“They’ll never miss it, unless Eisen tries actually to use the duplicate I left in place of that one. Now about that second half million. When and where do I collect?”
Olliver said, “Sit down, Crag,” and went over to sit on the sofa beside his wife. “Let me explain part of my plans, and make a suggestion. First, I can get you the rest of the money within twenty-four hours of the time we get back to Earth. I’ve got it there; it’s just a matter of turning investments into cash.”
“All right,” Crag said. “And when do you plan to get back to Earth?”
“Leaving tomorrow. But with one other place to go before we go to Earth. Whole trip will take us a week. But there’s the second part of the suggestion. Why not come with us?”
“What’s your other stop?”
“The asteroid belt. Just the near edge of it. I want to land on one small asteroid.”
“To test the disintegrator?”
Crag nodded slowly, wondering why he hadn’t thought of so simple an answer to getting neutronium in handleable form. Disintegrate an entire tiny asteroid and its atoms would collapse inward on themselves, since the asteroid would be in no gravitational field except its own; it would collapse into a tiny ball that could be carried back in a spaceship—providing it was a small enough ball that its mass, which would become weight again when you brought it back with you to a planet, wasn’t great enough to crash the ship in landing it. Simple, once you thought of it. How come Eisen hadn’t? Or maybe Eisen had, but hadn’t seen any value in or use for neutronium. Olliver had something up his sleeve there too.
“All right,” Crag said. “What time tomorrow do you clear?”
“Does noon suit you?”
“Any time,” Crag said. “I’ll meet you at the ship. You haven’t used it? It’s still in the same berth?”
“Yes, and refueled and ready. Glad you’re coming, Crag. I’ve got something really important to talk to you about, and that will give us plenty of chance. We’ll see you at the ship then.”
Crag still had time to go to two different banks and, at each, to stash a sizeable fraction of the half million. And then he spent a quiet and thoughtful evening wondering, among other things, why he’d bothered to do so. He didn’t trust Olliver—for the simple reason that he didn’t trust anyone—and it was quite possible Olliver might be inviting him on that trip with the idea of recovering one half million dollars and saving another. But if Olliver did succeed in killing him, what difference could it make to Crag whether the money was on his person or safe back in Mars City? Well, it might make a difference at that, if he let Olliver know that he’d stashed the bulk of the money. Yes, he’d take that precaution and every other one he could think of. But he’d still have to sleep and…. He shrugged; when you shoot for big money you take big chances and you might as well not worry about them. Possibly Olliver would be afraid to try to kill him, knowing that if he failed he himself wouldn’t have long to live. And possibly Olliver’s plan in connection with the disintegrator really was one that made peanuts out of a million dollars.
He slept well.
He was checking over the J-14 when Olliver and Judeth arrived the next day. Judeth immediately went to her cabin to change from street clothes into coveralls for the trip. Olliver sank into the co-pilot seat next to Crag, and leaned back. “Lots of time yet. And course is plotted.”
“Where?”
“Simply the nearest point in the asteroid belt. When we get there we simply look till we find one the right size.”
Crag said, “One weighing less than half a ton. That is, if you intend to bring it back. That’s about all the extra payload this ship can make a safe Earth-landing with. Or do you intend to jettison anything already aboard?”
Olliver smiled. “I’m not planning to jettison anything aboard. But I’m surprised, Crag—and pleased—that you had the nerve and judgment to come along. A lesser man might figure I might leave him out there, if I got the chance, to save myself a half million.”
Crag grunted. “I’ll take my chances.”
“You won’t be taking any. Crag, this thing is big, and if you want to ride with me on it, you can be big too. That lousy million won’t mean a thing to you. You’ll have something more important than money. Power.”
“And you?”
“I’ll have more power. More power than any man has ever had in the history of mankind. I’ll—well, I’m not telling you the details now, Crag. After we’ve been to the belt, after I’m sure of two certain points. Crag, what do you think of Judeth?”
“What does it matter?”
“I want to know.”
Crag said, “I hate all women.”
“And perhaps Judeth more than any other?”
“No,” Crag lied. “Why?”
Olliver shrugged. “Forget it. Well, since you’re in the driver’s seat, might as well take off. Cold on the stroke of noon, and here are the coordinates. I’ll tell Judeth to strap in.”
He headed for the double cabin, and a moment later came back and strapped himself in the co-pilot chair. “She’s strapping down in there,” he said. And then thoughtfully, “A beautiful woman, Crag, but also a brilliant one. Never trust brilliant women; that’s something I’m learning. Well, Crag, what do you think about my proposition?”
“I’ll wait till I hear it. All right, five seconds of twelve. Four. Three. Two….”
Crag found the trip dull. So apparently did Judeth; she spent most of the time in her cabin. Only Olliver seemed eager, operating under a barely suppressed excitement that made him so restless that he seemed unable to sit still or to concentrate. At times he seemed lost in a dream from which he had to shake himself with difficulty if asked a question.
Such as when they were nearing the belt. Crag, at the controls, was decelerating and, at the same time, turning to match speed and directions with the asteroids revolving in it. Some were already showing in the detectors. “How big a one shall I pick?” he asked.
“Huh? Oh. It doesn’t matter much. Few hundred tons. Size of a house, maybe.”
“We can’t take it back with us, no matter how small it gets, if you pick one with that much mass.”
“We’re not going to. Just a test.”
“Then why not pick a big one? I can find Ceres for you. Little under five hundred miles in diameter.”
“Take too long, Crag. This isn’t an instantaneous chain reaction; there’s a time lag, remember. If my information is correct, it’ll take at least an hour for one of a few hundred tons.”
Crag remembered that it had taken several seconds for the bush he’d tried it on; it seemed reasonable. He’d never told Olliver that he himself had disobeyed instructions and had already tested it.
There were asteroids all around them now, showing in the detectors at distances as close as a mile or two. Crag studied them and picked out one approximately the size Olliver had asked for, began the delicate maneuvering that would put the ship alongside it, exactly matching its speed and direction.
Olliver watched breathlessly. “You’ve got it, Crag.”
Crag nodded and shut off the power. The spaceship and the asteroid, held close together by the few pounds of gravitational pull between the masses, would continue through space side by side until power was again applied to the ship.
Olliver clapped him on the shoulder. “Nice work, Crag. All right, let’s get our suits on. I’ll tell Judeth.”
There would have been no real need for all of them to have left the ship for the test, but in any case they all had to put on space suits. A ship as small as a J-14 has no airlock; it is more economical, on the few occasions, which one leaves it in space or on an airless body, simply to exhaust the air from the entire ship and let the airmaker rebuild an atmosphere after one’s return—and before removing the space suit.
Crag was adjusting the transparent helmet of his suit when Judeth came out of the cabin, already suited. Olliver asked, “We all ready? I’ll start letting the air out.” They hea
rd his voice now, of course, in their helmet radios. “You’re both coming out, aren’t you?”
Judeth said, “I wouldn’t miss it for a million.” And Crag nodded.
Olliver stood watching the pressure indicator and in a minute or two he said, “All right,” and pushed the lever that activated the door mechanism. Standing in the doorway he adjusted the grapples on his space boots to enable him to stand on the asteroid and jumped lightly across to it, abruptly, once outside the artificial gravity field of the ship, seeming grotesquely to be standing at right angles to the floor of the ship.
Unspacewise, he had not carried the mooring line and grapple, and the backlash of his jump sent the spaceship drifting away from the asteroid; had he been alone he would have had to jump back quickly before it drifted out of jumping distance. Crag called out to him and threw him the grapple and, when Olliver had attached it, reeled in until the ship was again only a few feet away from the surface of the asteroid, and safely anchored. He jumped down then, and Judeth followed him.
Olliver was walking rapidly toward the opposite side of the asteroid. Before following, Crag looked about him. Time and its relation to distance were strange in so tiny a world as this. A walk of thirty yards could carry you from night to day and back to night again. The ship was moored at the sunset line; Olliver had stopped at the opposite sunrise line and called out, “Here we go,” and Crag knew he was holding the disintegrator down to the surface of the asteroid and flicking the switch.
Would it really, Crag wondered, disintegrate an object the size of this as easily as, even if more slowly than, the bush he’d tried it on on Mars? Why not, if what it started was a chain reaction that would go through any reasonably homogeneous substance? It had disintegrated all of the bush, although all of it had not been within two feet of the disintegrator. Good God, Crag thought, what if he had held the disintegrator closer to the ground, within two feet of it! Would it have started a chain reaction that would, however long it took to do it, destroyed the Planet Mars? Why not, if it was going to work on an asteroid like this? The difference was only a matter of size and size doesn’t matter in a chain reaction. A chill went down his spine at the thought of the risk he had unwittingly taken—the risk of not only having destroyed himself but a whole planet and having caused the death of almost fifty million people.
Olliver was coming back now and Judeth moved to meet him, so Crag followed. They stopped in the middle of the day side. Olliver was bending down again and Crag looked to see if he was going to apply the disintegrator to another point. But Olliver was merely laying a six-inch pocket rule against the surface of the asteroid and, with a piece of chalk was making marks opposite both ends of the rule. “So we can tell quicker when it starts to happen—if it does. If those chalk marks get less than six inches apart, then it’s happening.”
“And then what?” Crag asked. “We’d better run for the ship before the asteroid goes out from under us?”
“Yes, but there’ll be no hurry; we’ll have at least half an hour.”
“And then what?” Crag asked again.
“And then—Wait, I think those marks are closer together, but wait till we’re absolutely sure, and then I’ll tell. Look—” He grabbed Judeth’s space-suited arm. “Look, my dear, aren’t they closer? Isn’t it shrinking?”
“I—I think it is. And isn’t the horizon closer?”
Olliver straightened and looked toward the horizon and Judeth’s face turned toward Crag, her eyes staring strangely at him. He got the idea she wanted to ask him a question but didn’t dare—and was trying to find the answer by staring into his eyes. He met her gaze squarely, defiantly, but it puzzled him.
Olliver said, “I think—Well, why think? Another minute at the outside and we’ll be sure.”
And then, his voice very calm, he said, “Yes, those marks are almost half an inch closer together. It works.” He stepped back away from them and his eyes went to Crag. He said, “Crag, that million of yours is wastepaper now. But how would you like to be my hatchet man, second in command of the Solar System?”
Crag looked at him without answering, wondering if Olliver could be mad. The thought must have showed in his face, for Olliver shook his head. “I’m not crazy, Crag. Nor do I know any important commercial use for neutronium—that was camouflage. But Crag—think of this—
“Just one of these little gadgets set up in a hidden place on each of the occupied planets, each with a separate radio control so it can be triggered off from wherever I may be. That’s all it will take. If it works on an asteroid—and it does—it’ll work on an object of any size. A chain reaction doesn’t differentiate between a peanut and a planet.”
Crag stared, wondering how he had been so stupid not to have guessed.
Olliver said, “You might as well know all of it, Crag. There isn’t any political party behind me. That was just talk. But from now on, once I get this set up, there aren’t going to be any political parties. There’ll just be—me. But I’ll need help, of course, and you’re the man I’d rather have for my segundo, in spite of—”
Suddenly he laughed and his voice changed. “Judeth, my dear, that’s useless.”
Crag looked quickly toward Judeth and saw that she’d pulled a heatgun from the pocket of her space suit and was pointing it at Olliver.
Olliver chuckled. “I thought it was about time for you to show your true colors, my dear. And I thought this might be the time for it. I found that little toy in your space suit some hours ago and I took the charge out of it. Go ahead and pull the trigger. Or are you pulling it already?”
She was pulling it; standing alongside of her Crag could see that the trigger was all the way back against the guard, and the muzzle was aimed right at Olliver. Crag saw too that her face was pale—but he thought it was pale from anger rather than from fear.
She said to Olliver, “All right, you beat me on that one. But someone will stop you, somehow. Don’t you realize that you can’t do what you plan without destroying at least one planet to show them you’re not bluffing? Millions of lives—billions, if Earth has to be one of the planets you destroy! If you destroy Earth, you’ll kill off three-fourths of the human race, just to rule the ones that are left. You must be mad.”
Olliver laughed. There was a heatgun in his own hand now, held not too carelessly, so it covered both of them as he took a step backward.
“She’s a spy, Crag. A spy for the Guilds. I’ve known it all along—and kept her on a string. She married me because they wanted her to watch me. Well—I let her, and let her help me, and now God help her. Take that gun away from her, Crag.”
The gun was empty and the command meaningless; Crag knew Olliver was testing him. Olliver was making him line up, one way or the other.
Crag hesitated; was Olliver mad, or would he really run the system and would he really make Crag his second in command? And did Crag want that, at the price of destroying one or more worlds? Killing men was one thing; he’d killed plenty of them. But destroying worlds, killing entire populations—
Olliver said, “Your last chance, Crag, or I’ll burn both of you instead of just Judeth. Don’t think I’ve been blind to the fact that you two are crazy about each other, and have been pretending to hate one another so I wouldn’t guess. Well, you can have her, Crag, but she’ll be dead when you get her. Or would you rather have power worth more than billions?” He laughed. “And any woman, all the women, you want.”
Definitely the asteroid was shrinking in size. Olliver was standing closer to them, though he had not moved. He said, “Well, Crag?” and stepped back to reach a safe distance again.
If the attached glove of Crag’s space suit had not prevented, he could have thrown his metal hand and had at least an even chance of its striking before Olliver could trigger the heatgun. As it was, there was only one other chance, and whether they both survived it depended on whether the woman’s reflexes would be as fast or almost as fast, as Crag’s own. He turned to her and reached out with
his right hand, as though for the gun she still held, but instead his hand flashed up to her shoulder and he pushed hard and snapped “Night side!”
The push carried her off balance and two steps backward; only another step was needed to carry her below the dwindling horizon and out of range of Olliver’s weapon. Crag himself took a diagonally different course. And, as he’d hoped, the heat beam lanced out between them, hitting neither. A fraction of a second later both were in darkness on the side of the asteroid away from the sun. Safe, for the moment.
In his helmet radio, Crag heard Olliver curse. And then laugh. Olliver said contemptuously, “You’re a damned fool, Crag. Turning down an offer like I made you—for a woman and a chance to be a hero, for a few minutes.” He laughed again and this time there seemed to be genuine amusement in his laughter. “It’s a small world, Crag, and getting smaller. How long do you think it will be big enough to hide behind?”
There was no point in answering, and Crag didn’t. He stood still for the moment letting his eyes get accustomed to the almost perfect darkness, a darkness ameliorated only by faint starlight and light reflected dimly from a few other small but distant asteroids in orbits paralleling their own. One, he noticed, quite small in apparent size because of either genuine smallness or distance, seemed to be coming closer, growing larger. His eyes dropped and swept about the lessening horizon as he turned. No sign of Olliver; there wouldn’t be. Olliver would take no chances in coming around to the night side where, because for at least a moment he’d be completely blind, his weapon would be of no advantage to him.
He could, of course, simply go back to the spaceship and maroon them here, but Crag didn’t think Olliver would. Olliver would want the satisfaction of killing them in person; he felt sure of that. And it would be safe and easy for him to get them when the asteroid had shrunk enough. You can’t hide behind an object the size of a basketball.
But where was Judeth? He looked around again. Had she gone toward the spaceship in the hope that she might round the opposite side of the asteroid and get a chance to board it?
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