Part 1

COLLISION ORBIT

by CLYDE BECK

The tiny asteroid with the frightened girl and the wrecked spacer with the grim young man slowly spun closer and closer ... but the real danger came after the crash!

[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Planet Stories Summer 1950. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

There's one good thing about a blowout. You don't need a mechanic to tell you what the trouble is when it happens. This was the first blowout I ever had, but as soon as I heard that explosive pinging whistle and felt the floppy jolting and the terrifying sensation of a vehicle out of control, I knew what was wrong. I reached forward and cut the power.

When I leaned back in my seat I was sweating and my stomach was pushing my tonsils around, and not only on account of the sudden switch from one and a half G's to free fall. I was in a jam, and I didn't need a mechanic to tell me that, either. Spaceships don't carry spare drive tubes.

Not little wagons like the Aspera, anyway. If you could get a spare inside the hull you would have to leave out the air plant or the groceries or else stay home yourself, and even then there would be no room for the tools to make the change. Retubing is a dock job, and the nearest docks were a million miles away on Phobos and getting farther fast.

And besides, you never need a spare. Tubes don't blow in space. Diamondized graphite is tough--you caliper the throat every time you dock, and after a few thousand G-hours you find enough erosion to cut down efficiency to the point where it's a good idea to put in a new liner.

I knew all this, but at the same time I knew the main tube had blown. What I didn't know was what I was going to do about it. I lit a cigarette and took a deep drag, just in case the stimulating effect of the quabba smoke would give me an inspiration.

It made me sneeze.

I threw the butt on the deck and mashed it with my heel before it could bounce off and go adrift in the cabin. I never had liked the taste of the weedy stuff anyway. Smoking quabba is the prime attribute of a spaceman--it has the reputation of being a specific against spacesickness, toughening the cerebral meninges against high acceleration, cutting down reaction time when you have to act fast in a meteor field. Maybe it's all true. One thing it really does is make your clothes smell like a vacant lot on fire so people can say, "Ah, he's a spaceman," without having to ask.

No inspiration. Okay, Denby, think it out with your own brains. You've got a brain, haven't you?

Not being very eager to do any thinking about the situation I was in, I dragged the bulger out from under the seat and crawled into it. I had a vague idea that I might fake up some sort of patch for the tube and maybe limp back to Mars. I wasn't proud of it, but it was the best I had at the moment. I checked to make sure there was nothing on the screens, and then pulled myself over to the air lock, sealed the inner door, and started the pump.

While the chamber was exhausting, I tested the lubber line and snapped the end of it to a ring on the inner skin of the hull. When the lock clicked I pulled the hatch open and hooked it back. Then I took a short hold on the lubber line and stepped out into space.

For a minute I wished I had finished the quabba. This was not the first time I had been in open space, but the circumstances had not been so impressive before. Free fall had never bothered me particularly, but it bothered me now, with millions of miles of empty space under me in all directions and nothing in the sky but the tiny hard bright stars looking very far away. And the realization that I was alone, with a crippled ship, and a very good chance that the situation would be permanent, made me feel that an antidote against spacesickness would be a handy thing to have.

After a while the muscles of my forearm began to ache from gripping the lubber line so hard. I let go of it and took hold of a hand rail and crawled back to the stern.

* * * * *

It was a blowout, all right. The liner was completely gone and the jacket was a fused lump of slag. All I would need to patch it up was a week in the shops and a three-man crew. I crawled back along the hull and went through the hatch like a rabbit going down its hole.

I stowed away the suit and belted myself in the seat. So I would have to think anyway. I got out a pencil and reeled the tape out of the accelerometer and began figuring.

It took me an hour, which was not very good. Neither was the answer. I pushed the papers away and started all over again. The answer was still the same. The Aspera would miss the orbit of Jupiter by more than fifty million miles, and my nearest approach would occur about three and a half years after Jupiter had passed my intended point of tangency.

Of course these figures were only rough, and would be revised one way or the other after I had time to make a few triangulation shots. But I couldn't hope for much encouragement from any such revision. The Aspera, the ship my father had used to make the first landing on an asteroid ten years ago, was going to end up as an asteroid herself, and I would have the honor of being sole inhabitant--as long as I lasted.

I grabbed a sheet of paper and began figuring again. It took me only a minute or two this time. The period of the Aspera's orbit was seven and a half years, and seven and a half years Earth time make four Mars years within a few days. That was how much hope I had--in seven and a half years I would be back in the immediate vicinity of Mars, and I might have enough power in the steering jets to claw my way in to one of the moons. If I didn't bump into an asteroid. If Jupiter didn't pull me too far off course. If I didn't go star-happy in the meanwhile, or starve. Before seven and a half years were up I'd be eating the air plant.

I threw down the pencil, caught it on the first wild bounce, and stowed it away in my pocket. I felt like a fool.

With reason. It takes a very fancy kind of fool to rot four years in the Girdle swamps on Venus, getting drunk only every second month so he can save up enough of his pay to put himself through Space Tech, and then, when he has graduated second in his class, to throw away a plushy job with Translunar and go barging off into space in an ancient can and get himself wrecked just because he lets a girl talk him into making a magnificent gesture.

That's what I told myself. It didn't help any, but I had it coming. I was a worse fool than that, even. Betty Day hadn't talked me into this. I had thought the whole thing up with my own little brain. The germ of the idea was hers, though, or rather the inspiration for it.

II

For that matter, Betty Day inspired a lot of my ideas, ever since my first opening day at Space Tech. The first task they put us to on the opening day was to sit through a welcoming address from the President of the Institute. Maybe it was a good speech if you happened to be a kid fresh out of school, like most of the class, with your head full of the ideas of romance and glory that the tridim space operas pump into the cash customers, but when he began to talk about our "mission" and being "pioneers of the new frontier" it got a little too thick for me.

I hadn't come to the Institute of Space Technology to look for glory. I had come for the excellent if commonplace purpose of qualifying for a well-paid job. My father's happy-go-lucky space-ratting was not for me. I intended to do my planeteering with the resources of a nice fat soulless corporation behind me. Four years in the Girdle of Venus--which name, in case you are wondering, is a neat little piece of irony--had left me very sane and practical and disenchanted about the whole matter.

I let the President gabble on and began to glance around the auditorium.

I didn't glance far. As I turned my face toward the girl sitting at my left, she turned hers, and our eyes met. I managed a smile and cocked an eyebrow toward the speaker's stand. She smiled back with her eyes and crinkled her nose. It was a smooth straight nose, and the eyes on each side of it were a clear cool gray, set well apart under level brows. That was Betty--level and straight, and cool, too, for that matter. I didn't realize all this at once, of course. Just now I only knew that she was calmly and compellingly beautiful, and that I didn't feel sane and practical any more, and certainly not disenchanted.

There was a spatter of mildly enthusiastic applause, and I noticed the lecture hall again and saw that the President had finished and a youngish instructor was taking the stand to give out information about programs and class assignments. I got down enough to keep from getting lost. I heard him say the sections would be arranged alphabetically. That scared me--suppose this girl was named Wigglesworth or Zilch or some such and I would never see her again! I drew a circle around my name on the class roster they had given each of us at the beginning of the festivities and handed it to her. She smiled again and drew a circle around the name right next to it. Betty Day. So that was all right.

* * * * *

There is no time for social life at Space Tech. You go there for the training and you get your money's worth. Not that I cared--the work was hard, but it was exciting, and you could see the purpose of it as you went along. I would have worked even harder and not minded, because Betty Day was alongside in every class I had. After a few days we were eating lunch together every day in the campus slop shop, which arrangement I liked. It took my mind off the sort of food they served there.

Every two or three weeks we found or took time to see a tridim together, since there is not much else in the way of extracurricular diversion at Tech. It was a very slight intimacy, but it meant a good deal to me, and I believed that it did to Betty too. She was always pleased to have me around, and she crinkled her nose at my jokes in a special way that she did for no one else's, and my jokes were not much better than the average, either.

It was a long time before I tried to tell her about the way I felt. It was not until the three years at Tech were over and the Institute was letting down its hair to the extent of sealing our brow with the traditional farewell party for graduates known as the Blastoff.

By the time I got there the revelry had already started. I made a couple of passes at the punch bowl and looked around for Betty. She was out on the floor; I pried her loose from the Joe who was trying to dance with her, and we made one eccentric ellipse around the hall and headed for the terrace. It was cool out there, the unostentatious coolness of an early summer evening that has not quite forgotten the heat of the day, and there was a bright wash of moonlight on the bay beyond the lights of the town. There was a lot of stardust around.

Betty must have seen it too. She turned toward me, and the solemn look on her face and the way her shoulders glowed in the moonlight and the moonlight gleamed in her hair was enough to make your breath come short. My breath, at least. It came right up in my throat and stuck there, and I reached out and we sort of melted together. It was the first time that had happened. That's how hard they work you at Tech.

After a little while we separated and I opened my eyes and they still worked well enough for me to see a bench not far away and we walked over and sat down.

Betty sighed and leaned toward me and I moved my arm out of the way to make room. The skin of her shoulder was smooth to my hand, and cool the way the evening air was cool.

"It's been fun, Tom, hasn't it?" I knew she meant the last three years and not just the last three minutes.

"Lots of work and lots of fun," I agreed. "That's why space work gets in your blood, I think. It's fun even when it's hardest. My hitch in the Girdle even seems like fun now that it's over."

"I can see how planet work must be a thrill, even if I haven't ever been beyond the moon. I will be though--I'm going out with my uncle's Vesta expedition in a couple of weeks, you know."

* * * * *

I hadn't known. I knew she had been talking about it, but I had hoped Ed Day would have sense enough to say no. I wasn't altogether selfish about it. I did want her closer in, nearer where I would be, but a big part of the reason was that the asteroid belt was the Edge, and the Edge has always been a rough place for women, even when it was at the moon.

I started to tell her this, but she interrupted. "How did you make out with Translunar? The man must have had a lot to say to keep you this long."

"I get the money all right. And a job."

"A good one?"

"Six thousand."

"Yes, but what and where?"

"Luna City. I'll be port engineer."

"Oh, Tom!" I didn't think she had to put so much disappointment in her voice. It was practically disdain. "I should think Translunar could do better than that. It's practically landlocked. You aren't going to take it, are you?"

"Why not? Six thousand is a nice sackful of cash, and besides, I get a piece of the company. Not a very big one, but it will grow."

"Oh, Tom!" It was pure disdain this time. "It isn't the money! You should have a ship. You should be out doing things. They can't make you into a glorified slug monkey on the moon!" She pulled away from my arm and looked at me again. The solemn expression on her face was somber now, or maybe sullen; anyway I didn't like it.

"For six thousand they can do worse than that," I said. "It's more than the captain of a liner gets. And, anyway, Translunar's ships are all staffed. There wouldn't be a place for me even if I wanted one, and I'm not sure I want one. Maybe there's more glamour in being a deep-space man, but you can't call the job the engineers do trivial. The idea of being a slug monkey doesn't bother me at all at that pay. It's better than being a swamp hog on Venus."

"But it's such a waste, Tom! Anyone can be an engineer. You should be in research or exploration, and you know it. It's a crime to waste your talent in a dock job. You belong out on the Edge."

"Look, Betty--there are three sorts of Edge jobs: in the Patrol, on some sort of an expedition, or as a space-rat. The first two don't pay and, as for the third, even if I liked the idea of prospecting the planets, it takes money to outfit for it, and it took all I had to finish Tech."

"But you have the Aspera, and the Translunar prize would be enough to get her into shape again and buy supplies."

"I was given to understand this afternoon that it would be considered very unconventional to take the money and not take the job. And anyway, what would I do then--hunt for thorium in the asteroids? No thanks. I'll take the slug monkey job and the salary. And I think you ought to do the same. You could get a job closer in that would pay a lot more than going off to the Belt on a wild goose chase. When you graduate first in your class at Tech you can take your pick."

"Wild goose chase!" She sniffed. "We are going out to get data on the Warp at close range. We might even find out the way to get around it and open up the outer planets to exploration."

* * * * *

The Warp was supposed to be a sort of fourth-dimensional wrinkle in space somewhere beyond the asteroids that swallowed ships and accounted for the fact that out of three expeditions that had tried to reach Jupiter, three had not returned. I knew better.

"There isn't any Warp," I told her. "My father proved that eight years ago when he made the swing around Jupiter."

"But he never published any proof, Tom."

"No, all the proof he had was in his log book, and that went with him on his last trip. But I read the log. He sighted the pirate camp on Callisto, and would have had pictures to prove it if all his film hadn't been raystruck. Maybe he could have got somebody to listen to him anyway if he had tried a little harder, but he wanted to make a research job of it. He sold out all his claims and built the Astra and loaded it up with equipment to bring back all the proof that even the Patrol could ask for. Then he blasted off and no one ever heard of him again."

"But the idea of pirates doesn't make sense, Tom. There are no cargoes worth stealing beyond the Belt. On the Venus run, yes--but why should there be pirates out where there are no ships?"

"Okay, no pirates, then. What they really are is Hassley and all those hangers-on of his that were never accounted for after the Polar War. One of the moons of Jupiter would make a fine hideout for them. Air, water, and a livable climate. When any one comes snooping around, they see to it that they never get back. We blame it on the Warp and stay away and leave them alone."

"They would never get there in the first place. The Warp isn't just somebody's wild guess, you know. It follows from Heuvelstad's work. He derived Bode's law from quantum theory, and showed that a warp in space is the only explanation for the family of asteroids between Mars and Jupiter where there should be a single planet. No one can doubt it."

"I can. No one used to doubt that the earth was flat, or to bring it a little more up to date, that the craters of the moon were volcanoes, or that the red shift in the nebular spectra meant that the universe is expanding. A theory is good only as long as it explains all the facts, and Heuvelstad overlooked the fact that my father circled Jupiter and came back. He will just have to revise his mathematics."

"Maybe we'll know more about that after the Vesta expedition comes back." She sighed and looked out over the glittering bay.

I sighed too, and took my arm away from the back of the seat. I didn't quite know how the conversation had wandered so far from the point. I had felt quite set up about everything when I came to the party. I thought Betty would be glad about the Translunar offer, and maybe remark that six thousand credits was a remarkable salary for a fresh graduate, and I would suggest that it was enough to get married on. And here we were arguing.

She turned and looked at me again. "Tom," she said softly; maybe I was going to have my chance after all.

"Yes?" I answered.

"Are you really going to take that engineer job? Couldn't you talk Translunar out of something that would give you the chance to do the things a Denby ought to be doing?"

"Maybe I could. But look--I've sweated out the last seven years just for the chance I've got right now, and I mean to take it. My father spent all his life chasing a dream, and what did it get him? The one great discovery he did make no one will even believe."

"I never met Lance Denby, but I know he was a great spaceman, Tom, even if you do seem to have forgotten it. I never thought a son of his would ever turn out to be a company man. Let's go inside."

We went inside, and I went home. The punch bowl was empty by now so I didn't even stop.

* * * * *

It was probably a mistake, but I flew down to Mojave Outport the day the Vesta Expedition blasted off. Betty was very friendly when we said goodbye, and her hand in mine was small and firm, and the fingers were quite cold. I don't remember what I said. It couldn't have been much. There was a stiff feeling around my lips that it was hard to push any words through.

Betty was last on board. She turned and looked back for a few seconds before they closed the hatch, and it seemed to me that there was the same solemn expression on her face that I had seen that night on the terrace. I was too far away to be sure.

My interview with the Western manager of Translunar was scheduled for the next day. I'm afraid I made a poor impression from the very start. I wasn't feeling very sharp; instead of sleeping I had spent a good part of the night wondering about that look in Betty's eyes. That and a few other things.

Elkins, the manager, was the sort of man who wears a nice sharp crease in his pants and his hair brushed carefully over his bald spot and calls everyone heartily by his first name.

"Well, Tom," he said expansively, after the formalities of introduction and exchange of cigarettes were out of the way, "let's get to business. First of all, this, ah--token."

He held out a check. The four figures on it were even prettier than the pretty-colored ink they were printed in. That was for me. Legally, by the terms of their prize offer. I had checked on that.

"Thank you," I said.

"And now, as concerns your place with the Translunar organization--"

I interrupted. "I'm sorry, Mr. Elkins. Personal plans make it impossible for me to accept the position you have so generously offered me."

That rocked him. Why not--it rocked me. He still smiled with his lips, out of habit, but his eyes weren't smiling. He pulled an ash tray to him and crushed out his cigarette--the one I had given him.

"But--! You realize this is most irregular, Mr. Denby! And unexpected."

"I do. I didn't know it myself until a little while ago."

"Is this decision final, Mr. Denby?"

"I'm afraid it is."

"Very well. I'm sorry to hear it." His tone meant that I would be sorry too. "In that case there is nothing further to say."

He pushed a button and a flunky came in to sweep me out. As I left I could as good as see him writing down my name on a sheet marked Blacklist in 72 point caps.

III

It took three months to make the Aspera spaceworthy again, and when I had bought the shielded tele-camera, vitanalyzer, and the other little toys I would need to prove that there was a pirate hideout in Callisto, my bank account was within saluting distance of absolute zero. This was space-ratting for fair, without even a chance for paydirt at the end of the orbit. And Translunar, or any other outfit, wouldn't have me even as a swamp hog after this. I was the smart Joe who was going to have me a Career.

You never know.

I stopped at Phobos to fill up on reactant. I didn't mean to land on Callisto. I didn't even mean to be seen if I could help it, but still I might have some dodging to do, and full tanks could be nice to have. For the same reason I put in a new power slug, because the emission had begun to go a little soft on the way out from Luna City. With the salvage of the old one, that left me just enough for a couple of highballs at the port canteen. I thought I needed them more than two loose coins. I left the slug monkey grumbling about having to root around among the obsolete parts to find a Group VI slug, and headed for the bar. Let him grumble. The Aspera was still a good ship, even if she didn't have the tungsil tubes it takes to handle Group IV fissionables.

Wait a minute! Maybe he got tired of rooting and put in a Group IV slug just out of laziness and ignorance. I made my way back to the power shack, cracked the case, and took a look through the periscope. The IV on the can was as big as a house. Well, when I got back I would be able to prove to Betty that I was right about trained personnel not being wasted in the engineering department. If I got back.

Seven and a half years in a space can is a horrible thought, but to do it in free fall is out of the question. I swung a pair of steering rockets to tangent position and cranked up enough rotation to give me a few pounds of weight. That made a mess out of the visual screens, but the radek would still let me know if anything came close enough to worry about, and this way a cup of coffee would at least stay in the cup. I brewed a pot of it, stuffed a pipe full of tobacco, and started to settle down to do my time.