Asteroid Man (7 page)

"Then he does not know you are here."

He shook his head. "I think I'd better tell you my story first," he said. "It will be simpler. Do you know the solar system at all? Are you from any of the planets of our star: earth, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus?" At each she shook her head.

"I do not know the system of which you speak."

"Jumping Jupiter," said Masterson. "Then you're one of the Out-worlders—"

"The Out-worlders?" Again she shook her head. "I do not know what you mean."

"Never mind; I'll try and put my bit in first. I'll tell you a bit about my system—if I do you may be able catch onto it. There are nine planets and that asteroid belt. The first one is called Mercury in our language. It's fifty-seven million miles from my home world and
has a diameter of about three thousand miles and a rather thin atmosphere. It's devilishly hot; you need an escape velocity of seven thousand nine hundred miles an hour to get off the place, and it has a year of eighty-eight days, and no moons. The second planet as you travel outward from the sun in Venus, it's twenty-six million miles from my planet, the earth. It has a diameter of seven thousand six hundred miles; the atmosphere is filled with choking dust, and the escape velocity you need is twenty-three thousand four hundred miles an hour. It has a year of two hundred and twenty-four days and, again, no satellite. The third planet is my home; we call it earth. It has a diameter of eight thousand miles, an atmosphere almost exactly like this one, because I'm breathing this without a pressure suit, and has an escape velocity of twenty-five thousand miles an hour; there are three hundred and sixty-five days in its year, and it has one satellite which we call the moon. That satellite is two hundred and thirty-eight thousand miles from our planet. It has no atmosphere. To get a ship from it you would need an escape velocity of five thousand two hundred miles; it completes its year in twenty-seven days; and it itself, of course, has no subsidiary satellites. The fourth planet out from the sun is Mars. It's about forty-eight million miles on an average from our own earth, has a diameter of four thousand two hundred miles, thin atmosphere, which is just breathable after you've been carefully conditioned. It has an escape velocity of twelve thousand miles an hour. There's six hundred and eighty-seven days in its year, and two moons.

"Next you come to the asteroid belt, which is where I thought we were. There's a collection of two thousand eight hundred and twelve, or rather eight hundred and thirteen, including this thing, asteroids or minor planets. They've all got very eccentric orbits. After you get past them you come to Jupiter, and then you're beginning to get some distance out. It's three hundred and ninety million miles away from us, from my home planet. It has a diameter of eighty-five thousand miles; it's a giant. The atmosphere is poisonous. Methane and various other ammoniates. You need an escape velocity of a hundred and thirty-three thousand miles an hour—it's got a terrific gravity. Its year is twelve earth years, and it has twelve moons. Saturn, which is seven hundred and ninety-three million miles from the earth, has a diameter of seventy-five thousand miles; it's another giant. Again it has the poisonous giant planet atmosphere of methane, marsh gas and the like. You need an escape velocity of seventy-nine thousand miles an hour to get clear of the place, and its year is twenty-nine earth years long. It has a ring system composed of dust particles and small meteorites, and nine satellites proper. Uranus, another giant as you travel out, is one thousand six hundred and eighty-nine million miles from earth, has a diameter of thirty-two thousand miles, the atmosphere is poisonous, and it has an escape velocity of fifty-seven thousand miles an hour. The length of its year is fifty-four earth years, and it has five moons. Neptune, the last of the giants, is two thousand six hundred and ninety-six million miles from earth. It has a diameter of thirty-three thousand miles, its atmosphere is poisonous: as with the other giants, you'd need an escape velocity of fifty-one thousand five hundred miles an hour. Its year is one hundred and sixty-four earth years long, and it has two moons. Pluto, the outermost planet, is three million five hundred and eighty-two thousand miles from earth. Its diameter is three thousand seven hundred miles—it's only a dwarf. Its atmosphere is frozen; its escape velocity, if you're on board a ship, would be about eleven thousand miles an hour. Its year is the equivalent of two hundred and eighty-four earthly years, and it has no moons. That's just giving you a rough guide to our solar system. Can you translate it into any terms which you understand?" She looked very thoughtful for a few moments.

"Yes, I think I can. We have observed your system from our own world. You are very, very far away, and we did not know that any part of it was inhabited. We are perhaps, after all, what you would call the Out-worlders, I don't know. Is travel in your system limited to those planets?"

"Apart from one or two crazy guys like myself who have been as far as Proximo, which is four light years away, it is."

"I see." She looked even more thoughtful. "Well, how did you get here? Please go on."

"Those planets that I was tell you about have been working together for many years, since space travel opened up toward the end of the 20th century—which is about three hundred years ago. We have been building up an inter-planetary empire, not an empire with one nation, or one planet, on top, but an empire of allies. Because we know that somewhere beyond our own system might lie danger, might lie other intelligences, that we couldn't cope with alone. So we worked together and tried to understand one another's differences. On worlds with poisonous atmospheres, we built vast domes and underground cities. We created artificial atmospheres of our own."

"I understand. Similar things have been done in other parts of the universe."

"Well, with all this empire we have a big defense system—"

"Please go on," she prompted. Masterson found himself fascinated by her.

"Part of this defense system means that we have to keep a very constant check on the asteroid belts, the planet fragments I was telling you about, between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. We believe that countless ages ago, astronomically speaking, there was another planet there, which tore itself to pieces because of the counter-gravitational pulls of the giant Jupiter on the one hand and the sun on the other. We believe it was a world that got spoilt in the making. Those asteroids all have very erratic orbits. They are fiendishly difficult to track down, even with electronic computers, but we do the best we can. About the only infallible system we've got is to count them electronically every few hours. If they don't tally, by one too many or one too few, we start looking around."

"I see, and you found an extra one, didn't you?" He looked at her sharply.

"Yes—we did. We found that instead of two thousand eight hundred and twelve, as there should have been, there were two thousand eight hundred and thirteen. That thirteen must have been an unlucky number. I didn't find this out—two of my pals did, back on the base—so we came out here to investigate. When I say 'we' I mean me and twenty-four other men, and five of the most superb and up-to-date dart ships you ever saw. We pulled into the belt, and we started our routine check, and then suddenly, the geiger counter started going crazy, and we saw this fellow, we leveled the geigers on it—"

"You mean this asteroid?" she interrupted.

"Yes, I mean
this
asteroid," he said emphatically. "We leveled the geigers and the other tele-metering equipment on it and began to observe—gave it full treatment. It looked innocent enough, apart from that concentrated radioactivity, that didn't make sense. We were coming in a bit closer to investigate, and then decided that if it was as radioactive as it appeared we'd better get the devil out of here. So I tried to turn the ship." He shrugged his shoulders. "I bet you know what happened then!"

She nodded, and something that might have been a tear moistened her beautiful eyes. "Your five ships crashed—"

"They crashed!" said Greg coldly. "They crashed, and I was the only survivor. I got out of the ship and I started walking. I picked up a couple of oxygen flasks and a spare gun, and I started high-tailing it across the surface. Then I got to the next wreck, and found five of my pals were dead. That meant nine of 'em gone. I reached the next—there were five more—that made fourteen gone. I reached the fourth wreck, still hoping that maybe I wasn't alone. There were five more as dead as mutton and as mangled and smashed as a human body can be and still be recognizable. Then I reached the last one, and by that time I wasn't hoping, and I was right not to hope, because they were all dead, too. So there 1 was, alone on an asteroid, except for five wrecks and twenty-four bodies; an asteroid that pulled us to it as though by some kind of super gravity or electro magnetism. Only it wasn't electro magnetism, because our ships aren't affected by any kind of magnetism. We're not so technologically stupid that we'd be caught in that old trick. I got to hating this asteroid. I was tired, I was shaken, I was shocked. Every nerve in my body was screaming out for action, and there was nothing I could do except walk. But my nerves kept on screaming out for action, so I decided I'd give them some. There was nothing I could hit to hurt. The only thing I could hit was the asteroid, so I fired a shot into it, and I blew a hole, as I expected to do—yet not what I expected to do, because just as our ship was crashing, we let go some three-megaton bombs. Now they by rights should have blown half this place to John o' Groats, but they didn't. They didn't go off."

"No," she agreed sadly. "They wouldn't."

"And yet my gun—which works on the same principle —did go off." There was an edge to his voice. "And I couldn't figure out—and I still can't, although I've got a theory that doesn't make sense."

"It's probably the true one," she said sadly. "Go on—"

"Well, I'd just blown this hole in the place, only the hole was bigger than it should have been, because what I'd done by a chance in a million was to uncover the top of one of the ventilator shafts for these tunnels that honey-comb this place."

"I heard the alarm go off a few hours back," she said, "to show that a tunnel was punctured—"

"I did that, and stood trying to figure it out when I heard footsteps; you know how that gravel stuff on the surface crunches and thuds when anybody walks on it. The auditory equipment on my suit was switched on, and I heard this thudding crunch and felt the ground vibrating under my feet. When I looked up, there coming towards me like something out of a cave man's nightmare was a thing with slime and scales and great purple eyes and claws." He shuddered as if to shut out some horrible memory. "Oh, man, it was like nothing on earth! So I went down the only place I knew I could go. I knew I couldn't outrun it, so I dropped down the shaft I had blown in the crust of this little world. I landed at the bottom, and it was a lot deeper than I thought, and I reckoned I was done for. Looked up and saw this thing scratching for me, like a cat scratching for a mouse. I let him have it with the gun, and he dragged what was left of his claw out of the hole. He went back. But he wasn't as stupid as he looked. There must have been some smattering of a brain inside that scaly head, because next thing I knew, he was shoveling stones down on top of me."

The girl nodded. "I see; please go on."

"Well, I managed to crawl out from under the stone bombardment and got into one of these tunnels. I dragged on as long as I could; then my oxygen gave out, and before I could get the cylinder changed I started to black out, and I knew I was done for. I hadn't enough strength left to change the cylinder, so I had to flip my helmet open. It was either quick death or slow death. Then I found I could still breathe. The air was cool and sweet and fresh. It was lovely, like a drink from a mountain stream or the bottom of a well. After that I just dragged on till I came to a door, and I saw that door wasn't meant to be opened by a human hand."

Now it was the girl who shuddered.

"You're right," she said. "It isn't. Could you open it?"

"I'm pretty tough," answered Masterson; "otherwise I wouldn't be here now. I forced that door open. Got through and forced it shut!" Her lips pursed in an admiring whistle.

"I've never been able to do so much as move it," she said.

He looked at her curiously, impatient to know the facts about her presence in the asteroid.

"Then," he continued, "I staggered along this passage. I ripped off my space suit, put it down another passage to act as a decoy, in case anybody came hunting for me, had a sleep with one eye and one ear open, and the fingers of both hands on the triggers of my guns. I woke up, heard your footsteps, and saw the light coming —that's what I'm doing here. And in case I forgot to introduce myself during the rigmarole, my name is Greg Masterson, and I'm a space pilot." He bowed with mock seriousness and held out his hand.

She understood the gesture and clasped his.

"Very, very glad to know you, Greg. Is that the custom on your world? Do you use the first name of someone you think you might like, or someone you would like to like?"

All this was quaint, almost as if she were making it up as she went along, as though she were learning it by trial and error.

"I guess you've got it right," agreed Greg.

"Well, I expect you want to know about me?"

"I certainly do," replied Masterson. "But first of all, is it safe to talk here? I can tell without you saying a word that you'd nothing to do with the evil part of this asteroid. I'd say that you either came here the same way as I did, or a similar way insofar as you'd rather be some place else."

"Yes, I would," she said sadly. "I'll tell you my story, Greg. My name is Astra, and I'm a Princess of Altair."

"Altair! We use the same name for a very distant star."

"I expect it's the same one. We have a planetary system not unlike your own."

"Tell me about your Altair," said Greg.

"Oh, it's quite simple to tell. I do not understand astronomy as you do, but—" she broke off and lapsed into a thoughtful silence—"I was trying to put myself on your earth and viewing Altair from there as if I were one of your own people. I would say that to you it would look like the brightest star of the group of Thor."