Ray Cummings: Golden Age Space Opera Tales

THE STAR-MASTER-3

III CAME TO WITH THE sound of distant throbbing in my ears. It seemed that I was lying on a metal grid-floor; and as I stirred, a familiar voice sounded.

“Thank the Lord, you’re coming out of it at last.”

It was Jim, here on the floor with me, bending anxiously over me in a luminous darkness. His pug-nosed face grinned down at me.

“I sure thought you might never come back, Art. You been a day, sleeping off that damned drug.”

Dizzily I tried to sit up as he held me. “What—what happened? Where the devil are we?” Then I remembered the fight. “Venta—” I murmured.

“She’s all right. I’ve seen her, and talked with her.”

I could see that Jim and I were alone in a small, triangular metal apartment. A closed door was to one side. And to the other, there was a round bull’s-eye window. It was black out there, with bright white points of stars. The thrumming was a faint distant electronic throb, off in this strange interior.

I could feel my strength rapidly coming back. I sat up, shoving Jim away. “I’m all right now. Where are we?”

He grinned wryly. “Hold your breath for a shock. We’re out in Space, plenty far. I guess, by now, we’re on our way to Venus!”

Out in Space! How often, like everyone else in our modern world of science, I had envisaged it, and wondered why it had never been made possible.

“On the way to Venus?”

“So they tell me, an’ Lord knows I wouldn’t doubt it. If you don’t believe me, come take a look.”

With his arm around me, I staggered dizzily to the bull’s-eye porte. It was an amazing scene! The Heavens everywhere were a black vault, strewn with myriad white gems of the blazing worlds. Filling one whole side, the familiar Earth hung motionless. It was mottled with clouds, beneath which the configurations of the oceans and continents were plainly visible.

I stared, awed, wordless; and then, still weak and dizzy with the cold sweat of the drug chilling me, I was glad enough to sit down on the couch, with Jim beside me.

“Who’s got us?” I asked presently.

“A fellow named Curtmann and his band. A dozen or more of them here on board. I’ve talked with one of them—they’re all Earthmen—this ship was built on Earth. Would you believe it? A damned scientist from mid-Europe built it secretly. He never told the world about it, but gathered a bunch of crooks and beat it off.”

“Not so fast,” I murmured. “Don’t get incoherent.”

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