Gold in the Sky Page 4

  4. "Between Mars and Jupiter...."

  After all the tension of preparing for it, the trip out seemedinterminable.

  They were all impatient to reach their destination. During blastoff andaccelleration they had watched Mars dwindle to a tiny red dot; then timeseemed to stop altogether, and there was nothing to do but wait.

  For the first eight hours of free fall, after the engines had cut out,Tom was violently ill. He fought it desperately, gulping the pillsJohnny offered and trying to keep them down. Gradually the waves ofnausea subsided, but it was a full twenty-four hours before Tom feltlike stirring from his cot to take up the shipboard routine.

  And then there was nothing for him to do. Greg handled the navigationskilfully, while Johnny kept radio contact and busied himself in thestoreroom, so Tom spent hours at the viewscreen. On the second day hespotted a tiny chunk of rock that was unquestionably an asteroid movingswiftly toward them. It passed at a tangent ten thousand miles ahead ofthem, and Greg started work at the computer, feeding in the data tapesthat would ultimately guide the ship to its goal.

  * * * * *

  Pinpointing a given spot in the Asteroid Belt was a gargantuan task,virtually impossible without the aid of the ship's computer to computeorbits, speeds, and distances. Tom spent more and more time at theviewscreen, searching the blackness of space for more asteroidsightings. But except for an occasional tiny bit of debris hurtling by,he saw nothing but the changeless panorama of stars.

  Johnny Coombs found him there on the third day, and laughed at his sourexpression. "Gettin' impatient?"

  "Just wondering when we'll reach the Belt, is all," Tom said.

  Johnny chuckled. "Hope you're not holdin' your breath. We've alreadybeen _in_ the Belt for the last forty-eight hours."

  "Then where are all the asteroids?" Tom said.

  "Oh, they're here. You just won't see many of them. People always thinkthere ought to be dozens of them around, like sheep on a hillside, butit just doesn't work that way." Johnny peered at the screen. "Of course,to an astronomer the Belt is just loaded ... hundreds of thousands ofchunks, all sizes from five hundred miles in diameter on down. Butactually, those chunks are all tens of thousands of miles apart, and theBelt _looks_ just as empty as the space between Mars and Earth."

  "Well, I don't see how we're ever going to find one particular rock,"Tom said, watching the screen gloomily.

  "It's not too hard. Every asteroid has its own orbit around the sun, andeveryone that's been registered as a claim has the orbit charted. Theone we want isn't where it was when your Dad's body was found ... it'sbeen travelling in its orbit ever since. But by figuring in the fourthdimension, we can locate it."

  Tom blinked. "Fourth dimension?"

  "Time," Johnny Coombs said. "If we just used the three lineardimensions ... length, width and depth ... we'd end up at the place wherethe asteroid _was_, but that wouldn't help us much because it's beenmoving in orbit ever since the Patrol Ship last pinpointed it. So wefigure in a fourth dimension ... the time that's passed since it was lastspotted ... and we can chart a collision course with it, figure out justwhere _we'll_ have to be to meet it."

  It was the first time that the idea of time as a "dimension" had evermade sense to Tom. They talked some more, until Johnny started bringingin fifth and sixth dimensions, and problems of irrational space andhyperspace, and got even himself confused.

  "Anyway," Tom said, "I'm glad we've got a computer aboard."

  "And a navigator," Johnny added. "Don't sell your brother short."

  "Fat chance of that. Greg would never stand for it."

  Johnny frowned. "You lads don't like each other very much, do you?" hesaid.

  Tom was silent for a moment. Then he looked away. "We get along, Iguess."

  "Maybe. But sometimes just gettin' along isn't enough. Especially whenthere's trouble. Give it a thought, when you've got a minute or two...."

  Later, the three of them went over the computer results together. Johnnyand Greg fed the navigation data into the ship's drive mechanism,checking and rechecking speeds and inclination angles. Already theDutchman's orbital speed was matching the speed of Roger Hunter'sasteroid ... but the orbit had to be tracked so that they would arriveat the exact point in space to make contact. Tom was assigned to theviewscreen, and the long wait began.

  He spotted their destination point an hour before the computer hadpredicted contact ... at first a tiny pinpoint of reflected light in thescope, gradually resolving into two pinpoints, then three in a tinycluster. Greg cut in the rear and lateral jets momentarily, stabilizingtheir contact course; the dots grew larger.

  Ten minutes later, Tom could see their goal clearly in theviewscreen ... the place where Roger Hunter had died.

  * * * * *

  It was neither large nor small for an asteroid, an irregular chunk ofrock and metal, perhaps five miles in diameter, lighted only by the dullreddish glow from the dime-sized sun. Like many such jagged chunks ofdebris that sprinkled the Belt, this asteroid did not spin on any axis,but constantly presented the same face to the sun.

  Just off the bright side the orbit-ship floated, stable in its orbitnext to the big rock, but so small in comparison that it looked like atiny glittering toy balloon. And clamped on its rack on the orbit-ship'sside, airlock to airlock, was the _Scavenger_, the little scout shipthat Roger Hunter had brought out from Mars on his last journey.

  While Greg maneuvered the Dutchman into the empty landing rack below the_Scavenger_ on the hull of the orbit-ship, Johnny scanned the blacknessaround them through the viewscope, a frown wrinkling his forehead.

  "Do you see anybody?" Tom asked.

  "Not a sign ... but I'm really looking for other rocks. I can see threethat aren't too far away, but none of them have claim marks. This onemust have been the only one Roger was working."

  They stared at the ragged surface of the planetoid. Raw veins ofmetallic ore cut through it with streaks of color, but most of thesun-side showed only the dull gray of iron and granite. There wasnothing unusual about the surface that Tom could see. "Could there beanything on the dark side?"

  "Could be," Johnny said. "We'll have to go over it foot by foot ... butfirst, we should go through the orbit-ship and the _Scavenger_. If thePatrol ship missed anything, we want to know it."

  The interior of the orbit-ship was dark. It spun slowly on its axis,giving them just enough weight so they would not float free wheneverthey moved. Their boots clanged on the metal decks as they climbed upthe curving corridor toward the control cabin.

  Then Johnny threw a light switch, and they stared around them inamazement.

  The cabin was a shambles. Everything that was not bolted down had beenripped open and thrown aside.

  Greg whistled through his teeth. "The Major said the Patrol crew hadgone through the ship ... but he didn't say they'd wrecked it."

  "They didn't," Johnny said grimly. "No Patrol ship would ever do this.Somebody else has been here since." He turned to the control panel,flipped switches, checked gauges. "Hydroponics are all right. Atmosphereis still good; we can take off these helmets. Fuel looks all right,storage holds ..." He shook his head. "They weren't looting, but theywere looking for something, all right. Let's look around and see if theymissed anything."

  It took them an hour to survey the wreckage. Not a compartment had beenmissed. Even the mattresses on the accelleration cots had been tornopen, the spring-stuffing tossed about helter-skelter. Tom went throughthe lock into the _Scavenger_; the scout ship too had been searched,rapidly but thoroughly.

  But there was no sign of anything that Roger Hunter might have found.

  Back in the control cabin Johnny was checking the ship's log. The oldentries were on microfilm, stored on their spools near the reader. Morerecent entries were still recorded on tape. From the jumbled order,there was no doubt that marauders had examined them. Johnny ran throughthem nevertheless, but there was nothing of interest. Routi
nenavigational data; a record of the time of contact with the asteroid; alog of preliminary observations on the rock; nothing more. The last taperecorded the call-schedule Roger Hunter had set up with the Patrol, aroutine precaution used by all miners, to bring help if for some reasonthey should fail to check in on schedule.

  There was no hint in the log of any extraordinary discovery.

  "Are any tapes missing?" Greg wanted to know.

  "Doesn't look like it. There's one here for each day-period."

  "I wonder," Tom said. "Dad always kept a personal log. You know, a sortof a diary, on microfilm." He peered into the film storage bin, checkedthrough the spools. Then, from down beneath the last row of spools hepulled out a slightly smaller spool. "Here's something our friendsmissed, I bet."

  It was not really a diary, just a sequence of notes, calculations andideas that Roger Hunter had jotted down and microfilmed from time totime. The entries on the one spool went back for several years. Tom fedthe spool into the reader, and they stared eagerly at the last fewentries.

  A series of calculations, covering several pages, but with no notes toindicate what, exactly, Roger Hunter had been calculating. "Looks likehe was plotting an orbit," Greg said. "But what orbit? And why? Nothinghere to tell."

  "It must have been important, though, or Dad wouldn't have filmed thepages," Tom said. "Anything else?"

  Another sheet with more calculations. Then a short paragraph written inRoger Hunter's hurried scrawl. "No doubt now what it is," the wordssaid. "Wish Johnny were here, show him a _real_ bonanza, but he'll knowsoon enough if...."

  They stared at the scribbled, uncompleted sentence. Then Johnny Coombslet out a whoop. "I told you he found something! And he found it _here_,not somewhere else."

  "Hold it," Greg said, peering at the film reader. "There's somethingmore on the last page, but I can't read it."

  Tom blinked at the entry. "'Inter Jovem et Martem planetam interposui,'"he read. He scratched his head. "That's Latin, and it's famous, too.Kepler wrote it, back before the asteroids were discovered. 'BetweenJupiter and Mars I will put a planet.'"

  Greg and Johnny looked at each other. "I don't get it," Greg said.

  "Dad told me about that once," Tom said. "Kepler couldn't understandthe long jump between Mars and Jupiter, when Venus and Earth and Marswere so close together. He figured there ought to be a planet outhere ... and he was right, in a way. There wasn't any one planet, unlessyou'd call Ceres a planet, but it wasn't just empty space between Marsand Jupiter either. The asteroids were here."

  "But why would Dad be writing that down?" Greg asked. "And what has itgot to do with what he found out here?" He snapped off the reader switchangrily. "I don't understand any of this, and I don't like it. If Dadfound something out here, where is it? And who tore this ship apartafter the Patrol ship left?"

  "Probably the same ones that caused the 'accident' in the first place,"Johnny said.

  "But why did they come back?" Greg protested. "If they killed Dad, theymust have known what he'd found before they killed him."

  "You'd think so," Johnny conceded.

  "Then why take the risk of coming back here again?"

  "Maybe they _didn't_ know," Tom said thoughtfully.

  "What do you mean?"

  "I mean maybe they killed him too soon. Maybe they thought they knewwhat he'd found and where it was ... and then found out that theydidn't, after all. Maybe Dad hid it...."

  Johnny Coombs shook his head. "No way a man can hide an ore strike."

  "But suppose Dad did, somehow, and whoever killed him couldn't find it?It would be too late to make him tell them. They'd _have_ to come backand look again, wouldn't they? And from the way they went about it, itlooks as though they weren't having much luck."

  "Then whatever Dad found would still be here, somewhere," Greg said.

  "That's right."

  "But where? There's nothing on this ship."

  "Maybe not," Tom said, "but I'd like to take a look at that asteroidbefore we give up."

  * * * * *

  They paused in the big ore-loading lock to reclamp their pressuresuit helmets, and looked down at the jagged chunk of rock a hundredyards below them. In the lock they had found scooters ... the littleone-man propulsion units so commonly used for short distance work inspace ... but decided not to use them. "They're clumsy," Johnny said,"and the bumper units in your suits will do just as well for thisdistance." He looked down at the rock. "I'll take the center section.You each take an edge and work in. Look for any signs of work on thesurface ... chisel marks, Murexide charges, anything."

  "What about the dark side?" Greg asked.

  "If we want to see anything there, we'll either have to rig up lights orturn the rock around," Johnny said. "Let's cover this side first and seewhat we come up with."

  He turned and leaped from the airlock, moving gracefully down towardthe surface, using the bumper unit to guide himself with short burstsof compressed CO_{2}, from the nozzle. Greg followed, pushing offharder and passing Johnny halfway down. Tom hesitated. It looked easyenough ... but he remembered the violent nausea of his first few hoursof free fall.

  Finally he gritted his teeth and jumped off after Greg. Instantly heknew that he had jumped too hard. He shot away from the orbit-ship likea bullet; the jagged asteroid surface leaped up at him. Frantically hegrabbed for the bumper nozzle and pulled the trigger, trying to breakhis fall.

  He felt the nozzle jerk in his hand, and then, abruptly, he was spinningoff at a wild tangent from the asteroid, head over heels. For a momentit seemed that asteroid, orbit-ship and stars were all wheeling crazilyaround him. Then he realized what had happened. He fired the bumperagain, and went spinning twice as fast. The third time he timed theblast, aiming the nozzle carefully, and the spinning almost stopped.

  He fought down nausea, trying to get his bearings. He was three hundredyards out from the asteroid, almost twice as far from the orbit-ship. Hestared down at the rock as he moved slowly away from it. Before, fromthe orbit-ship, he had been able to see only the bright side of the hugerock; now he could see the sharp line of darkness across one side.

  But there was something else....

  He fired the bumper again to steady himself, peering into the blacknessbeyond the light-line on the rock. He snapped on his helmet lamp, aimedthe spotlight beam down to the dark rock surface. Greg and Johnny werelanding now on the bright side, with Greg almost out of sight over the"horizon" ... but Tom's attention was focussed on something he could seeonly now as he moved away from the asteroid surface.

  His spotlight caught it ... something bright and metallic, completelyhidden on the dark side, lying in close to the surface but not quite onthe surface. Then suddenly Tom knew what it was ... the braking jets ofa Class I Ranger, crouching beyond the reach of sunlight in the shadowof the asteroid....

  Swiftly he fired the bumper again, turning back toward the orbit-ship.His hand went to the speaker-switch, but he caught himself in time. Anywarning shouted to Greg and Johnny would certainly be picked up by theship. But he had to give warning somehow.

  He tumbled into the airlock, searching for a flare in his web belt. Itwas a risk ... the Ranger ship might pick up the flash ... but he had totake it. He was unscrewing the fuse cap from the flare when he saw Gregand Johnny leap up from the asteroid surface.

  Then he saw what had alarmed them. Slowly, the Ranger was moving outfrom its hiding place behind the rock. Tom reached out to catch Greg ashe came plummeting into the lock. There was a flash from the Ranger'sside, and Johnny Coombs' voice boomed in his earphones: "Get inside! Getthe lock closed, fast ... hurry up, can't waste a second."

  Johnny caught the lip of the lock, dragged himself inside frantically.They were spinning the airlock door closed when they heard thethundering explosion, felt the ship lurch under their feet, and allthree of them went crashing to the deck.