by Scott Reeves
The answer came in the form of a sudden powerful blow that drove him to his knees like a nail being pounded by a hammer.
Half stunned, his vision nearly doubled from the concussive blow, he looked around behind him to find a mechanical man towering over him.
The answer was suddenly clearer than his vision: the pirates had already taken what they considered to be the most valuable treasure onboard the ship: a young girl, recently come of age, just celebrating her eighteenth birthday. With limited room on their ship, the pirates had retreated to their base with the girl, and had left this mechanical man behind to guard the lesser treasure until their return.
The mechanical man was not tall, and did not appear hefty. It actually appeared quite fragile, with its exposed flywheels, gears, belts and servos whirring about beneath a transparent plastic chest casing, an intricate clockwork mechanism that, under other circumstances, would have been quite beautiful and impressive.
But its fragility was deceptive. Those metal cables that served as the man’s muscles packed an immense power behind them. Mechanical men such as this one were designed to possess superhuman strength within petite forms, enabling them to carry out tasks requiring industrial strength in tight quarters, such as within a cargo ship, or the narrow crevices and tunnels of an asteroid mine.
Fighting off the aftereffects of the blow, Bucky leapt out of the way as a large metal fist whizzed through the air where his head had been and slammed into the locker behind him. Metal crumpled. He shuddered at what the blow might have done to his head had he not possessed such finely honed reflexes.
Bucky drew his ray pistol. But before he could raise it and bring it to bear upon a target, the mechanical man roughly smacked the pistol from Bucky’s hand, sending it spinning through the air and ricocheting off a nearby wall, then drifted off, spinning like a small asteroid, down the corridor behind the mechanical man, well beyond Bucky’s easy reach.
And unfortunately it was the only weapon he was carrying.
Bucky wasted no time in scrambling back the way he had come.
The mechanical man’s servos spun, and gears cranked it about, sending it swiftly in pursuit of the fleeing Bucky. Its feet were magnetized, so that it was able to run as if in gravity, moving much faster than Bucky, who, lacking the same magnetization (obviously, Bucky now realized, a design flaw in his suit), was forced to propel himself in the zero gravity environment by careening off walls and ricocheting around corners.
As he struggled clumsily along, he imagined he could feel the hot breath of the mechanical man on the back of his neck, despite his knowledge that mechanical men had no breath, nor was there any atmosphere to propagate the heat of such breath.
He punched several buttons embedded in the gauntlet on the right forearm of his spacesuit, and commands were radioed ahead to his ramjet.
Thus when at last he shot from the ragged wound in the yacht’s side, and tumbled across the short intervening distance, maneuvering around so that he slipped smoothly, feet first, into the cockpit, the aether pumps were already powered up. All that was necessary to send the ramjet fleeing from the yacht and his pursuer was to shove the control stick forward. He did so, and light flared from the jets as acceleration pressed him into the cushions.
He lowered the cockpit canopy, not yet bothering to replenish the atmosphere. If he had to bail out again shortly, the brief pause as he waited for the atmosphere to drain back out might make the difference between life and death.
As the canopy clicked into place, he peered behind him and around the ship’s rear fin at the receding Starry Splendor, just in time to witness the mechanical man come shooting out like a comet from the hole in the hull. The asteroid loomed imminently large behind the yacht, mere moments from collision.
The mechanical man oriented itself upon Bucky in a matter of nanoseconds. Jets embedded in its feet flared to life.
Bucky cursed in chagrin. He had hoped that the mechanical man would have ceased pursuit once the interloper had been driven from the vicinity of the treasure it had been commanded to guard.
But apparently such was not the case, for the mechanical man was obviously intent upon pursuit. It was then that Bucky noticed he was still holding one of the diamond rings from the storage locker, having neglected to replace it, and which he had been turning idly in his hands as he had considered his options for taking the treasure into custody. The mechanical man had apparently noticed Bucky’s theft of a portion of the treasure, and its limited mechanical mind demanded that it recover such stolen portion. So it shot after Bucky at maximum thrust.
Another thought occurred to Bucky as well. Although of course he couldn’t confirm this, it was possible that the mechanical man had been aware of the doom represented by the approaching asteroid, and had grabbed up what treasure it was able, even as it had launched its pursuit of Bucky. Or was it too fleeing the wreck, only coincidentally following on Bucky’s heels?
This presented an opportunity for Bucky. As he threaded his way between two tumbling asteroids, he launched a cloud of chaff. Then, in a physics-defying maneuver requiring a delicate combination of braking and thrusting that only a pilot of Bucky’s skill could manage, he dove into a dark crater on one of the asteroids.
He managed to conceal himself in the shadows of the crater only just in time. For even as he settled onto the regolith, he glanced upward through the canopy, and saw the mechanical man hurtle by high overhead, a small black shape silhouetted against the stars.
It was his hope that the mechanical man, upon encountering the chaff, would assume that Bucky’s ship had been pulverized in an unfortunate collision with one of the asteroids.
Tense microseconds passed.
Bucky’s hopes were fulfilled as the man soared onward through the cloud of chaff and away into the blackness, apparently ignorant of its quarry having taken refuge a few hundred feet below. Or perhaps it simply didn’t care. For whatever reason, the man was moving on.
Bucky heaved a sigh of relief, and then flicked the button that would replenish the atmosphere within the cockpit.
No sooner had the mechanical man passed than Bucky Jupiter powered up his ramjet once more. He pulled back on the joystick, sending the ramjet leaping into space atop a column of light. The man had already disappeared into the black depths of space, and in any case, would not have been visible due to the intervening asteroids. But the aetheric wake left by the man’s passage, although rapidly dissipating, was still visible to Bucky’s detectors.
And so he settled into a pursuit course, following the man at a discreet distance, under the assumption that it was returning to its masters.
As he cruised, Bucky opened the small compartment into which he had earlier placed Judy. The cat climbed out, and contentedly settled into her customary place upon his lap.
The ramjet cruised along until the analog chronometer, with its split flap display, had counted out twenty minutes and ten seconds, whereupon a large asteroid hove into view from the darkness up ahead. Here the aetheric trail of the mechanical man came to an end, obviously its destination.
Bucky parked his ramjet at a discreet distance. He brought out his spyglass and brought it to bear upon the distant asteroid’s smooth, shiny surface. The only structure visible thereupon was a large geodesic dome, composed of thousands of octagonal panes of glass set within the rusting steel framework of the dome. Near the dome were three enormous brass crucifixes, standing like lone sentinels upon the smooth plain.
Bucky didn’t need to consult his index of local asteroids to know what this place was. It was an old Catholic cathedral, abandoned approximately eighty years earlier, when the Second Gold Rush had ended and thousands of discouraged miners (the cathedral’s parishioners) had moved on to more promising locations on the other side of the Belt. The bishop had followed soon after.
Beneath the dome, Bucky knew from memory, was the sanctuary. He looked for and found the raised mounds on the asteroid’s surface which marked the end of each t
ransept of the subterranean crucifix-shaped cathedral.
So, he thought to himself. Apparently pirates had taken up residence within the holy structure. Obviously not very intelligent pirates, as this was such a conspicuous location, well known to both the Space Patrol and practically everyone else in the local Belt. In fact, once a month, Bucky’s fellow Space Patrolmen, a squad from headquarters, visited this cathedral to run off any vagrants who had thought to take up residence. Only an incompetent band of pirates would consider making this their base of operations.
This asteroid had been specifically chosen for its purpose because its trajectory had been calculated not to intersect the path of any other asteroid for thousands of years, making it like a dervish dancing his way through a hailstorm of bullets, a miraculous survivor among a sea of death. A very unique rock in the Belt; the perfect symbol for a place of worship, as far as Bucky was concerned.
Yet another reason why the place made a foolish choice for a pirate base .
As he considered his next moves, Bucky idly stroked the scruff of Judy’s neck, and she purred, a soothing, hypnotic sound within the cramped confines of the ramjet’s cockpit.
Bucky finally gave up on trying to formulate a plan. Experience had taught him that in his line of business, plans of action were untenable, as flexibility was paramount. But it never stopped him from considering his options and attempting to formulate a plan, for contrarily, others had told him that plans were never unwise things to have.
“Come on, Judy,” he told his cat. “Time to go earn our paychecks.”
He tucked her into the cat harness on his suit, fastened its seals, donned his helmet, and raised the cockpit canopy. Jumping free from his ramjet, he activated his jetpack and rocketed toward the asteroid, sweeping around its curving horizon to the other side, where he knew, from having studied the plans of this cathedral in his Academy days, a hangar bay was located.
He could, of course, have piloted his ramjet into the hangar bay, instead of going EV. But the ramjet would surely have been noticed by anyone observing from within the cathedral, whereas a tiny spacesuited figure would be a mere blip to the same observer, who possibly might even consider Bucky a momentary malfunction of the radar.
As he soared over the dome, he looked down and saw within two figures moving about on the distant floor of the sanctuary. He caught a glimpse of a third figure chained to a table half hidden in the shadows.
Before he could get a clearer view, he was beyond the dome, and soaring toward a black opening in the surface of the asteroid: the maw of the hangar bay. He swooped down into the dark opening. When he came level with the lip of the bay, he felt a brief moment of resistance, as he passed through an invisible, permeable aetheric barrier designed to keep the atmosphere from leaking out of the hangar bay and into the cold vacuum of space.
He alighted on the floor of the cavernous bay. With a grateful sigh, he noted the presence of an Earth-normal gravitational field; no more blundering clumsily about as he had in the Starry Splendor. And an indicator inside his helmet told him that an Earth-normal atmosphere lay outside his spacesuit.
The bay, designed to accommodate dozens of spaceliner-sized vessels, stood empty, like a vast mausoleum, having long lain in disuse, its floor gathering dust and pebble-sized debris that had drifted into the hangar bay, falling to the ground like a fine particulate snow, a snow that had continued unabated for eighty years.
There were a few sets of bootprints in the dust, indicating that someone, or several someones, had been in the bay recently. But this was only in one corner, and there only appeared to be two or three unique sets of prints, meaning that most likely, Bucky was not up against more than a handful of pirates. Either this gang only consisted of two or three or four pirates, or the gang was just moving in, and the handful here was merely the advance guard.
In the dust near the bootprints, there were also indications that a ship, or ships, had recently visited the bay.
Bucky unzipped his harness and took Judy into his arms. He stroked her briefly, and then set her on the floor.
“Okay, girl, run along and play now,” he told her. He made a few signs with his fingers, to which she paid an uncanny amount of attention.
The cat took a few tentative steps, sniffing at the air, and then broke into a quick run, ducking low as though being harried by a flock of unruly birds, toward a nearby air duct situated at floor level. Once there, she pawed and clawed at the covering screen, until it came loose and toppled to the floor, raising a cloud of dust.
Judy darted into the darkened maw thus revealed.
Bucky started walking toward the nearest exit. Out of habit, he reached for his holster and made to draw his pistol, only to recall at the last minute that he had lost it aboard the Starry Splendor.
He cursed himself for not bringing along a spare. Just that morning, he had removed the spare from the ramjet, with the intention of giving it a good cleaning later in the day. Indeed, the pistol even now lay on a bench in the workroom back in his lair, waiting for its cleaning. Hopefully he wouldn’t keep it waiting too long.
He looked around the hangar bay for a makeshift weapon, and found a short length of steel pipe lying on a wooden crate near the exit. He picked it up, slapped it against his gloved palm a few times to get the heft of it, and then swished it through the air several times, bringing it down on an imaginary head. Once he was satisfied that he had its measure, he stepped through the exit, and began prowling the corridors of the asteroid cathedral.
The initial metal of the corridors soon gave way to the bare rock of the asteroid, which had been smoothed and squared off to a fine precision, and made to resemble huge blocks of granite. Catholics always had loved constructing their cathedrals out of brick and stone, and that love had not ended once Man had left the bounds of Earth.
Bucky longed to remove his glove and feel the cold, smooth, slick surface, just to feel a connection to Earth. But he instinctively knew not to remove any part of his spacesuit while he was carrying out an operation such as this. Things could go sour very quickly, and one was just as likely as not to find himself expelled into the vacuum of space during such a mission. And in such a case, it wouldn’t do to be without his spacesuit.
The corridors were devoid of human traffic. Had his bare ears been exposed to the atmosphere, rather than being encased within the bubble of his helmet, he was certain they would have been filled by an eerie silence. The silence of the tomb.
“Don’t worry, Judy,” he whispered. “It won’t be our tomb.”
But he crept cautiously along, keeping his pipe at the ready. It was possible that someone, somewhere, had somehow been alerted to his intrusion within the cathedral, and might even now be slouching along toward him to investigate.
He had the layout of the place displayed within his eidetic memory, and was working his way toward the sanctuary, where earlier he had seen the three figures through the dome as he had passed by overhead.
But before he could get there, he rounded a corner, and ran smack dab into the same mechanical man he had tracked here. Literally ran smack dab into it. The decorative, sharply pointed metal nose on its small, angular head jabbed painfully into his chest as they collided.
Thin metal arms reached out and roughly took hold of Bucky’s arms, twisting them painfully upward behind his back in a vice-like, pneumatic grip, locking him into a restraining hold almost before he realized what was happening.
A third metal arm appeared from somewhere on the thing and squeezed his wrist until pain forced his fist open, and the metal pipe clattered to the floor.
At first, he struggled against the grip of the steel-cable muscles, until he realized that the man was taking him toward the nave and sanctuary, exactly where he’d been heading, whereupon he relaxed, and let the thing manhandle him along toward his destination.
Quite soon, the corridor ended. He and his mechanical captor emerged into a cavernous room: the nave of the cathedral. Bucky had seen pictures o
f the place in its heyday, to which he compared what he was currently seeing, in a pointless but compulsive inventory-taking exercise. There were rows and rows of rectangular shapes etched into the dust of the enormous threadbare, moldy rug that covered the floor, marking where a sea of pews had once occupied most of the room. But the pews had been removed, along with tapestries, candelabra, a few holy relics all the way from Earth, and all the other accoutrements that had for many hundreds of years been part and parcel of the Catholic worship experience.
The cathedra at the far end of the large hall, a grand throne where the pompous bishop had once sat, surmounting a dais made from genuine oak that had been brought from distant Earth, was all that remained of the nave’s past glory.
The mechanical man hustled Bucky past the missing pews and into the smaller sanctuary beyond the cathedra.
Overhead arched the geodesic dome through which he had earlier peered from the other side, and its thousands of octagonal window panes, which from this side were etched with crosses, a detail that had not been visible from without, that refracted the light from beyond, creating a distorted but strangely beautiful panorama of the jewel-like scattering of stars and the tumbling asteroids.
In the center of the room, a stunningly beautiful young girl stood rubbing her wrists, as though she had just been released from the chain that had bound her. A chain which now lay in a jumbled pile at the foot of a grand table to whose thick wooden leg one end of the chain was attached.
She was dressed in filmy pink pantaloons made of satin, and slippers of silk covered her tiny feet. Her nicely proportioned torso was clad in a silk jacket of matching style, a jacket with no sleeves, which left her slender, tanned arms delightfully bare. Her long blond tresses were coiffed in the latest fashion, and her full, pouting lips were rouged red.
“Suzy Howell, I presume,” Bucky called out jovially, his words transmitted through his helmet by his suit’s radio.
The mechanical man released him near her at the center of the room. The man then moved off a few feet, but stood, its belts and gears whirring with well oiled smoothness inside its plastic chest, ready to restrain Bucky at the least sign of trouble.