The Golden Age of Science Fiction Novels Vol 05

by Anthology

  He started to approach the commander with a question about his orders, then thought better of it. He stood quietly near the control panel and watched.

  The air lock hissed, then slid open. A Martian stood in the entryway, a case on his shoulder. Rip watched him with interest. He had seen Martians before, on the space platform, but he had never gotten used to them. They were human, still....

  He tried to figure out, as he had before, what it was that made them strange. It wasn't the blue-whiteness of their skins nor the very large, expressionless eyes. It was something about their bodies. He studied the Martian's figure carefully. He was slightly taller and more slender than the average earthman, but his chest measurements would be about the same. Nor were his legs very much longer.

  Suddenly Rip thought he had it. The Martian's legs and arms joined his torso at a slightly different angle, giving him an angular look. That was what made him look like a caricature of a human, although he was human, of course--as human as any of them.

  Rip saw that other Martians were in the air lock, all carrying cases of various sizes and shapes. They came through into the control room and put them down, then turned without a word and hurried back into the lock. They were all breathing heavily, Rip noticed. Of course! The artificial atmosphere inside the spaceship must seem very heavy and moist to them, after the thin, dry air of Mars.

  The lock worked, and the Martians were replaced by others. They, too, deposited their cases. But these cases were bigger and heavier. It took four Martians to carry one, which meant they weighed close to half a ton each. The Martians could carry more than double an earthman's capacity.

  When the lock worked next time, a Planeteer captain came in. He breathed the heavy air appreciatively, fingering the oxygen mask he had to wear outside. He saluted Commander O'Brine and reported, "This is all, sir. We filled the order exactly as Terra sent it. Is there anything else you need?"

  O'Brine turned to his deputy. "Find out," he ordered. "This is our last chance. We have plenty of basic supplies, but we may be short of audio-mags and other things for the men." He turned his back on the Planeteer captain and walked away.

  The captain grinned at O'Brine's retreating back, then walked over to Rip. They shook hands.

  "I'm Southwick, SOS Two. Canadian."

  Rip introduced himself and said he was an American. He added, "And aside from my men, you're the first human being I've seen since we made space."

  Southwick chuckled. "Trouble with the spacemen? Well, you're not the first."

  Talking about assignments wasn't considered good practice, but Rip was burning with curiosity. "You don't by chance know what my assignment is, do you?"

  The captain's eyebrows went up. "Don't you?"

  Rip shook his head. "O'Brine hasn't told me."

  "I don't know a thing," Southwick said. "We got instructions to pack up a pretty strange assortment of supplies for the Scorpius, and that's all I know. The order was in special cipher, though, so we're all wondering about it."

  The deputy commander returned, reported to O'Brine, then walked up to Rip and Southwick. "Nothing else needed," he said curtly. "We'll get off at once."

  Southwick nodded, shook hands with Rip, and said in a voice the deputy could hear, "Don't let these spacemen bother you. Trouble with them is they all wanted to be Planeteers and couldn't pass the intelligence tests." He winked, then hurried to the air lock.

  Spacemen worked quickly to clear the deck of the new supplies, stowing them in a nearby workroom. Within five minutes the engine control room was clear. The safety officer signaled, and the radiation warning sounded. Taking off!

  Rip hurried to the squad room and climbed into an acceleration chair. The other Planeteers were already in the room, most of them in their bunks. Koa slid into the chair beside him. "Find out anything, sir?"

  "Nothing useful. A bunch of equipment came aboard, but it was in plain crates. I couldn't tell what it was."

  Acceleration pressed them against the chairs. Rip sighed, picked up an audio-circuit set, and put it over his ears. Might as well listen to what the circuit had to offer. There was nothing else to do. Music was playing, and it was the kind he liked. He settled back to relax and listen.

  Brennschluss came some time later. It woke Rip up from a sound sleep. He blinked, glancing at his chronometer. Great Cosmos! With that length of acceleration they must be high-vacking for Jupiter! He waited until the ship went into the gravity spin, then got out of his chair and stretched. He was hungry. Koa was still sleeping. He decided not to wake him. The sergeant major would see that the men ate when they wanted to.

  In the messroom only one table was occupied--by Commander O'Brine.

  Rip gave him a civil hello and started to sit alone at another table. To his surprise, O'Brine beckoned to him.

  "Sit down," the spaceman invited gruffly.

  Rip did and wondered what was coming next.

  "We'll start to decelerate in about ten minutes," O'Brine said. "Eat while you can." He signaled, and a spaceman brought Rip the day's ration in an individual plastic carton with thermo-lining. The Planeteer opened it and found a block of mixed vegetables, a slab of space meat, and two units of biscuit. He wrinkled his nose. Space meat he didn't mind. It was chewy but tasty. The mixed vegetable ration was chosen for its food value and not for taste. A good mouthful of Earth grass would be a lot more palatable. He sliced off pieces of the warm stuff and chewed thoughtfully, watching O'Brine's face for a clue as to why the commander had invited him to sit down.

  It wasn't long in coming. "Your orders are the strangest things I've ever read," O'Brine stated. "Do you know where we're going?"

  Rip figured quickly. They had accelerated for six and a half hours. Now, ten minutes after Brennschluss, they were going to start deceleration. That meant they had really high-vacked it to get somewhere in a hurry. He calculated swiftly.

  "I don't know exactly," he admitted. "But from the ship's actions, I'd say we were aiming for the far side of the asteroid belt. Anyway, we'll fall short of Jupiter."

  There was a glimmer of respect in O'Brine's glance. "That's right. Know anything about asteroids, Foster?"

  Rip considered. He knew what he had been taught in astronomy and astrogation. Between Mars and Jupiter lay a broad belt in which the asteroids swung. They ranged from Ceres, a tiny world only 480 miles in diameter, down to chunks of rock the size of a house. No accurate count of asteroids--or minor planets, as they were called--had been made, but the observatory on Mars had charted the orbits of thousands. A few were more than a mile in diameter, but most were great boulders of irregular shape, from a few feet to several hundred feet at their greatest dimension.

  "I know the usual stuff about them," he told O'Brine. "I haven't any special knowledge."

  O'Brine blinked. "Then why did they assign you? What's your specialty?"

  "Astrophysics."

  "That might explain it. Second specialty?"

  "Astrogation." He couldn't resist adding, "That's more advanced than the simple space navigation you use, Commander."

  O'Brine started to retort, then apparently thought better of it. "I hope you'll be able to carry out your orders, Lieutenant," he said stiffly. "I hope, but not much. I don't think you can."

  Rip asked, "What are my orders, sir?"

  O'Brine waved in the general direction of the wall. "Out there somewhere in the asteroid belt, Foster, there is a little chunk of matter about one thousand yards in diameter. A very minor planet. We know its approximate coordinates as of two days ago, but we don't know much else. It happens to be a very important minor planet."

  Rip waited, intent on the commander's words.

  "It's important," O'Brine continued, "because it happens to be pure thorium."

  Rip gasped. Thorium! The rare, radioactive element just below uranium in the periodic table of the elements, the element used to power this very ship! "What a find!" he said in a hushed voice. No wonder the job was Federation priority A, with Spa
ce Council security! "What do I do about it?" he asked.

  O'Brine grinned. "Ride it," he said. "Your orders say you're to capture this asteroid, blast it out of its orbit, and drive it back to Earth!"

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Find the Needle!

  Rip walked into the squad room with a copy of the orders in his hand. After one look at his face, the Planeteers clustered around him. Santos woke those who were sleeping, while Rip waited.

  "We have our orders, men," he announced. Suddenly he laughed. He couldn't help it. At first he had been completely overcome by the responsibility and the magnitude of the job, but now he was getting used to the idea, and he could see the adventure in it. Ten wild Planeteers riding an asteroid! Sunny space, what a great big thermonuclear stunt!

  Koa remarked, "It must be good. The lieutenant is getting a real atomic charge out of it."

  "Sit down," Rip ordered. "You'd better, because you might fall over when you hear this. Listen, men. Two days ago the freighter Altair passed through the asteroid belt on a run from Jupiter to Mars." He sat down, too, because deceleration was starting. As his men looked at each other in surprise at the quickness of it, he continued, "The old bucket found something we need--an asteroid of pure thorium."

  The enlisted Planeteers knew as well as he what that meant. There were whistles of astonishment. Koa slapped his thigh. "By Gemini! What do we do about it, sir?"

  "We capture it," Rip said. "We blast it loose from its orbit and ride it back to Earth."

  He sat back and watched their reactions. At first they were stunned. Trudeau, the Frenchman, muttered to himself in French. Dominico, the Italian, held up his hands and exclaimed, "Santa Maria!"

  Kemp, one of the American privates, asked, "How do we do it, sir?"

  Rip grinned. "That's a good question. I don't know."

  That stopped them. They stared at him. He added quickly, "Supplies came aboard at Marsport. We'll get the clue when we open them. Headquarters must have known the method when they assigned us and ordered the equipment they thought we'd need."

  Koa stood up. He was the only one who could have moved upright against the terrific deceleration. He walked to a rack at one side of the squad room and took down a copy of The Space Navigator. Then, resuming his seat, he looked questioningly at Rip. "Anything else, sir? I thought I'd read what there is about asteroids."

  "Go ahead," Rip agreed. He sat back as Koa began to recite what data there was, but he didn't listen. His mind was going ten astro-units a second. He thought he knew why he had been chosen for the job. Word of the priceless asteroid must have reached headquarters only a short time before he was scheduled to leave the space platform. He could imagine the speed with which the specialists at Terra base had acted. They had sent orders instantly to the fastest cruiser in the area, the Scorpius, to stand by for further instructions. Then their personnel machines must have whirred rapidly, electronic brains searching for the nearest available Planeteer officer with an astrophysics specialty and astrogation training.

  He could imagine the reaction when the machine turned up the name of a brand-new lieutenant. But the choice was logical enough. He knew that most, if not all, of the Planeteer astrophysicists were in either high or low space on special work. Chances were there was no astrophysicist nearer than Ganymede. So the choice had fallen to him.

  He had a mental image of the Terra base scientists feeding data into the electronic brain, taking the results, and writing fast orders for the men and supplies needed. Work at the Planeteer base had probably been finished within an hour of the time word was received.

  When they opened the cases brought aboard by the Martians, he would see that the method of blasting the asteroid into a course for Earth was all figured out for him.

  Rip was anxious to get at those cases. Not until he saw the method of operation could he begin to figure his course. But there was no possibility of getting at the stuff until Brennschluss. He put the problem out of his mind and concentrated on what his men were saying.

  "... and he slugged into that asteroid going close to seven AU's," Santos was saying. The corporal shrugged expressively.

  Rip recognized the story. It was about a supply ship, a chemical drive rocket job, that had blasted into an asteroid a few years before.

  Private Dowst shrugged, too. "Too bad. High vack was waiting for him. Nothing you can do when Old Man Nothing wants you. Not a thing in space!"

  Rip listened, interested. This was the talk of old space hands, who had given the high vacuum of empty space a personality, calling it "high vack," or "Old Man Nothing." With understandable fatalism, they believed--or said they believed--that when high vacuum really wanted you, there was nothing you could do.

  Rip had come across an interesting bit of word knowledge. Spacemen and Planeteers alike had a way of using the phrase "by Gemini!" Gemini, of course, was the constellation of the Twins, Castor and Pollux. Both were useful stars for astrogation. The Roman horse soldiers of ancient history had sworn "by Gemini," or "by the Twins." The Romans believed the stars were the famous Greek warriors Castor and Pollux, placed in the heavens after their deaths. In later years, the phrase degenerated to the simple "by jiminy," and its meaning had been lost. Now, although few spacemen knew the history of the phrase, they were using it again, correctly.

  Other space talk grew out of space itself, not out of history. For instance, the worst thing that could happen to a man was to have his helmet broken. Let the transparent globe be shattered, and the results were both quick and final. Hence the oft heard threat, "I'll bust your bubble."

  Speaking of bubbles ... Rip realized suddenly that he and his men would have to live in bubbles and space suits while on the asteroid. None of the minor planets were big enough to have an atmosphere or much gravity.

  If only he could get a look into those cases! But the ship was still decelerating, and he would have to wait. He put his head against the chair rest and settled down to wait as patiently as he could.

  Brennschluss was a long time coming. When the deceleration finally stopped, Rip didn't wait for gravity. He hauled himself out of the chair and the squad room and went down the corridor hand over hand. He headed straight for where the supplies were stacked, his Planeteers close behind him.

  Commander O'Brine arrived at the same time. "We're starting to scan for the asteroid," he greeted Rip. "May be some time before we find it."

  "Where are we, sir?" Rip asked.

  "Just above the asteroid belt near the outer edge. We're beyond the position where the asteroid was sighted, moving along what the Altair figured as its orbit. I'm not stretching space, Foster, when I tell you we're hunting for a needle in a junk pile. This part of space is filled with more objects than you would imagine, and they all register on the rad screens."

  "We'll find it," Rip said confidently.

  O'Brine nodded. "Yes. But it probably will take some hunting. Meanwhile, let's get at those cases. The supply clerk is on his way."

  The supply clerk arrived, issued tools to the Planeteers, then opened a plastic case attached to one of the boxes and produced lists. As the Planeteers opened and unpacked the crates, Rip and O'Brine inspected, and the clerk checked off the items.

  The first case produced a complete chemical cutting unit, with an assortment of cutting tips and adapters. Rip looked around for the gas cylinders and saw none. "Something's wrong," he objected. "Where's the fuel supply for the torch?"

  The supply clerk inspected the lists, shuffled papers, and found the answer.

  "The following," he read, "are to be supplied from the Scorpius complement. One landing boat, large, model twenty-eight. Eight each, oxygen cutting unit gas bottles. Four each, chemical cutting unit fuel tanks."

  "That's that," Rip said, relieved. Apparently he was supposed to do a lot of cutting on the asteroid, probably of the thorium itself. The hot flame of the torch could melt any known substance. The torch itself could melt in unskilled hands.

  The next case yielded a s
et of astrogation instruments, carefully cradled in a soft, rubbery plastic. Rip left them in the case and put them to one side. As he did so, Sergeant Major Koa let out a whistle of surprise.

  "Lieutenant, look at this!"

  Corporal Santos exclaimed, "Well, stonker me for a stupid space squid! Do they expect us to find any people on this asteroid?"

  The object was a portable rocket launcher designed to fire light attack rockets. It was a standard item of fighting equipment for Planeteers.

  "I recognize the shape of those cases over there, now," Koa said. "Ten racks of rockets for the launcher, one rack to a case."