V
"It's the life of Reilly, Paul," Ramos was beaming back to Jarviston,Minnesota, not many hours after Frank Nelsen, Gimp Hines and he startedout from the Moon, with their ultimate destination--after the deliveryof their loads of supplies to the Kuzaks--tentatively marked in theirminds as Pallastown on Pallas, the Golden Asteroid.
Ramos was riding a great bale, drawn by his spinning and stillaccelerating ring, to the hub of which it was attached by a thin steelcable, passed through a well-oiled swivel bolt. One of his booted feetwas hooked under a bale lashing, to keep him from drifting off in theabsence of weight. He held a rifle casually, but at alert, across hisknees. Its needle-like bullets were not intended to kill. They were tinyrockets that could flame during the last second of a long flight, homingin on a target by means of a self-contained and marvelously miniaturizedradar guidance system. Their tips were anesthetic.
The parabolic antenna mounted on the elbow of Ramos' Archer, swung atiny bit, holding the beam contact with Paul Hendricks automatically,after it was made. Yet Ramos kept his arm very still, to avoid makingthe slender beam swing wide. Meanwhile, he was elaborating on his firststatement:
"... Not like before. No terrestrial ground-to-orbit weight problem tobeat, this trip, Paul. And we've got some of about everything that theMoon could provide, thanks to Gimp, who paid the bill. Culture steak inthe shadow refrigerators. That's all you need, Out Here, to keep thingsfrozen--just a shadow... We've got hydroponic vegetables, tinned bread,chocolate, beer. We've got sun stoves to cook on. We've got numerousluxury items not meant for the stomach. We're living high for a while,anyhow. Of course we don't want to use up too much of the fancy stuff.Tell Otto Kramer about us..."
Frank Nelsen and Gimp Hines, who were riding the rigging of theirrespective bubbs, which were also hauling big bales of supplies, werepart of the trans-spatial conversation, too. There was enough leakagefrom Ramos' tightened beam, here at its source, for them to hear what hesaid.
But when, after a moment, Paul Hendricks answered from the distance,"Easy with the talk, fella--overinterested people might be listening,"they suddenly forgot their own enthusiasms. They realized. Their hidestingled unpleasantly.
Ramos' dark face hardened. Still he spoke depreciatingly. "Shucks, Paul,this is a well-focused beam. Besides it's pointing Earthward andsunward; not toward the Belt, where most of the real mean folks are..."But he sounded defensive, and very soon he said, "'Bye for now, Paul."
A little later, Frank Nelsen contacted Art Kuzak, out in the AsteroidBelt, across a much greater stretch of space. He thought he was cautiouswhen he said, "We're riding a bit heavy--for you guys..." But after thetwenty minute interval it took to get an answer back over tenlight-minutes of distance traversed twice--186,000 miles for everysecond, spanned by slender threads of radio energy which were oflow-power but of low-loss low-dispersal, too, explaining theirtremendous range--Art Kuzak's warning was carefully cryptic, yet plainto Nelsen and his companions.
"Thanks for all the favors," he growled dryly. "Now keep still, and be_real_ thoughtful, Frankie Boy. That also goes for you other two naiveboneheads..."
Open space, like open, scarcely touched country, had produced itsoutlaws. But the distances were far greater. The pressures of need wereinfinitely harsher.
"Yeah, there's a leader named Fessler," Gimp rasped, with his phoneturned low so that only his companions could hear him. "But there areother names... Art's right. We'd better keep our eyes open and ourmouths shut."
Asteroid miners who had had poor luck, or who had been forced to kill towin even the breath of life; colonists who had left Mars after terriblemisfortunes, there; adventurers soured and maddened by months in avacuum armor, smelling the stench of their own unwashed bodies; menflush with gains, and seeking merely to relieve the tensions of theirrestrained, artificial existences in a wild spree; refugees from rigidTovie conformism--all these composed the membership of the wandering,robbing, hijacking bands, which, though not numerous, were significant.Once, most of these men had been reasonably well-balanced individuals,easily lost in a crowd. But the Big Vacuum could change that.
Ramos, Hines, and Nelsen had heard the stories. Now, their watchfulnessbecame almost exaggerated. They felt their inexperience. They made nomore radio beam contacts. One of them was always on lookout, clutching arifle, peering all around, glancing every few seconds at theminiaturized radar screen set inside the collar of his helmet. But thespherical sky remained free of any unexplained blip or luminous speck.Fragments of conversations picked up in their phones--widely separatedasteroid-miners talking to each other, for the most part--obviously camefrom far away. There was a U.S.S.F. bubb cruising a few million milesoff. Otherwise, the enormous emptiness was safely and perversely empty,all around.
They kept accelerating. For a planned interval, they enjoyed all thegood things. They found that masculine guardedness and laziness wentwell together. They ate themselves full. Like Mitch Storey had oncedone, they all started hydroponic gardens inside their bubbs. In thepleasant, steamy sun-warmth of those stellene interiors, they bouncedback and forth from elastic wall to elastic wall, with gravitytemporarily at zero because they had stopped the spin of their bubbs.Thus they loosened their muscles, worked up a sweat. Afterwards theydozed, slept, listened to beamed radio music or taped recordings oftheir own. They smiled at pin-up pictures, read microfilmed booksthrough a viewer, looked at the growing plants around them.
There was an arrogance in them, because they had succeeded in bringingso much of home out here. There was even a mood like that of a lost,languid beach in the tropics. And how was that possible, with only athin skin of stellene between them and frigid nothing?
Ramos said just about what he had said--long ago, it seemed, now."Nuts--the Big Vacuum ain't so tough." But he amended quickly, "Yeah, Iknow, Frank--don't scowl. When you aren't looking, it can up and killyou. Like with my Uncle Jose, only worse. He was a powder monkey inMexico. It got so he thought dynamite was his friend. Well, there wasn'teven anything to put in his coffin..."
The luxurious interlude passed, and they reverted mostly to Spartanmeals of space-gruel, except for some fresh-grown lettuce. Mars becamean agate bead, then a hazy sphere with those swirled, almost fluidmarkings, where the spores of a perhaps sentient vegetable life followedthe paths of thin winds, blowing equatorward from the polar caps ofhoarfrost.
The three stellene rings bumped lightly on the ten mile chunk ofcaptured asteroidal rock and nickel-iron that was Phobos, Mars' nearermoon. Gravitation was almost nil. There was no need, here, for rockets,to land or take off. The sun-powered ionics were more than enough.
A small observatory, a U.N.-tended between ground-and-orbit rocket port,and a few hydroponic garden domes nestled in the jaggedness were aboutall that Phobos had--other than the magnificent view of the Red Planet,below.
Gimp Hines' freckled face shone in the ruddy light. "_I'm_ going down,"he declared. "Just for a few days, to look around near the SurveyStation. You guys?"
Ramos shrugged, almost disinterested. "People have been there--somestill are. And what good is poking around the Station? But who wants togoof up, going into the thickets? Others have done that, often enough.Me for Pallastown, and maybe lots farther, pal."
Frank Nelsen wasn't that blase. On the Moon, he had seen some of the oldMars of advanced native technology, now long extinct. But there was alsothe recent Mars of explorers and then footloose adventurers, wonderingwhat they could find to do with this quiet, pastel-tinted world oftremendous history. Then had come the colonists, with their tractors andtheir rolls of stellene to make sealed dwellings and covered fields inthat thin, almost oxygenless atmosphere.
But their hopes to find peace and isolation from the crowded andtroubled Earth by science and hard work even in so harsh a place, hadcome into conflict with a third Mars that must have begun soon after theoriginal inhabitants had been destroyed. Though maybe it had had itsstart, billions of years before, on the planets of another star. Thethickets had s
eemed harmless. Was this another, _different_civilization, that had risen at last in anger, using its own methods ofallergy, terrible repellant nostalgia, and mental distortions?
Frank felt the call of mystery which was half dread. But then heshrugged. "Uh-uh, Gimp. I'd like to go down, too. But the gravity istwice that of the Moon--getting up and down isn't so easy. Besides, oncewhen I made a stopover in space, after a nice short hop, I got intotrouble. I'll pass this one up. I'd like to talk to Mitch Storey,though."
They all tried to reach him, beaming the Survey Station at the edge ofSyrtis Major, the great equatorial wedge of blue-green growths on thefloor of a vanished ocean, first.
"Mitchell Storey is not around right now," a young man's voice informedthem. "He wandered off again, three days ago. Does it often... No--wedon't know where to reach him..."
Widening their beams over the short range of considerably less than fourthousand miles, they tried to call Mitch directly. No luck. Contactshould have been easy. But of course he could be wandering with hisArcher helmet-phone turned off.
Considering the reputation of Mars, Nelsen was a bit worried. But he hada perhaps treacherous belief that Mitch was special enough to take careof himself.
Ramos was impatient. "We'll hook old Mitch on our party line, sometime,Frank," he said. "Right now we ought to get started. Space is still niceand empty ahead, toward the Kuzaks and Pallastown. That condition mightnot last... Gimp, are you honest-to-gosh set on going down to thisdried-up, museum-world?"
"Umhmm. See you soon, though," Gimp answered, grinning. "I'll leave mybubb and my load of supplies up here on Phobos. Be back for it probablyin a week. And there'll be a freight-bubb cluster, or something, for meto join up with, and follow you Out..."
Nelsen and Ramos left Gimp Hines before he boarded the winged skip-gliderocket that would take him below. Parting words flew back and forth."See you... Take care... Over the Milky Way, suckers..."
Then they were standing off from Mars and its two moons. During the nextseveral Earth-days of time, they accelerated with all the power thattheir bubb ionics could wring out of the sunshine, weakened now, withdistance. They knew about where to find the Kuzaks. But contact wasweeks off. When they were close enough, they could radio safely,checking the exact position of Art's and Joe's supply post. And theyknew enough to steer clear of Ceres, the largest Asteroid, which wasTovie-occupied. All the signs were good. They were well-armed andwatchful. They should have made the trip without trouble.
Ahead, dim still with distance, but glinting with a pinkish, metallicshine which made it much brighter than it would otherwise have been, wasPallas, which Ramos watched like a beacon.
"Eldorado," he said once, cockily, as if he remembered something fromthe Spanish part of his background.
They got almost three-quarters across that unimaginable stretch ofemptiness before there was a bad sign. It was a catcall--literally--intheir helmet phones. "Meow!" It was falsely plaintive and innocuous. Itwas a maliciously childish promise of trouble.
A little later, there was a chuckle. "Be cavalier, fellas. Watchyourselves. I mean it." The tone had a strange intensity.
Ramos was on lookout, then, with eyes, radar and rifle. But the spokenmessage had been too brief to get a fix on the direction of its radiowaves.
Ramos stiffened. With his phone power turned very low, he said,"Frank--lots of people say 'Be cavalier', nowadays. But that includesone of the old Bunch. The voice _might_ match, too."
"Uh-huh--Tiflin, the S.O.B.," Nelsen growled softly.
For ten hours, nothing else happened. Then there were some tinyradar-blips, which could have indicated meteors. Nelsen and Ramoschanged the angle of the ion guides of their ionic motors to move theirbubbs from course, slightly, and dodge. During the first hour, they weresuccessful. But then there were more blips, in greater numbers.
Fist-sized chunks flicked through their vehicles almost simultaneously.Air puffed out. Their rings collapsed under them--the sealer was no goodfor holes of such size. At once, the continued spin of the bubbs woundthem, like limp laundry, into knots.
While Nelsen and Ramos were trying to untangle the mess, visible specksappeared in the distance. They fired at them. Then something slammedhard into the fleshy part of Nelsen's hip, penetrating his armor, andpassing on out, again. The sealing gum in the Archer's skin workedeffectively on the needle-like punctures, but the knockout drug had beendelivered.
As his awareness faded, Nelsen fired rapidly, and saw Ramos doing thesame--until his hand slapped suddenly at his side...
After that there was nothing, until, for a few seconds, Frank Nelsenregained a blurred consciousness. He was lying, unarmored, inside abubb--perhaps his own, which had been patched and reinflated. All aroundhim was loud laughter and talk, the gurgle of liquor, the smells ofcooked meat, a choking concentration of tobacco smoke. Music blaredfuriously.
"Busht out shummore!" somebody was hollering. "We got jackpot--the wholefanshy works! I almost think I'm back in Sputtsberg--wherever hell thatis... But where's the wimmin? Nothing but dumb, prissy pitchers! Noteven _good_ pitchers...!"
There were guys of all sizes, mostly young, some armored, some not. Onewith a pimply face stumbled near. Frank Nelsen choked down his fury atthe vandalism. He had a blurred urge to find a certain face, and almostthought he succeeded. But everything, including his head, was a fuzzyjumble.
"Hey!" the pimply guy gurgled. "Hey--Boss! Our benefactors--they're halfawake! You should shleep, baby greenhorns...!"
A large man with shovel teeth ambled over. Frank managed half to rise.He met the blow and gave some of it back. Ramos was doing likewise,gamely. Then Nelsen's head zeroed out again in a pyrotechnic burst...
He awoke to almost absolute silence, and to the turning of the wholeuniverse around him. But of course it was himself that wasrotating--boots over head. There was a bad smell of old sweat, andworse.
His hip felt numb from the needle puncture. In all except the most vitalareas, those slim missiles would not usually cause death, or evenserious injury; but soon the wound would ache naggingly.
First, Frank Nelsen hardly knew where he was. Then he understood that hewas drifting free in space, in an armor. He thought it was his own untilhe failed to recognize the scuffed, grimy interior. Even the workshirthe was wearing wasn't the new blue one he had put on, it seemed onlyhours ago. It was a greasy grey.
Etched into the scratched plastic of the helmet that covered his head,he saw "Archer III--ser. no. 828211." And casually stuck into thegasketted rim of the collar, was a note, pencilled jaggedly on a scrapof paper:
"Honest, Greenie, your a pal. All that nice stuff. Thanks a 1,000,000!Couple of my boys needed new Archies, bad. Thanks again. You and yourbuddie are not having so bad a brake. These old threes been all overhell. They will show you all about Asteroid hopping and mining. So willthe load-hauling net and tools. Thanks for the little dough, too. Findyour space fitness card in shirt pocket. We don't need it. Have lots offun. Just remember me as The Stinker."
Frank Nelsen was quivering with anger and scare. He saw that a mendedsteel net, containing a few items, had got wrapped around him with histurning. He groped for the ion-guide of the ancient shoulder-ionic, andtouched a control. Slowly his spin was checked. Meanwhile he untangledhimself, and saw what must be Ramos, adrift like himself in a batteredArcher Three, doing the same.
Gradually they managed to ion glide over to each other. Their eyes met.They were the butts of a prank that no doubt had been the source of manyguffaws.
"Did you get a letter, too, Frank?" Ramos asked. For closecommunication, the old helmet-phones still worked okay.
"I did," Nelsen breathed. "Why didn't they just knock us off? Alive, wemight tell on them."
"Not slow and funny enough, maybe," Ramos answered dolefully. "In thesebroken-down outfits, we might not live to tell. Besides, even with thesenotes for clues, who'd ever find out who they are, way out here?"
Nelsen figured that all this was probably the truth. I
n the Belt, lifewas cheap. Death got to be a joke.
"There was an ox of a guy with big teeth!" he hissed furiously. "ThoughtI saw Tiflin, too--the S.O.B.! Cripes, do I always land in the soup?"
"The bossman with the teeth, I remember," Ramos grated. "Tiflin I don'tknow about. Could be... Hell, though--what now? I suppose we're going inabout the same direction and at the same speed as before? Have to watchthe sun and planets to make sure. Did they leave us any instruments?Meanwhile, we might try to decelerate. I'd like to get out to Plutosometime, but not equipped like this."
"We'll check everything--see how bad off they left us," Nelsen said.
So that was what they did, after they had set their decrepitshoulder-ionics to slow them down in the direction of the Belt.
Each of their hauling nets contained battered chisels, hammers, saws formetal, a radiation counter, a beaten-up-looking pistol, some oldposition-finding instruments, including a wristwatch that had seen muchbetter days to be used as a chronometer. There were also two largeflasks of water and two month-supply boxes of dehydratedspace-gruel--these last items obviously granted them from their own, nowvanished stores. Here was weird generosity--or perhaps just moreghoulish fun to give them the feeble hope of survival.
Now they checked each other's Archer Threes as well as they could whilethey were being worn. No use even to try to communicate over anydistance with the worn-out radio transmitters. The nuclear batterieswere ninety-percent used up, which still left considerabletime--fortunately, because they had to add battery power to the normallysun-energized shoulder-ionics, in order to get any reasonabledecelerating effect out of them. Out here, unlike on the Moon at night,the air-restorers could also take direct solar energy through theirwindows. They needed current only for their pumps. But the greenchlorophane, key to the freshening and re-oxygenation of air, wasgetting slightly pale. The moisture-reclaimers were--by luck--not as badas some of the other vital parts.
Ramos touched his needled side. His wry grin showed some of his recklesshumor. "It's not utterly awful, yet," he said. "How do you feel?"
Nelsen's hip hurt. And he found that he had an awful hangover from theknockout drug, and the slapping around he had received. "Bad enough," heanswered. "Maybe if we ate something..."
They took small, sealed packets of dehydrated food in through theirchest airlocks, unsleeved their arms, emptied the packets into plasticsqueeze bottles from the utensil racks before them, injected water fromthe pipettes which led to their shoulder tanks, closed the bottles andlet the powdered gruel swell as it reabsorbed moisture. The gruel turnedout hot all by itself. For it was a new kind which contained anexothermic ingredient. They ate, in the absence of gravity, by squeezingthe bottles.
"Guess we'll have to become asteroid-hoppers--miners--like the slobsaid," Nelsen growled. "Well--I _did_ want to try everything..."
This was to become the pattern of their lives. But not right away. Theystill had an incomplete conception of the vast distances. They hurtledon, certainly decelerating considerably, for days, yet, before they werein the Belt. Even that looked like enormous emptiness.
And the brightened speck of Pallas was too far to one side. Tovie Cereswas too near on the other side--left, it would be, if they consideredthe familiar northern hemisphere stars of Earth as showing "up"position. The old instruments had put them off-course. Still, they hadto bear even farther left to try to match the direction and the averageorbital speed--about twelve miles per second--of the Belt. Otherwise,small pieces of the old planet, hurtling in another direction--and/or ata different velocity--than themselves, could smash them.
Maybe they thought that they would be located and picked up--the gangthat had robbed and dumped them had found them easily enough. But there,again, was a paradox of enormity. Bands might wait for suckers somewherebeyond Mars. Elsewhere, there could be nobody for millions of miles.
They saw their first asteroid--a pitted, mesoderm fragment ofnickel-iron from middle-deep in the blasted planet. It was just driftingslightly before them. So they had achieved the correct orbital speed.They ion-glided to the chunk, and began to search clumsily forworthwhile metal. It was fantastic that somebody had been there beforethem, chiselling and sawing out a greyish material, of which there was alittle left that made the needles of their radiation counters swingwildly.
They got a few scraps of the stuff to put into the nets which they weretowing.
"For luck," Ramos laughed. "Without it we'll never pay J. John."
"Shut up. Big deal," Nelsen snapped.
"Okay. Shut up it is!" Ramos answered him.
So they stayed silent until they couldn't stand that, either. Everythingwas getting on their nerves.
Their next asteroids were mere chips a foot long--core fragments of theplanet, heavy metals that had sunk deep. No crust material of anynormally formed world could ever show such wealth. It gleamed with apale yellow shine, and made Ramos' sunken eyes light up with an ancientfever, until he remembered, and until Nelsen said:
"Not for the gold, anymore, pal. Common, out here. So it's almostworthless, everywhere. Not much use as an industrial metal. But theosmium and uranium alloyed with it are something else. One hunk for eachof our nets. Too bad there isn't more."
The uranium was driving their radiation-counters wild.
"Could we drag it, if there was more?" Ramos growled. "With justsun-power on these lousy shoulder-ionics?"
Everything was going sour, even Ramos. After a long deceleration theywere afraid to draw any more power for propulsion from their weakenedbatteries. They needed the remaining current for the moisture-reclaimersand the pumps of the air-restorers--a relatively much lighter but vitaldrain. The sunlight was weak way out here. Worse, the solarthermocouples to power the ionics were almost shot. They tried to fixthem up, succeeding a little, but using far more time than they hadexpected. Meanwhile, the changed positions of the various largeasteroids, moving in their own individual orbits, lost them any definiteidea of where the Kuzaks' supply post was, and the dizzying distance toPallas, with only half-functioning ionics to get them there, fuddledthem in their inexperience.
Soon their big hope was that some reasonable asteroid-hoppers would comewithin the few thousand mile range of their weakened transmitters. Thenthey could call, and be picked up.
Mostly to keep themselves occupied, they hunted paymetal, taking onlythe very best that they could find, to keep the towage mass down. Rightfrom the start they cut their food ration--a good thing, because onemonth went, and then two, as near as they could figure. Cripes, how muchlonger could they last?
Often they actually encouraged their minds to create illusions. Frankwould hold his body stiff, and look at the stars. After a while he wouldget the soothing impression that he was swimming on his back in a lake,and was looking up at the night sky.
Mostly, they were out of the regular radio channels. But sometimes,because of the movement of distant bubb clusters that must be kept intouch, they heard music and news briefly, again. They heard ominousreports from the ever more populous Earth. Now it was about areas ofocean to become boundaried and to be "farmed" for food. Territorialdisputes were now extending far beyond the land. Once more, the weaponswere being uncovered. Of course there were repercussions out here. CeresStation was beaming pronouncements, too--rattling the saber.
Nelsen and Ramos listened avidly because it was life, because it wascontact with lost things, because it was not dead silence.
Their own tribulations deepened.
"Cripes but my feet stink!" Ramos once laughed. "They must be rotten.They're sore, and they itch something awful, and I can't scratch them,or change my socks, even. The fungus, I guess. Just old athlete's foot."
"The stuff is crawling up my legs," Nelsen growled.
They knew that the Kuzaks, maybe Two-and-Two, Reynolds, Gimp, Storey,must be trying to call them. They kept listening in their helmet-phones.But this time Frank Nelsen knew that he'd gotten himself a real haystackof enormity in which to double for a lost n
eedle. The slender beamscould comb it futilely and endlessly, in the hope of a fortunateaccident. Only once they heard, "Nelsen! Ra..." The beam swept on. Itcould have been Joe Kuzak's voice. But inevitably, somewhere, there hadto be a giving up point for the searchers.
"This is where I came in," Nelsen said bitterly. "Damn these beamsystems that are so delicate and important!"
They did pick up the voices of scattered asteroid-hoppers, talkingcautiously back and forth to each other, far away. "... Got mepinpointed, Ed? Coming in almost empty, this trip. Not like the last...Stake me to a run into Pallastown...?" Most of such voices soundedregular, friendly.
Once they heard wild laughter, and what could have been a woman'sscream. But it could have been other things, too.
On another occasion, they almost believed that they had their rescuemade. Even their worn-out direction and distance finders could place theten or so voices as originating not much over a hundred miles away. Butthey checked their trembling enthusiasm just in time. That was sheerestluck. The curses, and the savage, frightened snarls were all wrong. "Ifwe don't catch us somebody, soon..."
Out here, the needs could get truly primitive. Oxygen, water, food,repair parts for vital equipment. Cannibalism and blood-drinking couldalso be part of blunt necessity.
Nelsen and Ramos were fortunate. Twenty miles off was a haze against thestars--a cluster of small mesoderm fragments. Drawing power for theirshoulder-ionics from their almost spent nuclear batteries, they glidedtoward the cluster, and got into its midst, doubling themselves up tolook as much like the other chunks as possible. They were like hidingrats for hours, until long after the distant specks moved past.
While he waited, Frank Nelsen's mind fumbled back to the lost phantom ofJarviston, Minnesota, again. To a man named Jig Hollins who had gotmarried, stayed home. Yellow? Hell...! Nelsen imagined the comforts hemight have had in the Space Force. He coaxed up a dream girl--blonde,dark, red-headed--with an awful wistfulness. He thought of Nance Codiss,the neighbor kid. He fumbled at the edge of a vast, foggy vision, wherethe wanderlust and spacelust of a man, and needs of the expanding race,seemed to blend with his home-love and love-love, and to become,impossibly, a balanced unit...
Later--much later--he heard young, green asteroid-hoppers yakkinghappily about girls and about how magnificent it was, out here.
"Haw-haw," he heard Ramos mock.
"Yeah," Nelsen said thickly. "Lucky for them that they aren't nearus--being careless with their beams, that way..."
Frank Nelsen sneered, despising these innocent novices, sure that hecould have beaten and robbed them without compunction. That far he hadcome toward understanding the outlaws, the twisted men of the Belt.
Ramos and he seemed to go on for an indefinite period longer. In asense, they toughened. But toward the last they seemed to blunderslowly in the mind-shadows of their weakening body forces. They had alittle food left, and water from the moisture-reclaimers. Atzero-gravity, where physical exertion is slight, men can get along onsmall quantities of food. The sweetish, starchy liquid that they couldsuck through a tube from the air-restorers--it was a by-product of thephotosynthetic process--might even have sustained them for aconsiderable interval.
But the steady weakening of their nuclear batteries was another matter.The pumps of their air-restorers and moisture-reclaimers were dependenton current. Gradually the atmosphere they breathed was getting worse.But from reports they had read and TV programs they had seen long ago,they found themselves another faint hope, and worked on it. With onlysolar power--derived through worn-out thermocouple units--to feed theiruncertain ionics, they could change course only very slowly, now.
Yet maybe they had used up their bad luck. At last they came to asurface-fragment a couple of hundred yards long. They climbed over itsedge. The thin sunshine hit dried soil, and something like corn-stubblein rows. Ahead was a solid stone structure, half flattened. Beside it afallen trunk showed its roots. Vegetation was charred black by theabsolute dryness of space. There was a fragment of a road, a wall, ahillside.
Here, there must have been blue sky, thin, frosty wind. The small,Mars-sized planet had been far from the sun. Yet perhaps the greenhouseeffect of a high percentage of carbon dioxide in its atmosphere and theradioactive heat of its interior had helped warm it. At least it hadbeen warm enough to evolve life of the highest order, eons ago.
Poof had gone the blue sky and this whole world, all in a moment, thescattered pieces forming the asteroids. Accident? More likely it was ahuge, interplanetary missile from competing Mars. The Martians had died,too--as surely, though less spectacularly. Radioactive poison,perhaps... Here, there had been an instant of unimaginable concussion,and of swift-passing flame. The drying out was soon ended. Then, whatwas left had been preserved in a vacuum through sixty millions of years.
Frank Nelsen had glimpsed ancient Mars, preserved on the Moon. Now heglimpsed its opponent culture, about which more was generally known.
"It's real," Ramos grunted. "Hoppers find surface-fragments like this,quite often."
Nelsen hardly cared about the archeological aspects just then.Excitement and hope that became certainty, enlivened his dulled brain.
"An energy source," he grated joyfully. "The Big Answer to Everything,out here! And it's always self-contained in their buildings..."
They pushed the collapsed and blackened thing with the slender bones,aside. They crept into the flat, horizontal spaces of the dwelling--muchmore like chinks than the rooms that humans would inhabit. They shovedaway soft, multi-colored fabrics spun from glass-wool, a metal case withgraduated dials and a lens, baubles of gold and glinting mineral.
In a recess in the masonry, ribboned with glazed copper strips that ledto clear globes and curious household appliances, they found what theywanted. Six little oblong boxes bunched together. Their outsides wereblue ceramic.
Frank Nelsen and Miguel Ramos began to work gingerly, though the glovesof their old Archer Threes were insulated. Here, sixty million years ofstopped time had made no difference to these nuclear batteries, that,because of the universal character of physical laws, almost had to besimilar in principle to their own. They had almost known that it wouldmake no difference. There had been no drain of power through theautomatic safety switches.
"DC current, huh?" Ramos said, breathing hard of the rotten air in hishelmet.
"Yeah--gotta be," Frank answered quickly. "Same as from a thermocouple.Voltage about two hundred. Lots of current, though. Hope these oldionics'll take it."
"We can tap off lower, if we have to... Here--I'll fix you, first...Grab this end..."
They had a sweating two hours of rewiring to get done.
With power available, they might even have found a way to distill andcollect the water, usually held in the form of frost, deep-buried in thesoil of any large surface-fragment. They might have broken down some ofthe water electrolytically, to provide themselves with more oxygen tobreathe. But perhaps now such efforts were not necessary.
When they switched in the new current, the pumps of their equipmentworked better at once. The internal lights of their air-restorers couldbe used again, augmenting the action of the pale sunshine on thephotosynthetic processes of the chlorophane. The air they breathedimproved immediately. They tested the power on the shaky ionics, and gota good thrust reaction.
"We can make it--I think," Frank Nelsen said, speaking low and quick,and with the boldness of an enlivened body and brain. "We'll shoot up,out of the Belt entirely, then move parallel to it, backwards--contraryto its orbital flow, that is. But being outside of it, we won't chancegetting splattered by any fragments. Probably avoid some slobs, too.We'll decelerate, and cut back in, near Pallas. There'll be a way tofind the Kuzak twins."
Ramos chuckled recklessly. "Let's not forget to pack these historicalobjects in our nets. Especially that camera, or whatever it is. Money inthe bank at last, boy..."
But after they set out, it wasn't long before they knew that two peoplewere following them. Ther
e was no place to hide. And a mocking voicecame into their phones.
"Hey, Nelsen... Oh, Mex... Wait up... I've been looking for you for overthree months..."
They tried first to ignore the hail. They tried to speed up. But theirpursuers still had better propulsion. Nelsen gritted his teeth. He feltthe certainty of disaster closing in.
"There's just two of them--so far," Ramos hissed. "Maybe here's ourchance, Frank, to really smear that rat!" Ramos' eyes had a battlelight."All right, Tiflin--approach. These guns are lined up and loaded."
"Aw--is _that_ friendship, Mex?" the renegade seemed to wheedle. Butinsolently, he and his larger companion came on.
"Toss us your pistols," Ramos commanded, as they drifted close, checkingspeed.
Tiflin flashed a smirk that showed that his front teeth were missing."Honest, Mex--do you expect us to do that? Be cavalier--I haven't evengot a pistol, right now. Neither has Igor, here. Come look-see... Hi,Frankie!"
"Just stay there," Nelsen gruffed.
Tiflin cocked his head inside the helmet of a brand-new Archer Six, in aburlesqued pose for inspection. He looked bad. His face had turned hardand lean. There were scars on it. The nervous, explosive-tempered kid,who couldn't have survived out here, had been burned out of him. For asecond, Nelsen almost thought that the change could be for the good. Butit was naive to hope that that could happen. Glen Tiflin had becomepassive, yielding, mocking, with an air of secret knowledge withheld.What did an attitude like that suggest? Treachery, or, perhaps worse, akind of poised--and poisonous--mental judo?
Nelsen looked at the other man, who wore a Tovie armor. Tall,starvation-lean. Horse-faced, with a lugubrious, bumpkinish smile thatalmost had a whimsical appeal.
"Honest--I just picked up Igor--which ain't his real name--in the courseof my travels," Tiflin offered lightly. "He used to be a comic back inEurasia. He got bored with life on Ceres, and sort of tumbled away."
With his body stiff as a stick, Igor toppled forward, his mouth gapingin dismay. He turned completely over, his great boots kicking awkwardly.His angular elbows flapped like crow-wings. He righted himself, lookedastonished, then beatifically self-approving. He burped delicately,patted his chest plate, then sniffed in sad protest at the leveledpistols.
Now Nelsen and Ramos cast off the loaded nets they had been towing, andclosed in on this strange pair. Nelsen did the searching, while Ramospointed the guns.
"Haven't even got my shiv anymore, Frankie," Tiflin remarked, casually."Threw it at a guy named Fessler, once. Missed by an inch. Guess it'sstill going--round and round the sun, for millions of years. Longestknife throw there ever was."
"Fessler!" Frank snapped. "Now we're getting places, you S.O.B.! Thefunny character that robbed and dumped Ramos and me, I'll bet. Probablywith your help! You know him, huh?"
"_Knew_--for a while--past tense," Tiflin chuckled wickedly. "Nope--itwasn't me that stripped off his armor in space. He wasn't even around,anymore, when you beauties got caught. They come and they go."
"But _you_ were around, Tiflin!"
"Maybe not. Maybe I was twenty million miles off."
"Like hell!" Nelsen gritted his teeth, grabbed Tiflin's shoulder, andswung his gloved fist as hard as he could against the thin layer ofrubber and wire over Tiflin's stomach. He struck three times.
"Damn you!" Nelsen snarled. "I promised myself I'd get you good, Tiflin!Now tell us what else you and your friends are cooking for us, or by theBig Silence, you'll be a drifting, explosively decompressed mummy!"
Frank Nelsen didn't know till now, after exerting himself, how weakprivations had made him. He felt dizzy.
Tiflin's eyes had glazed slightly, as he and Frank did a slow roll,together. He gasped. But that insulting smirk came back.
"Haven't had your Wheaties lately, have you, Frank? Go ahead--hit, knockyourself out. You, too, Mex. I've been slugged before, by big men, inshape...! Could be I'm not cooking anything. Except I notice that youtwo have found yourselves some very interesting local objects of ancienthistory, worth a little money. Also, some good, raw metal... Well, Isuppose you want to get the load and yourselves to the famous twins, Artand Joe. That's easy--with luck. Though the region is a trifledisturbed, right now. But I can tell you where they are. You won't haveto fiddle around, hunting."
"Here, hold these guns, Frank. Lemme have a couple of pokes at theslob," Ramos snapped.
"Aw-right, aw-right--who's asking you guys to believe me?" Tiflin cutin. "I'll beam the twins for you--since I'd guess your transmitter won'treach. You can listen in, and talk back through my set. Okay?"
"Let's see what happens--just for kicks," Ramos said softly. "If you'recalling some friends to come and get us, or anything, Tif--well, you'vehad it!"
They watched Tiflin spin and focus the antenna. "Kuzak... Kuzak...Kuzak... Kuzak..." he said into his phone. "Missing boys alive andcoming to you. Mex and old Guess Which... Kicking and independent, butvery hungry, I think... Put on the coffee pot, you storekeepers...Kuzak... Kuzak... Kuzak... Talk up, Frank and Miguel. Your voices willrelay through my phone..."
"Hi, Art and Joe--it's us," Ramos almost apologized.
"Yeah--we don't quite know yet what Tiflin is pulling. But here weare--if it's you we're talking to..."
There was the usual long wait as impulses bridged the light-minutes.
Then Art Kuzak's voice snarled guardedly. "I hear you, Ram and Nel. Comein, if you can...! Tif, you garbage! Someday...! This is all. This isall..." The message broke off.
Tiflin smirked. "Third quadrant of the Belt," he said, giving a positionin space almost like latitude and longitude on Earth. "About twentyminutes of the thirty-first degree. Three degrees above median orbitalplane. Approximately two hundred hours from here. Can Igor and I leaveyou, now, or do you want us to escort you in?"
"_We'll_ escort _you_," Ramos said.
So it was, until, near the end of a long ride, a cluster of bubbs was inview in the near distance, and Ramos and Nelsen could contact Art Kuzakthemselves.
"We've got Tiflin and his Tovie pal with us, Art," Frank Nelsen said."They showed us the way, more or less because we made them. But Tif didgive us the right position at the start. A favor, maybe. I don't know.And now he's saying, 'Be cavalier--it might be awkward for me to meetArt and Joe just at present.' Do you want to fix this character's wagonbad enough? Your customers could get mean--if he ever did them dirt."
"Just one thing I've got against Tiflin!" Art snarled back. "Every timeI hear his voice, it means trouble. But I've never seen the crumbface-to-face since that Moonhop. Okay, let's not spoil my stomach. Turnhim loose. It can't make much difference. Or maybe I'm sentimental aboutthe old Bunch. He was our cracked, space-wild punk."
"Thanks, Art," Tiflin laughed.
In a minute he, and his comic, scarecrow pal who originated from thedark side of trouble, on Earth and out here, too, were fading againstthe stars.
Nelsen and Ramos, the long-lost, glided in, past some grim hoppers. Abubb and sweet air were around them once more. They shed their stinkingArcher Threes. Hot showers--miraculous luxury--played over them. Theyrubbed disinfectant salves into their fungus-ridden hides.
Then there was a clean, white table, with plates, knives, forks. Theyhad to treat their shrunken stomachs gently--just a little ofeverything--beer, steak, vegetables, fruit... Somewhere during the past,unmarked days Frank Nelsen had gotten to be twenty years old. Onlytwenty? Well--maybe this was his celebration.
Ramos and he told their story very briefly. Little time was wasted oncongratulations for survival or talk of losses long past. The Kuzakslooked leaner and tougher, now, and there were plenty of presentdifficulties to worry them. Joe Kuzak hurried out to argue with theminers at the raw metal receiving bins and at the store bubbs. Artstayed to explain the present situation.
"Three big loads of supplies were shipped through to us from the Moon,"he growled. "We did fine, trading for metal. We sent J. John Reynoldshis percentage--a fair fraction of his entire loan. We sent old Pa
ulfive thousand dollars. But the fourth and fifth loads of trade stuff gotpirated en route. When there's trouble on Earth, it comes out here, too.Ceres, colonized by our socialist Tovie friends of northern Eurasia,helps stir up the bums, who think up plenty of hell on their own. It's aforce-out attempt aimed at us or at anybody who thinks our way. Aftertwo lost shipments, and a lot of new installations here at the Post,we're about broke, again. Worse, we've got the asteroid-hoppersexpecting us to come through with pay for the new metal in their nets,and with stuff they need. Back home, some people used to raise hellabout a trifle like a delayed letter. How about a spaceman's reaction,when what is delayed may be something to keep him alive? They could getreally annoyed, and kick this place apart."
Art Kuzak blew air up past his pug nose, and continued. "Finance--herewe go again, Frank!" he chuckled. "Gimp Hines is helping us. After Mars,he came here without trouble. He's in Pallastown, now, trying to raisesome fast cash, and to rush supplies through from there, under SpaceForce guard. You know he's got a head for commerce as well as science.But our post, here, perhaps isn't considered secure enough to back aloan, anymore."
Art grinned wryly at Nelsen and Ramos. His hint was plain. He had seenthe museum pieces that they had brought in.
"Should we, Frank?" Ramos chuckled after a moment.
"Possibly... We've got some collateral, Art. Lots more valuable per unitmass than any raw metal, I should think."
"So you might want to work for us?" Art inquired blandly.
"Not 'for'," Nelsen chuckled. "We might say 'with'."
"Okay, Cuties," Art laughed.
Joe Kuzak had just come back into the dwelling and office bubb.
"Don't let my twin sell you any rotten apples, fellas," he warnedlightly. "He might be expecting you to transport your collateral toPallastown. Naturally anybody trying to strangle this Post will beblocking the route. You might get robbed again. Also murdered."
Ramos' gaunt face still had its daring grin. "Frank and I know that," hesaid. "I'm past bragging. But we've had experience. Now, we might besmart enough to get through. A few more days out there won't hurt. Howabout it, Frank?"
"Ten hours sleep and breakfast," Frank said. "Then a little camouflagematerial, new weapons, a pair of Archers in condition--got any left?"
"Five in stock," Joe answered.
"Settled, then?" Art asked.
"Here, it is," Ramos answered, and Nelsen nodded.
It would have been rough going for them to try to sleep in beds. Theyhad lost the habit. They slept inside their new Archer Fives.
Afterwards they painted their armor a dark grey, like chunks of mesodermstone. They did likewise to the two bundles in which they wrapped theirrelics.
They were as careful as possible to get away from the post without beingobserved, visually or by radar. But of course you could never be sure.
Huddled up to resemble stray fragments, they curved out of theBelt--toward the Pole Star, north of its orbital plane. Moving in aparallel course, they proceeded toward Pallastown. The only thing thatwould seem odd was that they were moving contrary to the general orbitalrotation of most of the permanent bodies of the solar system. Of coursethey and their bundles _might_ have been stray meteors from deep inspace.
Four watchful, armored figures seemed to notice the peculiarity of theirdirection, and to become suspicious. These figures seemed too wary forhonesty as they approached. They got within twenty-five miles.
Even without the memory that Tiflin might make guesses about what theymeant to do, Nelsen and Ramos would have taken no chances. They had tobe brutal. Homing darts pierced armor. The four went to sleep.
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