Read Ebook: Spiritual Torrents by Guyon Jeanne Marie Bouvier De La Motte

Font size: 10 px 15 px 20 px 25 px 30 px 35 px

Background color: BlackWhiteGrayLight GrayDark GrayDim Gray

Text color: BlackWhiteGrayLight GrayDark GrayDim Gray

Apply/Save settings

Ebook has 230 lines and 34514 words, and 5 pages

There was a moment of silence. Then the girl shut the book on her lap, laid it on the table, rose. "Very well, Lieutenant. I'm a rather poor deceiver, aren't I? Nevertheless, I thank you for your well-meant advice." She moved toward the doorway, grace and poise in her every stride. And she turned there to smile back at him, her voice soft and unamused. "Lieutenant," she said, "you should lay aside your shoulder-straps more often. The man beneath is most--interesting."

Then she was gone, leaving behind her a red-faced, speechless, utterly chaotic Dan Mallory.

At breakfast, Mallory presided at the head of the table. Bud Chandler, arriving a few minutes late, stared at his comrade surprisedly.

"Why, Skipper!" he said, "What this trip is doing for your complexion! You look thirty years younger. Where did you get them pretty pink cheeks?"

Mallory growled, "Sit down, pal, and shut up. The Old Man's grabbing forty, and he deserves 'em. He and Norton ran into a loft-bound vacuole last night, had a hell of a time pulling out. Didn't you hear the commotion?"

"All I heard," complained Bud, "was somebody in my room snoring. It woke me up once, and what made me maddest was when I found out it was me." He nodded to the assembled passengers, sat down and made wry faces over his grapefruit juice.

Albert Lemming, the swarthy-skinned jewel merchant en route to his company's headquarters in New Fresno, stared at the acting-Captain curiously.

"A vacuole, Lieutenant? What's that?"

"A hole in space. Something like an air-pocket in the ether. They aren't particularly dangerous, but the one we ran into was whirling in the wrong direction; if Captain Algase hadn't pulled us out, we'd have lost time on our trip to Io."

Mrs. Wilmot looked up. She was not, thought Mallory, a bad looking dame--if you went for that sharp, peaked sort of beauty. But there was a touch of cruelty to the cut of her lips, a pinched look about the nostrils, he didn't go for. And her eyes were too close together. She said, "That would be unfortunate, wouldn't it, Lieutenant? Losing time, I mean?"

There was a touch of some subtler meaning behind her words; Mallory couldn't decide just what it was. Maybe it was sarcasm, maybe it was fear, maybe it was mockery. He said, "I think we all share the desire to reach New Fresno as soon as possible, don't we?"

Her answer was unexpectedly sharp.

"I don't care if we never reach there. I'd rather die peacefully in space than--"

Mallory rose suddenly. He was half angry with the ex-space officer. Smith wasn't being very subtle in his effort to help matters. No doubt the old duck meant well, but--

He said, "If you'll excuse me, ladies and gentlemen, I must go to the bridge. Ready, Bud?"

Bud Chandler gulped, "Ssswllwmcffy! Ulp!"

"What?"

"I said, 'As soon as I swallow my coffee!'" repeated the Second Mate aggrievedly. "Can't you understand English? Let's go."

Lemming intercepted them as they passed his end of the table. He asked, "Lieutenant, I've been wanting to ask for several days--might I be permitted to visit the bridge? This is my first spaceflight, you know. I've always wanted to see how the controls are operated."

"Speak to Captain Algase," suggested Dan. "That's not within my power--Yes, Billy?"

The mess-boy had just raced in from the outer deck, trayless, almost breathless. "Y're wanted on the bridge immejitely, Lootenant! Cap'n orders!" His eyes were as big as saucers. "Sparks just got a message through. A message from New Fresno!"

Dan had just time to notice, out of the corner of one eye, how this bald pronouncement affected the passengers. He saw the concerted motion that dragged them all to their feet as if they were puppets on a single string; saw the sudden gleam in Wilmot's eye, the worried frown that creased Bonetti's forehead, heard the swift, startled gasp from Lady Alice and intercepted Captain Smith's darting glances from one to another of the listeners. Lemming's voice quavered, "A--a message from New Fresno!" and Susan Wilmot laughed, a short, strident, triumphant burst of sound.

Then Dan Mallory saw no more. For with Chandler at his heels, he was pounding through the corridors to the Jacob's ladder that fed the control turret.

Captain Algase was no beauty even when garbed in his officer's blues; in pajamas and slippers he was something out of a nightmare. His bare legs were like cylindrical hair mattresses, his pajama slacks bulged at the equator as if he were concealing there a half watermelon. His eyes were red and gummy, his temper like something that could be poured out of a cruet. As Dan and Bud entered the control turret he was battering the bewildered radioman's defenses into oblivion with a salvo of verbal thermite.

"Message!" he was howling. "You call this thing a message! I'll have you stewed in slow gravy for waking me up like this, Sparks! Of all the damn, dumb--" He saw his two lieutenants. "Never mind, you two. Go back and finish your breakfast. False alarm."

"We've finished, Skipper," said Dan. "What's all the commotion?"

Sparks said miserably, "But it was Marlowe's hand on the keys, Cap'n! I swear it was. I know the message don't make sense, but you can't fool a bug-pounder. Every radioman has a distinctive sending style. Ask anybody. Even one of them wise-cracking Donovan boys. They'll tell you. And this was Marlowe's hand--"

"Let's see," said Mallory. He took the flimsy from his senior's fingers, frowned as he ran an eye over the cryptic symbols. "Numerals! All numerals. Sparks--?"

Chandler, peering over his comrade's shoulder, said,

"Well, hell's bells, are you all nuts? It must be a code of some sort. Sparks, we use several numerical codes, don't we?"

"Yes." Meekly. "But that ain't one of them, Lieutenant. That don't fit no code in the reg book."

Mallory continued to stare at the message. It was long, and undeniably confusing. It read:

"--and there it began all over again," said Sparks. "The same sequence. I agree, it's a code. But what good is a code when we ain't got the key to it. It ain't a simple word substitution cryptogram or a five-by-five. I studied them in the Academy, and tried them all before I brought this to the Captain. In other words, it ain't no good to us unless we've got the clue--and we ain't got the clue!"

Mallory said, "Billy said this was a message from New Fresno?"

"Well, he was wrong, as usual." Determinedly. "It come from Earth's moon. I know Joe Marlowe's fingers when I hear 'em. Damn, we was classmates for three years. Before I got crazy and gave up chemistry for key-pushing--"

"Chemistry!" Mallory started. "Did you say chemistry? Did you and Marlowe study chemistry together?"

"Yeah. Why?"

"Oxygen," declared Chandler promptly. "The atomic weight of oxygen."

"And eighty-three point seven? Forty-seven, nine?"

"Krypton. And--let's see--titanium?"

"Right! Grab a pencil, pal! I think we've got a solution here. Jot these down--krypton, europium, thorium, erbium--Hold it!" He looked at his companion disgustedly. "Just the symbols, you dope! Don't you see? The symbols of the various elements employ every letter in the English language except 'j' and 'q'--and those are the two least commonly used, anyway. Start over. Krypton--"

"Kr," said Bud.

"Europium--"

"Eu."

"Thorium. Erbium--"

"'Kreuther'!" howled Bud. "That's it, Dan! Keep going!"

The message slowly scrawled its way onto paper. A word appeared, another, another. Then:

"Ten point twenty-five!" said Mallory. "Followed by 69.87! What the hell are they?"

Bud said, "Maybe he made a mistake? Boron's 10.82. Lithium's 6.94--"

"No. That's not it," said Mallory. He frowned. Captain Algase had long since wakened completely, was listening to his two juniors with glowing pride. Now he cut the Gordian knot.

"Chromium," he suggested, "is fifty-two point one, Dan. The reverse of the number that stumps you."

Share on: WhatsApp @Hash Facebook Tweet