Part 1

THE OLD WAY

By MILTON LESSER

A man could walk around the tiny asteroid in the space of a few hours. But Jerry had only minutes, to find and use--an invisible weapon!

[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Imagination Stories of Science and Fantasy November 1951 Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

Like I expected, the fairgrounds were crowded with thousands of the drifter-families waiting for the big blast-off tomorrow. They thronged about uncertainly, in anxious little knots, chattering friendly, meaningless things, making fast friends who would be forgotten in the bustle and competition, after blast-off.

Gramps stood apart from all this, and when he saw me he came running through the mob on spindly legs, waving his arms frantically so that I wouldn't miss him. As if I would. If there was anything more incongruous here on the Martian landscape, anything that seemed more out of place than did old Gramps, I didn't see it. Two hundred years ago in another homestead rush, maybe he would have fit. The only thing I know about that is what I read in books, but I could picture Gramps with his battered old corncob pipe and his wizened face, leading a team of mules or oxen or whatever animals they used.

"Hey, Jerry," he called. "Hey, kid, I got it!"

I'm no kid. I'm twenty-seven, six feet two, and I probably weigh twice as much as Gramps does, wringing wet. But that's the way he was.

"Where's Clair?" I asked him. I hadn't seen my wife in a month. She had gone to the Martian Fair with Gramps to put in a bid for one of the old derelict ships, and now I had come here to join them, with a dime, a quarter and a crumpled dollar bill hardly filling the emptiness of my jumper-pocket.

"That girl!" He whistled. "She's back at the ship now, cleaning and polishing, putting everything together with spit and string so you wouldn't know the old Karden Cruiser."

I felt something gnawing away, deep inside my stomach, and it wasn't just that I was hungry. "The _what_?" I demanded.

* * * * *

Gramps smiled, and right then I could have seen him rocking on a chair on a little porch, with a garden full of rose bushes and crab grass. I could have seen him anyplace but here with Clair and me, on the eve of the great blast-off for the asteroid belt. "The _what_?" I said again.

"The old Karden Cruiser, Jerry. Neat little job. And cheap--they almost gave it away. You shoulda seen those durned fools. No one else bid for it, I had it all to myself, first bid."

I tried to be patient. "You didn't expect anyone else to bid for _that_, did you?"

He had a hurt look on his face. "Why not? A good ship, kid. When I was your age, younger, I went to Venus on one. I can remember--"

"That's it," I told him. "Fifty years ago the Karden might have been a good ship, but not now. Not now, Gramps. It's as obsolete as a pea-shooter. Will it run?"

"You're durned tootin' it'll run. What do you think I paid? Go ahead, guess."

Something was still gnawing at my stomach. Gramps had had three hundred dollars to purchase our ship and equipment. You could stretch three hundred dollars a long way if you bought wisely these days. "You tell me," I said.

"Hundred and fifty. 'Nother hundred and a quarter for supplies--"

There's some old saying about letting old dogs lie or not crying over spilled milk or some such thing, but anyway, I reminded him, "For another twenty-five or thirty dollars you could have got a Wilson '13, maybe even a twelve-bank Carpenter."

"Couldn't," Gramps said. "Kid, let me tell you, I saw the nicest _gui_-tar. One of them old Martian types with eight strings, you know. Twenty-five bucks...."

I looked at him a long time without saying anything. When you're down to just a few dollars in these depression years, everything counts, every last penny. But my folks had died in the panic and riots of '24 and Gramps had reared me since almost before the time I could reach the wart on his knee.

"Let's go look at our Karden," I said.

* * * * *

Gramps was beaming proudly. "There she is," he told me. "Section G, Row 14, Ship 7. Beauty, eh?"

As far as you looked, you couldn't see anything but the old ships, all lined up, row on row of them. Some glistening with new paint if they had been bought as early as yesterday and sprayed today, others still dull and cracked with caked jet-slag and the erosion of a dozen atmospheres, all with people scurrying in and out of them, getting new faces and new entrails for blast-off tomorrow.

The Karden squatted in row 14, a short, stubby grub-like boat whose jet-slag completely hid the original paint job. But I didn't want to say another thing about it. I just hoped the Karden could get us where we were going, even if it burped and hiccupped like a drunken driver all the way.

Clair opened the lock and I saw her red hair framed against the dark interior of the ship, and I hardly remembered Gramps was there. We'd been married two months, and separated for half that time, with me getting my last month's paycheck in New York so I'd have money for the liner-fare to Canal City.

Clair cried, "Welcome aboard ship. Captain Brooks, wel.... Umm-m, Captain, that was nice.... Umm-m, again...."

Gramps coughed. "You two gonna stand there mooning over each other all afternoon, or do we get some work done?"

"It's just about all finished," Clair told him. She snuggled up close once more and then skipped out of my arms, leading us through the lock and into the Karden.

It looked more like the inside of a packing crate than a spaceship. Ideally, the old Kardens were two-man cruisers, at a time when you strapped yourself into a bunk and just about remained there until you hit atmosphere. Now Clair had readied three makeshift bunks, and our supplies stood piled tight against the bulkheads and as high as the ceiling in several places. I had to take Clair's word that the ship's old hull was sealed and could be pressurized--there wasn't enough space for me to see for myself.

The trip had left me a bit bleary, and Clair, who had worked all day, yawned a little while she opened a can of beans and bacon for supper. We sat around against the packing cases and we smoked. Then I checked a few things which remained to be checked, and I suggested we turn in. Clair nodded, but Gramps said no, he had a little unfinished business yet.

I needed sleep, every bit of it I could get, for the grueling run tomorrow. I leaned back and stretched out, with my feet sticking out a good half a foot beyond the edge of the bunk, and then I heard Gramps' unfinished business.

The nasal twang of the eight-stringed Martian guitar blended with the dubious qualities of Gramps' voice:

He'll hug and he'll kiss you And tell you more lies Than the cross ties on the railroad Or the stars in the sky....

* * * * *

At an hour before sunrise we tuned in our radio and heard Governor Eddington's voice cut through the static. "Ladies and gentlemen," he said, "it is now exactly fifty-nine minutes and thirty-seven seconds until blast-off. Let me review the rules for you, to avoid any unpleasantness later.

"One. No ship is to leave before the signal. Any ship which does so is automatically disqualified, and your claim will not be recognized.

"Two. Any asteroid is fair prey, but the government strongly recommends that you consider two items. First, those asteroids which lie within the belt itself and which do not have overly eccentric orbits are preferable since the government supply ships will visit them much more frequently. Second, you will benefit by selecting an asteroid with one or more of the old abandoned mining domes, for two reasons. With slight repairs you can live within the domes, and also their existence assures you of profitable mineral material.

"Three. Vesta, the government base within the Belt, is not to be landed upon.

"Four. Each ship is restricted to one asteroid, and once your selection is made it must be a permanent one.

"Five. No more than one ship can claim a given asteroid, and the automatic chronometer within each ship will radio the moment of landing to Vesta, thus taking care of any priority claims.

"Six. Claim jumping will be considered by the Federal Worlds Government as an act of piracy and will be punished accordingly.

"Seven. In the event that an asteroid is abandoned for any reason, a new ship may claim it at once, and the departing ship can claim no other asteroid.

"If you have any questions, relay them to your Section Official in the fifty-five minutes which remain. Good luck to all of you...."

The rules were thorough, all right. This could turn out to be a two-way proposition which would help both the Government and the families, and the Government wanted it to be a rousing success. In the first place, there were literally thousands of families, all waiting tensely for blast-off. None of them had been earning sufficient income, thanks to the depression following the final East-West war on Earth, and now it was hoped that they could earn their keep by mining the asteroids.

Further, I knew that the Government had been forced to abandon its mineral deposits on all the asteroids except Vesta, and now it could use the extra wealth from the silent mines which waited on a thousand little worlds in deep space between Mars and Jupiter.

* * * * *

I sat smoking cigarette after cigarette, until Clair reminded me that the supply wasn't infinite. She pored over our charts, studying the three or four asteroids which had seemed most promising, looking up with a smile now and then to watch Gramps strum his guitar and sing about a fly with a blue tail.

The radio barked, "Three minutes to blast-off!"

Outside, I could hear the roar of a thousand rocket engines tuning up, and a shroud of smoke and fire blanketed the field.

"Two minutes!"

"Hey, Gramps," I said. "Put down that banjo and strap yourself into a bunk. We're set to go--"

"It's a guitar," he told me. "A _gui_-tar. Okay, kid, plenty of time."

I stood up and helped Clair into her bunk, kissing her lightly on the lips. "I'm a little scared," she said.

"Don't be silly. Nothing to be afraid of, honey." I was glad she couldn't feel me trembling.

Gramps was next, and I saw to it that his straps were fastened properly, then I sat down again in the pilot-chair, buckling a heavy leather belt across my thighs.

"Thirty seconds!"

I remember wondering vaguely if the Karden could get us to the Belt in one piece, and not hours behind every other ship. Then a shrill whistle outside was going "beep-beep-beep!" and I pulled the firing lever back all the way.

* * * * *

I grinned at Clair. "How do you like weighing exactly nothing?"

"You always told me I was a little too skinny, Captain Brooks, sir!"

Gramps scowled darkly. "Aw, you two kids are just making fun of the Karden, that's all. So what if we ain't got any gravity to speak of?"

The Karden had been built before each ship had its own little gravity unit, and no one had ever bothered to refit her. Clair had set up the guide-ropes right after acceleration, and now we floated around the crammed little cabin of the ship if we weren't careful. I had to admit Gramps was right, however. A little inconvenience like this didn't really matter, and the important thing was the fact that I could look out the port and see all the little motes of the thousand other ships gleaming in the sunlight like tiny space-born fireflies. The Karden was definitely holding its own.

"She's built for speed," Gramps told us. "In the old days there was no such thing as gravity-equalizers anyhow. This soft new generation...."

I winked at Clair and said, "Go on. Go play your fiddle, Gramps, and leave astrogation to the soft new generation."

"It's a banjo," he said. "I mean a _gui_-tar!"

Through the fore-port there was a haze of milky white which in a few hours would separate out into the thousands of little planetoids, each a tiny mote following its predestined course around the sun. Actually, some weren't so small. There was the big bulk of Ceres, with a diameter close to five-hundred miles, Vesta, and some of the other big babies, but for the most part the asteroids were tiny cosmic specks, less than a mile across.

"Okay," Clair said, "which one?"

That was a good question. You had to consider several things. First, some ships sped through space faster than our Karden, and they'd claim the really first-rate asteroids before we even reached the Belt. Of the second-raters, you had to consider what sort of mineral deposits they had, which would be the simplest to mine, and so forth.

"How's about 4270?" I said.

She checked the charts. "Ummm-m. Diameter, half a mile. Eccentricity of orbit, .17. Tilted to the ecliptic, .08. Two deserted mining domes, excellent condition. High-grade copper ore, no power tools needed. Sounds swell, Jerry."

Gramps stopped tuning his guitar. "Copper? Did I hear you say copper?" He snorted. "In my day men went prospecting for diamonds and other precious stones. Or for gold or pitchblend...."

"Ever find any?" I wanted to know.

"Well, no. But that doesn't mean I couldn't have. I was just too busy with the women on the outworlds--"

* * * * *

I looked at Clair and Clair looked at me. "4270," we said together, and when Clair checked the charts again she found that its present orbital position was just a few degrees off to the left.

"Two hours," I grunted. "Maybe three. If we're lucky, she'll be deserted...."

Clair smiled. "Two domes there, Jerry. Hah--a winter home and a summer home."

"Ain't no seasons on an asteroid," Gramps said very seriously. "Of course, if you two kids want, you can have one dome and I can have the other. Might be a good idea at that."

Clair told him not to be silly, that we couldn't get along without his guitar playing anyway, and then I was busy turning us the few degrees which would bring us into orbital conjunction with 4270. Ahead and all around us the little sparks which were spaceships fanned out in all directions, hurtling for their homesteads out here beyond Mars. It was nice to know that in just a few hours--if luck held--we'd be setting up home, living in our own place instead of the crowded barracks they set up for transient workers back on Earth. Nice? Hell, that's all we'd been thinking about since the announcement came through six months ago.

You really feel a small turn in an old Karden Cruiser rocketing outward at top speed. I could feel the gravity slamming me back down against the right-hand cushions of the pilot-chair, and I heard Gramps muttering something under his breath. With Clair, he had remained out of his bunk so that he could watch us blast in toward the asteroid, and now I could picture each of them grasping stanchions for all they were worth, peering out of the port.

I couldn't turn around to watch, of course. This landing on a tiny asteroid is tricky business. You can't just come in and set her down as easy as all that, floating in on the cushion of a five-hundred mile atmosphere.

The Karden came in slowly, at right angles to the orbit, and I saw that 4270 was an amorphous hunk of greenish rock, craggy and mountainous, if you call a ponderously turning rough-hewn slab of stone less than three thousand feet across mountainous.

* * * * *

I worked the studs slowly, feeling the breath go out of my lungs with each one, and soon we had executed a turn of almost ninety degrees, with 4270 tumbling along parallel to us now, just a few miles off in the void. You could feel its weak gravity, tugging like a child's fingers might tug at your overcoat as you ran in another direction.

I pulled up all the studs together, and I could breathe again. For a moment it seemed that 4270 wouldn't be strong enough to grab us and hold us, to reel us in slowly like a fisherman with a whopper at the end of his line. But her distance didn't increase, either--and we went spinning along through the void with her like a lopsided dumbbell, the tiny planetoid and the smaller Karden.

Soon 4270 grew in the fore-port, and quite suddenly she wasn't alongside us any longer, but down below. Every time you come in for planet-fall you get that sensation, but it never ceases to be strange--one moment you're heading toward something which is in front of you, the next you're hurtling down upon it headfirst.

Only with 4270's light gravity, we didn't exactly hurtle. It was more like floating, slowly at first and then faster, and then I decided I'd better give one short blast from our forerockets to brake the fall. I pressed the stud and waited. There was nothing. Momentarily, the fore-tubes had jammed. Of all the times....

I heard Clair calling my name, "Jerry, Jerry!" and then 4270's jagged tumbling surface expanded up all around us and the planetoid didn't look so small any more. It looked huge, it could have been Jupiter. There came a grinding bump, and I thought I could hear my safety strap snapping. The black-light dials of the instrument panel zoomed up at me from someplace far beyond 4270, it seemed, and I met them head first with a hundred rocket tubes snorting inside my skull.

* * * * *

"Good morning," Clair said cheerfully.

"Good _what_?" I answered, not so cheerful.

"You slept for twelve hours, so now it's morning."

"And durn you," Gramps chimed in. "You made one hell of a mess out of that instrument board. Why don't you be a mite careful...."

"Hey!" I sat up suddenly, and the pinwheels began to go around in my head like at the Martian Fair. Only bigger. Brighter. "After that crash, did the chronometer radio our landing here to Vesta?"

Clair nodded. "I thought of that. I radioed Vesta for confirmation, and it came. But right after that the radio went blooie, so now any music we hear will have to come from Gramps."

"I can oblige," Gramps said, running for his guitar, but I shook my head.

"Hold it! We've got a lot of work to do."

"Yeah, sure," said Gramps. "Only what did you think we was doing while you slept peaceful like a baby? We wasn't playing or singing, I'll tell you that."

Clair explained, "We were exploring, Jerry, after we made sure you were all right. We're less than a hundred yards from one of the domes here, and it looks darned good. Of course, I don't know yet if it can be pressurized or if there'll be any leaks, but I think we can answer yes to the first question and no to the second."

"What about the second dome?"

"Just about like this one, half a mile around the planet. Living quarters in both, plenty of abandoned equipment. You also can do open pit mining until you burrow clean through the planet. Rich lode, too, I'd say."

"Good," I told her, and I stood up a bit shakily and took her in my arms. I kissed her soundly.

"Jerry. Come on, stop. How can we get any work done this way, Jerry?... Ooo, Jerry...."

A few moments later, we all donned our spacesuits.

* * * * *

Effortlessly, we carried great stacks of supplies across 4270's crumbled, broken surface. The light gravity seemed hardly to exist at all, and I think I could have lifted the Karden Cruiser bodily if I desired. We made exactly two trips from the ship to the dome's airlock, our grav-plates clomping up and down soundlessly under the space-boots--ordinarily it'd have taken us a whole day to unload the Karden.

The horizon was a crazy distorted thing no more than three hundred feet away, where the planetoid's surface bent away almost at right angles, and right on the crest against the blackness of the sky rested our Karden. It looked pretty good on a place which Gramps told me Clair had called ghastly when they first stepped outside to explore, but the dome looked even better.

We stood within the lock now, and with a little squeal of delight which I picked up over our suit intercoms, Clair ran for one of the dull metal structures.

"Look in here," she called back over her shoulder, and I entered through the doorway just in time to see her unscrewing her helmet.

I yelled something loud over the intercom, I don't remember what, and then I flicked off the grav-plate button in the glove of my left hand and dove at Clair.

I caught her just above the mid-section and we went down in a heap. I switched on my grav-plates again.

"Just to show me how strong you are," she pouted, "you don't have to come flying through the air and landing on my belly. Lucky you weigh less than a pound without the grav-plates. Only quit trying to be funny."

"Who's trying to be funny? There's only two things wrong with taking your helmet off now. First, we haven't warmed this place, and you'd have frozen your pretty little head off in half a minute. Second, there's less air here than in a vacuum tube, and even after we turn on the air generators I want to examine the dome for possible leaks before you go around taking off your helmet. See?"

"Y-yes." She suddenly looked frightened. "It's just that the place looks so warm and homey, Jerry."

It did. We were standing in a foyer and I could see a couple of bedrooms off on the left, comfortable, all metal and metal fibre construction. Further down the hall there was a pantry and when Clair opened the door we found it to be full of canned goods, all glued to the shelf lightly against the tricks which could be played by the negligible gravity. Beyond that, we found a first-class, compact kitchen unit, and you should have seen Clair's eyes light up. If there's anything that makes a girl sparkle all over, it's the first sight of a good kitchen over which she's to have domain. You can be anywhere--New York or here on 4270 or out on Pluto, it wouldn't matter. She hardly heard a word I said for the next ten minutes, as I patiently lined up the things we must do first. Three things, primarily. We had to start the heating units within the dome, do the same for the air generators, and check the dome itself for any leakage.

* * * * *

Gramps took care of items one and two, and I felt an urge to take off my helmet without checking further. But that was silly. We had played the game right thus far, and it would be pointless to get into serious trouble over a thing like that.

So for the next fifteen minutes, Clair and I just knocked off our grav-plates and swarmed all over the inside of the dome like a couple of trained houseflies. From this height I could see almost half way around my side of the little planet, and Clair's line of vision probably came close to meeting mine someplace around the equator. And after a time I was satisfied that my side of the dome couldn't lose as much as a molecule of air.

"Tight as a thermos bottle," I called over the intercom. "How's yours, Clair?"

Her answer was a scream. It jarred me from my precarious hold on the under surface of the dome, and I went floating to the ground as light as a feather.

Clair still clung up on top yelling so loud that the intercom only reproduced the sound as garbled noise and static. And I couldn't do anything but float down slowly, with Gramps motioning me down with his arms, as if I could do anything to hurry.

Clair scrambled down her side of the dome and waited there next to Gramps, hands on hips, looking up at me like a vexed mistress might look at her lap dog when he didn't come to her call soon enough. But she looked more composed now, and she took off her helmet. The air situation, then, was all right, and I unscrewed my own fishbowl and let it float down beside me.