■記事の内容
IMAGE OF SPLENDOR
By LU KELL
From Venus to Earth, and all the way between,
it was a hell of a world for men ... and
Apprentice Burnerman O'Rielly particularly.
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Planet Stories Summer 1955.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
The intercom roared fit to blow O'Rielly back to Venus. "Burner Four!"
"On my way, sir!"
At the first flash of red on the bank of meters Apprentice Burnerman
O'Rielly had slammed the safety helmet on his head; he was already
throwing open the lock to the burner room. The hot, throbbing rumble
whipped around him and near crushed his breath away. Power! Power of
the universe trapped here and ready to destroy its captors given one
chance! Swiftly O'Rielly unlocked the controls and reset them. The
throbbing rumble changed tone.
Old Callahan's voice crackled now through the helmet's ear contact.
"Well, Mr. O'Rielly?"
"Fusion control two points low, sir."
O'Rielly wondered had Callahan passed out, was so long before the old
Burner Chief demanded hoarsely, "Didn't you lock them controls before
blast-off?"
"If every control hadn't been locked in correct setting," O'Rielly
answered from his own angry bewilderment, "the error would have
registered before blast-off?wouldn't it, sir?"
"So a control reset itself in flight, hey?"
"I don't know yet, sir."
"Well, Mr. O'Rielly, you better know before we orbit Earth!"
The icy knot in O'Rielly's stomach jerked tighter. A dozen burners on
this ship; why did something crazy have to happen to O'Rielly's? In
a hundred years, so the instructors?brisk females all?had told O'Rielly
in pre-flight school, no control had ever been known to slip. But one
had moved here. Not enough to cause serious trouble this far out from
Earth. On blast-down, though, with one jet below peak, the uneven
thrust could throw the ship, crash it, the whole lovely thing and all
aboard gone in a churning cloud.
Sweat pouring off him, O'Rielly prowled around his burner. Design of
the thing had been bossed by dames of course; what on Earth wasn't any
more? Anyway, nobody could get to a burner except through its watch
room. Anyone entered or left there, a bell clanged, lights flashed
and a meter registered beside the Burnerman's bunk and on the Burner
Chief's console up in the flight room full of beautifully efficient
officers. Ever since Venus blast-off O'Rielly had been in Four's watch
room. Nobody had passed through. O'Rielly knew it. Callahan knew it.
By now the Old Woman herself, Captain Millicent Hatwoody, had probably
inquired what was in charge of Burner Four.
Well, ma'am, O'Rielly searched every cranny where even a three-tailed
mouse of Venus could have stowed away. His first flight, and O'Rielly
saw himself washed out, busted to sweeper on the blast-off stands of
some God-forsaken satellite. He staggered back into his watch room. And
his brain was suddenly taken apart and slapped together again. Felt
that way.
She was sitting on his bunk. No three-tailed mouse. No Old Woman
either. Oh, she was a female human, though, this creature at which
O'Rielly stood gaping. Yes, ma'am!
"I was in your burner room." Her voice matched the rest of her, a blend
of loveliness unlike anything outside a guy's most secret dreams. "I
couldn't stand the heat any longer and I couldn't open that big door.
So I moved one of your controls a tiny bit. All the noise in there,
naturally you couldn't hear me walk out while your back was turned
resetting the control."
O'Rielly suddenly felt like turning her over his knee and whaling her
until she couldn't sit for a year. This, mind you, he felt in an age
where no Earth guy for a thousand years had dared raise so much as
a breath against woman's supremacy in all matters. That male character
trait, however, did not seem to be the overpowering reason why
O'Rielly, instead of laying violent hands upon this one's person, heard
himself saying in sympathetic outrage, "A shame you had to go to all
that bother to get out here!"
"You're so kind. But I'm afraid I became rather sticky and smelly in
there."
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