The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Marooner, by Charles A. Stearns

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Title: The Marooner

Author: Charles A. Stearns

Illustrator: Leo Summers

Release Date: March 9, 2008 [EBook #24791]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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The
MAROONER

By CHARLES A. STEARNS

ILLUSTRATOR SUMMERS

_Wordsley and Captain DeCastros
crossed half a universe--suffered
hardship--faced unknown dangers;
and all this for what--a breath
of rare perfume?_

[Illustration: The creature was more pitiful than fearsome.]

Steadily they smashed the mensurate battlements, in blackness beyond
night and darkness without stars. Yet Mr. Wordsley, the engineer, who
was slight, balding and ingenious, was able to watch the firmament from
his engine room as it drifted from bow to beam to rocket's end. This was
by virtue of banked rows of photon collectors which he had invented and
installed in the nose of the ship.

And Mr. Wordsley, at three minutes of the hour of seventeen over four,
tuned in a white, new star of eye-blinking magnitude and surpassing
brilliance. Discovering new stars was a kind of perpetual game with Mr.
Wordsley. Perhaps more than a game.

"I wish I may, I wish I might ..." Mr. Wordsley said.

* * * * *

The fiddly hatch clanged. DeCastros, that gross, terrifying clown of a
man, clumped down the ladder from the bridge to defeat the enchantment
of the moment. DeCastros held sway. He was captain. He did not want Mr.
Wordsley to forget that he was captain.

The worst of Captain DeCastros was that he had moods. Just now he was
being a sly leprechaun, if one can imagine a double-chinned,
three-hundred pound leprechaun. He came over and dug his fingers into
Mr. Wordsley's shoulder. A wracking pain in the trapezius muscle.

"The ertholaters are plugged," he said gently. "The vi-lines are giving
out a horrible stink."

"I'll attend to it right away," Mr. Wordsley said, wincing a little as
he wriggled free.

"Tch, tch," DeCas