, isn't it!"

And true enough, Themis was beginning to appear in the vision plate before us. A weird looking sight it was. A thin sliver of terrain at first ... then widening, growing into a full sized cosmic body as it stopped being occulted by its phenomenal little companion.

Biggs punched the intercommunicating stud and spoke to the engine room.

"All right, Mac," he called. "You can cut the V-I. Prepare to land in about fifty minutes." Then he turned to us again. "Remarkable thing, what? Some day when we're not so busy we'll have to drop jets on that invisible moon, eh? Should be an interesting visit to make."

The skipper groaned feebly.

"Interestin'! He finds an invisible moon, figures a trajectory around it, then says it's--Oooh! Let me out of here! I'm feelin' heat-waves!"

I grinned at him consolingly.

"Cheer up," I told him. "I know just how you feel. Only it's not the heat ... it's the humility."

So that was that. The next hour was taken up with routine stuff. Decelerating to atmo velocity, cruising over Themis until we located the capital city of Kraalbur, where the Thagwar maintained his royal residence, dropping to a stern-jet landing ... that was all child's play for a spaceman like Lt. Lancelot Biggs.

* * * * *

Thus it was that a short while later, armed to the teeth and ready for any eventuality, our foray party of ten men stood in the lock of the _Saturn_, listening to Hanson's final instructions.

"Be quiet," he advised us, "be calm ... but above all, be careful. These Themisites is as untrustworthy as three-of-a-kind in a gamblin' joint. Our orders is to improve relations, not make 'em worse ... so act accordin'ly. We'll treat them exactly like they meet us. If they greet us friendly, we'll be nice. But if they get tough--"

"Well?" asked one of the crew.

"Give 'em the works!" said the Old Man succinctly, and nodded to his son-in-law. "O.Q., Lanse. Open up!"

The airlock wheezed asthmatically, and we stepped out upon the soil of the satellite Themis.

A huge mob of natives had gathered around to greet us. They were a weird looking outfit. Sort of like men on horses, you might say, or like those old Centaurs you read about in mythology books. Maybe that's where the legend of Centaurs originated; I don't know. The more man travels the spaceways, the more he discovers races of beings similar to the freaks and curiosities recorded in ancient myths. Lanse Biggs believes that once upon a time, thousands of years ago, before Earth's old moon crashed, destroying the civilization then existent, Man knew the secret of spacetravel, and legend is a record of things once seen and known. But I wouldn't know about that. I'm just a radioman....

Anyhow, these Themisites were sort of like us down to the tummy. But from there on they branched out into the equine family, being endowed with strong, muscular, quadrupedal bodies and postscripted with long, bushy tails.

But they were intelligent. No doubt about that. And surprisingly enough, they seemed friendly! One, their ruler, trotted forward and raised an arm in the cosmoswide gesture of greeting. He addressed us in Universale, the common language of space.

"_Salujo, amiji!_" he said. "Welcome to Themis, land of peace and brotherly love!"

Hanson gasped, "Get a load of that! Three days ago the four-legged punks murdered a whole crew of Earthmen, and now they yap about brotherly--"

"Maybe he's right?" I suggested thoughtfully. "You ever have a brother, Skipper?"

"Shhh!" whispered Biggs. He stepped forward, acting as spokesman for our team. "Greetings, O Thagwar of Themis! We come as emissaries from the Blue World, seeking to forge a bond of friendship between your people and ours."

"Friendship and peace," said the Thagwar grandiloquently, "are ever the desire of my race."

Lanse said, "We hear and believe, noble Thagwar. But evil tidings have lately reached our ears. It is told that a few days ago you led your people in mortal combat against a party from our planet--"

* * * * *

The Thagwar drew himself stiffly erect and shook his head in firm denial.

"That," he said in a tone of outraged dignity, "is not so! It was the _old_ Thagwar who led that brutal assault."

"Old Thagwar? Then you have overthrown his government since--?"

"The former Thagwar," informed the Themisite leader, "has been removed from power. _I_ am now Thagwar of Themis. I wish only friendship and peace between our peoples. And now," his eyes rolled hopefully, "have you brought the usual--er--tributes?"

"Tributes," of course, meant graft. Humanoid forms change with the planets, but human nature doesn't. However, we had come prepared, knowing the mentalities of our opponents. Lanse beckoned to a pair of our crewmen who lugged forward a crate packed with an assortment of the doolallies and thingamajiggers loved by abos like the Themisites. Mirrors, gaudy bits of costume jewelry, brightly-colored trinkets, yards of richly hued cloth, horn-rimmed spectacles, cheap cameras ... all that sort of thing.

Crooked? Sure. Taking advantage of ignorant savages? Posilutely. But, hell, you can't interest uncultured aborigines in vanRensselaer atomo-converters and pre-Rooseveltian Era art treasures. Of course they'd be glad to get their paws on a few Haemholtz ray-pistols or a case of three-star _tekel_, but the authorities frown on the practice of supplying lower races with firearms, fireworks or firewater.

So Lanse handed out the gadgets to the Thagwar, who beamed with delight. And after that the negotiations were a snapperoo. We told what we wanted: permission for Earth's colonists to settle on Themis, the right to construct spaceports, and so on and so forth ... and the ruler said, "Yes ... yes ... yes," till he sounded like a phonograph needle caught in a worn groove.

There remained but one thing to be done. The formal signing of the treaty. So Lanse drew from his pocket the previously prepared sheets, and was just getting ready to help the Thagwar scrawl a legal "X" on the dotted line when a stir passed through the assemblage.

* * * * *