Chapter 8

"But then the Patrol ship intercepted us and told us we were under arrest. And when we landed, they let Tawney drive off without even questioning him."

"The least we could do, under the circumstances," the Major said.

"Well, I'd like to know why," Greg broke in bitterly. "Why pick on us? We've just been telling you...."

"Yes, yes, I heard every word of it," the Major sighed. "If you knew the trouble ... oh, what's the use? I've spent the last three solid hours talking myself hoarse, throwing in every bit of authority I could muster and jeopardizing my position as Coordinator here, for the sole purpose of keeping you three idiots out of jail for a few hours."

"Jail!"

"That's what I said. The brig. The place they put people when they don't behave. You three are sitting on a nice, big powder keg right now, and when it blows I don't know how much of you is going to be left."

"Do you think we're lying?" Greg said.

"Do you know what you're charged with?" the Major snapped back.

"Some sort of nonsense about piracy...."

"Plus kidnapping. Plus murder. To say nothing of totally disabling a seventeen-million-dollar orbit-ship and placing the lives of four hundred crewmen in jeopardy." The Major picked up a sheet of paper from his desk. "According to Merrill Tawney's statement, the three of you hijacked a company scout-ship that chanced to be scouting in the vicinity of your father's claim. Your attack was unprovoked and violent. Everybody on Mars knows you were convinced that Jupiter Equilateral was responsible for your father's death." He looked up. "In the absence of any evidence, I might add, although I did my best to tell you that." He rattled the report-sheet. "All right. You took the scout-ship by force, with the pilot at gunpoint, and made him home in on his orbit-ship. Then you proceeded to reduce that orbit-ship to a leaking wreck, although Tawney tried to reason with you and even offered you amnesty if you would desist. By the time the crew stopped shooting each other in the dark ... fifteen of them subsequently expired, it says here ... you had stolen another scout-ship and kidnapped Tawney for the purpose of extorting a confession out of Jupiter Equilateral, threatening him with torture if he did not comply...." The Major dropped the paper to the desk.

Johnny Coombs picked it up, looked at it owlishly, and put it back again. "Pretty large operation for three men, Major," he said.

The Major shrugged. "You were armed. That orbit-ship was registered as a commercial vessel. It had no reason to expect a surprise attack, and had no way to defend itself."

"They were armed to the teeth," Greg said disgustedly. "Why don't you send somebody out to look?"

"Oh, I could, but why waste the time and fuel? There wouldn't be any weapons aboard."

"Then how do they explain the fact that the _Scavenger_ was blown to bits and Dad's orbit-ship ripped apart from top to bottom?"

"Details," the Major said. "Mere details. I'm sure that the company's lawyers can muddy the waters quite enough so that little details like that are overlooked. Particularly with a sympathetic jury and a judge that plays along."

He stood up and ran his hand through his hair. "All right, granted I'm painting the worst picture possible ... but I'm afraid that's the way it's going to be. I believe your story, don't worry about that. I know why you went out there to the Belt and I can't really blame you, I suppose. But you were asking for trouble, and that's what you got. Frankly, I am amazed that you ever returned to Mars, and how you managed to make rubble of an orbit-ship with a crew of four hundred men trying to stop you is more than I can comprehend. But you did it. All right, fine. You were justified; they attacked you, held you prisoner, threatened you. Fine. They'd have cut your throats in another few hours, perhaps. Fine. I believe you. But there's one big question that you can't answer, and unless you can no court in the Solar System will listen to you."

"What question?" Tom said.

"The question of motives," the Major replied. "You had plenty of motive for doing what Tawney says you did. But what motive did Jupiter Equilateral have, if your story is true?"

"They wanted to get what Dad found, out in the Belt."

"Ah, yes, that mysterious bonanza that Roger Hunter found. I was afraid that was what you'd say. And it's the reason that Jupiter Equilateral is going to win this fight, and you're going to lose it."

"I don't think I understand," Tom said slowly.

"I mean that I'm going to have to testify against you," the Major said. "_Because your father didn't find a thing in the Asteroid Belt_, and I happen to know it."

* * * * *

"It's been a war," the Major said later, "a dirty vicious war with no holds barred and no quarter given. Not a shooting war, of course, nothing out in the open ... but a war just the same, with the highest stakes of any war in history.

"It didn't look like a war, at first," the Major went on. "Back when the colonies were being built, nobody really believed that anything of value would come of them ... scientific outposts, perhaps, places for laboratories and observatories, not much more. The colonies were placed under United Nations control. Nobody argued about it.

"And then things began to change. There was wealth out here ... and opportunities for power. With the overpopulation at home, Earth was looking more and more to Mars and Venus for a place to move ... not tiny colonies, but places for millions of people. And as Mars grew, Jupiter Equilateral grew."

"But it was just a mining company," Tom said.

"At first it was, but then its interests began to expand. The company accumulated wealth, unbelievable wealth, and it developed many friends. Very soon it had friends back on Earth fighting for it, and the United Nations found itself fighting to stay on Mars."

"I don't see why," Tom said. "The company already has half the mining claims in the Belt...."

"They aren't interested in the mining," the Major said. "They have a much longer-range goal than that. The men behind Jupiter Equilateral are looking ahead. They know that someday Earthmen are going to have to go to the stars for colonies ... it won't be a matter of choice after a while, they'll _have_ to go. Well, Jupiter Equilateral's terms are very simple. They're perfectly willing to let the United Nations control things on Earth. All they want is control of everything else. Mars, if they can drive us out. Venus too, if it ever proves up for colonies. And if they can gain control of the ships that leave our Solar System for the stars, they can build an empire, and they know it."

They were silent for a moment. Then Johnny Coombs said, "Doesn't anybody on Earth know about this?"

"There are some who know ... but they don't see the danger. They think of Jupiter Equilateral as just another big company. So far U.N. control of Mars and Venus has held up, even though the pressure on the legislators back on Earth has been getting heavier and heavier. Jupiter Equilateral won the greatest fight in its history when they limited U.N. jurisdiction to Mars, and kept us out of the Belt. And now they hope to convince the lawmakers that we're incompetent to administer the Martian colonies and keep peace out here. If they succeed, we'll be called home in nothing flat; we've had to fight just to stay."

The Major spread his hands helplessly. "Like I said, it's been a war. Our only hope was to prove that the company was using piracy and murder to gain control of the asteroids. We had to find a way to smash the picture they've been painting of themselves back on Earth as a big, benevolent organization interested only in the best for Earth colonists on the planets. We had to expose them before they had the Earth in chains ... not now, maybe not even a century from now, but sometime, years from now, when the breakthrough to the stars comes and Earthmen discover that if they want to leave Earth they have to pay toll...."

"They could never do that!" Greg protested.

"They're doing it, son. And they're winning. We have been searching desperately for a way to fight back, and that was where your father came in. He could see the handwriting, he knew what was happening. That was why he broke with the company and tried to organize a competing force before it was too late. And it was why he died in the Belt. He knew I couldn't send an agent out there without unquestionable evidence of major crime of some sort or another. But a private citizen could go out there, and if he happened to be working with the U.N. hand in glove, nobody could do anything about it."

"Then Dad was a U.N. agent?"

"Oh, not officially. There's not a word in the records. If I were forced to testify under oath, I would have to deny any connection. But unofficially, he went out there to lay a trap."

The Major told them then. It had been an incredible risk that Roger Hunter had taken, but the decision had been his. The plan was simple: to involve Jupiter Equilateral in a case of claim-jumping and piracy that would hold up in court, pressed by a man who would not be intimidated and could not be bought out. Roger Hunter had made a trip to the Belt and come back with stories ... very carefully planted in just the right ears ... of a fabulous strike. He knew that Jupiter Equilateral had jumped a hundred rich claims in the past, forcing the independent miners to agree, frightening them into silence or disposing of them with "accidents."

But this was one claim they were not going to jump. The U.N. cooperated, helping him spread the story of his Big Strike until they were certain that Jupiter Equilateral would go for the bait. Then Roger Hunter had returned to the Belt, with a U.N. Patrol ship close by in case he needed help.

"We thought it would be enough," the Major said unhappily. "We were wrong, of course. At first nothing happened ... not a sign of a company ship, nothing. Your father contacted me finally. He was ready to give up. Somehow they must have learned that it was a trap. But they had just been careful, was all. They waited until our guard was down, and then moved in fast and hit hard."

He sank down in his seat behind the desk, regarding the Hunter twins sadly. "You know the rest. Perhaps you can see now why I tried to keep you from going out there. There was no proof to uncover and no bonanza lode for you to find. There never was a bonanza lode."

The twins looked at each other, and then at the Major. "Why didn't you tell us?" Greg said.

"Would you have listened? Would telling you have kept you from going out there? There was no point to telling you, I knew you would have to find out for yourselves, however painfully. But what I'm telling you now is the truth."

"As far as it goes," Tom Hunter said. "But if this is really the truth, there's one thing that doesn't fit into the picture."

Slowly Tom pulled the gun case from his pack and set it down on the Major's desk. "It doesn't explain what Dad was doing with this."

13. Pinpoint in Space

Tom knew now that it was the right thing to do. There was no question, after the Major's story, of what Dad had been doing out in the Belt at the time he had been killed. He had been doing a job that was more important to him than asteroid mining ... but he had found something more important than his own life, and had no chance to send word of what he had found back to Major Briarton on Mars. That had been the unforeseeable part of the trap.

But now, of course, the Major had to know.

The Mars Coordinator looked at the thing on the desk for a long moment before he reached out to touch it. The bright metal gleamed in the light, pale gray, lustrous. The Major picked it up, balanced it expertly in his hand, and a puzzled frown clouded his face. He examined it minutely.

"What is this thing?" he said.

"Suppose you tell us," Johnny Coombs said from across the room.

"It looks like a gun."

"That's what it is, all right."

"You've fired it?"

"Yes ... but I wouldn't fire it in here, if I were you," Johnny said. "You were wondering how we wrecked Tawney's orbit-ship so thoroughly. That's your answer right there." He told about the hole in the bulkhead, the way the ship's generators had melted like clay under the powerful blast of the weapon.

The Major could hardly control his excitement. "Where did you get it?" he asked, turning to Tom.

"From the space pack that you turned over to us. I didn't even look at it, until we needed a gun in a hurry. I just assumed it was Dad's revolver."

"And your father found it somewhere in the Belt," the Major said softly. He looked at the weapon again, shaking his head. "There isn't any such gun," he said finally. "These things you say it could do ... they would require energy enough to break down the cohesive forces of molecules. There isn't any way we know of to harness that kind of energy and channel it in a hand weapon. Nobody on Earth...."

He broke off and stared at them.

"That's right," Johnny said. "Nobody on Earth."

"You mean ... extraterrestrial?"

"There isn't any other answer," Johnny said. "_Look_ at the thing, Major. _Feel_ it. Does it feel like it was made for a human hand? It doesn't fit, it doesn't balance, you have to hold it with both hands to aim it...."

"_But where did it come from?_" the Major said. "We've never had visitors from another star system ... not in the course of recorded history. And we know that Earthmen are the only intelligent creatures in our Solar System."

"You mean that they're the only ones _now_," Tom said.

"Or any other time."

"We don't know that, for sure," Tom said.

"Look, we've explored Venus, Mars, all the major satellites. If there had ever been intelligence on any of them, we'd have known it."

"Maybe there was a planet that Earthmen haven't explored," Tom said. "Even Dad tried to tell us that. The quotation from Kepler that he scribbled down in his log ... 'Between Jupiter and Mars I will put a planet.' Why would Dad have written that? Unless he had suddenly discovered proof that there _had_ been a planet there?"

"You mean this ... this gun," the Major said.

"And whatever else he found."

"But there's never been any proof of that theory ... not even a hint of proof."

"Maybe Dad found proof. There are hundreds of thousands of asteroid fragments out there in the Belt, and only a few hundred of them have ever been examined by men."

On the desk the strange weapon stared up at them. Evidence, mute evidence, and yet its very existence said more than a thousand words. It was there. It could not be denied.

And someone ... or _something_ ... had made it.

Slowly the Major pulled himself to his feet. "It must have happened after his last message to me," he said. "It wasn't part of the scheme we had set up, but he made a strike just the same ... an archeological strike ... and this gun was part of it." He picked up the weapon, turned it over in his hand. "But it was days after that last message before his signal went off, and the Patrol ship moved in."

"It makes sense," Johnny Coombs said. "He found the gun, and something more."

"Like what?"

"I wouldn't even guess," Johnny said. "A planet with a race of creatures intelligent enough and advanced enough to make a weapon like that ... it could have been anything. But whatever it was, it must have scared him. He must have known that a company ship might turn up any minute ... so he hid whatever he had found, and all he dared to leave was a hint."

"And now it's vanished," the Major said. "The big flaw in the whole idea. My Patrol ship found nothing when it searched the region. You looked, and drew a blank. The company men scoured the area." He spread his hands helplessly. "You see, it just won't hold up, not a bit of it. Even with this gun, it won't hold up. We've got to find the answer."

"It's out there somewhere," Tom said doggedly. "It's got to be."

"But _where_? Don't you see that everything hangs on that one thing? If we could prove that your father found something just before he was killed, we could tear Jupiter Equilateral's case against you into shreds. We could charge them with piracy and murder, and make it stick. We could break their power once and for all ... but until we know what Roger Hunter found, we're helpless. They'll take you three to court, and I won't be able to stop them. And if you lose that case, it may mean the end of U.N. authority on Mars."

"Then there's just one thing to do," Johnny Coombs said. "We've got to find Roger Hunter's bonanza."

* * * * *

It was almost midnight when they left the Major's office, a gloomy trio, walking silently up the ramp to the Main Concourse, heading toward the living quarters.

They had been talking with the Major for hours, going over every facet of the story, wracking their brains for the answer ... but the answer had not come.

Roger Hunter had found something, and hidden it so well that three groups of searchers had failed to discover it. After seeing the gun, the Major was convinced that there had indeed been a discovery made. But whatever that discovery had been, it was gone as if it had never existed ... as if by some sort of magic it had been turned invisible, or conjured away to another part of the Solar System.

Finally, they had given up, at least for the moment. "It has to be there," the Major had said wearily. "It hasn't vanished, or miraculously ceased to exist. We know he was working on one claim, one asteroid. There were no other asteroids in the region ... and even the ones within suicide radius have been searched."

"It's there, all right," Tom said. "We're missing something, that's all."

"But what? Asteroids have stable orbits. Nobody can just make one disappear...."

They had called it a night, finally.

Once home they found more bad news waiting. There were two messages on the recordomat. The first was an official summons to appear before the United Nations Board of Investigations at 9:00 the following morning to answer "certain charges placed against the above named persons by the Governing Board of Jupiter Equilateral Mining Industries, and by one Merrill Tawney, plaintiff, representing said Governing Board." They listened to the plastic record twice. Then Greg tossed it down the waste chute.

The other message was addressed to Greg, from the Commanding Officer of Project Star-Jump. The message was very polite and regretful; it was also very firm. The pressure of the work there, in his absence, made it necessary for the Project to suspend Greg on an indefinite leave of absence. Application for reinstatement could be made at a later date, but acceptance could not be guaranteed....

"Well, I might have expected it," Greg said, "after what the Major told us. The money for Star-Jump must have been coming from somewhere, and now we know where. The company probably figures to lay claim on any star-drive that's ever developed." He dropped the notice down the chute, and laughed. "I guess I really asked for it."

"You mean I pushed you into it," Tom said bitterly. "If I'd kept my big mouth shut at the very start of this thing, you'd have gone back to the Project and that would have been the end of it...."

* * * * *

Greg looked at him. "You big bum, do you think I really care?" He grinned. "Don't feel too guilty, Twin. We've been back to back on this one."

He pulled off his shirt and walked into the shower room. Johnny Coombs was already stretched out on the sofa, snoring softly.

Quite suddenly the room seemed hot and stuffy, oppressive. He couldn't make his thoughts come straight. There had been too much thinking, too much speculation. Tom stood up and slipped on his jacket.

He had to walk, to move about, to try to think. He slipped open the door, and started for the ramp leading to the Main Concourse.

There was an answer, somewhere.

He walked on along the steel walkways, trying to clear his mind of the doubts and questions that were plaguing him. At first he just wandered, but presently he realized that he had a destination in mind.

He went up a ramp and across the lobby of the United Nations Administration Building. He took a spur off the main corridor, and came to a doorway with a small circular staircase beyond it. At the bottom of the stairs he opened a steel door and stepped into the Map Room.

It was a small darkened amphitheater, with a curving row of seats along one wall. On either side were film viewers and micro-readers. And curving around on the far wall, like a huge parabolic mirror, was the Map.

Tom had been here many times before, and always he gasped in wonder when he saw the awesome beauty of the thing. Stepping into the Map Room was like stepping into the center of a huge cathedral. Here was the glowing, moving panorama of the Solar System spread out before him in a breath-taking three-dimensional image. Standing here before the Map it seemed as if he had suddenly become enormous and omnipotent, hanging suspended in the blackness of space and staring down at the Solar System from a vantage point a million miles away.

Once, Dad had told him, there had been a great statue in the harbor of Old New York which had been a symbol of freedom for strangers coming to that city from across the sea, and a welcome for countrymen returning home. And someday, he knew, this view of the Solar System would be waiting to greet Earthmen making their way home from distant stars. The Map was only an image, a gift from the United Nations to the colonists on Mars, but it reproduced the Solar System in the minutest detail that astronomers could make possible.

In the center, glowing like a thing alive, was the Sun, the hub of the magnificent wheel. Around it, moving constantly in their orbits, were the planets, bright points of light on the velvet blackness of the screen. Each orbit was computed and held on the screen by the great computer in the vault below.

But there was more on the Map than the Sun and the planets, with their satellites. Tiny green lights marked the Earth-Mars and the Earth-Venus orbit-ships, moving slowly across the screen. Beyond Mars, a myriad of tiny lights projected on the screen, the asteroids. Without the magnifier Tom could identify the larger ones ... Ceres, on the opposite side of the Sun from Mars now as it moved in its orbit; smaller Juno, and Pallas, and Vesta....

For each asteroid which had been identified, and its orbit plotted, there was a pinpoint of light on the screen. For all its beauty, the Map had a very useful purpose ... the registry and identification of asteroid claims among the miners of Mars. Each asteroid registered as a claim showed up as a red pinpoint; unclaimed asteroids were white. But even with the advances of modern astronomy only a small percentage of the existing asteroids were on the map, for the vast majority had never been plotted.

Tom moved up to the Map and activated the magnifier. Carefully he focussed down on the section of the Asteroid Belt they had visited so recently. Dozens of pinpoints sprang to view, both red and white, and beneath each red light the claim-number neatly registered. Tom peered at the section, searching until he found the number of Roger Hunter's last claim.

It was quite by itself, not a part of an asteroid cluster. He stepped up the magnification, peered at it closely. There were a dozen other pinpoints, all unclaimed, within a ten-thousand-mile radius....

But near it, nothing....

No hiding place.

And then, suddenly, he knew the answer. He stared at the Map, his heart pounding in his throat. He cut the magnification, scanning a wide area. Then he widened the lens still further, and checked the coordinates at the bottom of the viewer.

He knew that he was right. He _had_ to be right. But this was no wild dream, this was something that could be proved beyond any question of error.