Part 2

I don't know how many days later it was that the radek began to groan. I quit counting days after the first week--if I needed the date I could get it off the chronograph. The signal was feeble, but I took the twist off her to get a fix on what it was. The radek gave the range as extreme--nearly a million miles--and anything that would trip the relay at that range must be big. After a few sweeps I found it in the scope, and it showed a perceptible disk. That meant an asteroid. I didn't know which one--the General Emphemeris of the asteroids hasn't been published yet.

* * * * *

During the next day or two I spent a good deal of my time at the scope, and most of the rest figuring orbits. It was pleasant to have something to do to keep my mind off my predicament. I hardly minded even when it became obvious that I would come so close to the asteroid as to be perturbed out of all possibility of making the contact with Mars that I had projected. I hadn't really believed in that anyway. And, when I discovered that I was in a collision orbit, it was more of a relief than otherwise. Get it over with in a hurry. Starvation is a slow and tedious way to blast off. A short life and a merry one, Denby, that's what you always said. Or did you? Well, it doesn't matter, you're going to get it anyway.

It was a fine sight. I don't know anything more impressive to watch than a planet, even a little two-hundred-mile chunk of rock like this one, swinging up out of empty space and taking on size and form. White and round as a snowball, and spinning lazily like a snowball thrown through the air. This one was going to hit me right on the knob.

The twelve-hour rotation of the asteroid must have swung the spot past me three or four times before I paid any attention to it. A black smudge it was, round, but with ragged edges like a starfish. A jet scorch if I ever saw one. I swallowed my stomach on the third gulp, and as soon as I stopped being dizzy I looked again. A jet scorch it was, and a few hundred yards away the sunlight glittered on a round lump that couldn't be anything but a Mitchell blister. Of all the rocks in the Belt, I would bump into one with a station on it. Nice catch, Denby!

I crawled into the bulger again in case I might set her down a little heavy, and got at the controls. Landing on the steering jets is tricky, especially when there is no atmosphere to help you brake down. I never would have made it if it had been a full-sized planet.

I set her down heavy, all right, but I'm not ashamed of it. Try it yourself some time. We crashed in a gully some sixty feet deep, about a mile from the station. The shock broke my belt and threw me against the control panel, and I felt a couple of ribs crack. That was cheap. When my head cleared a little I could hear rocks rattling on the hull and air whistling out through a hole in her somewhere. I made a dash for the lock and kicked the emergency hatch release and blew outside with the rest of the air.

* * * * *

Just in time. Looking up, I could see the whole side of the cliff coming loose and toppling toward me like the crest of a breaker. I gritted my teeth and jumped. When I looked back there was nothing to see but a heap of rock.

Under this light gravity, the leap took me well above the cliffs. I could see a glint of sunlight on the Mitchell in the distance, and a spacesuit-clad figure coming over the surface in long leaps. One jump had been enough for me--I hung onto my ribs and did my best to walk. That isn't easy with a gravity a couple of hundredths Earth normal, but at least when you fall you don't hit very hard.

In a minute or two I came up with my rescuer, and we touched helmets to talk. I stared through the faceplate of the other suit. "Hello, Betty," I said. Then I passed out.

* * * * *

When I woke up someone was swabbing my face with a damp cloth. It was very pleasant. I opened my eyes, and it was Betty, all right.

"Hello yourself," she said, and smiled. It was the old smile, crinkled nose and all. I took back what I had told myself about being a fool. I sat up and reached out my arms, but the ribs got in the way.

"Tom!" she cried. "What's the matter?"

"I bent a couple of ribs a little too far," I answered. "Nothing vital."

"Here, let me help!"

Between us we pulled the bulger off me and got rid of my packet and shirt. Betty crossed the room and began to rummage in a locker. I looked around. I was on a folding cot in one of the sleeping cubicles of a Mitchell. Apparently Betty had carried me in after I collapsed. That was not as had as it sounds--I only weighed three or four pounds here, and I was light-headed besides. The old girls with the spinning wheel seemed to have changed their minds after they blew my jet for me. They send me an asteroid, and it comes near enough to land on more or less and there is a party on it, and it is the Day expedition, including Betty. Thanks, girls! I would have bowed to them, but on account of my ribs I only nodded.

Betty came back with a pair of scissors and a roll of plaster, cut loose my undershirt, and began building a straightjacket. I averted my attention from the fact that it would have to come off some time.

"Where's your uncle and the rest of the crew?" I asked.

"Everyone but me is off on a field trip to Thule. Opposition was a week or two ago, and they're due back any time. Thule seems to be our last chance. We haven't found out a thing so far. But Thule is half-way to Jupiter from here and right on the edge of the Warp, or where the Warp ought to be. If they don't bring back some significant data from there we may begin to think you are right after all and there isn't any such thing."

"I knew it all along," I informed her. "Not that I'm likely to have a chance to prove it, with the Aspera dead and buried."

"Be still a minute--how am I going to tape you up if you keep on talking? Blow out your breath." She ripped off half a meter of tape and slapped it onto my side.

Presently she stepped back to inspect the job. "It'll do, I guess," she said, frowning critically. "For the time being, anyway. Uncle Ed will be back in a couple of days, and he can fix it right."

"Oh no he can't. When this comes off it stays off."

"Why Tom! Are you afraid of a little tape?"

"You bet I am. Give me a ray-burn any day."

"All right then." She picked up my shirt and began helping me into it. "But if you grow up lopsided or chicken-breasted, don't blame me!"

I didn't pay any attention. I tried my arms again, and they reached out all right. It was a good job of taping.

She pushed me away and stood up. "Careful of your ribs, mister," she warned. "Come on, you don't belong in here anyway--this is the women's side."

I hunched myself into my jacket and followed her through the door and down a short passage which led into a sort of utility room in the midsection of the blister. One end was taken up with shelves and cases of food and other supplies, a diatherm cooker, distillation unit, mess table and the like; at the other, to the sides of the air lock, were two or three desks with books and papers. One of the desks held a periscreen which reflected the star-speckled black of space and a small bright ball which was the distant sun. A row of thick glass portholes at each end of the room let in a fair amount of light.

* * * * *

Out in the center of the floor were several chairs which looked almost comfortable, and a large table with a ping-pong net on it. The thought of trying to predict the behavior of a ping-pong ball under gravity of point-o-two or thereabouts made me dizzy again.

I sat down in the easiest-looking chair and Betty took a seat opposite me. The solemn look was on her face again.

"I should have mentioned it before," she apologized, "but I am glad to see you, Tom. And amazed, of course. What happened to your job at Translunar?"

"Translunar doesn't like me any more. I took the prize money to fit out the Aspera and sneered at the job."

"Oh, Tom!" I liked the way she said it this time. "Then you are free-lancing?"

"Free is the word for it. The list they put me on is black as the night side of Pluto. No outfit in space would hire me for a swamper after this. And you can't space-rat without a ship to rat in. As a matter of fact, I have a great future behind me. All because I had a great idea."

"What was the idea, Tom? I know you didn't come all the way out here just to talk to me."

"Well, it would have been worth it, but that wasn't it. I was on my way to Jupiter to prove once and for all that there isn't any Warp and that there are pirates on Callisto. Then I broke down a few hours out of Mars, with too much velocity to get back on the chemicals. After a while you came along, and I saw the camp, and managed to set her down. I didn't know this was your rock."

"You have the craziest ideas, Tom!"

"All right, let it go. I'm done with crazy ideas. The wildest one I have at the moment is to talk your uncle into thinking that I can earn my keep here and a passage back to Earth."

"Good--and I'll talk him into not sending you back with the Patrol."

"The Patrol?"

"Yes--our time here is half gone, and they are due any day to pick up our data and preliminary report. They're overdue right now, as a matter of fact. I thought you were the Patrol cruiser at first. Our figures are hardly worth coming after, unless they've got some good readings on Thule."

I had stopped listening. Patrol regulations make the rescue of distressed spacemen mandatory. They would take me to Earth and turn me loose with a hundred credits bonus, and I could look for a job as a shoe salesman. Or write my memoirs. The Tale of a Disappointed Space Hound. That ought to sell. Back to Earth. I wasn't happy about it. I had crossed four hundred million miles of space to find Betty and I wanted to stay.

I looked at her. She crinkled her nose at me and stood up. "Come on, Tom, don't look so glum. How about something to eat? If you're not hungry I am."

She crossed to the galley end of the room and I followed. Cooking was simple--stick a couple of cans in the diatherm and wait until the signal beeped. It tasted better than what I had had on the Aspera, though. I told her so, and Betty laughed. Then suddenly she jumped to her feet.

"Look, on the screen, Tom!" She pointed. There was a bright streak half filling the field of the periscope. Betty hurried across the room and I got up as quickly as I could and followed her.

"It must be the Patrol ship!" she cried. "They will have letters aboard, and newspapers!" She was practically dancing with excitement. I wasn't so happy.

We watched her come in. She was a small ship, not much larger than the Aspera, but it was a spectacular sight at that. An atom-jet blast in space is quite a blaze of glory.

They had a sharp lad at the controls. He had to be--I could tell from the shape and color of the blast that the emission was soft as a raw egg. He must have had twenty percent fluctuation. That was queer--you'd think the Patrol would have brains and money enough to put in a new power slug when it was needed. That one could go dead any time. But the pilot was good. He set down easy, right in the center of the scorch.

As soon as she was down the hatch swung open and half a dozen men in bulgers stepped out and floated to the ground. Betty had the outer air lock door open for them already. They crossed the ground quickly, in the long leaps of men accustomed to low gravity.

I noticed suddenly that the palms of my hands were damp. That made me wonder. It wasn't so much that I was scared by the idea of going back to Earth with the Patrol. Something was wrong with the set-up somewhere, and I couldn't place it. Then it hit me. That ship out there was no Patrol cruiser--she was the Astra! My father's ship! It had been years ago and I was just a kid at the time, but there was no chance of a mistake--I had practically lived aboard that wagon all the while she was on the ways. That meant my father had found the hideout on Callisto again, and hadn't got away this time. The Astra had been captured and converted to a pirate ship. As for my father, there was no doubt now about what had happened to him. Lance Denby would never have been taken alive.

These six men crossing the ground toward us were a bunch of Hassley's cutthroats.

"Betty!" I yelled. "Shut the lock quick!"

She threw me a startled look, but sprang to obey. It was too late.

IV

They were in. All big monkeys with their helmets peeled back, and every one with a blaster in his hand you could put your thumb in. They came in fast and fanned out to cover the room in a way that showed they knew their business, and the muzzles of their weapons never wavered an inch. I looked at Betty. She was quite pale. It didn't matter about the lock. We couldn't have kept them out anyway.

I didn't have a chance to tell her so. The boss of the show spoke. "Over against the wall," he said. Quietly, but we went. It was that kind of voice. There was no tone to it, and not much volume. It reminded me of the noise we used to make by rubbing rocks together under water when we were kids. He grinned, exposing thirty or forty grayish teeth shaped like old-fashioned tombstones. His whole face was grayish and stony, with heavy brows and a thick jaw. The 20 cm blaster in his hand looked like a water pistol. I might have called it a slight case of acromegaly, but I was not interested in diagnosis at the moment. I was busy getting mad. That was easy enough with such a subject, but I didn't see what I was going to do about it.

He followed us over to the wall, walking slowly, not cautiously, but as if he knew there was no need to hurry.

"Where's the rest of the crew?" he asked. He looked at me.

"That's all there is," I said. "There isn't any more." I didn't see any use in lying to him, but I didn't see any use in telling him the truth, and I would sooner lie to him than not. That's the way I felt about it.

"Wise, huh?" he said. His expression didn't change. He didn't have any expression.

He turned to Betty. "Where's the rest of the crew?"

"There aren't any more. There's just the two of us." Good girl. She was going to back my play. If I had any play. I was trying, but looking at that face slowed my mind down into first gear.

Back to me again. "Where's your ship?"

"Ship?" I asked. The innocent line. "We don't have a ship."

He looked toward the rest of his gang. Two of them came up alongside of me and grabbed my elbows.

"Do you hear that?" he complained. "They don't have any ship. They walked all the way out here." He moved in close to me. His face wasn't really rock or I could have seen the moss on it.

"Look, chum," he said. "Do you have to get wise? This ain't no game of marbles. I'm telling you."

"Take it or leave it," I cracked. "What would we want with a ship? They bring us out here and leave us, and a year later they come back to get us and drop off the new crew." It sounded like a good way to run an asteroid station at that.

He cursed. It had a horrible sound, in that muted rocky voice of his. He faced Betty again. "That true?"

"Of course it's true!" The contempt in her voice would have withered him, only stones don't wither.

I still couldn't see where we were getting. Hold him here until the Patrol cruiser came in? That wouldn't work. If the Patrol boat came in first they would think the Astra was the expedition ship, and Ed Day would think it was the Patrol. And Stoneface here would sit back just like a hunter in a duck blind and wait for an easy shot. If we could figure out some way to signal. Come on, Denby, think it out. There's an answer to everything.

He was talking again. "How long have you been here?"

"Six months."

"When's that ship due?"

"In six months more."

"How long?" This was to Betty.

"Five months and twenty-three days, to be exact," she told him. "Earth time."

He cursed again. I was sweating. The way Betty was following my lead, she must think I had a plan. Maybe I did, at that. It was pretty hazy, but the way Stony kept worrying about a ship made me think. That, and the wobbly jet I had seen.

"Six months, huh?" he mused. "Well, we can wait. It won't be bad. Not with the company we'll have." He put one of his big shovel-shaped hands on Betty. "No, not bad at all."

I jerked one elbow loose and swung at his jaw. I might have done better if it hadn't been for the ribs, but as it was I felt it all the way up to my shoulder. His head snapped back but his feet never moved. The two gunsels grabbed my hands and twisted them up under my shoulder blades.

* * * * *

Old Stony stood for a minute rubbing his jaw and looking at me. Just looking. It was a look like you might see in the eye of a snake. Then he hit me in the cheek with the flat of his hand. It wasn't a slap. I tasted blood. He swung his foot at my ankles, and I hit the floor. He swung it again. I felt another rib let go.

"Pick him up," he said. "Tie him in that chair." His boys did as they were told.

He came and stood in front of me. "I told you this wasn't no game of marbles. Now look, chum. You're going to be a good boy and keep your trap shut and do like I tell you or I'm going to take you apart. That's going to be fun, too, only not for you." I didn't say anything.

Stoneface ground around on his heel and began grating out orders. "Slats and Joker, you tie up the girl till I decide what to do with her. Tubby, see what they've got to eat in this shack. Trigger--back to the ship and tell the boys we'll relieve them in an hour and they're to keep their eyes open in the meantime. Bring back a couple of bottles of juice with you. Karns, you keep a rod on this monkey in case he didn't understand what I told him."

In a few minutes they were all sitting around the mess table washing down about a week's supply of Expedition rations with raw juice. When they had finished Stony belched vigorously, stood up, and walked over to look out of one of the portholes. I followed him with my eyes, and was surprised to see that it was night outside. I hadn't realized how short these six-hour days would be. Stony began talking again.

"Slats, you and Karns get back to the ship and let the other boys come over here and stretch their legs and get some chow. After that we all got to get busy and ditch the ship and set up the artillery on the ground to get ready for that Patrol boat when it shows up. Me, I got some other business on hand."

He walked over to Betty and picked her up under one arm, chair and all.

"Put the girl down!" I told him.

He set her down on the deck again and came at me, balling up one of his cobblestone fists. "I said I was going to take you apart if you didn't act nice," he snarled. "Well, here goes!"

"Wait a minute," I said. "I know what you want and I know where to get it."

That stopped him. "What do you mean?" he growled.

"I mean a new power slug. I saw how sloppy your jet was when you came in. You haven't got one G-hour left. You might take off from a little rock like this, but you'd never make Venus again and you know it. That's why you're willing to wait around here for six months on the slim chance of being able to shoot down a Patrol cruiser and salvage a slug out of it."

He blinked when I mentioned Venus, but I didn't let him see I noticed it. My mind was beginning to click now. This wasn't the way I would have preferred to handle the matter, but I didn't see anything else to do.

Stony ground his teeth at me. "Well?"

"I know where you can get a new slug just for picking it up."

One of his hands reached out and wrapped around my neck, and he started shaking. "Where is it then!" he gritted. "Out with it!"

"I didn't say I was going to tell you," I reminded him, as soon as I started breathing again. "I'm willing to talk about it, though."

"I'm listening. But talk fast, chum."

"Cut the girl loose, and me too."

Stoneface waved a command, and in a moment we were rubbing the circulation back into our wrists. Betty wasn't looking at me.

"Here's my proposition," I said. "I'll trade you the slug for the girl. You give her a suit with full tanks and rations and turn her loose now. That will give her enough head start so you won't be able to find her. Then in the morning I'll show you where this slug is, and as soon as you get it you take off and we'll all be happy. That saves you a six months' wait and a fight with the Patrol."

"Tom!" Betty broke out. "You're not going to let these apes get away!"

"Sorry, Betty. It's the only way."

"Oh, you--!" She stamped her foot. She was crying. I couldn't blame her for being mad. She was not the kind to stop fighting anywhere this side of the last ditch. Well, for me it was the last ditch when he put his hand on her.

"Can the chatter, you two," Stony gritted. "Look, how do I even know you got a slug?"

"You don't," I agreed. "That's the chance you take."

"Yeah. And you know the chance you're taking if you don't produce?"

"I can imagine," I assured him.

"Okay," he decided. "I'll play. But I'm warning you, chum, if you're trying to run a bluff--you'll be sorry!" He turned to Betty. "Come on, babe, climb into your rubber pants and scram!"

Betty didn't even glance in my direction while she was putting on her space-suit. She gave me one look as she went out through the air lock, and one was enough. It was pure poison.

V

I was glad before morning that the nights on Vesta were only six hours long. Soon after Betty left, a couple of Stony's gorillas went over to the ship and sent back the two that had been left on watch. The new ones weren't any prettier to look at, and they scoffed up just as big a share of rations as the others had, and with even less manners, if possible. After that one of them got out a deck of mouldy-looking cards, and the whole crew sat down to a game of poker.

They had me tied down on the chair again by this time, and after the second bottle of juice had been around once or twice they hit on the quaint idea of using me for stakes. Each winner of a pot was to have the right to choose which portion of my anatomy he would separate from the rest of me by force and violence in case I didn't come through with the power slug in the morning.

By the time they had reached the stage of marking out their respective territories with chalk, Stony made them quit. He told them that when he got through with me there wouldn't be enough left for them to argue about.

My ribs weren't doing me any good, either....

Someone was cuffing me on the head. I opened my eyes and it was a bright day.

"On your feet," Stony gritted. "You and me have got a date for a little game of truth or consequences. Remember?"

I staggered up and scrubbed some of the fatigue out of my face with my hands. Someone shoved a bulger at me. I saw that it was mine, and the tanks and ration kits were full. I crawled in and clamped down the fishbowl.

I led the way into the lock, with Stony and several of his lads at my heels. In a minute the lock clicked and I opened the door and stepped outside. The sun was only a couple of degrees high and the long shadows of the blister and the ship lay sharp and dark across the gray-white terrain. The stars burned against the black sky, very remote and indifferent. I tried to swallow the dryness in my mouth and throat, but it wouldn't go down.

A nudge from the muzzle of a blaster brought me back to the business in hand. I set off across the rocks, taking it as easy as I could without making my convoy too impatient. I headed straight for the Aspera. No need stalling now. Either Betty had had time to hide herself by now or it didn't matter.