Chapter III

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

You never know.

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

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

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

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.