Everything erupted into a mad, tearing orgy.
Rivets screamed as they left their sockets. Bulkheads and portions of fuselage buckled and twisted and crumpled. The graceful outline of the dart ship broke and twisted and concertinaed till there was practically nothing left of it. There were five shattering impacts in all, and five heaps of twisted metal marked the end of the surveying expedition. Amidst the heaps of metal lay twenty-four mangled, space-suited bodies, as dead as the space through which they had plummeted to their deaths. One man stirred faintly and feebly among the wreckage; stirred and groaned softly and staggered to his feet. His head ached violently and abominably. His vision was blurred. He seemed to be seeing everything through a mist. He realized that the red mist was blood. Blood on the plastic lenses of his helmet. Blood from a two-inch gash on his forehead, which was still dripping. He put his hand to the helmet and realized that he was in a suit. Miraculously, after all that holocaust, the suit was not leaking.
He was alive. He had enough air and water for a long, long time.
Greg Masterson looked at the bodies in the wreckage, and slumped across what had once been a delicate instrument panel. He switched on the external auditory equipment. Something was chattering madly, gibbering like a frenzied monkey. He tried to think. Thought was difficult. His head was still spinning from the crash. What the devil was that thing, clicking and chattering. It had to make sense. Something had to make sense out of all this crazy holocaust of asteroid and distorted ships. What clicked like that? Blast, why couldn't he think!
Everything was a sea of pain, and he was a tiny cork bobbing along on its waves. He struggled upright again. A geiger counter, that was it! He looked at the thing. Odd that it had escaped the wreckage. Providential perhaps, for without it he wouldn't have recognized his danger. The whole surface of the asteroid seemed to be violently radioactive. He had to get off and get off fast. He couldn't get away. If a ship couldn't get away, how could a man alone, in a space suit?
Think, Masterson, he said to himself, think. Don't panic; think! The suit is lead-impregnated; you're all right. There's nothing to panic about if you're not exposed to it for too long. You're filtering ninety-nine percent of those radiations. They're bouncing off you.
You're safe, if you just keep your head and get off as soon as you can—or get away from the radiation…
Automatically he reached down and took up the geiger counter, knotted the broken strap and slung it over his shoulder. He turned the volume down, so that the chattering was less distracting.
What else would he need? Guns! Yes, of course, he would want guns… as many as he could comfortably carry. He stooped beside the nest of the bodies. It was Dan Richards, looking strangely peaceful in death, with his mysterious eyes wide open, staring up into the thoughtless mystery of space. Poor old Dan, thought Greg to himself. That blasted asteroid has a lot to answer for. Dan's vivid red hair was stained now a darker red with his own blood. He picked up his dead companion's gun and thrust it into the empty holster on the left-hand side of his belt. He checked his own weapon. They were both in working order. That was something to be thankful for… not that he expected to need them, and yet he was completely at a loss to understand what had happened and how it had happened. Unless… unless… no! That was fantastic—he would have to see what he could find. Time for theories later. There weren't enough facts to build a theory on. There weren't enough facts to build anything on. He moved slowly, like a man in a dream, looking more like a robot. Slowly, jerkily, like an automation, searching in the wreckage. He had guns; he had better have some more oxygen… He unplugged the cylinder from Richard's corpse, unstrapped it and put it into the spare clamp on his own back. He'd better pick up another couple of cylinders if he was going to move any distance from the wreckage. He had strong nerves, but he couldn't stand the sight of those bodies. It wouldn't have mattered so much if they had been other people's bodies, but these were his friends, his pals, his messmates, men he had lived and fought and worked with—for years, some of them. He looked at young Sparks. A kid straight from college. Poor little devil, what chance had he had? Yet he had had as much guts as any of them. Quiet and strong to the end. A real man in spite of his boyish face. Rest in peace, whispered Greg, the lot of you, God have mercy on your souls.
He staggered away out of the wreckage, moving slowly and ponderously in the suit, not really knowing where he was going or why; just feeling instinctively that he had to get away from that heap of charnel wreckage.
The asteroid was small as asteroids go, and yet he realized it must be several miles in diameter. He couldn't make out the gravity effect. It seemed to be the same as earth normal, about 1G. That didn't make sense either; too soon for theorizing. There should be practically no gravity here. Mentally he judged the size of the asteroid against the earth. Why, it should take him up to two or three miles at a bound—yet it didn't. Something to do with that force that had brought them crashing onto it, no doubt. This thing wasn't obeying the laws of time and space. It wasn't abiding by the rules; it wasn't playing the game. There was something wrong with the thing, something fiendishly wrong. He took a deep breath, sucking in lungfuls of the life-saving oxygen. It made him feel better. It cleared his head. He took another and another. He squared his shoulders inside the narrow confines of the suit. Better start thanking heaven, or Providence, or God, or whatever it was that had kept him alive… No good being bitter about the others. He couldn't understand why he was alive. They had all been standing so close together. It was just one of those odd freaks of chance. Twisting fuselage had missed him and gotten his pals. That was all there was to it. His name hadn't been written on any of those jagged sections of fuselage. Funny, life was like that. He realized that it was only in the face of death that he had begun to understand life. He had better go and check on the other ships; the last thing he had heard over the intercom was that they were coming down, too. He hadn't heard any crash before his own ship hit, possibly because he was nearer than the others. They must have hit a few seconds after…
He moved on…
He didn't know whether he had walked a mile or two miles before he came across the next tangled heap of wreckage. The odd granular surface of the asteroid gritted and grated beneath his feet. He had no idea whether there was any atmosphere clinging to the strange world. There might be—there might not. He didn't feel like opening his helmet to have a look…
It would probably be a pretty quick get-out, when he had had all he could take.
There was nothing but this hard, bare, gritty surface. The asteroid was for all the world like a great cube of sugar, square and yet not quite square; rectangular enough to look as though it might be artificial. But that was a wild theory. There was a great number of rectangular asteroids… Nobody ever suggested that they were artificial. The next crash was right ahead of him now. It told the same pitiful story as his own ship. The men were so badly shattered they were hardly recognizable—fragments of ship and fragments of crew. He turned away, feeling violently sick. Poor devils, he kept saying to himself. What chance did they have? Squadron-Leader Masterson, he hadn't a squadron any more. It made him feel bad, very bad, deep down in the pit of his stomach.
He moved on, finding nothing but rough, gritty, dark brown, granular "something" beneath his feet.
It was like walking over a shingle beach with rock beneath it.
He reached the third, and the fourth and the fifth.
And everywhere the same story. Dead ships. Dead men. He was the only survivor. The only survivor of his own ship, and the only survivor of the expedition.
Chance played funny games sometimes. Apart from the cut across his forehead, where he had crashed his head into the helmet, he didn't seem to have come to any other harm.
He kept moving.
He wondered whether he could compete the revolution of the asteroid before it passed on its erratic orbit out of the sunlight. There had to be something somewhere; it couldn't all be just like this.
That wouldn't account for that radioactivity. He turned the geiger counter up again. The noise had not abated by one iota. It was louder than it had been before. He still kept moving doggedly. His strong jaw jutted with determination. He kept grinding on—the shingly stuff, hard and gritty beneath his feet, was becoming very, very aggravating. Greg wanted to destroy it, to kick it off into space, to walk on something smooth, instead of this constant slipping, sliding shingle.
He felt that there was something pretty solid just a short way down, and he wondered how far down.
On impulse, he drew the blaster from his pocket and fired. A searing destruction beam tore a jagged hole in the shingle a few yards ahead of him. The gritty stonelets spat and cracked and leapt in the air with the heat. He laughed. He felt as if he had hurt them. In an odd, twisted sort of way, it gave him a feeling of satisfaction. He'd have liked to have blasted up the whole asteroid that way.
His mind had cleared almost completely now, and he was aware that something didn't ring true. Now what was it? He sat down by the edge of his newly smashed crater and thought. He thought hard. Yes… he snapped the metallic fingers of his suit as an idea suddenly burst upon him like a flood of light. That was what was wrong. Why had the gun gone off? The gun had gone off powered by its miniature atomic blasting power. It was a microscopic miniature of the three-megaton bomb that had been released. They had not exploded. Why? He drew a deep breath and peered hard through the red mist that still blurred his vision. The stones had leapt, spat and cracked. A wide hole yawned beneath him, five or six feet in diameter. Why had the big bomb failed to go off? That was the question. Surely if there was some kind of force field operating, it would have prevented the pistol from firing, just as it had prevented the bomb from exploding. Apparently there was no force field. Then why hadn't the bombs gone off? He gritted his teeth in a desperate effort to bring every focal ounce of his concentration to bear on the problem in hand. There had to be a reason for everything, he told himself. Cause and effect. The whole universe was cause and effect. If it wasn't, then nothing made sense. Today's effects were being caused by yesterday. Tomorrow's would be caused by today's. He lapsed into a long, thoughtful silence. The enigmatical crater, and the smoking gun in his hand prodded at his mind. Prodded at him like an electric ox goad moving a sluggish beast into motion. His brain was the sluggish beast. It didn't want to think. It didn't want to trouble. It wanted to lie down and relax. But he was going to make it think. His will was stronger than his intelligence. He had to find an answer, to come up with a solution. Everything had a solution if only a man looked for it long enough.
He was convinced of that, too. If you think about a thing for long enough, you're bound to come up with an answer. He had faith in human intelligence. He believed that homo sapiens deserved the second part of his appellation…
Man had risen by brain and courage to be leader of the brute creation. He had come from primeval slime by the sweat of his brow, by his nerve, by his brains and by his courage. If he was going to stay out of the primeval slime, he needed those things more than ever in the 23rd century. He wondered if the force field was situated at a distance from the asteroid. Maybe only a small distance, and once he was through it, it was no longer operational. Yet that didn't make sense, either. Because having passed through it, the bombs would become operational again as soon as they hit the planet's surface. They were not the type of bomb that exploded in the air. There would have to be a better reason. What if the force field was operated on some sort of time basis? If the nullifying power came into effect only when it was needed? He sat thinking that one over for a time, and then, still no nearer the solution, he went over the edge of the crater he had blasted into the rock and peered down.
"Didn't know the guns were as effective as that," he muttered to himself. He kept on peering down. "By the stars, it's a hole!" It seemed to be about twelve feet deep. There wasn't much sign of a definite bottom even after that. It could have been much bigger…
He cursed the red mist fogging his helmet. "Wonder what the devil it is." He realized he was talking to himself. "Got to stop it," he said out loud. "Got to stop it. This place is getting me. It's giving me the screaming heebies, and the Mongolian habdabs." He laughed at his own joke. "First man to land on asteroid dies of Mongolian habdabs. How's that for a TV headline?" He kept peering as intently as the red mist would permit. The more he gazed, the more perplexed he became. "But I didn't fire at that angle," he whispered half to himself. He retraced his steps, stood where he had stood before, and aimed an empty hand as though he still pointed a gun at the crater. Penetration angle should have been approximately thirty degrees to the surface, away from him. It did go in this direction a matter of about three feet, which was normal limitation for that kind of power charge. After that, it tailed off in another direction. The maximum twelve-foot depth appeared to be practically vertical. He regarded the crater more closely. The edge where the power charge had cut was smooth and shining where the rocks fused and ran together under the instantaneous heat of the gun's discharge. That was to be expected. But the twelve-foot shaft, with the murky, mysterious bottom, led off in another direction altogether, and its outline appeared to have been drilled or dug—it was not seared.
Fantastic, he thought. If I wasn't functioning on about half brain power, I should have realized what I've done. By a million to one chance, his impulsive shot had uncovered the top of an artificial shaft, which had been let into the asteroid, loosely covered over, by a surface that now obviously seemed artificial, or at least, if natural, very unusual. He imagined the effect he would have gotten in the limestone hill country, had he taken a shot somewhere in the hills of Derbyshire. He imagined himself gazing down an 800-foot cavern or mine shaft. Natural or artificial was, at the moment, still a matter of conjecture. The point was that his chance shot had uncovered the lid of some kind of sub-asteroidanean passageway, cavern or tunnel.
The intelligence that lurked in the depths of his subconscious was putting things together for him, even though his conscious mind was still fogged and shaken from the crash and the shock of seeing all his friends dead… It dawned on him like a sudden idea from outside, like a sudden flash of inspiration, that here was the obvious escape route from the radioactivity. If the surface of the asteroid was radioactive, might it not be safe in its interior regions? Should he descend? Would it not be better to risk the radioactivity and remain on the surface?
The auditory receivers on the outside of his suit were tuned in to maximum reception. He suddenly became aware that there was another odd noise. It might have been imagination—but he didn't think it was. It was a very low, dull rumble as though the ground were shaking. What the devil could that be? Distant footsteps? But what manner of creature would make footsteps like that? Thud! About a four-second pause, and then—thud! Three or four seconds, and then—thud!
It told him something about the atmosphere as well. There had to be an atmosphere of some kind—albeit a thin one—otherwise he would have heard nothing, or would he have sensed a vibration? He wasn't sure. He was too muddled to think clearly. He guessed there was an atmosphere of some kind, though. Which again spoke of something unnatural, just as did the gravity. Thud! Definitely a footstep! But what a size! What kind of foot would make that sort of noise? Could it be some kind of trick of the asteroid? He wondered hopefully for a second whether someone from the ship had not been dead after all, and was even now coming to look for him—had followed his tracks through the shingle. Thud! Crunch! That was no human footstep, no matter how magnified. He made up his mind suddenly about the tunnel. It was the only place of concealment about the tunnel. Gingerly he lowered himself over the edge and hung by his hands, peering toward the horizon.
Then he saw it. And the blood congested in his veins and arteries. His eyes stood out from his head as though they were going to touch the very lenses. He felt as though an iron hand had seized him by the throat and were shaking out his life and his courage at the same time.
Something was coming, something so hideous and horrible that his first thought was that some unutterable prehistoric monster had risen from the pages of history where it belonged and was now stalking this nightmare world to destroy him. His nerveless fingers lost their grip and he found himself falling… falling sickeningly into the subterranean depths of the asteroid.
CHAPTER IV
Jonga and Krull were working round the clock! Nerves that had been previously badly frayed by monotony were now being stretched and strained by lack of sleep and anxiety.
Jonga put the computer through its paces for the fourth time during its twelve-hour schedule.
"I wish we could get some word, some report, from that patrol," he said for the tenth time.
"So do I," said Krull. "I want to hear from them more than I want to win the inter-galactic sweep. I need news of them like I need blood."
"You don't think the general's heard and hasn't told us?"
"Rotherson's not that type of guy," said Krull, "and you know it."
"Yes, yes, I know it. I'm sorry, Krull. It's just that I can't stick this waiting…"
"Well, you can take this as definite," replied Krull; "it's not just routine. If it was, we'd have heard before now."
"Yes, yes, I suppose we would."
"What d'ya mean 'suppose we would'? You know we would. It just isn't possible for a routine fight to blast off and then refuse to answer. They should have checked in every four hours. They haven't checked in for the last thirteen and a half hours. Now that's not routine. It may be that there's some kind of force field around this thing. Maybe the radio's out of action; maybe the direction locator's loose. I don't know what's happened; I've got no idea at all. I'm an astrophysicist. I'm not a spaceman! There's a thousand and one things can go wrong up there. But we do know this. Greg Masterson's in charge of that crew, and there's no trouble up in space that Greg Masterson can't handle."
Asteroid Man Page 3