Scavengers in Space

by Alan Edward Nourse

  “Right here.”

  They were stepping off the ramp below the ship when a man loomed up out of the shadows. He was a miner Tom had never seen before. Johnny nodded as he approached. “Any news, Jack?”

  “Quiet as a church,” said the man.

  “We’ll be held up another eight hours at least,” Johnny said. “Don’t go to sleep on us, Jack.”

  “Don’t worry about us sleepin’,” the man said grimly. “There’s been nobody around but yourselves, so far, except the clearance inspector.”

  Johnny looked up sharply. “You check his papers?”

  “And his prints. He was all right.”

  Johnny took Tom’s arm, and they headed through the gate toward the control tower. “I guess I’m just naturally suspicious,” he grinned, “but I’d sure hate to have a broken cut-off switch, or a fuel valve go out of whack at just the wrong moment.”

  “You think Tawney would dare to try something here?” Tom asked.

  “Never hurts to check. Well have our hands full for a few hours getting set, so I just asked my friends to keep an eye on things. Always did say that a man who’s goin’ to gamble is smart to cover his bets.”

  At the control tower they parted, and Tom walked in to the clearance office. Johnny’s watchman had startled him; for the first time he felt a chill of apprehension. If they were right—if this trip to the belt were not a wild goose chase from the very start—then Roger Hunter’s accident had been no accident at all.

  Quite suddenly, Tom felt very thankful that Johnny Coombs had friends.

  “I don’t like it,” the major said, facing Tom and Greg across the desk in the U.N. registry office below the control tower. “You’ve gotten an idea in your heads, and you just won’t listen to reason.”

  Somewhere above them, Tom could hear the low-pitched rumble of a scout ship blasting from its launching rack. “All we want to do is go out and work Dad’s claim,” he said for the second time.

  “I know perfectly well what you want to do. That’s why I told the people here to alert me if you tried to clear a ship. You don’t know what you’re doing, and I’m not going to sign those clearance papers.”

  “Why not?” Greg asked.

  “Because you’re going out there asking for trouble, that’s why not.”

  “But you told us before that there wasn’t any trouble. Dad had an accident, that was all. So how could we get in trouble?”

  “I won’t even discuss it with you,” the major snapped. “I’m simply refusing you clearance.”

  Greg shook his head. “I don’t think you can do that, Major. We’re both past eighteen, birthday was last March. We’re of legal age, so you can’t object to that. We’re not prospecting, we’re heading out for claimed rocks. Those were Dad’s claims, and they were free and clear., We have a space- worthy craft to take us out there, and a qualified rig waiting for us when we get there. We have more than a minimum crew signed. Maybe I sound like a space lawyer, but I’d like to know what regulation you’re going to use to stop us.”

  The major’s face was an angry red. He started to say something, then stopped, and scowled at them instead. They met his stare. Finally he threw up his hands. “All right, so legally I can’t stop you,” he said. “But at least I can beg you to use your heads. You’re wasting time and money on a foolish idea. You’re walking into dangers and risks that you can’t handle, and I hate to see it happen.”

  “What kind of dangers?” Greg said.

  “Mining in the belt is a job for experienced men, not rank novices.”

  “Johnny Coombs is no novice.”

  “No, but he’s lost his wits, taking you two out there.”

  “Well, are there any other dangers you have in mind?”

  Once more the major searched for words, and failed to find them. “No,” he sighed, “and you wouldn’t listen if I did.”

  “It seems everybody is warning us about how dangerous this trip is likely to be,” Greg said quietly. “Last night it was Merrill Tawney. He offered to buy us out; he was so eager for a deal that he offered us a fantastic price. Then Johnny tells us that Dad hit some rich ore when he was out there on his last trip, but never got a chance to bring it in because of his . . . accident. Up until now I haven’t been so sure Dad didn’t just have an accident, but now I’m beginning to wonder. Too many people have been warning us.”

  “You’re determined to go out there, then?”

  “That’s about right.”

  The major picked up the clearance papers, glanced at them quickly, and signed them. “All right, you’re cleared. I hate to do it, but I suppose I’d go with you if the law would let me. And I’ll tell you one thing—if you can find a single particle of evidence that will link Jupiter Equilateral or anybody else to your father’s death, I’ll use all the power I have to break them across my knee.” He handed the papers back to Tom. “But be careful, because if Jupiter Equilateral is involved in it, they’re going to play dirty. If there’s something they want badly enough, they won’t waste much time with you. So watch out.”

  At the door he turned. “Good trip, and good luck.”

  Tom folded the papers and stuck them thoughtfully in his pocket.

  The Hunters met Johnny Coombs in the registry offices upstairs; Tom patted his pocket happily. “We’re cleared in forty-five minutes,” he said.

  Johnny grinned. “Then we’re all set.” They headed up the ramp, reached ground level, and started out toward the launching racks.

  At the far end of the field a powerful Class I Ranger, one of the Jupiter Equilateral scout fleet, was settling down into its slot in a perfect landing maneuver. The triangle-and-J insignia gleamed brightly on her dark hull. She was a rich, luxurious-looking ship; in comparison, the Class III Dutchman looked small and shabby, its hull pitted and scarred by meteors and dust. The Ranger, with her dozens of sister ships, made a formidable fleet in the Asteroid Belt. With that fleet, Jupiter Equilateral had built its strength as a mining concern in the belt; the Ranger had power, and maneuverability, and a highly trained crew to handle her.

  But with that power there was a touch of arrogance. Many miners on Mars could remember when Jupiter Equilateral had been nothing more than a tiny mining company working claims in the remote “equilateral” cluster of asteroids far out in Jupiter’s orbit. Gradually the company had grown and flourished, accumulating wealth and power as it grew, leaving behind it a thousand half-confirmed stories of cheating, piracy, murder and theft. Other small mining outfits had fallen by the wayside until now over two-thirds of all asteroid mining claims were held by Jupiter Equilateral, and the small independent miners were forced more and more to take what was left, what Jupiter Equilateral didn’t want.

  They reached the gate to the Dutchman’s launching slot, and the watchman hailed them. “Not a sign of anythin’,” he said, with a touch of disappointment in his voice, “and me all set for a good brawl.”

  Johnny chewed his lip thoughtfully. “Well, thanks anyway. You took a weight off our minds.”

  The man watched them start up the ramp for the ship. “Johnny,” he said suddenly, “if you need any more crew, fust speak up.” He jerked a thumb toward the Ranger that had just landed. “There’s plenty of boys around here who’d like to tangle with that crew.”

  “Thanks, Jack,” Johnny said. “But this round is ours.”

  “Well, you’ll find a couple of Markheims stored in the cabin,” the man said. “Don’t be afraid to use them.”

  Johnny grinned and clapped the man on the shoulder. “Doubt if we’ll need them at all,” he said. But when he joined the twins on the ramp, he wasn’t smiling any longer. “I don’t like it,” he said. “I was certain they’d have somebody snoopin’ around.”

  “Maybe we’re lucky,” Greg said.

  “Maybe.” Johnny didn’t sound convinced.

  Inside the ship Tom and Johnny strapped down while Greg made his final check-down on the engines, gyros and wiring. The cabin was a
tiny vault, with none of the spacious “living room” of the orbit ships. Tom leaned back in the acceleration cot, and listened to the count-down signals that came at one-minute intervals now. In the earphone he could hear the sporadic chatter between Greg and the control tower. No hint that this was anything but a routine blast-off.

  But there was trouble ahead, Tom was certain of that. Everybody on Mars was aware that Roger Hunter’s sons were heading out to the belt to pick up where he had left off. Greg had secured a leave of absence from Project Star-Jump, unwillingly granted, even though his part in their program had already been disrupted. Even they had heard rumors that were adrift.

  And if there was trouble now, they were on their own. The Asteroid Belt was a wilderness, untracked and unexplored, and except for an almost insignificant fraction, completely unknown. If there was trouble out there, there would be no one to help.

  Somewhere below, the engines roared, and Tom felt the weight on his chest, sudden and breathtaking. In the view screen the Martian horizon began to widen below them as the little ship rose into the dark sky.

  They were on their way.

  Chapter Four

  “Between Mars And Jupiter”

  After all the tension of preparing for it, the trip out seemed interminable.

  They were all impatient to reach their destination. During blast-off and acceleration they had watched Mars dwindle to a tiny red dot; then time seemed to stop altogether, and there was nothing to do but wait.

  For the first eight hours of free-fall, after the engines had cut out, Tom was violently ill. He fought it desperately, gulping the pills Johnny offered and trying to keep them down. Gradually the waves of nausea subsided, but it was a full twenty-four hours before Tom felt like stirring from his cot to take up the shipboard routine.

  And then there was nothing for him to do. Greg handled the navigation skillfully, while Johnny kept radio contact and busied himself in the storeroom, so Tom spent hours at the view screen. On the second day he spotted a tiny chunk of rock that was unquestionably an asteroid moving swiftly toward them. It passed at a tangent ten thousand miles ahead of them, and Greg started work at the computer, feeding in the data tapes that would ultimately guide the ship to its goal.

  Pinpointing a given spot in the Asteroid Belt was a Gargantuan task, virtually impossible without the aid of the ship’s computer to calculate orbits, speeds, and distances. Tom spent more and more time at the view screen, searching the blackness of space for more asteroid sightings. But except for an occasional tiny bit of debris hurtling by, he saw nothing but the changeless panorama of stars.

  Johnny Coombs found him there on the third day, and laughed at his sour expression. “Gettin’ impatient?”

  “Just wondering when we’ll reach the belt, is all,” Tom said.

  Johnny chuckled. “Hope you’re not holdin’ your breath. We’ve already been in the belt for the last forty-eight hours.”

  “Then where are all the asteroids?” Tom asked.

  “Oh, they’re here. You just won’t see many of them. People always think there ought to be dozens of them around, like sheep on a hillside, but it doesn’t work that way.” Johnny peered at the screen. “Of course, to an astronomer the belt is loaded . . . hundreds of thousands of chunks, all sizes from five hundred miles in diameter on down. But actually, those chunks are all tens of thousands of miles apart, and the belt looks just as empty as the space between Mars and Earth.”

  “Well, I don’t see how we’re ever going to find one particular rock,” Tom said, watching the screen gloomily.

  “It’s not too hard. Every asteroid has its own orbit around the sun, and every one that’s been registered as a claim has the orbit charted. The one we want isn’t where it was when your dad’s body was found . . . it’s been traveling in its orbit ever since. But by figuring in the fourth dimension, we can locate it.”

  Tom blinked. “Fourth dimension?”

  “Time,” Johnny Coombs said. “If we used only the three linear dimensions—length, width and depth—we’d end up at the place where the asteroid was, but that wouldn’t help us much because it’s been moving in its orbit ever since the patrol ship last pinpointed it. So we figure in a fourth dimension—the time that’s passed since it was last spotted—and we can chart a collision course with it, figure out just where we’ll have to be to meet it.”

  It was the first time that the idea of time as a “dimension” had ever made sense to Tom. They talked some more, until Johnny started bringing in fifth and sixth dimensions, and problems of irrational space and hyperspace, and got even himself confused.

  “Anyway,” Tom said, “I’m glad we’ve got a computer aboard.”

  “And a navigator,” Johnny added. “Don’t sell your brother short.”

  “Fat chance of that. Greg would never stand for it.”

  Johnny frowned. “You lads don’t like each other very much, do you?” he said.

  Tom was silent for a moment. Then he looked away. “We get along, I guess.”

  “Maybe. But sometimes just gettin’ along isn’t enough. Especially when there’s trouble. Give it a thought, when you’ve got a minute or two.”

  Later, the three of them went over the computer results together. Johnny and Greg fed the navigation data into the ship’s drive mechanism, checking and re-checking speeds and inclination angles. Already the Dutchman’s orbital speed was matching the speed of Roger Hunter’s asteroid, but the orbit had to be tracked so that they would arrive at the exact point in space to make contact. Tom was assigned to the view screen, and the long wait began.

  He spotted their destination point an hour before the computer had predicted contact. At first a tiny pinpoint of reflected light in the scope, it gradually resolved into two pinpoints, and then three, in a tiny cluster. Greg cut in the rear and lateral jets momentarily, stabilizing their contact course. The dots grew larger.

  Ten minutes later, Tom could see their goal clearly in the view screen—the place where Roger Hunter had died.

  It was neither large nor small for an asteroid, an irregular chunk of rock and metal, perhaps five miles in diameter, lighted only by the dull reddish glow from the dime-sized sun. Like many such jagged chunks of debris that sprinkled the belt, this asteroid did not spin on any axis, but constantly presented the same face to the sun.

  Just off the bright side the orbit ship floated, stable in its orbit next to the big rock, but so small in comparison that it looked like a tiny glittering toy balloon. Clamped in its rack on the orbit ship’s side, airlock to airlock, was the Scavenger, the little scout ship that Roger Hunter had brought out from Mars on his last journey.

  While Greg maneuvered the Dutchman into the empty landing rack below the Scavenger on the hull of the orbit ship, Johnny scanned the blackness around them through the viewscope, a frown wrinkling his forehead.

  “Do you see anybody?” Tom asked.

  “Not a sign. But I’m really lookin’ for other rocks. I can see three that aren’t too far away, but none has claim marks. This must have been the only one Roger was workin’.”

  “Claim marks?” Tom said.

  Johnny pointed to the white markings on the surface of the rock below. “Chalk,” he said. “It shows up almost before the rock does, and it gets down into the crevices in the rock, so that it’s hard to erase. Discourages claim jumpin’. -That’s your dad’s mark down there, and whatever he found must be down there too.”

  They stared at the ragged surface of the planetoid. Raw veins of metallic ore cut through it with streaks of color, but most of the sun side showed only the dull gray of iron and granite. There was nothing unusual about the surface that Tom could see.

  “Could there be anything on the dark side?”

  “Could be,” Johnny said. “Well have to go over it foot by foot. But first, we should go through the orbit ship and the Scavenger. If the patrol ship missed anything, we want to know it.”

  They waited until Greg had thrown out the magn
etic cables to secure the Dutchman to the orbit ship’s hull. Then Johnny checked the airlock, and they slipped into the lightweight pressure suits. He handed each of the twins one of the heavy Markheim stunners. “Make sure the safeties are on,” he warned.

  Tom fingered the safety dial and pushed the weapon into a storage slot in the suit. It took a direct hit from a stunner to paralyze a man, but the sub-sonics from an accidental discharge could be dangerous. He checked the leather case at his belt, with his father’s revolver inside, and then followed Greg and Johnny through the airlock into the orbit ship.

  At first they noticed nothing wrong. The ship was dark. It spun slowly on its axis, giving them just enough weight so they would not float free whenever they moved. Their boots clanged on the metal decks as they climbed up the curving corridor toward the control cabin.

  Then Johnny threw a light switch, and they stared around them in amazement.

  The cabin was a shambles. Everything that was not bolted down had been ripped open and thrown aside. Cabinet doors hung gaping, the contents spilled out in heaps onto the deck. A safe hung open on one hinge, the metal door twisted, obviously opened with an explosive charge. Even the metal plates housing the computer had been torn loose, exposing the banks of tubes and colored twists of wire.

  Greg whistled through his teeth. “The major said the patrol crew had gone through the ship, but he didn’t say they’d wrecked it.”

  “They didn’t,” Johnny said grimly. “No patrol ship would ever do this. Somebody else has been here since.” He turned to the control panel, flipped switches, checked gauges. “Hydroponics are all right. Atmosphere’s still good, we can take off these helmets. Fuel looks all right, storage holds—” He shook his head. “They weren’t just looting, they were looking for something, all right. Let’s look around and see if they missed anythin’.”

  It took them an hour to survey the wreckage. Not a compartment had been missed. Even the mattresses on the acceleration cots had been torn open, the spring stuffing tossed about helter-skelter. Tom went through the lock into the Scavenger. The scout ship too had been searched, rapidly but thoroughly.