Part 1

Produced by Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net

ESCAPE VELOCITY

BY CHARLES L. FONTENAY

_It was a duel to the death and Kraag had all the advantages, including offense and defense. Jonner had neither, but he employed an old equation peculiarly adaptable to the situation. And the proper equation properly worked...._

[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Worlds of If Science Fiction, October 1954. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

Murdering Stein was easy. Kraag waited until Jonner donned his spacesuit and went out to have a personal look at the asteroid. Even then Kraag held his patience, because he wanted Jonner to come back to the ship unsuspecting.

Kraag sat tensely at the back of the control room while Stein, the navigator and communications man, operated the radio. There was a brief period when Stein talked with Marsport, then he got in touch with Jonner. Until Jonner got some distance from the wrecked ship, most of their conversation was an argument.

"I still think two of us ought to go out and one stay at the ship," argued Stein. "Kraag agrees with me. What if you fall into a crevice?"

"There's not much danger, and you've got a directional fix on me," replied Jonner's voice through the loudspeaker. "If we had a large crew, I'd agree we ought to explore in pairs. Since there are just three of us, only one ought to be endangered at a time. I'm the captain, so I'm it."

"Well, don't get out of sight," warned Stein. "We don't have an atmosphere here to bounce radio waves over the horizon."

Through the glassite port, Kraag could see Jonner poking around at the asteroid's surface with his steel probe. Against the incredibly curved horizon, Jonner's suited figure leaned at a slight angle under the black, star-studded sky. The distant sun gleamed from the sphere of his helmet.

"Pretty smooth terrain," remarked Jonner. "It's not much of a planet, but it seems to have enough mass to pull down any mountains. Looks like there should be some hills, though. It must have been in a molten state when the original trans-Martian planet was broken up."

"That ought to mean high albedo," said Stein. "Higher than it ought to be."

"Sounds more like Vesta," said Jonner. "Sure we're on Ceres?"

Stein looked at the notes he had made from the ship's instruments, before the crash.

"The escape velocity was 1,552.41 feet per second," he said, "and the diameter 0.06. I figure the mass at .000108."

"All those figures are off according to the latest table for Ceres," said Jonner.

"The fellows that made that table were on Mars," reminded Stein. "Vesta doesn't have a 480-mile diameter. It must be Ceres."

"You're the navigator," surrendered Jonner. "I'll take your word for it."

The personnel sphere of the ship rested on the ground, tilted at almost a 20-degree angle from the horizontal. The tilt was no inconvenience, however. Each of the men weighed only five or six pounds here, and slippage was hardly noticeable.

"I'll turn you over to Kraag," said Stein at last, glancing up at the chronometer. "It's my day to fix supper, you know."

It was the signal Kraag had been waiting for. He reached behind him and fumbled in the rack for a gun.

The one he brought out was Jonner's, and it wasn't a heat-gun but the ancient pistol Jonner swore by. Kraag put it back hurriedly, but not before Stein had turned in his chair and seen it.

"What's up, Kraag?" asked Stein without alarm. "Why the gun?"

Kraag pulled a heat-gun from the rack.

"Nothing's up," he said, and shot Stein.

The ray burned into Stein's shoulder, and Kraag swung it down across Stein's chest to his stomach before relaxing his pressure on the trigger.

"My God, Kraag!" gurgled Stein. Summoning a last effort, he croaked into the microphone: "Jonner! Watch out! Kraag shot...."

Kraag blasted him in the face, cutting him off. Stein's body floated forward and upward out of the chair and began to settle slowly toward the slanting floor.

"What's going on, Stein?" came Jonner's alarmed voice over the loudspeaker. "Stein? Stein!"

"It's all right, Jonner," said Kraag as calmly as he could, when he could reach the microphone. "Stein just fainted."

There was silence from Jonner.

"I'll take care of Stein and then take over the mike till you get ready to come in," said Kraag into the microphone.

"I want to talk to Stein when he comes around," said Jonner. His voice sounded cold.

So Jonner suspected something. Well, that couldn't be helped. Maybe he could be talked around.

"All right, Jonner," agreed Kraag soothingly.

Stein's body had to be hidden from Jonner, just in case. Jonner got into the personnel sphere alive--something Kraag did not intend for him to do. When he had taken care of Jonner, he could dispose of both bodies before the rescue ship got there.

Dragging Stein's body was like towing someone through water. It floated through the air of the sphere at Kraag's tug, settling slowly. His only problem was getting good leverage for pushing. After some cogitation, he jammed the body into an empty food compartment two decks below the control room.

Back in the control room, Kraag looked out the port. Jonner was closer to the personnel sphere now, looking toward it but not moving.

Other portions of the ship, some jettisoned, some crumpled and broken apart by its crash, lay at varying distances from the personnel sphere. Some of the parts were scattered out of sight beyond the horizon, a mile away.

Kraag had not wanted to fool with the asteroid. There had been no question that they had to swing back off their original orbit toward Titan when the meteorite slashed open both of their hydrazine tanks. But Kraag's idea had been to stay in space and try to turn back toward Mars before the fuel gave out.

As the engineer, Kraag resented Jonner overruling him. Jonner had felt it safer to take an orbit around the asteroid and wait for rescue. But the fuel pumps had failed before they could adjust to the orbit. Kraag would never forget that helpless waiting as they circled and circled, spiraling downward to the inevitable crash.

He went back to the microphone.

"Okay, Jonner," he said. "What's going on out there now?"

"Where's Stein?" countered Jonner. "I want to talk to him."

"He's not feeling so good. Said he'd rather not try to get back up to the control room right now."

"Tell him to come to the mike anyhow. I don't want to talk to you till I talk to Stein."

"Stein can't talk, I tell you. If you don't want to talk to me, then are you ready to come in?"

"And get shot?" retorted Jonner.

So Jonner's suspicions were that definite. It was to be expected after the words Stein had been able to shout into the microphone. Jonner was nobody's dumbbell.

Kraag tired once more.

"That's a ridiculous idea, Jonner," he said. "I can't figure why you'd say such a thing."

"You shot Stein," said Jonner positively. "There's no use your denying it. I know you shot Stein, and I'll know it until Stein himself tells me it isn't so."

Kraag knew Jonner too well to try to keep up the pretense any longer. He tried another tack.

"Okay, so I shot Stein," he admitted. "That doesn't mean I'll shoot you. Come on in and talk it over. We can make a deal."

"If you shot Stein, why wouldn't you shoot me?" asked Jonner logically.

"There wasn't enough air for three. There is for two."

Jonner was silent for a moment.

"So that's why you did it," he said then. "Figured it pretty close, didn't you, Kraag?"

"I'm the guy who has to watch supplies on this boat. I checked the oxygen after the crash broke open those three compartments on the supply deck. There's 3800 pounds of oxygen left. It'll take about 22 months for the rescue ship to get here from Mars. At 2.8 pounds of oxygen a day, you and I can make it, but it would have lasted the three of us only 15 months."

Jonner cursed him for a full minute, not loudly but with such intensity that Kraag felt his face getting warm.

"You damn murderer!" finished Jonner. "You damn cold-blooded murderer!"

"Cut it out, Jonner," growled Kraag. "I can't understand you and Stein. What were you expecting to save us? A miracle?"

"I don't feel like talking about it now," said Jonner warily. "If you had only ... Hell, Kraag, we'd been together a long time. Even if all of us had thought we were going to die, I didn't think we'd kill each other off like animals."

"Self-preservation is the first law of nature," said Kraag cynically. "Better that two should die than three. Come on in, Jonner."

"That's self-preservation? No thanks, Kraag. You know I'll turn you in as a murderer when the rescue ship gets here. I have no hankering to walk up where you can burn me down."

"Okay, stay out there till your air gives out."

The airlock was not a comfortable place to spend one of the asteroid's seven-hour nights, but Kraag was afraid not to stand guard there with his heat-gun. He was afraid to sleep, too, for the airlock combination was virtually noiseless and Jonner could open it from the outside. Jonner was unarmed, but Kraag had no hankering for a hand-to-hand fight with the powerfully built captain inside the personnel sphere. Because the air would swish out of the lock instantly if Jonner opened it, Kraag had to wear a spacesuit.

He tried to talk to Jonner several times, but got no answer. Toward dawn, Kraag dozed off, only to be brought awake with a start by Jonner's voice in his earphones.

"Good morning, Kraag," said Jonner. There was iron in his voice. "Have a good night's sleep?"

"About as good as yours, I'd say," retorted Kraag, wishing he could get his hands inside his helmet to rub his eyes.

"I slept fine. Found me a good foxhole just beyond the horizon."

"Damn you, Jonner! Where are you now?"

"Go on and have breakfast, Kraag. I'm far enough away for you to see me. Take a look."

Kraag peered out of the uppermost airlock ports, one by one. They slanted at a bad angle, but through one of them he made out Jonner, standing half a mile away. Uncannily, as though he could see Kraag's helmet at the port, Jonner waved.

Kraag was afraid to take off the spacesuit now because the supply deck had no ports and Jonner could get to the ship in a hurry if he wanted to. He took off the helmet, though, and went up to the center deck. Hurriedly, he opened the cover of the port in the direction he had seen Jonner. Jonner was still in the same place, sitting down.

Kraag heated breakfast and ate it with an eye on the port. Jonner didn't move. Kraag felt better when he had eaten, and went up to the control room.

"Why don't you give it up and come on in, Jonner?" he asked. "The oxygen in that suit's not good for more than another 15 hours."

"That's where you're wrong, Kraag, and that's what's so tragic about your murdering Stein," said Jonner quietly. "You either forgot that we carried oxygen instead of nitric acid as the fuel oxidizer this trip or, being an engineer, you didn't think of it except as fuel.

"There's enough oxygen in the tanks scattered over the landscape to keep a dozen men alive until the rescue ship gets here. It's hard for me to get at, but I've already found I can manage it."

Kraag was profoundly shocked. For a moment the enormity of what he had done in killing Stein almost overwhelmed him. It had been completely unnecessary.

Then his self-reproach turned into a growing anger against Jonner. Jonner was always so reticent, always required his orders to be obeyed without explanation. During the whole argument about taking an orbit around the asteroid, during the whole time it had taken to spiral down to a crash, he had not told Kraag how he expected them to stay alive until they were rescued.

Kraag hadn't asked him, of course. Kraag had assumed Jonner was thinking in terms of his own figures.

"I'm sorry about Stein," said Kraag, and meant it. "But it can't be helped now, Jonner. There's enough air for both of us, if you'll keep your mouth shut when the rescue ship gets here."

"If I promised, I still wouldn't trust you and you wouldn't trust me. No, Kraag. The only way it'll work is for you to come out unarmed and let me go in and get the guns. Then I'll lock you in the control room till the rescue ship gets here."

"One of us is a fool, Jonner, and you seem to think it's me. I'm not going to burn for murder. I've got the whip hand. You may have oxygen, but you've got to have food and water, too."

Jonner laughed, without humor.

"I've got enough of that for three Earth days and I can last longer," he said. "Before that time, I'll come and get you, Kraag. Don't go to sleep!"

Kraag cursed and switched off the loudspeaker. But he kept an eye on Jonner through the glassite. Always, he had to watch Jonner--or stay on guard in the airlock.

If there were only some way to lock Jonner out! But the only real lock was on the control room, and a man couldn't live in the control room with an enemy below who could cut the water and oxygen lines.

Kraag would have to sleep some time. Jonner couldn't know when, but Jonner already was seven hours sleep up on him. Jonner could pick his own time to slip up to the sphere under cover of darkness, he could pick his own time to come through the lock. Maybe Kraag would be awake and could burn him down--but maybe not.

There was only one thing to do. He'd have to take the attack to Jonner.

* * * * *

Still watching Jonner through every port he passed, always watching Jonner, Kraag hung a heat-gun on one of the hooks at his spacesuit's belt. He went back below, put the helmet on, and went out through the airlock.

The shadow of the sphere stretched away toward his left. He was in sunlight.

Jonner, still in the same spot, got to his feet but made no move to approach.

"Welcome to the great outdoors," said Jonner.

"I'm going to get you, Jonner," said Kraag grimly. "One way or another, I'm going to get you."

He moved toward Jonner. Each step was a long, floating leap and it was hard to stay balanced before landing. Jonner moved, not away from him but sidewise.

Kraag stopped. The effective range of the heat-gun was no more than 100 feet. If he tried to get close enough to Jonner to use it, Jonner could circle and get to the personnel sphere.

There were the oxygen tanks, the big ones used for fuel. If Kraag could get to them and burn them open, Jonner couldn't last long outside. But they were scattered pretty far from the personnel sphere. Jonner would get to the sphere for sure if he tried that.

"Okay, Jonner, I know when I'm licked," said Kraag. "Come on in."

"I'm not too far away to see the gun, Kraag."

"I'll take it back to the sphere and leave it."

"Why not just toss it away?"

"And have you beat me to it and get the drop on me? We'll leave the guns in the sphere and I'll meet you on even terms."

"I'll believe it when I see it."

Kraag went back to the sphere. He couldn't stand in shadow without looking suspicious, but he took the heat-gun from his belt ostentatiously and swung it in an arc, apparently tossing it through the open outer lock. Instead, he held onto it and hung it by the trigger guard to a belt hook at the back of his suit.

"I'm all clean, Jonner. Come on up," he invited.

"Let's see the hooks, Kraag," said Jonner.

Kraag held his arms aloft, wriggling the empty steel fingers of the spacesuit. Jonner came toward him, floating high above the surface with each step. At just about the extreme range of the heat-gun, he stopped. Kraag kept his arms outspread, but tensed himself.

"Clean, so far," said Jonner drily. "Now turn around, Kraag."

"And have you jump me from behind? Not hardly."

"Gun on the back hook, eh, Kraag?"

"Damn you, Jonner!" Kraag reached behind him for the gun and at the same time leaped toward Jonner. Jonner, ready, jumped back, and Jonner was a more powerful man. Handling a heat-gun with the hand-hooks of a spacesuit is awkward business, and by the time Kraag could bring the weapon to bear on Jonner and press the trigger, Jonner's distance was such that the ray obviously did no worse than make things uncomfortably warm for him.

"I didn't think that surrender rang true," commented Jonner. "If you'd been level, you'd have tossed away the heat-gun."

Then Jonner revealed that he was not entirely weaponless. As he hit the surface, his arm moved in an arc and a good-sized rock came hurtling through space toward Kraag.

Kraag writhed frantically, two feet off the ground, and the stone missed him by inches. Kraag landed on his side and bounced again. Jonner hit once more and hurled another rock. Evidently he was armed with several of them. This one ricocheted off the ground near Kraag just as Kraag finally slid to rest.

Getting to his feet and turning to flee was agonizingly slow, when every frantic movement lifted him off the ground. Another stone came sailing by, to strike the personnel sphere and rebound at an angle, before Kraag could jump back, away from Jonner.

Perspiring and panting, he clambered hastily back into the safety of the airlock.

Jonner's rocks were a better weapon than a heat-gun, Kraag realized. They weighed only a fraction of an ounce and Jonner could fling them an amazing distance. But their mass was just the same as ever, and a jagged one could rip a fatal hole in a spacesuit. He had no intention of engaging in a stone-throwing duel with Jonner, in which Jonner would be at least on equal terms with him.

On the other hand, it was even more imperative than before that he eliminate Jonner as soon as possible. A rock could be a deadly weapon if Jonner got inside the sphere, too.

At any rate, there was no point in concealing Stein's body from Jonner any longer and Kraag couldn't take chances on it polluting the atmosphere of the sphere. He dragged the corpse from the food compartment, down to the airlock, and pushed it out onto the surface of Ceres. The body settled stiffly to the ground a few feet away.

Kraag removed his helmet and hand-hooks, went back up to the control room and settled himself to watch Jonner. Jonner walked around freely, periodically hurling rocks at the sphere. The rocks bounced off without damage, but every time one of them hit the hull, the sound of it rang through the sphere.

Kraag switched on the communications system.

"Do you have to do that?" he demanded in irritation. "It's not doing you any good."

"Keeping me in practice," replied Jonner cheerfully. "I developed a pretty good arm throwing grenades in the Charax Uprising."

Jonner was a veteran of that brief but savage war on Mars, and sometimes reminisced about it. It was there he had developed his preference for the old-style projectile pistol over the heat-gun.

* * * * *

Kraag's eyes lingered on Jonner's pistol, hanging in the rack with the heat-guns, and slowly an idea spread through his mind. The heat-gun range was the same anywhere, but the range of a projectile weapon should be greater here than on Mars or Earth. Its range should be far greater than Jonner's rocks.

Kraag took it from the rack and turned it over in his hand, studying it. He wasn't sure of its principle, but thought it was something on the order of rocket fuel. It should fire without an atmosphere around it.

There were some figures stamped on the barrel: "COLT 1985, Cal-.45, MV-1100, Ser-45617298." Kraag puzzled over them. He knew the first one was the make and year and the last undoubtedly was the serial number. He deduced that "MV-1100" probably was a figure showing the relationship between the projectile's mass and velocity. But it had been a long time since projectile weapons were common.

He called on the memory of a demonstration of the weapon Jonner had given his companions once on Mars. There was something that had to be done to prepare it for firing. Holding it in his right hand, Kraag grasped the barrel with his left. After a moment of hesitant tugging, he hit the right movement and the whole outer casing of the barrel slid backward and clicked. It snapped back into position as Kraag released it, and he remembered.

The gun was primed now. All he had to do was press the trigger and it would fire. It would automatically prime itself again after firing. It would fire each time he pressed the trigger now, until it exhausted its projectiles.

Exultant, he laid it carefully in a contour chair, where it wouldn't slide out. He put his helmet back on and replaced the hand-hooks of his spacesuit.

He looked out several ports before he found Jonner. The captain was not more than 150 feet away, casually lobbing rocks at the sphere.

Kraag picked up Jonner's pistol and made his way down to the airlock. He emerged and walked around the sphere to the side where he had located Jonner.

Jonner was moving away now, though he couldn't have known Kraag was coming out. He was about 300 feet away--too far for a heat-gun, but certainly within range of the projectile weapon. He seemed to be headed toward one of the big fuel tanks.

Kraag levelled the pistol toward Jonner and pulled the trigger. To his astonishment, he was hurtled backward, heels over head.

The kick of a .45 on an asteroid is pretty powerful. Kraag must have bounced 50 feet backward over the terrain before he slid to rest on his stomach. But he held on to the pistol--and, since he never had a chance to release the pressure of his hand-hook on the trigger, it did not fire again.

When he struggled upright, Jonner was standing at the edge of the fuel tank, watching him.

"Using my gun now, eh, Kraag?" Jonner said. "You'd better stick to weapons you know something about."

With that, he disappeared behind the fuel tank.

Kraag got to his feet and advanced confidently. His heat-gun was still hanging at his belt if he got close enough to Jonner to use it, and he could fire the projectile weapon at Jonner when Jonner was out of heat-gun range.

He was learning. One had to point the projectile gun accurately before firing. It couldn't be swung around and focused while pressing the trigger, like a heat-gun. He might miss a few times, but he ought to be able to hit Jonner at least once before the ammunition was exhausted. Once should be enough.

Heat-gun ready in his left hand, projectile gun in his right, Kraag circled the fuel tank. Keeping it between them, Jonner had headed straight for the horizon, running in long, shallow leaps. He was at least half a mile away.

Kraag pointed the projectile pistol and pulled the trigger. Nothing happened. Then he realized that he had never released the pressure of his hand-hook on the trigger after firing the first time. He let up on it and pressed it down.

And again Kraag was hurled backward, but this time he was smashed against the fuel tank and rebounded forward, falling on his face. By the time he reached his feet again, Jonner had vanished over the horizon.

Cursing softly, Kraag made his way back to the personnel sphere. He had hoped to get Jonner with that shot. He was very sleepy, and now he was faced with another night on guard.

He entered the airlock, pushed himself gently upward to catch the rungs of the metal ladder and turned the wheel of the airlock's inner door.

Nothing happened. The door did not open.

Fear gripped him like a paralyzing hand. For a moment he thought Jonner had managed to get to the sphere ahead of him and somehow had locked him out. But that was impossible. Then he thought the inner door might be jammed, and he and Jonner locked out together.

He glanced frantically below him, then broke into relieved laughter. He had left the outer airlock door open. As a safety measure against the sphere's accidentally losing its air, neither door would open unless the other was shut.