“Gosh, Mr. Penger, she’s overhauling us hand over fist. She must be doing five hundred a second.
“She’s Mitco’s fastest. I’ve heard she made six-fifty on her test trip. Well, we’ll dodge her as long as we can.”
The Satona was clearly defined now on the large visor screen, a hemisphere glinting in the oblique rays of the sun. On and on sped the little Wanderer without rest across the void, its occupants thinking and thinking, as if seeking to increase the speed of their craft by the very intensity of their wills. And on and on came the pursuer, bulking ever larger on the screen.
“Isn’t there anything we can do to keep those papers from them?” Britt grated out once between clenched teeth.
“If worse comes to worst, I’ll smash the box. That will destroy them, but it won’t do much good—only delay matters. They’ll search Venus till they find Bell’s mine and make sure no Earthmen has a chance to run across it.”
“But we can send out expeditions too.”
“Yeah? Earth will never know, till it’s too late. You don’t think they’ll leave us alive to tell the story. No. Our only chance is to get the box through to Ganymede. And I’m darned if hold on, I’ve got a hunch. It might work.”
Penger’s eye had drifted mechanically to the ground glass chart across which a red dot was moving to indicate the Wanderer’s position in the reaches of interstellar space. Blue disks showed the direction of Earth, the Sun, Venus; Jupiter, the other planets. But an inch ahead a band of tiny blue dots wandered across the map. They represented the Asteroids—small fragments of a blasted planet following their own orbit around the central Sun.
The veteran changed the field of the visor screen. The following Satona, Venus, the Sun swept out of sight. Directly ahead the periscope pointed. Golden in the tremendous distance, Jupiter beckoned. But here—not forty thousand miles ahead, was a light fleck, something catching the sunlight. Penger grunted.
“Get bearings on the Satona, Britt. How far behind is she?”
“Only a hundred and ten thousand miles. Relative speed about four hundred per second. She’ll have us in five minutes.”
“Here!” the other snapped. “Take the controls. Hold her on the mark I’ve set.”
Britt sprang to obey. A question trembled on his lips, but Penger’s peremptory tone, the grim set of his jaw, forbade. The Wanderer had veered from her course, was driving for the asteroid, revealed now as a blurred ball, ten miles in diameter, revolving at incredible speed. Arnim had snatched up the precious box, was in the nose of the ship, his hand on the handle of the bow porthole. The flier would miss the asteroid by scant miles. They were passing it.
“Turn her, man, turn her left! Quick!” Even as Britt twisted the dial to obey Arnim had the port open, was throwing the box out in the direction of the Wanderer’s curving flight, was struggling to close the thick glass against the outrush of air. The flier curved in a great semicircle around the whirling midget planet, headed back toward the Satona, now right at hand. Penger was at the telescope.
CHAPTER IV
Caught!
A voice sounded in the chamber, a grating, metallic voice.
“Halt, Wanderer!”
Arnim’s eye was glued to the telescope eyepiece. To Haldane’s wonder he paid not the slightest attention to the challenge. The youth hesitated, then with a flush of anger reddening his face he sprang to the controls.
Some wild scheme of escape must have inspired him at he swung lever after lever, sending the little flier darting about in mad, erratic zigzags. And still no sound came from Penger, save a muttered, “I think it’s working!”
Again the voice sounded, coldly contemptuous, from the Wanderer’s space-radio receiver.
“Do not resist, Earthman, it is useless. Rutnom speaking.”
Britt’s face was livid with fury. He shook his fist at the image that filled the visor screen, the great bulking image of the Martian spaceship a rusty red egg of metal with the intertwining symbols that spelled M. I. T. Co. in the Martian graphs.
Suddenly the Wanderer lurched, her darting rushes checked in midspace. A tremendous force had seized her, was drawing her irresistibly toward her enemy. The Earthship shook with the thunder of her rocket-tubes, the void about, seethed with flaring gases.
But the power that could send her careening through space at twice a hundred miles a second was puny against the pull of the Martian’s magnetic fields. Inexorably the little flier was drawn back, back, back, until at last she drifted against the metallic side of the Satona and clung there.
Now at last Penger was torn from the telescope that so queerly absorbed him.
“Cut it out, you fool!” he whispered urgently to Britt. “Let me handle this.” Then, aloud, as the tube-exhausts dwindled and died, “Penger speaking. What do you want of us, Rutnom?”
“Ah, it’s Penger I have to deal with!” There was satisfaction in the metallic tone. “You know what I want. The location map of the jovium mine Bell found. Deliver that, together with the sample flask, pledge me your word not to report this occurrence and you shall be permitted to return to Venus, unharmed.”
Penger’s response was cold and very calm. “Sorry, I haven’t the chart.”
“Don’t trifle with me. You would not be making this hurried voyage toward Antka [1] had your comrade not delivered it to you. Come now, you must realize that you are helpless. And, you of all Earthmen should know it is dangerous to play with me.”
“You know my reputation. I do not lie. I had the chart, it is true. But when I saw that I could not escape you, I threw the dispatch box that contained it from the bow port of my ship. It is beyond your reach.”
“Beyond my reach! Why, Penger, you grow senile. I noted and wondered at your erratic maneuver. I noted what you did in our televisor. You threw the box into the gravitational field of the asteroid. Your box lies on it by now. The rock is very small, you planned to rid yourself of me and return for it. So you’ve rendered my task easy. We descend. After I have recovered the map, I shall deal further with you.”
“He’s outguessed me, Britt!” There was exasperation, despair in Penger’s tone. But the staring youngster noted, and wondered at the smile that played around his tight-lipped mouth. A warning gesture stayed the question foreshadowed in the lad’s eager eyes.
The Satona, with the Wanderer held tight against her sphere, had hung motionless in space during this interchange. Now the captured Terrestrials could see the blue flare from the tube exhausts of the Martian spacesphere and feel the vibration of their blast.
Slowly at first, then faster and faster, the coupled ships began to circle the whirling asteroid. Rapidly the speed of the artificial satellite increased till, to an observer far off in space, the course of the coupled fliers must have been a gray blurred circle, whose centre was the planetoid, itself a blur because of the tremendous rate at which it turned.
To Arnim and Britt, watching their visoscreen, the effect of the circling was otherwise. Across the black sky was drawn a dazzling white arc that was the sun. The stars were darting golden lines. But the little planet became distinct as their speed neared that of its rotation.
Now they could see it as a jagged mass of bare rock. It was not ball-shaped, for this was not a world that had been formed while molten, but a bit torn from some ancient planet in an unimaginable cataclysm. It was a great jagged boulder, roughly oblate, ten earth miles through at its widest diameter, perhaps six miles at its narrowest.
Rutnom spiraled lower as the speed increased. The asteroid covered the screen, a bare, rocky shelf split and rent by its birth throes.
“Hello, we’re drifting backward!” Britt broke the silence.
Penger laughed shortly.
“Looks like it. But it’s simply that we haven’t quite reached the speed at which the Asteroid is turning.”
At last the landing was made.
“Whoever is handling that boat is a pilot!” was Arnim’s tribute to the smoo
th halt. Then his face grew suddenly grim. “Some rocket tubes are still on. Quick, lad, how are they inclined?”
“Straight up, sir!”
Penger nodded.
“Then he hasn’t thought of it,” he muttered, in tones scarcely audible to Britt. “Keep quiet and follow my lead. We’ll lick these birds yet, with a bit of luck.” He slid open the beryllium-steel shield that covered the glass side ports.
An airlock door in the side of the Satona had opened. Grotesque in their goggled, billowing space suits three Martians were coming down a swinging ladder. The weight of the Wanderer, still clamped against her shell, was holding the larger craft askew. Not great, this weight, it is true, for the gravity of the miniature world was exceedingly minute, but the Martian captain had evidently thought it not worth while to correct the canting by use of his power-exhausts.
Arnim and Britt watched the ten-foot-tall aliens stride across the short stretch of deck to the entrance back of their own vessel. Around the waist of each a studded belt was clamped, its excrescences showing where the individual gravity coils were inserted. Were it not for these the Martians would have been rising a hundred feet with each step, so small was the asteroid’s attraction.
As their captors reached the Wanderer, Rutnom’s voice sounded again.
“Open your airlock for my men, Earthlings, and admit them.”
“And suppose I refuse?”
“Then we shall burn our way through, and it will be the worse for you. I warn you again, Penger, I am in no mood to be trifled with.”
The veteran shrugged his shoulders and swung over the switch that actuated the outer door of the lock. To Britt’s astonishment, his left eye closed in an unmistakable wink as he did so. The veteran had some plan, some strategy. Haldane racked his brain in an effort to guess it, but could evolve nothing.
The giant invaders were within the ship. The Terrestrials’ hands shot upward as they noted the squat infra-red heat guns clutched ready in their hands. From one of the Martians, apparently the leader, came a guttural sentence in his own language. The others advanced warily. In a trice Penger and Haldane had been seized, searched none too gently, their weapons extracted and their wrists bound with tough cords.
“Here, not so rough!” Britt had protested as his arms were twisted down behind his back. But his exclamation brought no response save a particularly vicious tightening of his bonds. Arnim was silent, though his eyes were glowing like live coals.
The two prisoners were thrust unceremoniously against the wall of their vessel. The apparent leader remained at guard over them, the wicked snout of his weapon never moving from its threatening posture, while the two others commenced a hurried but thorough search of the cabin.
Every nook or cranny was invaded, the door of the food closet was ripped from its hinges, the plates of the flooring torn up as a heat gun melted its rivets. Even the metal walls of the vessel were scrutinized inch by inch for evidences of a concealed hiding place.
Suddenly there was a grunt from one of the Martians, signalizing his finding of the badinite sample flask.
At last, apparently satisfied that the location map was not on board, the chief of the Mitco men spoke aloud, in the curious concatenation of consonantal sounds that was the Martian language. From the speaker came a crisp rejoinder, then, in his precise English, Rutnom’s admonition to the Earthlings.
“You will be brought to this ship, you two. Set your gravity pads at full Earth setting. The attraction of this world is negligible.”
Silently the “Venus, Inc.” men permitted themselves to be invested in their space suits after having made the indicator adjustment on the padded attraction plates. Once again, Britt started to protest at the unnecessary harshness with which he was being handled.
However, he again caught a warning look on Penger’s face.
As the little group crossed to the Satona, the empty sleeves of the Terrestrial’s space suits stuck out queerly, straight before them, as if a high wind were blowing. Britt noted this and wondered. There could be no wind, for the asteroid was utterly devoid of atmosphere.
Then he forgot the matter and gave himself up utterly to the black mood of despair that flooded him.
Divested once more of their encumbering garments within the shelter of the Martian spacesphere’s hull, Penger and Haldane stood at bay, facing the gigantic figure of Mitco’s Venusian representative, and the bulking forms of a dozen others, ranged behind him. The Martians were counterparts of the Earthmen, save for their size and the curious greenish tint of their skins.
Even as he bravely met Rutnom’s sneering stare, Britt was conscious of a strange lightness, a feeling of power that comported oddly with his situation. Then he realized that the gravity coils of the Satona were adjusted to Mars’ conditions; that the weight, the internal pressure of every part of his body was one-third what it would be on Earth or Venus.
Rutnom was speaking, a threat in every syllable he uttered.
“Penger, I am growing tired of this. Tell me where that deposit lies.”
Arnim returned the Martian’s stare.
“If I knew, I wouldn’t tell you, but luckily I know as much about it as you.”
The green tinge of Rutnom’s face deepened.
His tiny red eyes shot fire.
“You lie, Penger.”
The veteran made no reply.
“I said you lie.” Rutnom raised his gun, ominously. “I’ll burn ever bit of skin from your body, inch by inch, till you tell me what I want to know.”
Penger’s gaze was level.
“Bell had no time to tell me before he died. And he had already sealed the chart in the dispatch box.”
The eyes of the two ancient enemies met and clung. Veins stood out on Rutnom’s forehead as he strove to read the Earthman’s thought. But his gaze was the first to waver and fall.
“Very well. Since you are so stubborn, and I am in haste, I shall search for the box. It should not be hard to find on this bare terrain. But, mark you, if I fail I’ll wring that location from you if I have to smash you into a quivering pulp.”
In staccato sentences the Martian issued swift orders to his men.
Fresh thongs were strapped about the Earthlings’ ankles, and those about their wrists tightened.
All but one of the Martians slid into space suits.
Then the great hull emptied, and Britt and Arnim were left alone, with one huge guard watching their prone bodies. One guard, but his eyes never wavered from them, as they lay sprawled on the floor where they had been thrown, and the terrible heat-gun of Mars was ready in his hand.
Britt twisted till he could look out through a porthole. Outside, on the tumbled, rocky plain, he could see the Martians clustered about their leader. Then they scattered, and Rutnom’s plan was quickly evident Back and forth, back and forth the hunters quartered, each with his own small portion of the asteroid’s surface to search.
Not a square inch of the territory would be left uncovered by this scheme. He groaned aloud. There was no hope that the precious box would escape scrutiny. What could Penger have been thinking of? Better to have pulled at the lid and thus destroyed the map.
CHAPTER V
Strategy
Perhaps he hoped that a patrol ship would rescue them in time. But the whirling asteroid and all its surface was a blur to a space wanderer. They were as effectually concealed as though they were a hundred feet below the surface. He became aware that the trader was talking.
But what was he saying? Despair clutched the lad’s heart. Coldly, dispassionately, he was reviling the personal appearance, the ancestry; the habits of the guard.
“Britt, did you ever see anything like him? He’s got the face of one of those little pigs that have just had a ring pushed through their snouts. And his body—if I were shaped like that I would have drowned myself long ago. Look at those eyes. Why, you can see the fear staring out of them. He’s a coward, boy, that’s why Rutno
m left him behind. He’s afraid of us, tied up as we are.”
Now Haldane understood Penger’s peculiar behavior, the strange air of amusement that had hovered about him through all this catastrophe, his inexplicable action. His mind had given away. The long years of loneliness, the death of his best friend, the capture by Rutnom, had smashed a brain that long had been famed as the keenest of all “Venus, Inc.’s” force.
“That ugly-looking Martian must be the misbegotten offspring of the foulest scum of his putrid planet.” The quiet voice went on with its taunting. The Martian was standing well, his watchful expression unchanged, but sooner or later Penger would get under his skin—and then—Britt hoped that the heat gun killed quickly.
“No, Britt, I’m not crazy.” The youth was startled by his remark. “Just warned to find out if the brute understood English. He doesn’t. I’ve been using some of the worse insults you can apply to a Martian. Even if he had self-control enough not to do anything, his expression would have shown that he understood.
“If Z had started whispering to you he would have been suspicious. But he thinks I’m simply cussing out our capture. Now listen.”
In the lame calm dispassionate tones Penger continued. And as he talked, Britt’s despair was forgotten, and hope carne to him again.
“You’re near enough to the wall to get your feet against it,” Arnim concluded. “So I guess the most dangerous part of the job will be yours. You know what to do. I’ll follow your lead, but don’t take too long to get set. Rutnom may tumble at any moment, and then we’ll be through.”
He fell silent, and both men closed their eyes and seemed to sleep. After a bit, Britt moved, restlessly, swung himself so that the soles of his feet were flat against the wall, and he was lying curled on his side.
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