Asteroid Man (3 page)

Yet he could not quite subdue the lurking hope within him that there would be something different out there, something new, something frightening, something that tingled with adventure and excitement. They reached the belt. The five pilots had their work cut out, diving in and out, navigating and matching their velocity with the hurtling planetoids: those tiny, irregular-shaped objects, some smaller than their own ships, some as large as Scotland or Wales. Some were shaped like vast, rough-hewn eggs; some were triangular, some were cone-shaped. Some were almost square as though they had been hewn by the hand of galactic giants for some building that was never finished. He brought his survey equipment to bear.

Dan Richards, his second-in-command, stood beside him at the panel. Dan was a short, stocky man of Celtic descent, with a crown of vivid red hair and strange, thoughtful eyes. He was more than a scientist. He was a philosopher and a metaphysicist; he enjoyed examining the universe. He was one of the youths who had not found geography dull at school. He enjoyed the world as it was, where people like Greg Masterson found nothing but dull routine and monotony. He was a man to whom God was in His heaven, and all was right with the world. Masterson sometimes envied him his attitude. Dan was peering intently through a spectroscope and ticking marks off on a chart. He was putting out radioactivity check units and listening to the dull, regular click of the geiger counter as it registered in a dismal level. All as usual. Dan ticked off another of the wandering bodies.

"Perhaps it's not in this section, Chief," he said. "I've found nothing here that I can't identify, nothing that's behaving erratically." He held up the dimensional selector. "They're all much the same as usual." Then suddenly, "Listen! Listen to that geiger counter, Chief! There's something very seriously adrift here!"

"How do you mean?"

"The geiger counter's low-lever 'cluck' has risen to a staccato rattle, like a cosmic machine-gun."

"Where the heck is that coming from?" said Greg.

"Over here," said Dan. "This baby, as far as I can make out."

"This baby" was a chunk of rock about fifteen miles square. It was rough and irregular and superficially bore a close resemblance to all its fellows in the group, yet there was something about it which was giving the geiger counter a heart attack.

"We'd better get out of range," said Dan.

"I think we had," said Masterson, and began punching buttons with silent efficiency. The ship veered but didn't alter course…

Dan and Greg exchanged glances…

"What the devil's happened now?" exclaimed Masterson. Blessed is the man who expecteth nothing for he shall not be disappointed, he thought to himself. Stars and stripes, the blasted thing must be magnetic.

"Magnetic!" The word was torn from Masterson's lips, and then he remembered! It dawned upon him with a suddenness that was frightening in its very intensity.

"If it is magnetic," he said softly, "it can't be magnetic in any way that we understand. These ships—"

"Yes, of course! Of course!" repeated Dan. "They're protected against normal ferric magnetism. Yep."

"Whatever that thing is that's pulling us, it's not acting by any magnetism that we understand. Some sort of attractor ray, maybe."

"Do you mean a manufactured one?"

"I don't know what to think. I only know that there's something out there that's pulling us toward the surface of that asteroid. Something that's stronger than our atomic rocket drive. Something that's attracting a ship that's supposed to be unattractable. Something that's gonna smash us up like matchwood, if we can't do something about it pretty soon."

They managed to spin the ship round so that they were coming at it tail first.

"I'm going to give it the lot," said the pilot. "Sparks!" The young radio engineer dashed quickly toward him.

"Sir?"

"Get a message through to the rest. Get a message back to earth. Tell them we're in the grip of some magnetic beam that we don't understand, some kind of hazy gravitational warp. I don't know what the heck it is, but it's pulling us toward this thing out here." He pointed through the observation panel. "Tell 'em it looks as if we've had ours. Tell 'em to get back to earth and report."

"Right, sir," said Sparks. "You mean this is—?"

"I don't mean anything! We may be able to pull out yet. Just get the message through, will you, son?"

"Sir!" Sparks hurried back to his set. Dan and Greg exchanged quiet, meaningful glances.

"It looks as if that survey message wasn't a false alarm after all!"

"Is it any good blasting the thing?" asked Greg.

"See if we can break out first."

Greg threw the multi-million horse-power rocket engines with full force against the asteroid's attraction. They refused to fire.

"Darn!" he exploded savagely. "What the blazes can that be?"

"May just be a mechanical failure," volunteered Dan. Greg shook his head. "Not on your life, boy! Those engines are foolproof by the standards of our puny technology. There's something out there that's too tough for us, something that we can't handle."

Sparks darted back into the cabin, his face as white as a sheet.

"The other ships, sir."

"Yes? Go on!"

"They are also caught in the field; their engines are not responding. They're being dragged toward our sector."

"Jumping Jupiter! Get through to earth if you possibly can! Just send them as SOS. Tell them this thing has got to be blasted; us along with it if necessary! Tell them to send up two hydro warheads. Blow the thing out of space! It may get us, but it won't get the earth. If they blast it, it won't get any more ships."

"Right, sir."

Greg knew that he had just signed his own death warrant and those of his men. But the system was in danger, and it was the only thing he could do. They continued their helpless, plummeting dive.

"We've got a couple of triple megatons on board ourselves, don't forget, sir!" Dan reminded him respectfully.

"Yes, of course we have! Right. This is an emergency. If they'll still fire, we'll let go!"

Greg began pressing computer keys with savage efficiency. The deadly three megaton missiles winged away toward the asteroid. They stood by with bated breath, waiting to see the showers of debris scattered into space. The bombs struck the asteroid—and failed to explode!

There was nothing they could do but wait, with cold, quiet resignation, as the ships plummeted down toward what must be certain, inevitable death.

Dan looked at Greg, and Greg looked at Dan, and through their minds ran thoughts that were too deep for words, thoughts that came from the deepest depths of the human mind.

"Been good to know you," said Greg quietly.

"Same here," said Dan. Monosyllables, he thought. This is where fact parts company with fiction. If this was a play on the televiewer, we should be making some sort of grand speech. Funny… when real life comes to a sudden stop, all you can say is, "Cheerio," because those grand thoughts that need putting into grand words can be put into such words only if you've got time… oceans of time. We haven't got oceans of anything. We haven't even oceans of space.

"How long do you think we've got?" asked Greg.

" 'Bout ten seconds," said Dan.

"That's how I figured it. Ah well…" That "Ah well" was pregnant with meaning. It held resignation and something more. They relapsed into stony silence. Sparks left the radio and came up, looking over their shoulders through the observation port at the rough granular surface leaping to meet them.

"Shall we try the rockets again?" His voice was so flat it held scarcely any inflexion.

"I'll keep my hand on the button until we hit," said the captain. "But I don't think it'll do any good." He tried the rockets again, but there was nothing but a "click" from the button. The firing mechanism was as dead as a doornail, as dead as they reckoned they would be in a few seconds. "Get the suits on, I suppose, just in case."

"Yes, it's better than nothing. Reduces the odds from about a million to one to a million to two, I suppose. All right. Suits on, chaps!" There was no panic as they quietly donned the suits.

"Any good trying to get out through the air lock?"

"We should be still caught in that force, whatever it is. It would only mean that we hit the meteorite completely unprotected. If we stay inside the ship, there's just a chance it will take enough of the impact to leave one, or perhaps two of us alive. If we go out there without the suits, we shall be squashed like beetles."

"Yes, I see what you mean."

They stood there, weird, ungainly, plastic-clad figures, waiting for the end.

Eyes behind steel-strong plastic lenses betrayed feelings that were quite inexpressible.

"A few more seconds," said Greg quietly. Those last seconds were like centuries…

It seemed that the ship would never hit, and then everything erupted into an enormous sea of concussion and violence and destruction…

Everything erupted into a mad, tearing orgy.

Rivets screamed as they left their sockets. Bulkheads and portions of fuselage buckled and twisted and crumpled. The graceful outline of the dart ship broke and twisted and concertinaed till there was practically nothing left of it. There were five shattering impacts in all, and five heaps of twisted metal marked the end of the surveying expedition. Amidst the heaps of metal lay twenty-four mangled, space-suited bodies, as dead as the space through which they had plummeted to their deaths. One man stirred faintly and feebly among the wreckage; stirred and groaned softly and staggered to his feet. His head ached violently and abominably. His vision was blurred. He seemed to be seeing everything through a mist. He realized that the red mist was blood. Blood on the plastic lenses of his helmet. Blood from a two-inch gash on his forehead, which was still dripping. He put his hand to the helmet and realized that he was in a suit. Miraculously, after all that holocaust, the suit was not leaking.

He was alive. He had enough air and water for a long, long time.

Greg Masterson looked at the bodies in the wreckage, and slumped across what had once been a delicate instrument panel. He switched on the external auditory equipment. Something was chattering madly, gibbering like a frenzied monkey. He tried to think. Thought was difficult. His head was still spinning from the crash. What the devil was that thing, clicking and chattering. It had to make sense. Something had to make sense out of all this crazy holocaust of asteroid and distorted ships. What clicked like that? Blast, why couldn't he think!

Everything was a sea of pain, and he was a tiny cork bobbing along on its waves. He struggled upright again. A geiger counter, that was it! He looked at the thing. Odd that it had escaped the wreckage. Providential perhaps, for without it he wouldn't have recognized his danger. The whole surface of the asteroid seemed to be violently radioactive. He had to get off and get off fast. He couldn't get away. If a ship couldn't get away, how could a man alone, in a space suit?

Think, Masterson, he said to himself, think. Don't panic; think! The suit is lead-impregnated; you're all right. There's nothing to panic about if you're not exposed to it for too long. You're filtering ninety-nine percent of those radiations. They're bouncing off you.

You're safe, if you just keep your head and get off as soon as you can—or get away from the radiation…

Automatically he reached down and took up the geiger counter, knotted the broken strap and slung it over his shoulder. He turned the volume down, so that the chattering was less distracting.

What else would he need? Guns! Yes, of course, he would want guns… as many as he could comfortably carry. He stooped beside the nest of the bodies. It was Dan Richards, looking strangely peaceful in death, with his mysterious eyes wide open, staring up into the thoughtless mystery of space. Poor old Dan, thought Greg to himself. That blasted asteroid has a lot to answer for. Dan's vivid red hair was stained now a darker red with his own blood. He picked up his dead companion's gun and thrust it into the empty holster on the left-hand side of his belt. He checked his own weapon. They were both in working order. That was something to be thankful for… not that he expected to need them, and yet he was completely at a loss to understand what had happened and how it had happened. Unless… unless… no! That was fantastic—he would have to see what he could find. Time for theories later. There weren't enough facts to build a theory on. There weren't enough facts to build anything on. He moved slowly, like a man in a dream, looking more like a robot. Slowly, jerkily, like an automation, searching in the wreckage. He had guns; he had better have some more oxygen… He unplugged the cylinder from Richard's corpse, unstrapped it and put it into the spare clamp on his own back. He'd better pick up another couple of cylinders if he was going to move any distance from the wreckage. He had strong nerves, but he couldn't stand the sight of those bodies. It wouldn't have mattered so much if they had been other people's bodies, but these were his friends, his pals, his messmates, men he had lived and fought and worked with—for years, some of them. He looked at young Sparks. A kid straight from college. Poor little devil, what chance had he had? Yet he had had as much guts as any of them. Quiet and strong to the end. A real man in spite of his boyish face. Rest in peace, whispered Greg, the lot of you, God have mercy on your souls.

He staggered away out of the wreckage, moving slowly and ponderously in the suit, not really knowing where he was going or why; just feeling instinctively that he had to get away from that heap of charnel wreckage.

The asteroid was small as asteroids go, and yet he realized it must be several miles in diameter. He couldn't make out the gravity effect. It seemed to be the same as earth normal, about 1G. That didn't make sense either; too soon for theorizing. There should be practically no gravity here. Mentally he judged the size of the asteroid against the earth. Why, it should take him up to two or three miles at a bound—yet it didn't. Something to do with that force that had brought them crashing onto it, no doubt. This thing wasn't obeying the laws of time and space. It wasn't abiding by the rules; it wasn't playing the game. There was something wrong with the thing, something fiendishly wrong. He took a deep breath, sucking in lungfuls of the life-saving oxygen. It made him feel better. It cleared his head. He took another and another. He squared his shoulders inside the narrow confines of the suit. Better start thanking heaven, or Providence, or God, or whatever it was that had kept him alive… No good being bitter about the others. He couldn't understand why he was alive. They had all been standing so close together. It was just one of those odd freaks of chance. Twisting fuselage had missed him and gotten his pals. That was all there was to it. His name hadn't been written on any of those jagged sections of fuselage. Funny, life was like that. He realized that it was only in the face of death that he had begun to understand life. He had better go and check on the other ships; the last thing he had heard over the intercom was that they were coming down, too. He hadn't heard any crash before his own ship hit, possibly because he was nearer than the others. They must have hit a few seconds after…