by Anthology
"That old goat must be crazy to think he could toss us out here and have us act like a trained crew. How can we even hope to do anything right, without blowing ourselves up?"
"We can try," said Phillips coldly. "It shouldn't be impossible to get one started, at least."
He found the twin control panels in the bulkhead, and pulled a pair of switches. There was a smooth humming and a slight click as two hatches in the deck slid open. Slanting metal chutes rose out of the dark apertures, just behind the conveyor belts.
"Look at those babies!" breathed Phillips.
The snouts of two miniature spaceships protruded from the storage hold. Phillips touched other switches, and the sleek missiles were prodded onto the belts and moved forward until the full, twenty-foot lengths were in view.
"Phillips, you better be careful with those things!" quavered Truesdale as the engineer unscrewed a small hatch on one.
"Afraid I'll blow it up?" asked Phillips, peering inside.
"Why not? You never touched one before."
"You go ahead and believe that," retorted the engineer. "Now, I'll just turn on the radio controls, check the batteries, and feed the bad news into the launching tubes. Watch!"
Replacing the hatch and securing it, he thought out the procedure to use at the remote control panels. Turning on the screen above one of them produced a cross-haired image of the bulkhead directly in front of the near torpedo. He tried various manipulations until he had focused the view and caused it to sweep all around the interior of the turret. After idly watching himself and Truesdale appear on the screen, he returned the view to dead ahead, switched it off, and turned to the other panel.
"I guess I can finish checking," he said.
Truesdale clambered hastily down the ladder. Phillips shook his head. "Don't know what use he'll be," he muttered. "Too bad Brecken wouldn't listen. He at least ... oh, well!"
He wondered whether he himself would stand up when the time came. What Varret had asked did not sound like much. Just a quick shot and watch them blow apart. What inhibitions made men black out rather than carry it through? It was not as if there were any hope for these people. Surely, it was obvious that to permit them, in their deranged state, to spread a catastrophic plague was inconceivable. But perhaps emotions were stronger than reason.
"I'll find out pretty soon," he reflected.
There was little more to do in the turret, except to run the torpedoes into the launching tubes and bring up a new pair in reserve. With that much done, he closed the hatch and climbed down the ladder.
* * * * *
In the control room, he found Donna and Truesdale peering into the screen. He crowded close to look over their shoulders. A small blob of light floated near the center of the view. "That it?" he asked.
"Yes," answered Donna. "Just enough Mars-light to show it."
"How near are we?" asked Phillips.
"About a hundred and fifty miles. I have quite a large magnification, but they may spot us if they're alert. Are you ready to ... do something?"
"Reasonably," said Phillips. "Where's Brecken?"
"You probably killed him!" Truesdale broke in accusingly.
"I found a first-aid kit and gave him a shot," said Donna. "He has a nasty lump on the head, but he might sleep it off."
Phillips was watching Truesdale. The youth was visibly nervous. Was it the thought of Brecken, the engineer wondered, or fear of what they were planning to do? Perhaps it would be best to clear the air now, before it was too late.
"I guess you can handle it here, Donna," he said. "Truesdale and I will go to the turret and stand by."
The youth shrank away. "No! I won't go up there again! You can't make me do this!"
"Do what?" demanded Phillips.
"It's murder! You both know it is! They won't even have any warning."
"I hope not," said Phillips drily. "They might get us!"
"You would put it that way," sneered Truesdale; "you're homicidal at heart anyway!" He turned on Donna, wiping perspiration from his forehead. "Are you going to let him do it?" he shrilled. "Are you going to help him commit such a crime?"
The girl stared at him with a worried look in her blue eyes but said nothing.
"Come on, Truesdale," said Phillips, making an effort at a peaceful, persuasive tone. "It will be either their lives or ours if they spot us--and millions more if they get by. They'll be too desperate to think of us. Do you want to die?"
The instant he spoke the last words, he remembered the other's record and wished he had kept quiet. He saw, a strange, wild expression creep over Truesdale's features. It changed into a look of hateful cunning as the youth, began to sidle toward the door.
"I'm not afraid to die!" he boasted in a low-pitched but tense voice. "But how about you, Phillips? How about the big, brutal space engineer who is proud of smashing men's skulls against steel walls, who would like nothing better than to blow up a shipload of innocent people. How do you really know they're dangerous? But you don't care, do you?"
"Truesdale!" snapped Phillips. "Calm down!"
"I'll calm you down with me!" shouted the other hysterically. "I'll show you who's afraid to die!"
He ducked through the door toward which he had been backing. Phillips lunged after him, just barely missing a grip.
"On your toes!" he shouted over his shoulder to Donna, and turned on all jets.
But Truesdale, driven by his peculiar fury, not only stayed ahead as they raced along the corridor, but actually gained.
He was fifteen or twenty feet out in front as they reached the midway point. Phillips, expecting him to take refuge in the rocket room, was completely fooled when Truesdale leaped for the ladder in the vertical well. He stumbled, and grabbed a handrail to stop himself. The other was swarming upward. Phillips sprang to follow.
Hardly had he climbed half a dozen rungs, however, than he saw he was outdistanced. Truesdale's feet were already disappearing beyond the hatchway. Phillips waited for the airtight door to slam shut. It remained open....
Then a thrill of instinctive fear shot through him as he thought of what Truesdale might do--probably was doing at that very instant!
Throwing his feet clear of the rungs, he plunged back toward the deck, guided only by his hands brushing the sides of the ladder. As Phillips reached the junction of the passages, he kicked desperately away from the ladder. He landed with a thump that would have hurt had he been in a calmer state.
Rolling over toward the control room, he came to his feet in time to glimpse Donna looking out the doorway before a jarring shock floored him again.
The deafening roar of an explosion resounded in the corridor as a brilliant light was luridly reflected from somewhere behind him. The bewildering force hurled him at the deck; he saw he could not prevent his head from striking--
Phillips found himself on hands and knees, staring stupidly at the deck a few inches past his nose. As in a nightmare, he seemed to spend an eternity pushing himself painfully to his feet. Clutching a handrail, he finally made it.
He saw Donna kneeling in the doorway, hand to head. As he watched, the girl looked at her hand, and dazedly pulled out a handkerchief to wipe off the blood.
Then Phillips became aware of a high breeze in his face. Behind him, the sound of rushing air rose to a moan, then to a shriek. That shocked him to his senses.
"Button up!" he screamed above the noise, bringing his hands together in an urgent gesture understood by all spacemen.
As the girl staggered to her feet, he whirled and leaped toward the junction of the cross corridors. He wasted no time in a vain glance upwards--he knew what Truesdale had done. Only setting off the torpedoes' rockets in the enclosed turret compartment would have caused an explosion just severe enough to rupture the ship's skin; if the warheads had gone off, he never would have known it.
Diving headlong through the opening in the deck, he experienced a dizzying shift of gravity as he passed through the plane of the main deck. When h
e had his bearings again, he scrambled "up" the ladder toward the belly turret. By the time he got the airtight hatch open, he was beginning to pant in the thinning air. He pulled himself through at last, and sealed the compartment.
Phillips sucked in a deep, luxurious breath while he glanced about. This turret, he saw, was a duplicate of the other. He immediately located the intercom screen and called the control room. Donna's worried face appeared. "Where are you?" was her relieved inquiry.
Phillips explained what had happened. "The only thing," he concluded, "is to try it from here."
"I think they must have spotted the flash," Donna told him. "The instruments show a shift in their course."
"Blast right at them!" said Phillips. "We might get away with it if we're quick."
He turned away, leaving the intercom on. A few quick steps took him to the control panels in the bulkhead. Guided by his lessons in the other turret, and by faded memories of space school on Earth, he brought up two of the torpedoes. He checked the radio controls and ran the missiles into their launching tubes. As he worked, with nervous sweat running down into his eyes, he was aware of the intermittent jar of rocket blasts.
"Run 'em down!" he muttered, trying to steady his hand on the controls.
He had a hand at each panel, with the torpedoes poised viciously in the tubes, when he heard Donna's shout, shrill with excitement, over the intercom.
Instantly, he launched the missiles. He started the rockets by remote control, and scanned the screens for a sight of the other vessel.
For a moment, his view was confused by the expanding puff of air; then that froze, and drifted back to the hull, and he could see the stars.
* * * * *
Donna's voice, strained but coldly controlled, came over the intercom with readings from her instruments. He corrected his courses accordingly.
Then he saw the image of their target centered on one screen, so he concentrated on steering the other missile. He made the nose yaw, but was unable to locate anything on its screen.
"You're sending one of them too far above, I think," Donna reported.
"I have something wrong," he shouted. "I can't spot them at all for that one. The jets must be out of line and shooting it in a curve."
Nevertheless, he fired a corrective blast on the weight of the guess, before returning his attention to the first torpedo.
This one was right on the curve. He could see the massive hull of the cruiser plainly now. It was almost featureless until, as he watched, several sections seemed to slide aside.
The screen showed him a momentary glimpse of a swarm of small, flame-tailed objects spewing forth from one of the openings. Then the view went dark. "Interceptor rockets with proximity fuses," he muttered. "They'll be after us next, crazy-mean and frantic!"
Over the intercom, he heard Donna exclaim in dismay. He caught a fleeting sight of her face and realized that the situation must be torture for the girl, as for himself or any normal person of their civilization.
Cursing himself for an optimist, he raised two more of the missiles from the magazine. Hopping about like a jet-checker five minutes before take-off time, he made them ready. It seemed like hours before he got them into the launching tubes and blew them out into the void.
Again, he watched the other vessel appear ahead of his torpedoes, this time on both screens. Before the gap narrowed, he had a better opportunity to see the defenses of the cruiser in action.
A whitish cloud of gas was expelled from his target's hull, bearing a myriad of small objects which promptly acquired a life of their own. Both screens were filled with flashing, diverging trails of flame. Then--nothing.
"They're heading at us!" called Donna. "Hang on!"
Phillips had already pulled the switches to bring up a new pair of torpedoes. Hearing the urgency in Donna's tone, he leaped toward a rack of spacesuits and grabbed.
* * * * *
The next instant, he was pinned forcibly against the rack by acceleration, as Donna made the ship dodge aside. From one side, he heard a screech of grating metal. The fresh missiles must have jammed halfway out of the storage compartment.
It gave him a weird feeling of unreality; as he hung there helplessly, to see one of the screens on the bulkhead pick up something moving, gleaming, metallic.
"Donna!" he shouted hoarsely. "Let up!"
"I don't dare," she gasped over the intercom. "I lost them, but they were starting after us!"
"Let up!" repeated Phillips. "They're dead ahead of that wild shot of ours. Let me get to the controls!"
He dropped abruptly to the deck as the acceleration vanished. One leap carried him to the radio controls.
The metallic gleam had swelled into a huge spaceship. The cruiser was angling slightly away from the point from which he seemed to be viewing it. How soon, he wondered, would they detect the presence of his torpedo? Or would they neglect this direction, being intent upon the destruction of those who were attempting to frustrate their mad dash for Mars?
Phillips stood before the screen, clenching his fists. There was, after all, nothing for him to do but watch. The gleaming hull expanded with a swelling rush. Details of construction, hitherto invisible, leaped out at him. A crack finally appeared as a section began to slide back.
This time, however, there was no blinding flare of small rockets. The blacking out of the screen coincided with Donna's scream. "It hit!"
In the silence that followed, he thought he heard a sob.
"Oh, Phillips," she said, recovering, "we did it. They're--"
"Hang on," said Phillips. "I'll climb into a spacesuit and come forward."
He switched off the intercom and dragged a suit from the rack. It took him a good fifteen minutes to get the helmet screwed on properly and to check everything else. He realized that he was very tired.
He opened the exit hatch, seized the top of the ladder in his gauntlets as the air exploded out of the turret, and climbed back to the main deck.
Clumping forward through the airless corridor, he stopped to look into the compartment where he had left Brecken. He quickly slid the door shut again.
He found that Donna had sealed off the corridor just short of the control room by closing a double emergency door that must have been designed to form an airlock in just such a situation. He hammered upon it, and she slid it open from the control desk.
It closed again behind him, and he entered the control room through the usual door. The girl helped him to remove the suit and motioned him toward the screen.
* * * * *
Phillips regarded the scene without enthusiasm. The sight of the dead man had reminded him of what the compartments of that other vessel must look like by now. Its parts were beginning to scatter slowly.
He looked at Donna, and found her regarding him soberly. "What will they do with us now?" she asked.
She looked exhausted. He extended an arm, and she leaned against him. "You heard what Varret said," he told her.
"Yes, but will he keep his word? They might be ... ashamed of us, now that it's done. Even if they're not, I can't bear the thought of going back to Earth and having them stare at me!"
Phillips nodded. He remembered the morbid curiosity during his own trial, the crowds who had watched him with a kind of shrinking horror--and he had actually been responsible for saving a spaceship and its crew, had they cared to look on that side of the affair.
But he had killed. That was no longer the action of a normal human being, according to popular thinking.
"I guess you and I are the only ones who will understand one another from now on," he shrugged.
Donna smiled faintly, just as the signal sounded on the communication screen.
It was Varret, looking pale and strained. He listened to Phillips' account, including the deaths of Truesdale and Brecken, and apologized for his appearance. He had, he informed them, been unpleasantly ill when he had seen the explosion. "It was a terrible thing," Varret continued sadly, "but necessary. They were
beyond reasoning with, and a deadly menace."
He pulled himself together and tried to hide his agitation by reminding them of his promise. He suggested that they consider their requests while his ship attempted to tow them in to Deimos.
Phillips glanced speculatively at Donna. They would be two outcasts, however much their deed might be respected abstractly, however much official expressions of gratitude were employed to gloss over the fact. He might as well take one chance more. "We have already decided," he said boldly. "I hear you are building a new space station on Deimos."
The old man nodded, surprised.
"We will ask for a deed to that moon, and a contract to operate the beacon and radio relay station," Phillips stated flatly.
Varret blinked, then smiled slightly in a sort of understanding admiration.
"Reasonable and astute," he murmured after a moment's hesitation. "I think I appreciate the motive. Perhaps, if that ship can be repaired and remodeled, we can include it so that you may make short visits to Mars."
He warned them to watch for the emergency crew he would send to their aid, and switched off.
Phillips then dared finally to turn and look inquiringly at Donna. Her smile was relaxed for the first time since they had met. "Nice bargaining," she said, and Phillips felt like the king of something larger than a tiny Martian satellite.
* * *
Contents
ASTEROID OF FEAR
By Raymond Z. Gallun
All space was electrified as that harsh challenge rang out ... but John Endlich hesitated. For he saw beyond his own murder--saw the horror and destruction his death would unleash--and knew he dared not fight back!
The space ship landed briefly, and John Endlich lifted the huge Asteroids Homesteaders Office box, which contained everything from a prefabricated house to toothbrushes for his family, down from the hold-port without help or visible effort.
In the tiny gravity of the asteroid, Vesta, doing this was no trouble at all. But beyond this point the situation was--bitter.