The Outward Urge Read Online Free PDF Page B

glass to bear so far to sunward.’
    ‘I see. Try to keep you informed,’ said Ticker.
    He worked forward on the metal body. There was enough iron in it to give some traction for his magnetic soles. ‘Turn still gradual, but steady,’ he reported. ‘This thing has a number of knobs and protuberances and so on round the nose,’ he added. ‘Five major and several minor. God knows what they are. One or more must be radar.’
    ‘With limited range, obviously,’ said the Commander. ‘Must be, or it would go off chasing the moon, or the Earth, instead of us. That looks as if they must know our distance and the plane of our orbit pretty accurately, damn them. Given that, it wouldn’t be too difficult to make it sure to find us sooner or later. If you can sort out which is the radar, it might be helpful to have a good bash at it.’
    ‘Trouble is they aren’t like anything I’ve ever seen,’ complained Ticker. ‘It’d be just too bad if the one I bashed turned out to be a fuse.’
    ‘Take your time, and make sure. How’s she bearing now?’
    ‘Nearly on. Three or four degrees more.’
    He slid back a bit to a position where he could brace himself on a nacelle member. The intermittent vibration from the starboard tubes ceased, and a new tremor ran through the missile as the port tubes fired to check her.
    ‘She’s round now,’ he told the Commander. ‘Lined up on you, and steadying.’
    He waited tensely, gripping with arms and knees as best he could. The main tubes spurted briefly. He felt the missile surge forward. There was a jerk as the lines to the flotsam tightened, and checked it. The tubes fired again. The missile and its tow jerked to and fro on their loose coupling, but only one of the lines parted, to let a girder section spin off into space on its own. The rest joggled, and the lines looped about until presently the whole conglomeration was in motion on the new line, headed now for the distant hulk, but at a speed somewhat below that of the missile’s former attack.
    ‘On our way now, Skip,’ Ticker reported. ‘I’ll get forward again, and try to see about that radar.’
    On the nose once more, he tried shielding the protuberances in turn with his gloved hands. There was no apparent effect; certainly no tendency to deviate from the course. He slackened off the life-line a little, and hung over the front to shield as many as possible at once with his body, also without noticeable result. Again he examined the projections. One of them looked as if it might be a small solar-energy cell, but the rest were unidentifiable. He was sure only that some of them must be relaying information to the controls. He sat back, astride the nose of the missile, and feeling the need of a cigarette as he had seldom felt it before.
    ‘Got me beat,’ he admitted. ‘I just don’t know, Skip. Almost any of them might be any damned thing.’
    He turned his attention to the spangled blackness about him. The hulk and the assembly, lying dead ahead, were shining more brightly than anything but the sun itself.
    ‘One thing, Skipper,’ he said. ‘It won’t be like the other try. The turn’s brought it round so that you and the assembly are almost in line from here.’
    ‘There must be some way of disabling or disarming the brute. Don’t any of those projections unscrew?’
    ‘A couple of them look as if they ought to, but I’ve no spanners, and I lost the grips when I was snatched off.’
    Moving forward again, he braced himself as well as he could, and tried to unscrew a graspable portion with his gloved hands. It was a waste of effort. He gave up, and gazed ahead while he recovered his breath. The missile was steady on its course, with barely a tremor of correction to be felt. Distance was difficult to judge, but he guessed that he could not be much more than twenty miles from the hulk. Not many minutes...
    Ticker became aware of sweat forming on his forehead, and stinging in the corners of his eyes. He shook