World without Stars Read Online Free PDF

human shape met me in the passage. Not quite human, a two-legged bulk with a grotesqueglassy head; but the radio voice was Hugh Valland’s. “That you, skipper?” I clung to him and sobbed.
    “We’re lucky,” he told me. “I’ve been lookin’ us over. If we’d crashed in a sea we’d be done. The whole after section’s flooded.
     We’ve sunk. But the nose seems to be pokin’ out into air.”
    “How are the others?” I dared ask.
    “Can’t find anyone in the engine compartment,” he said grimly. “I took a flash and went into the water, but no trace, just
     a big half-melted hole in the side. They must’ve been carried out with the main reactor. So there’s two gone.” (Let me record
     their names here: Morn Krisnan and Roli Blax, good men.) Valland sighed. “Don’t seem like young Smeth’ll last long either.”
    Seven men
, I thought,
in poor shape, wrecked on a planet that every probability says is lethal for them
.
    “I came through fairly well, myself,” Valland went on. “Suppose you join the rest. They’re in the saloon. I want to gander
     out of a lock. I’ll report to you.”
    The room where we met was a cave. One evershine, knocked out of its frame, had been brought in for light. It threw huge misshapen
     shadows across crumpled walls. Snags of girders protruded like stalactites. The men slumped in their armor. I called the roll:
     Bren, Galmer, Urduga, Rorn. And Smeth, of course. He hadn’t left us yet.
    He was even conscious, more or less. They had laid him out on a bench as well as might be. I peered into his helmet. The skin
     looked green in what light we had, and the blood that bubbled from his mouth was black. But the eyeballs showed very white.
     I tuned up his radio for him and heard the harsh liquidity of his breathing.
    Rorn joined me. “He’s done,” he said without tone. “His harness ripped loose from the stanchions when they gave way, where
     he was, and he got tossed against a bulkhead. So his ribs are stove through his lungs and the spine’s broken.”
    “How do you know?” I challenged. “His suit’s intact, isn’t it?”
    Teeth gleamed in the murk that was Rorn’s face. “Captain,” he said, “I helped carry the boy here. We got him to describe how
     he felt, when he woke, and try to move his arms and legs. Look at him.”
    “Mother, mother,” said the gurgle in my earplugs.
    Valland came back. “The ferryboats are smashed too,” he said. “Their housin’s took the main impact. We won’t be leavin’ this
     planet soon.”
    “What’s outside?” I asked.
    “We’re in a lake. Can’t see the oppsite edge. But the waters fairly shallow where we are, and there’s a shore about two kilometers
     off. We can raft to land.”
    “For what?” Rorn flared.
    “Well,” Valland said, “I saw some aquatic animals jump. So there’s life. Presumably our kind of life, proteins in water solution,
     though of course I don’t expect we could eat it.”
    He stood a while, brooding in gloom, before he continued: “I think I can guess what happened. You remember the Yonderfolk
     said their system included a planet in the liquid-water thermal zone. The innermost one, with a mass and density such that
     surface gravity ought to be two-thirds Earth standard. Which feels about right, eh?”
    Only then did I notice. Every motion had hurt so much that nothing except pain had registered. But, yes, I was lighter than
     before. Maybe that was the reason I could keep my feet.
    “The Yonderfolk gave us information on each planet of this star,” Valland went on. “I don’t know exactly who made the big
     mistake. There was that language problem; and the the factor on Zara was in a hurry to boot. So my guess is, the Yonderfolk
     misunderstood him. They thought we wanted to land here first, it bein’ more comfortable for us; they even thought we had the
     means to land directly. So theysupplied figures and formulas for doin’ just that. And we assumed they were