THE ADVENTURES OF GERRY CARLYLE
THE INTERPLANETARY HUNTRESS
SIREN SATELLITE
By
Arthur K. Barnes
ASSIGNMENT: Siren Satellite
Chapter I. Ill-Starred Voyage
Chapter II. Intrigue in Space
Chapter III. Murder With Mathematics
Chapter IV. A Hairy Intruder
Chapter V. Gerry's Stratagem
Chapter VI. Knockout
Chapter I
Ill-Starred Voyage
GERRY CARLYLE draped her very lovely form over the functionally-designed Plastair and nibbled moodily at a long, bronze curl. She had just discovered how vulnerable she was and, like all-important public figures who happen to find themselves in such a situation, she was annoyed. That she was important, no one could deny. Gerry Carlyle was perhaps the most famous woman on Earth. She was beautiful. She was rich. And she was amazingly successful in a profession so rigorous and exacting that not one man in a thousand would dare face the dangers and hardships and excitement that she faced almost daily.
Queen of the space-rovers, in her mighty ship, The Ark, this slim woman covered nearly the entire Solar System in her quest for exotic and weird life-forms to be returned live for the edification and astonishment of the public at the London Interplanetary Zoo. Her name was a byword, and she was respected and loved throughout the System for her courage, as well as her beauty.
And yet, for all this, Gerry Carlyle was very vulnerable in one regard. Like all champions, she couldn't pass up a dare or a challenge, no matter what its nature. She had to take on all comers, and she had just realized that fact.
"The nerve of that fellow!" she muttered, then looked up in annoyance at her fiance, Tommy Strike. "You're none too sympathetic, either. What are you pacing around for?"
Strike was medium tall, and darkly good-looking in a rugged sort of way. He grinned tolerantly at her, the grin that always made her heart stumble.
"Just trying out the new flooring," he said.
The pilot room and main corridors of the Ark had just been refloored with zincal, the new metal, plastic, air bubble combination which gave under the foot like an expensive rug, but which never showed signs of wear.
Gerry pouted.
"Well, you might show a little interest," she said. "After all, you're second in command around here." But Gerry was not the pouting kind, so the pout was not very successful.
"You've been mumbling to yourself for the past half hour," Tommy Strike pointed out. "How do you expect me to know what It's all about? If you care to commence at the commencement, in words of one syllable, so my dull wits can grasp whatever it is that has so upset you, perhaps I'll listen."
Gerry gave her man a smoky, heavylidded glance, smiled, and made room for him on the Plastair.
"It's this fellow Dacres," she began. "He came around the other day with a business proposition. Said he wanted to use The Ark to rescue his brother whose expedition has apparently cracked up on Triton. He offered to finance the whole thing, with me furnishing the regular crew. He would simply be a passenger. Naturally, I turned him down. Gerry Carlyle does not run a taxi service.
"Triton, eh?" Strike grunted. "Neptune's only satellite. And with a very nasty reputation. Isn't that the place that's never been explored?"
"That's the place, all right. Two or three expeditions tried it. None ever returned."
"Oh, yeah. I remember reading about that. They call it the 'siren satellite.' Very dramatic. And also a very long way from here. Your pal Dacres must be well off to be able to afford such a jaunt."
Gerry tossed her blond hair.
"He's no pal of mine!" she said, hotly. "Wait till you hear what he did! He's blackmailing me!"
"Ah?"
"He's gone to all the papers and telefilm services and spread the story that I refused to rescue Dacres' brother because the rumors about Triton have scared me off. How do you like that?"
He leaned over, snapped the telenews switch, and pointed to the wall-screen. A headline flashed on.
GERRY CARLYLE SPURNS RESCUE PLEA!
Angrily, Gerry spun a dial to reveal a second lead.
QUEEN OF HUNTRESSES SHIES AWAY FROM TRITON CHALLENGE!
Miss Gerry Carlyle, the Catch-'em-Alive woman renowned the world over for her adventures while raiding the Solar System for weird monsters, today rejected the plea of Lawrence Dacres that she put her space-ship, The Ark, at his disposal for the rescue of his brother, believed lost on Triton.
Mr. Dacres alleges that fear of unknown forces upon the lonely, unexplored satellite of Neptune prompted the refusal.
It is true that Triton's record of being the grave of more than one ill-fated expedition is cause enough to make anyone wary. But if, as is asserted, something has been discovered at last which gives pause to the redoubtable Miss Carlyle, then man, indeed, bites dog.
Gerry's furious fingers again moved, and a third line of heavy type declared:
SWEETHEART OF SPACE SHUNS SIREN SATELLITE!
Strike sniggered. Gerry interrupted.
"I had a few words with the editor who dreamed that one up," she said with quietly vicious satisfaction. "He is now resting in a sanitarium."
"I can see what an awkward position that puts you in," he admitted. "The Dacres fellow's already tried the case in the press and found you guilty of something or other."
He rose, walked around behind Gerry. Presently his voice came again, musingly.
"Now let's see. Triton. Diameter, three thousand miles. Revolution, five days, seven hours, three minutes. Stellar magnitude-"
"You sound like an encyclopedia." Gerry twisted around, trying to see.
"That's because I'm reading from an encyclopedia, I'll bet... Stellar magnitude at opposition, thirteen. Retrograde motion. Gravity, two and a half times that of Earth. Oh, yeah. That's why they call it the 'siren satellite.' It lures the unwary space-traveler close, then hauls him in with the unexpected gravity... Mmm. Composed of matter not native to the Solar System - hence the terrific mass. Believed to be a wanderer from space trapped by Neptune. That would explain the retrograde motion."
Brisk, muffled footsteps sounded along the corridor, followed by an impatient knock on the pilot room door.
"That'll be friend Dacres now." Gerry grimaced. "Come in!"
Dacres made his entrance. He was not self-important, but he was imposing, and whenever he entered a room he would inevitably command attention. He was tall, slender in the manner of a rapier, and blond. He bowed stiffly.
"Good morning, Miss Carlyle," he said.
Gerry almost expected to hear his heels click. She introduced the two men, mentally compared them, as all women do.
"So, you've come to apologize for your insufferable conduct?" she said then.
"I've come to see if you have reconsidered your unfriendly and uncooperative attitude," he amended.
Gerry began to incandesce.
"Why, you - you-" she could scarcely contain herself. "You deliberately spread lies and false insinuations through the press, making me a laughing-stock, blasting my reputation, impugning my courage! And now you have the crust to pretend that I'm in the wrong for not throwing my whole organization into the lap of every would-be joyrider who comes along! You're nothing but a blackmailer!"
Dacres refused to be stampeded.
"Sorry to exert pressure on you in such fashion, Miss Carlyle," he said, unperturbed. "As you imply, however, I have, no scruples. None, at least, when my brother's life is at stake."
Gerry found it hard to answer that one. She had tried unsuccessfully to answer it ever since Dacres had first spoken to her. The blond man knew this, and pursued his advantage.
"While we argue here," he pointed out, "my brother and his crew may be dying slowly being crushed flat by the terrible gravity. He weighed two hundred on Earth. Up there, he'd weigh five hundred. The human heart simply cannot stand that kind of punishment. It'll quit."
The words conjured an unpleasant picture of freezing, starving men crawling painfully about like injured crabs, praying for quick release from agony. Gerry winced.
"Weren't the explorers equipped with degrav units?" she asked.
"Yes, but how long will they last? A couple of weeks at low power, possibly. Then-" Dacres brought his palms together with slow expressiveness. "That's why every second is precious."
Gerry felt cornered, and she glanced at Tommy Strike in an exasperated appeal for reinforcement. But Strike was strictly neutral. If anything, he found her predicament amusing, taking a perverse delight in seeing the ever victorious Gerry at bay for once.
She made one last try.
"Why pick on me, Mr. Dacres?" she asked. "Why is it so essential to have my ship, and only mine?"
"Rocket ships visiting Triton, however powerful, have so far all cracked up. Complete safety demands the tremendous power of a centrifugal flyer, like The Ark. How many such ships exist today? A handful. And how many of those are owned by other than government agencies? Only yours, Miss Carlyle. If you refuse me, I shall have to try and find a lesser ship. But I'm staking a great deal on having publicly put you into an intolerable position, so you can't afford to turn me down."
Gerry gasped. The fellow was certainly frank about it. What's more, he seemed to have all the answers. If she were ready to quit her romantic and risky business and settle down, she could safely say no. But as long as she wished to remain queen of the space-rovers, she dared not let a single questionable act stain her record.
She looked despairingly at Strike, but he simply shrugged, grinning faintly.
"Well, here we go again," he said.
Dacres tendered an olive branch.
"There might, of course, be some interesting alien life-forms on Triton. After the rescue is completed, you'd be welcome to try for a. couple of specimens, if that would enable you to - er - save face."
Gerry felt her temperature climb to a new high, and she counted ten, then stood up.
"You are insulting, Mr. Dacres," she announced. "I do not like you. The only reason my fiance has not knocked you down is because he feels I sometimes think too highly of myself, and that a dressing down does me good. However, your brother's peril and your own machinations force me to accept your proposition. Come back in an hour with your checkbook and your attorney. Our contract will be ready for you. We can leave at dawn."
Dacres bowed again, very tall and ever so slightly triumphant.
"Thank you," he said. "I regret our inability to be friends but, after all, that is unimportant. I'm sure we'll manage a successful and uneventful voyage."
He stalked out, ramrod-stiff.
"Whew!" Strike shook himself like a big dog. "The electric potential of this room must be terrific. Think I'll go outside and ground myself. I've never seen a fellow so completely right every time he opens his mouth. Most disconcerting."
And Tommy Strike gave out with a roar of accumulated laughter.
Lawrence Dacres seemed to have been in error once, however, when he predicted a journey without incident. Just before reaching Mars, five of The Ark's crew became violently ill after dinner.
"Food poisoning," was the verdict in the Martian hospital. The men were out of danger and would be released in two or three days, but as The Ark had left Earth with only a skeleton crew, in order to save expense, a serious problem was now at hand. Dacres, frantic at delay which cost him hundreds of dollars a day, suggested that he recruit replacements at the Martian spaceport.
"We must get under way at once, Miss Carlyle," he said, "or I'll go broke just waiting here. After all, it wasn't your key men who became ill, just subordinates. The chief engineer, for instance, is all eight. He could get along with new men for just this one trip."
It was true. On a routine journey such as this, Gerry had no need of the special qualifications and training which made those sick men expert hunters, trappers, and zoologists, as well as engineers. Any good mechanics could replace them.
So she agreed. But she couldn't help feeling that, conceived in anger and already stricken with misfortune, the expedition was ill-starred.
Chapter II
Intrigue in Space
IT WAS Tommy Strike who, several hours out from Mars, stumbled upon the extraordinary and amusing scene which suggested that the journey was indeed fated to be anything but routine. Glancing in through a half-open door in the crew's quarters, he observed a man, a total stranger, going through weird antics. The newcomer was holding his head very gingerly between his hands, as if it were about to explode, and walking around the small but comfortable room with awkwardly high steps.
The man glared at himself in the mirror, and Strike grinned at the homely reflection the man saw. It was epitome of the battered, broken-down boxer - flat nose, lumpy cheeks, scar tissue under the brows, cauliflower ears.
The man with the clownish face now staggered to a porthole to look out. Then he reeled back with a stricken, bewildered expression. He groaned piteously, obviously in the grip of a hangover to end all hangovers.
Strike leaned quietly against the door jamb, to watch. Gradually, both he and the broken-down pugilist became aware of voices in the next room, voices hushed but intense. The ex-bruiser wobbled over to the door and cocked his tin ear.
"Monk, you fool!" came the voice. "How the devil did that tramp get aboard?"
There was a shuffle of feet.
"Boss, I swear I dunno," came the conciliatory reply. "We didn't expect you right away, so we was havin' ourselves a time."
"A drunken carousal, you mean?"
"Okay, have it your way. Anyhow, when your message come, we headed for the space port, but everything was pretty happy, see, an' this fellow must have got sort of attached to the party, an'-" Monk's voice trailed away. "As a matter of fact, I don't much remember exactly what did happen."
"So when you checked in, seven souse-pots instead of six, no one thought anything of it. Beautiful!" The invisible speaker was very bitter. "Well, the tramp's aboard now, and the damage is done. I suppose I should have met you myself. Question is-"
The lumpy-faced man suddenly shoved open the door. It was like a French farce, with Strike able to see all that happened, while remaining unobserved. Six toughfisted mechanics, the men recruited by Dacres in the emergency, were looking very ill at ease as Dacres tongue-lashed them. Strike frowned slightly. He would have to remind the tall, blond Dacres that it was the captain alone who had the right to discipline the men.
Then the unidentified, clown-faced man spoke.
"You!" he snapped out. "Who're you?"
"Lawrence Dacres, and keep a civil tongue in your head."
"You shanghaied me aboard this here spaceship, Dacres, an' I demand you turn around and take me back to Mars pronto. Or else!"
There was a round of mirth, and Strike moved nearer to watch the rest of the scene. The strange, lumpy-faced man purpled.
"I mean it," he declared. "D'you know who I am?"
"Don't tell us. Let us guess." The heavy irony came from Monk, the man who had been trying to explain how the extra person had come aboard at the spaceport. He had a receding forehead and long, hairy arms.
"I'm Kid McCray, the Martian middleweight champion, that's who!"
The crewmen dissolved into the helpless hilarity of complete disbelief, and Strike fought back his own urge to laugh. Middleweight McCray ranted and stormed, trying to convince them of his sincerity. It was useless. In fury, he doubled his fists and sprang at Dacres.
However, Strike decided, whatever ring experience McCray might have had didn't include the trickiness of moving out in space. His lunge carried him well off the floor. He sailed, floundering, like a man in deep water, awkward and off balance. In this defenseless position, the blond man's punch caught him flush on the jaw and slammed him head-first against the steel wall.
McCray took a full count.
"Nobody can do this to me," he muttered dizzily, and was still shaky when he managed to stand again.
The crew men were weeping in their joy.
"The champ's off form today!" the guffawing Monk yelled. "He ain't so good in the light gravity!"
Strike thought it about time to intervene, so he stepped into the room. There was a sudden silence of frozen attitudes and wary eyes.
"Oh, Captain Strike," Dacres said, relaxing. "Glad you're here. If you overheard what's been going on, you realize that we have a stowaway aboard with some peculiar notions in his head."
"I understand, Dacres." Strike tried to look sternly at the groggy, clown-faced McCray. "Just how did you get on the ship?"
"Well," - McCray screwed up his face in thought - "Well, there was the fight, see? First championship bout ever held on Mars. I win by a kayo in the eleventh. Then we celebrated-parties, taverns, lots o' womans... Then I don't remember nothin' till a few minutes-" He looked very baffled. "Doncha believe me?"
Obviously, the various celebrants had somehow formed into one big party during the gay evening. It sounded like a fight night. There probably had been a fight. But as for a man with a face like McCray's being a champion-
Strike and Dacres exchanged sad smiles, and Dacres made a cranking motion with one finger to his temple.
"Perhaps a few weeks' work will straighten out your thinking, McCray," Strike said. "We'll go and see my partner, and yoied better act sensibly because technically you're subject to severe penalties. Here. Slip these on,
He kicked over a pair of gravity clogs - thick metal plates containing a power unit to adjust the wearer against differing gravities. Straps fastened them to the feet. Everyone else was wearing them. They enabled scrambled-ears McCray to follow Strike and Dacres up the long corridor to the elevator leading to the flight deck.
Tommy Strike noted with satisfaction McCray's reaction, as the pugilist's eyes fell on the glorious, copper-blond beauty of the ship's famous mistress.
"Holy Smoke!" McCray goggled at her. "You're Gerry Carlyle!"
In the questioning silence that followed, Strike explained.
"We have a stowaway, Gerry," he said. "Unintentional. Says he came aboard by mistake in a moment of alcoholic aberration. No one of us realized he wasn't one of the new men. He seems to be a bit punchdrunk."
The uninvited guest snapped out of it with a roar.
"Punch-drunk?" he yelled. "Listen, you! I'm Kid McCray, middleweight champ of Mars! I got influence, an' if you don't take me back to Mars right now, there'll be trouble!"
Strike, Dacres, and Gerry Carlyle doubled over with laughter.
"O - oh - h!" gasped the woman. "Those Martian liquors! I've heard they frequently bring on delusions of grandeur!"
However cool a ringman McCray might once have been, he had now had too much. He advanced vengefully upon Strike, his every thought written plainly on his battered face. Remembering his earlier experience, the fighter shuffled forward with determined caution. As a result, Strike found him practically a sitting duck.
Being in the light-heavyweight class, Strike promptly accepted the challenge and clubbed the intruder with a whistling right cross.
McCray spun round, fought clumsily for balance on the gravity clogs, then crashed, bouncing his head off the binnacle. "This just ain't possible," he muttered faintly.
"The 'champ,'" Dacres declared in an amused voice, "isn't so good with the footwork this morning."
"Overtrained, perhaps," offered Gerry.
There was more gaiety.
"Well, we can't put back to Mars, of course," Strike said then. "Better put him to work."
Actually, Strike was not at all sorry. McCray was probably in for some amusingly rough and humiliating hours. He would be assigned to the most menial tasks. He would be referred to derisively as "the Champ." He would have to learn that Space Law dealt ruthlessly with men with too-ready fists. But The Ark was on a grim mission, and Strike felt sure that McCray, once he found his place, would be good for many tension-relieving laughs...
Kid McCray was surprisingly persistent, however. Two days later, he buttonholed Strike and urged him to radio Mars, on the theory that if there were a missing middleweight champion, that might prove his story.
"Too bad you didn't think of that before," Strike smothered a grin and pointed out solemnly. "We're already too far from Mars for the limited capacity of our ship's radio."
No whit discouraged, McCray again petitioned the captain next day. He had learned the story of Dacres' brother, and the peculiar, untimely illness which had reduced the crew of The Ark.
"Don't that seem kinda odd, Captain?" insisted McCray, striving to look mysterious. "An' could anybody be so lucky as to find a half-dozen number-one mechanics on Mars at a moment's notice? Maybe we better turn baek right now!"
Strike got endless amusement from the little battles of wits in which McCray clumsily offered varied reasons for returning to Mars. But the ex-fighter's point about Dacres' substitute crewmen stuck in his mind. He remembered, too, the conversation he'd overheard the day McCray had awakened on the ship. The exact words escaped him, but hadn't Dacres been speaking as if to long-time acquaintances? The sudden silence, the suspicious looks when he shoved open the door and entered the room - had they meant anything?
Feeling very foolish, Strike dropped down to talk with Baumstark, the chief engineer, and was quickly reassured.
"It's working out fine, sir," the engineer said, "The new fellows are really topnotch engine men, especially that Monk. Not much to look at, but always asking questions. Probably could run the ship himself right now!"
After that, even McCray seemed to give up trying, tending strictly to business, as the mighty ship fled at astronomical speeds through the vast remoteness of the spaceways. Days drifted into weeks. One by one, the major planets' orbits passed astern. Then, another of those queerly unrelated incidents ruffled the surface of the quiet routine.
McCray was involved, as usual. On an inspection tour, Strike came upon him sprawled on the floor of one of the cabins, nursing a welt above his ear. Standing over him was Monk, a wrench in one hand and a wicked-looking proton pistol in the other.
"Nosey!" Monk was shouting. "Buttinsky! What's the idea?"
McCray explained fuzzily that he had just been searching for a tool in Monk's spacebag, and accidentally found the gun.
"Well, next time ask me first," Monk cried. "Besides, finding I got a gun is nothin' to get excited about. We're goin' to a strange world, an' it might be dangerous, see? We might need some weapons."
Tommy Strike chose that moment to make his presence known. He lashed Monk verbally, took the gun from him.
"It's the officers' duty to take care of the arsenal aboard this ship. No weapons are ever permitted in the men's quarters."
Monk scuffed his feet, made a handsome apology, and he and McCray went back to work. Strike watched them pensively, recalling past events, wondering if there were a pattern. On impulse, he searched the belongings of Dacres' recruits, and found exactly nothing out-of-the-way. Sheepishly, he returned to the flight deck, resolved not to bother Gerry with his unworthy suspicions.
That proved a mistake. The mystery came to a sudden and explosive head before the next changing of the watch. They were only one day out from Triton, and Gerry was making telescopic observations of the satellite.
"I've checked Triton's rotational speed, Tommy," she said. "It spins once around on its axis every forty-five minutes or so. Really rolling down this cosmic bowling alley, eh?"
...
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