John Racham Read Online Free PDF Page B

within a year or two,
and there probably were all kinds of things she had never seen or done, too.
But, he ridiculed himself, she wouldn't think of it, because she didn't know,
yet, that she was dead!
    "This is all rather pointless,
sir." She'd found an edge for

her voice from somewhere. "I've only indications, none too reliable. No kind
of operational controls at all. We're quite helpless to do anything except
watch and wait for it."
    "That's
what I said," Evans growled. "All we have to do. Just hang on. Ride
it out."
    "Yes, sir. We should touch down in about a minute from
now!"
    "Shed some of this
damned heat. Like an oven in here!"
    "Getting
close," she warned, turning her head . . . and a monstrous hammer hit the
deck under them. Query sank, winded, into his seat, grunting against the
impact. The lights winked out. In the dark came the squeal and grind of tortured
metal and plastic. He surged upward as the weight went away for a moment, then sagged back again. Everything seemed to have torn loose
and be bouncing around, even the control room itself, creating a bedlam of
noise to which Evans added his roaring protest. Query clutched his seat
frantically. It felt as if it was rocking under him like a seesaw. Then came a teeth-chilling creak, a crack like doom, and the
sudden hissing roar of water. Query gasped as hot spray struck his face and
brought strange and pungent smells with it. His seat lurched, tossing him
forward across the power panel console. Hot water smashed down on his head,
making him gasp again, and struggle frantically to get clear, to draw back and
stand, knee-deep in water. Hot water!
    There was a faint blue green glow through the
canopy, enough to let him see that the glassite had
split or burst under impact and that dark water was spurting in.
    "We're
sinking!" Lieutenant Evans scrambled out of her seat and clung to his arm
fearfully. "We're sinking! We have to get out!" Her voice was shrill
over the roar of water and her clutch desperate.
    "How?"
he shouted back at her. "All the hatches are self-sealing . . . and
they're underwater anyway, by now!"
    "Through the roof!" Evans roared. "Have to break it and get
out that way! Need a bar, something to bash with!" He looked wildly about,
grabbed at a scribble table that stood by the radio board on a single upright
pole, and tried to tear it loose by main force. That got him nowhere. Query
watched, again in that curiously indifferent mood. He was marginally aware of
the girl who clung to his
    28 arm , irrelevantly
puzzled that no vapor came from water so hot—but of course, the air
temperature was just as high—and he saw Evans sweat and strain and go scarlet in
the face.
    "Try
unscrewing it, sir!" he called, and the old man grunted, twisted savagely,
and the tabletop spun, came free and dropped with a splash into the water. Waist deep now. Evans wrestled with the tube, got it free
and in his fist, brandishing it like a symbol of triumph. A titanium alloy tube
not quite five feet long, tough but feather light. A fat lot of good he was
going to do with that! Query watched him scramble unsteadily up on the radio
console, swaying against the roll of the water, to poise and jab up at the dim
green glassite . All he got was a noise. Snarling, he
drew back and did it again, harder. With the same negative result Furious, he
took the tube in both hands, half turned to where the glassite sloped, took aim and swung, clouting the panel fair
and square.
    Query
winced in sympathy as the tube rebounded and spun away out of the old man's
grasp, glinting in the blue green glow. Almost without thought he stuck out his
hand and caught the thing, as Evans teetered, flailed the air, and fell backward
with a mighty splash into the water. The girl threw herself at him urgently,
angrily.
    "Aren't you going to do anything?" she screamed.
    "No.
Not yet. Not until we've settled below the level of that split, below the
inflow. Then we might have a chance to swim out."
    Her face set