Rocket from Infinity

by Lester Del Rey

  Contents

  COPYRIGHT INFORMATION

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  COPYRIGHT INFORMATION

  Copyright © 1966 by Lester del Rey.

  Cover art copyright © April Cat / Fotolia.

  All rights reserved.

  Published by Wildside Press LLC.

  www.wildsidepress.com

  CHAPTER ONE

  THE MYSTERIOUS RUIN

  It was a big day for Pete Mason. His permit to visit the Martian ruins had finally come through. He’d presented himself at the tourist section of the New Portland Space Authority, but his permit puzzled the dispatcher.

  “There must be some mistake. This says the Barco ruins.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “But you’re only a kid. You can’t be over seventeen.”

  “I’m eighteen, sir.”

  “All right. Eighteen. But kids aren’t allowed at the ruins. It’s reserved strictly for accredited scientists.”

  Perhaps the dispatcher was being officious or perhaps he was sincere in doing his job. It made no difference to Pete. Being barred from the ruins for whatever reason would be a terrible disappointment.

  “But my permit is authentic, sir. It’s signed by the Dean of the New Portland Mining College and it has the Federation stamp.”

  The dispatcher did not call it a forgery, but that could have been his thought as he frowned at the stamp and the signature.

  “They don’t want souvenir-hunting tourists out there. Valuable artifacts would be removed. Evidence would be trampled underfoot.”

  Pete knew all about that. Barco Village, named after Samuel Barco, the archeologist who had discovered it, was the only mark of human habitation ever found on the planet Mars. The deserted and moldering ruins of a small village uninhabited for at least a thousand years, standing alone on the planet.

  By every law of logic, chance, or probability, the place should not have existed. Yet it was there, empty, mute in its ancient solitude, successfully defying the keen archeological and scientific brains that had tried to discover its secrets.

  Of course, a dusty little Martian ruin didn’t cause much public excitement. There was too much of a current nature going on every day on the inhabited planets and asteroids. But to the scientific world, Barco Village was important indeed. And that included Peter Mason, down from the planetoid, Juno, studying for his archeological degree at New Portland Mining College.

  And now this character was making like he’d forged his own pass!

  Pete was angry and he wanted to show it. But he was also smart enough to realize that a fight with the dispatcher wouldn’t help him a bit.

  “You could check with the Dean’s office at the Mining College,” he suggested.

  The dispatcher glanced at his watch. “They don’t open over there for two hours yet.” The dispatcher’s frown worked overtime as he glanced along the ramp. “In fact, the scooter may not go at all. There doesn’t seem to be any passengers.”

  So that was it! There was still an hour to go, but the dispatcher wasn’t going to send a scooter out for a single eighteen-year-old college student. It was simpler to question the pass, which he apparently had a right to do.

  “But the pass is authentic,” Pete protested.

  The dispatcher continued to scowl at it, obviously having decided to think otherwise. But at that moment a tall, thin, middle-aged man entered the corridor and moved up the ramp. He’d evidently heard Pete’s protest during his approach. He smiled and asked, “Having trouble, son?”

  “Yes, sir. I have a pass to Barco Village and the dispatcher is questioning it.”

  “Let me see it.”

  With an air of casual authority, the man took the pass from the dispatcher’s hand and examined it.

  “Looks all right. In fact, it is all right.”

  “How do I know that signature is authentic?”

  “Because I tell you it is,” the man replied pleasantly. “It’s my signature. I am Dr. LeRoy, Dean of the New Portland Mining College. You’re new here, aren’t you?”

  “Yes—yes, sir,” the dispatcher stammered.

  “Let me commend you on your alertness. And now, if you don’t mind, I’d like a scooter. This young man can ride along with me to the ruins.”

  The dispatcher hurried into the shed and Dr. LeRoy glanced at Pete. He had deep-set, dark eyes, and they twinkled. “Don’t tell the dispatcher I issued the pass because I knew your father during my old mining days. He’d think I’m playing favorites, which of course I am.”

  Five minutes later, seated beside Dr. LeRoy as the scooter rocketed along some three feet above the level ground, Pete said, “I want to thank you for coming to my rescue.”

  Dr. LeRoy didn’t answer. He turned a quick, sharp gaze on Pete for a few moments, studying the not unhandsome but quietly serious face under the shock of unruly black hair.

  “You don’t look much like your father.”

  “No. Dad is heavier and stockier than I am.”

  “I’d say you’re somewhat less of an adventurer, too. Joe Mason and I roamed the asteroid belt in old buckets that have long since been outlawed. Those were the days before things were organized. When you made a strike you protected it by force of the arms you carried with you. Your father saved my life several times. He had quite a reputation. Pirates who discovered that they were facing Roaring Joe Mason often lost their predatory appetites.”

  Pete wished he’d been able to communicate better and tell Dr. LeRoy how proud he was of his father and how he still thrilled to the stories the old-timers told of Joe Mason.

  Of course, now with the Mining Brotherhood having been created and the Planetary Federation law in effect, piracy was at a minimum and the opportunity for wild adventure greatly reduced.

  “Dad mentions you often.”

  “He wrote me saying that you’d be down to Mars to register. That was some six months ago; then, recently, in another letter, he mentioned your strong archeological interests.”

  “So that was why—”

  “You received the permit? Partly. It also happens that your marks qualified you—and interested students interest me”

  The scooter flashed smoothly along across the ocher-colored expanse of the vast, dead sea floor of the planet. Uncountable eons before, these levels had been deep beneath Martian oceans.

  Pete sat silent—engrossed and enthralled. Again he wished he were better skilled in the use of words. He desperately wanted to express the feeling that came over him when he thought of the majestic grandeur of the planets and the solar system; the sense of microscopic insignificance that tightened him all up when he let his mind roam farther—out into the vast unreachable spaces beyond. Why this whole system—this whole incredibly vast galaxy was but a pinpoint in the infinite reaches that stretched on and on and on. Would mankind ever discover a cosmic law that would allow him to penetrate that vastness? To drive the shining ship out to where time and space had to blend and flow back into the eternal circle?

  “…I was surprised that you didn’t drop in to see me,” Dr. LeRoy was saying.

  “A
h—oh, I beg your pardon sir!”

  “I said…”

  “Yes, I heard you. It was just that…well, I didn’t want to impose on a friendship between you and Dad.”

  “Quite commendable. What are your plans—your ambitions?”

  “I want to be the best archeologist in the System.”

  “Very clearly put. But why archeology? Why not mining?”

  “It seems to me the natural history of the planets is very important. And so far as mining is concerned—well, it’s all pretty much been done. In the main, it’s routinized.”

  “There are a few rugged individualists left in the Belt,” Dr. LeRoy said.

  “Yes, but there are so many exciting archeological discoveries waiting to be studied. I want to be a part of the future.”

  The ghost of a smile played on Dr. LeRoy’s lips as he lifted the scooter a few feet to top a rise. “And I am sure you will be.”

  “I’ll certainly try.”

  “Do you have any theories on the mystery of Barco Village?”

  “I haven’t any of my own, but I know most of the theories that have been put forward. One that I like claims some advanced civilization on one of the Outer Planets ran into trouble and was destroyed after its scientists had developed the technology to cross to the Inner Planets nearer the sun. If that had happened, they could have left the village stranded. I think it’s certainly safe to say the inhabitants came from another planet. They had to. There’s ample proof that they didn’t originate on Mars.”

  “The logic is sound. But what about the evidence of two separate races in the same village? One was of about average size, but the others could not have been more than three feet tall.”

  “I’d say the superior race, whoever they were, brought slaves with them.”

  “That idea is accepted by some, rejected by others.” Less self-conscious now that the discussion had embraced his favorite subject, Pete said, “I’d say the big mystery is why, after establishing the village and living there for at least a thousand years, the race left the planet.”

  “Perhaps they were abducted by a superior race and became slaves themselves,” Dr. LeRoy said.

  “And what did they do with their dead during the thousand years? Where was their burial ground? Our only knowledge of what they looked like comes from the pictures they left behind on the walls.”

  “The bodies of the dead could have been totally destroyed. That could have been a part of their funeral process. I’d say the most mystifying part of the riddle is the contrast.”

  “The contrast, sir?”

  “Accepting as fact, their arrival by spaceship, we must also accord them great scientific and technological ability. Yet the village is quite primitive. It indicates the presence of a backward people.”

  “Also,” Pete said, warming to the subject, “How could a race with a pioneering spirit great enough to bring them through the void be content to remain static in Barco Village for a thousand years? They should certainly have developed the planet’s facilities and expanded their foothold or they should have left.”

  “I have a theory of my own,” Dr. LeRoy said, “that is tenable in that it answers every question ever brought up concerning the ruin.”

  Pete’s eyes widened. “Then you should certainly write a paper on it.”

  Dr. LeRoy lifted the scooter a hundred feet in the air to recheck his bearings. From that height Pete could see what had to be the celebrated ruin called Barco Village.

  He pointed. “There it is!” he cried. “There it is!”

  Dr. LeRoy smiled again, fully understanding Pete’s excitement. To an archeological student, first sight of legendary Barco Village was a thrill indeed.

  “We’ll be there in five minutes.”

  A great deal of Pete’s poise vanished, his excitement overriding it. “I can hardly wait!”

  Then a female voice cut in on the open radio circuit.

  “Dr. LeRoy…”

  “Yes, Dora.” He glanced at Pete. “My secretary.”

  There was a tone of quiet urgency in the voice as she said, “May I speak with you privately?”

  “Of course.”

  Dr. LeRoy took a cord and earpiece from his pocket and made the attachments.

  “Yes, Dora. I’m ready.”

  He had slowed the scooter down somewhat, and Pete watched the ruins grow slowly larger. He could not help hearing one end of the conversation.

  “When did the message come?” Then, “I see… Very well. Well return immediately.”

  Pete’s heart fell as Dr. LeRoy took the earpiece away and put the cord back into his pocket. “An emergency, sir?”

  “I’m afraid so, Pete. Dora checked the Space Authority and learned that you were with me. The emergency involves you.”

  Pete could think of only one possibility. His eyes widened in alarm.

  “Dad’s not…?”

  “He’s been in an accident, son. The first details were sketchy, but it’s serious. You must go home immediately.”

  Pete was stunned. Dad hurt! How badly? What kind of an accident? These questions shot through his mind, but he was afraid to ask them. At the moment it seemed better to wait and hope.

  He sat mute as Dr. LeRoy banked the scooter and reversed direction. He forgot Barco Village, his near arrival, his almost exploration of the fabulous ruin.

  His mind coming slowly out of the shock, he wondered again how bad it was. Would Dad die?

  As the scooter kited back toward New Portland, he tried to visualize what life would be like without his bluff, wonderful, forthright father.

  The visualization was a failure.

  There was a silence for a time, then Dr. LeRoy, a man with great experience at facing emergencies, spoke as calmly and quietly as though he were commenting on the weather.

  “I’ll pre-empt emergency passage on a Federation ship. Their routings are by far the most frequent.”

  “Thank you, sir. The Federation ships are the fastest, too.”

  “Buck up, son. Joe is tough and durable and he’s still alive. I’m sure everything will be all right…”

  CHAPTER TWO

  BACK TO THE ASTEROIDS

  It was toward Juno that the sleek black and silver Federation spacer set its hurtling course and the trip would take seven full days—a trip that would take the ship a few million miles out of its way, but regulations could be stretched at times.

  Although Pete Mason was thoroughly familiar with the processes involved, the romanticism in his nature caused him at times to react with wonder. A tiny dot of metal called a spaceship finding with unerring accuracy one small asteroid out of 250 million others. Of course, there were far more asteroids than that out in the vast reaches called the “void”; the total number could only be roughly estimated. But that figure roughly totaled the number that were large enough to be mined, a half-mile or more in diameter.

  Juno was 127 miles in diameter, a huge world when compared to the average asteroid, and returning for Pete was somewhat like going back into the cold and darkness, because it got only about twenty-five percent of the light and heat the sun delivered on Mars.

  But the asteroids were his home. He’d been born in the spaces of the Belt on the battered old Windjammer. An eight-jet space-freighter, it was of a slow, lumbering duck-like class, but ideally suited for mining, in that its hold was shaped like the belly of a bloated whale. The Windjammer’s class could carry enough high-grade ore to make prospecting a potentially profitable operation.

  Pete did not remember his mother. She’d died a year after he was born, his father turning resolutely from his grief in the interests of the son his lovely young wife had left him.

  Stubbornly refusing to allow a separation, Joe Mason had spurned the offers of Earthside relatives and had taken on a nurse—sixth generation Martian—ancie
nt and wrinkled, but marvelously wise and gentle, who was a mother to Pete until she, too, passed on during his eighth year.

  From that time on he and his father had been very close. Side by side they combed the Belt for minerals and led the wild, free life of the space miner.

  And Pete knew the Belt as his home. This identifying term actually meant the comparatively small cluster of asteroids that one ship was capable of covering. The Belts, in reality, covered the vast patterns that the asteroids—the sands on the deserts of space—formed. Although they were incredibly wide and un-chartable in their entirety, there were predictable patterns in the formation and movements of the clusters that made up the belts. It was on these movements and patterns that the space miners depended in their operations.

  But Joe Mason had vowed his son would never become an “ignorant rock-crusher.” Education was the ticket and Pete was going to get it till it ran out his ears!

  So when Pete, at twelve, had absorbed the Elementaries, the fundamental education that was channeled by radio to asteroid children, his father enrolled him in a specialized preparatory school on Parma, the largest of the planetoids in the Belt. It was there that Pete decided on archeology as a profession, thus making a course at New Portland imperative.

  But now that phase of his education had been cut short by tragedy, and he was on his way back to Juno, the Mason home base.

  The Federation ship Harlem was a comfortable, even an exciting spacer to ride, but Pete still counted the hours of passage. Even more so because of the disquieting news he’d received from Juno. His father had been injured when a load of shale was dumped on him, and very lucky because he was in not too bad shape. But shale just didn’t get dumped on people. Mining didn’t work that way. The implication was sinister.

  Pete talked to his father over radiophone his second day out—after he’d gotten the radiographed word. But the conversation hadn’t been reassuring. In fact, it had been most frustrating because his father had not explained anything and brushed off Pete’s questions. His gravel-voiced greeting was reassuring.

  “Pete! Will you get the thunder back here and start running things? These idiots won’t let me out of bed.”