Gold in the Sky Page 13

  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 atthe time he had been killed. He had been doing a job that was moreimportant to him than asteroid mining ... but he had found somethingmore important than his own life, and had no chance to send word of whathe had found back to Major Briarton on Mars. That had been theunforeseeable 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 momentbefore he reached out to touch it. The bright metal gleamed in thelight, pale gray, lustrous. The Major picked it up, balanced it expertlyin his hand, and a puzzled frown clouded his face. He examined itminutely.

  "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 powerfulblast 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 atit, until we needed a gun in a hurry. I just assumed it was Dad'srevolver."

  "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 suchgun," he said finally. "These things you say it could do ... they wouldrequire energy enough to break down the cohesive forces of molecules.There isn't any way we know of to harness that kind of energy andchannel 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? Itdoesn't fit, it doesn't balance, you have to hold it with both hands toaim it...."

  "_But where did it come from?_" the Major said. "We've never hadvisitors from another star system ... not in the course of recordedhistory. And we know that Earthmen are the only intelligent creatures inour 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 therehad 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 hescribbled down in his log ... 'Between Jupiter and Mars I will put aplanet.' Why would Dad have written that? Unless he had suddenlydiscovered 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 ofproof."

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

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

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

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

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

  "Like what?"

  "I wouldn't even guess," Johnny said. "A planet with a race of creaturesintelligent enough and advanced enough to make a weapon like that ... itcould 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 ... sohe 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 wholeidea. My Patrol ship found nothing when it searched the region. Youlooked, and drew a blank. The company men scoured the area." He spreadhis 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? Ifwe could prove that your father found something just before he waskilled, we could tear Jupiter Equilateral's case against you intoshreds. 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 whatRoger Hunter found, we're helpless. They'll take you three to court, andI won't be able to stop them. And if you lose that case, it may mean theend of U.N. authority on Mars."

  "Then there's just one thing to do," Johnny Coombs said. "We've got tofind 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 theliving quarters.

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

  Roger Hunter had found something, and hidden it so well that threegroups of searchers had failed to discover it. After seeing the gun, theMajor was convinced that there had indeed been a discovery made. Butwhatever that discovery had been, it was gone as if it had neverexisted ... 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 bethere," the Major had said wearily. "It hasn't vanished, or miraculouslyceased to exist. We know he was working on one claim, one asteroid.There were no other asteroids in the region ... and even the ones withinsuicide radius have been searched."

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

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

  They had called it a night, finally.

  Once home they found more bad news waiting. There were two messages onthe recordomat. The first was an official summons to appear before theUnited Nations Board of Investigations at 9:00 the following morning toanswer "certain charges placed against the above named persons by theGoverning Board of Jupiter Equilateral Mining Industries, and by oneMerrill Tawney, plaintiff, representing said Governing Board." Theylistened to the plastic record twice. Then Greg tossed it down the wastechute.

  The other message was addressed to Greg, from the Commanding Officer ofProject Star-Jump. The message was very polite and regretful; it wasalso very firm. The pressure of the work there, in his absence, made itnecessary for the Project to suspend Greg on an indefinite leave ofabsence. 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 toldus. The money for Star-Jump must have been coming from somewhere, andnow we know where. The company probably figures to lay claim on anystar-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 bigmouth shut at the very start of this thing, you'd have gone back to theProject and that would have been the end
of it...."

  * * * * *

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

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

  Quite suddenly the room seemed hot and stuffy, oppressive. He couldn'tmake his thoughts come straight. There had been too much thinking, toomuch speculation. Tom stood up and slipped on his jacket.

  He had to walk, to move about, to try to think. He slipped open thedoor, 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 thedoubts 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 NationsAdministration Building. He took a spur off the main corridor, and cameto a doorway with a small circular staircase beyond it. At the bottom ofthe stairs he opened a steel door and stepped into the Map Room.

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

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

  Once, Dad had told him, there had been a great statue in the harbor ofOld New York which had been a symbol of freedom for strangers coming tothat city from across the sea, and a welcome for countrymen returninghome. And someday, he knew, this view of the Solar System would bewaiting to greet Earthmen making their way home from distant stars. TheMap was only an image, a gift from the United Nations to the colonistson Mars, but it reproduced the Solar System in the minutest detail thatastronomers could make possible.

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

  But there was more on the Map than the Sun and the planets, with theirsatellites. Tiny green lights marked the Earth-Mars and the Earth-Venusorbit-ships, moving slowly across the screen. Beyond Mars, a myriad oftiny lights projected on the screen, the asteroids. Without themagnifier Tom could identify the larger ones ... Ceres, on the oppositeside 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 Maphad a very useful purpose ... the registry and identification ofasteroid claims among the miners of Mars. Each asteroid registered as aclaim showed up as a red pinpoint; unclaimed asteroids were white. Buteven with the advances of modern astronomy only a small percentage ofthe existing asteroids were on the map, for the vast majority had neverbeen plotted.

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

  It was quite by itself, not a part of an asteroid cluster. He stepped upthe magnification, peered at it closely. There were a dozen otherpinpoints, 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 heartpounding in his throat. He cut the magnification, scanning a wide area.Then he widened the lens still further, and checked the coordinates atthe bottom of the viewer.

  He knew that he was right. He _had_ to be right. But this was no wilddream, this was something that could be proved beyond any question oferror.

  Across the room he picked up the phone to Map Control. It buzzedinterminably; then a sleepy voice answered.

  "The Map," Tom managed to say. "It's recorded on time-lapse film, isn'tit?"

  "'Course it is," the sleepy voice said. "Observatory has to have therecord. One frame every hour...."

  "I've got to see some of the old film," Tom said.

  "_Now?_ It's three in the morning."

  "I don't need the film itself, just project it for me. There's a readerhere."

  He gave the man the dates he wanted, Mars time. The man broke thecontact, grumbling, but moments later one of the film-viewers sprang tolife. The Map coordinates showed at the bottom of the screen.

  Tom stared at the filmed image ... the image of a segment of theAsteroid Belt the day before Roger Hunter had died.

  It was there. When he had looked at the Map, he had seen a single redpinpoint of light, Roger Hunter's asteroid, with nothing in the heavensanywhere near it.

  But on the film image taken weeks before there were two points of light.One was red, with Roger Hunter's claim number beneath it. The other waswhite, so close to the first that even at full magnification it wasbarely distinguishable.

  _But it was there._

  Tom's hands were trembling with excitement; he nearly dropped the phonereceiver as he punched the buttons to ring the apartment. Greg's faceappeared on the screen, puffy with sleep. "What's that? Thought you werein bed...."

  "You've got to get down here," Tom said.

  Greg blinked, waking up. "What's the matter? Where are you?"

  "In the Map Room. Wake Johnny up and get down here. And try to get holdof the Major."

  "You've found something," Greg said, excited now.

  "I've found something," Tom said. "I've found where Dad hid hisstrike ... and I know how we can find it! We've got the answer, Greg."