Marooned! On the cold satellite of a dying sun,
light-years away from home.... For Rex there
was only one escape. But Carl called it murder!
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Planet Stories Spring 1947.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
The years passed relentlessly, ticked off—one, two three, four—by thebig lone planet Worta as it moved with ponderous sureness around thedying red star. Sometimes, in the first year after they were marooned,the two runaway boys, Carl Wyant and Rex Oberling, crawled from thegrottoes, chambers and labyrinthine tunnels which the Wortans haddriven deep beneath the planet's crust, and with a chill lonesomenesslooked out into the vastness of space where the stars brooded. One ofthose stars, thirty-five light-years away, was Sol, around which swungthe planet Earth! They could not think of Earth without a brightnesscoming to their eyes.
Sometimes the younger boy, then seventeen, would whisper, "I wish we'dnever left home, Carl."
And Carl would say, "But we left. So let's take our medicine like men."
Yes, their leaving home, leaving their parents, their friends, theirwhole world, could not be changed. Yet it seemed to them that theirpunishment was out of all proportion to their crime. Thinking back onit, Carl Wyant no longer remembered the petty grievance against hisparents which made him decide to run away.
Mainly, of course, it had been because his father dropped his keys tothe interstellar space-ship he had recently requisitioned from theSpace Council. Both Carl and his buddy, Rex, the young fellow who livednext door and belonged to the same Scout Troop, had been caught up withthe idea of visiting the stars, without parental supervision. To visitthe stars! That was a thrilling thought.
At first they planned to be gone a month. But after landing on oneof the Centaurian planets, four and a half light-years away, thetremendous excitement that gripped them burned away thoughts of theirparents, who must certainly be suffering agonies because of theirdisappearance. Beyond Centauri were other stars—and others beyondthem.
They never tired as the sub-etheric warp hurled them through the darkreaches of infinity at several times light-speed. For the first time,they were living.
By this time, the alarm had gone throughout the known universe. Twoboys on the loose. Carl, an expert at Morse Code, deciphered the wilddit-dit-da's.
"Boy, are they looking for us!"
Rex's deep chest came out. "We'll be pretty famous when we get back, Iguess." The thought pleased him. "Those smart alecs that always pickedon me at school will change their tune."
"Ah, Rex, nobody ever picked on you." Carl was slimmer than Rex, thougha year older. He added, "All you had to do was join in the fun andyou'd have got along swell."
A dangerous flush crept up from Rex's thick, powerful neck. "I say theypicked on me."
Carl said hastily, "Okay, okay." He dropped the subject. Sometimes Rexcould be pretty touchy. But he was handy to have around and most of thetime was a good guy. Both fellows had studied celestial navigation andmechanics, but Rex had it all over Carl when it came to handling thesmall ship, so Carl let him take the controls most of the time.
Suddenly the ship had gone haywire. Neither Carl nor Rex was technicianenough to understand that the etheric warp engines had been overdriven.The engines, down to the last accumulator cell, exploded with a mighty,tearing roar that blew gaping holes in bulkheads, deck-plates, andoverheads. Carl was knocked