Trapped in space (10 page)

Jeff saw a faint red glow in the middle of the black cushion. It was the laser. He knew now that it was no machine, but a living part of the hopper.

The hopper moved itself to point toward him. He tried to scramble out of the way of its red bolt, but his jets were dead and his battered body wouldn't move. All he could do was wait.

". . . lost air and power. . . ."

Tlie red glow faded, until Ben's captured voice was only a dying whisper in his helmet.

. . . caught. . . .

The hopper, Jeff realized, had used up all its power. This was his chance to kill it, to even the score for what it had done to Ben and Ty. He pointed the machine into the nearest yellow eye. Furiously, he thumbed the firing key.

The hopper's wide eye blinked, but nothing else happened. Jeff's machine had caught the full force of that last bolt from the hopper's laser. Now it was dead. He dropped it and looked back into that great yellow eye,

"Now what?" he muttered at the hopper, though he knew it couldn't hear him. "I'm not sure about the rules of the game. But I can't hurt you. I hope you can't hurt me."

His air smelled stale and the battered suit cramped his body. He couldn't think of anything to do. With the jets dead, he couldn't get away. With the laser dead, he couldn't fight.

All he could do was watch the hopper.

It glared back at him, but it couldn't move, with its silver arms gone. And now that its power was dead, it couldn't hurt him.

Jeff breathed his bad air. He twisted in the stiff metal of his suit. How had this queer kind of life been born, here in the ring of Topaz? Life on Earth had come out of the warm and friendly sea. Life would have to be

different, he thought, to hve in this cloud of cruel rocks with no air. It would have to be as marvelous, he thought, in its own strange way, as the living things of Earth.

He wondered if the hopper was really metal, or partly metal, as it looked. Was the life of the rocks based on metal, the way the life of Earth was based on water? Did it eat the scraps of metal collected in its web? Was that its source of energy? Was that deadly web spun out of its own metal body, as a spider spins its web?

He wondered how the hopper was made, to let it come apart. For he knew that his own weak fire had not cut off its silver arms. They had simply turned loose and flown away, like separate beings. No wounds were left where they had been, just smooth gray stumps.

He wondered why the creature had come to meet him alone. He thought it must have mates, perhaps by the million. Certainly the attack on his own star ship, out beyond the ring, must have been begun by other beings, because this crippled thing couldn't have come so far.

Where had the other hoppers gone?

He wondered what had crippled this one. His own machine had done no more than sting it. He wondered if it had been hurt in the battle with Ben's ship.

Wondering, he almost forgot to be afraid.

Pushing at the rock with his stiff right claw, he moved

closer to the hopper. He peered into the nearest yellow eye, wondering what the hopper was thinking about him. He saw the great eye shrink, as the shivering scales closed over it.

The hopper was afraid!

Suddenly a lot of things were clear to Jeff. Fear of men was the reason the hoppers had been waiting to fire at his ship, so far outside the ring of Topaz. Fear was the reason they had kept out of sight, baited their web with Ben's voice, and fired at every signal.

This hopper, he guessed, had been left to keep the web because it had been injured. All the others had Hed. But here it was, three feet from the thing it feared, hurt and desperate, and he felt a little sorry for it.

He wished for a way to make peace with it. Perhaps if Buzz and Lupe were here. . . .

But it was far too late for thoughts of peace. At least, Jeff knew, it was getting late for him. He caught himself yawning in the helmet. He could see the gray film of moisture spreading across the face plate, slowly shutting off his view. Dimly, he realized that the life support of his suit had been damaged in the fight.

Somehow he didn't care. He wanted to rip his helmet off, so that he could get one breath of good air, but he knew there was no air around him. For a long time he couldn't think of anything, except his need for air.

A pale red flicker reminded him of the hopper. He blinked through the fog on his face plate. He made out the cushion of black scales, the yellow eyes, the flashing laser.

But the great eyes weren't looking at him. They were staring off into the cloud. Following the red flash of its laser, Jeff found another huge rock. It was moving toward them, fast.

His old sense of mass and force and motion was working slowly now, but at last it told him why the hopper's laser was burning so wildly. It told him exactly where this new rock would strike the one where they were. He himself was safe, but the hopper wasn't.

It was going to be crushed between the rocks and it couldn't get out of the way. It was trying with its laser to break up the rock, but all of its power had been used. Jeff figured it had exactly 12 seconds left.

Jeff knew he ought to get farther back before the rock hit. He gripped a point of rock with his good left hand, to shove himself away. But something stopped him. He hung staring through his fogged face plate at the helpless, twisting hopper. Jeff knew he couldn't let it die.

Slowly, he moved toward it. The bright black scales pulled away from his gloves, shivering. The bright eye

beneath him drew back into a sht. The dark laser turned toward him, glowing like a dying coal.

". . . caught. ..." A far ghost of Ben's voice whispered in his helmet. ". . . web. . . ."

The hopper feared him more than it did the rushing rock. He knew it hated him. That dying whisper reminded him that it had trapped Ben's ship, possibly killed Ben and all his star men. Yet he couldn't just watch it be crushed.

He caught it under a thick gray stump, with his left hand and his frozen fist. He drew a gasping breath of the bad air in his helmet and pulled.

The fat cushion moved a little, half sliding, and half rolling across the rock. Though it weighed almost nothing, here in the rocks, its mass was almost too much for him. He had to pull and pull again, and he hardly knew when it was safe.

Dimly, he felt his fist slip from under that flat stump, and the iron soles of his boots scrape across the face of the rock. He knew that he was lying where the rock would hit.

He tried to look for the hopper and the rock, but gray mist had filled all his face plate. He tried to breathe. His air was almost gone. He made an effort to move his body out of the way, a yard or a foot or just an inch, but his energy was used up.

What happened then was hke a dim gray dream. He couldn't see what was going on, and he felt too weak and sick to care. But he thought one long silver arm had come back to the hopper. He thought he felt its quick tip whipping around his body to drag him from under that smashing rock.

CHAPTER 10

''First Man to Topaz

99

In his dream, Jeff was fighting to rescue Ben. He dived his jet suit into the ring around Topaz. He flew between rocks and searched through endless clouds. At last he came to the lost star ship caught in the rock hopper's web.

Hot blue sparks stung him when he drew near the web. But he used his laser to cut the captured ship out of the web. He tore the coils from around the ship and opened the lock to look for Ben.

What he found was a yellow eye, bigger than his head, riirimed with shining scales. The hopper was waiting for him. A cold silver arm snaked out of the lock and whipped around his throat.

It choked him so that he couldn't breathe.

"Hi, Jeff." Ty's calm, strong voice called from somewhere. "Need some help?"

He opened his eyes. This wasn't a dream. It was real. Something covered his face. He tried to move, but his body was stiff and cold. A sharp pain stabbed through his head.

"Ty?" His voice was a dull croak. "Ty?"

His jet suit was gone. He couldn't remember where he was. He was shivering from a damp chill and fighting for breath.

"No sweat, Jeff." Ty's easy voice was closer. "You'll be okay."

He tried to sit up, but he was wrapped in a thick cocoon of his own. Something hard and cold was strapped against his heart, and something stung his arms when he tried to move. A sharp sweet smell in the air burned his throat when he breathed.

"Easy, Jeff." Ty's voice was cheerful. "You are not supposed to wake up yet."

But he kept struggling until he felt something lifted from his head. Looking through a narrow slit in his bandages, he saw Ty's face floating over him. Ty was wearing dark glasses.

"I thought—" He had to stop and breathe, and the air hurt his lungs. "Thought the hoppers had me!"

12

"We've both been under deep sleep," Ty said. "I beat you out by a day and a half. What they have to do to wake you up is not much fun, but Buzz says you'll be okay."

Jeff shook his pounding head to clear it. Peering through the slit, he recognized the padded metal shapes around him in the tall round room. It was the cabin of his own ship. Too tired to be very much surprised at anything, he looked back at Ty.

"Your eyes?" he asked.

"Still weak," Ty said. "But I can see."

"I'm—glad!" He drew another breath. "How—how did I get here?"

"Buzz says the hoppers gave you a sleep shot from the aid kit in your own suit," Ty told him. "That kept you alive while they brought you out of the rocks."

"I was fighting a hopper—"

"But then you saved its hfe," Ty said. "Buzz didn't tell me how."

"I think I remember." He drew another long breath, which didn't hurt so much. "I remember a rock. I remember pushing the hopper out of the way."

"Buzz says that's why the hoppers helped you."

"What do they care?" He blinked through the slit. "They weren't acting very friendly when they trapped Ben's ship and copied his voice to bait a trap for us—"

"I will let you talk to Lupe/' Ty said, "She knows more about it."

Ty disappeared. Alone in the room, JefiE closed his aching eyes to rest them. When he looked up again, Lupe was bending over him.

"Don't worry, Jeff." Her cool hand felt good on his hot forehead. "You are trying to wake up too soon."

"I want to know about the hoppers," he told her.

"They were afraid," she said. "You see, all the hoppers belong to one great being—a queer, vast creature that is even stranger than Buzz's multiple mind. Each hopper has parts that can be separate beings or work together as they choose. But all the hoppers share one common intelligence, as Buzz and all his sister-brothers do. Their mind is the only one in all the rings of Topaz. It had never met another mind. That's why it was afraid."

Jeff tried to understand.

"Buzz had crawled back into his cocoon as we drifted toward the ring," she said. "He had sensed the hopper mind, and he was trying hard to make contact. The hopper mind was closed to him because it was afraid. But when you risked your own life to save that hopper, its mind saw that we could be friends. It opened up to Buzz."

"So now the hoppers are our friends?"

"They're Buzz's friends, anyhow." Her face came closer. "His mind has a lot in common with theirs. Buzz has been telling me all about them."

'What are they like?" His voice stopped when he remembered the mystery and wonder of the hoppers. ''How can they exist? Out among these dry, bare, flying rocks, with no planet at all!"

"Buzz says they're as strange and wonderful as human beings are." A quick smile lighted her face. "He says the working of their bodies is based on metals, the way ours is based on water."

"So they really eat rocks!"

"Buzz says they do eat certain ores. They drink hot metal. They don't have to breathe. Their bodies produce electric and magnetic forces, as well as laser beams. They fly with natural jets."

"Queer things!"

"Buzz says we seem queer to them. The air we breathe would burn them up."

"I guess in a way we're odd, too." Jeff moved stiffly in his tight cocoon. "But how do they live? Do they have machines and ships and cities?"

"Buzz says they have no use for things like that. Their bodies don't need them. Their great common mind keeps them all in touch, so they don't have to crowd into cities."

"What do they do?"

"They Hve," she said. "They weave their homes of metal strands. They spread their webs to gather food. They have their famihes and bring up the new-born hoppers. Buzz says their family webs are scattered far apart, wherever they can find the rare ores they need for food."

"Is that all?" Jeff felt somehow disappointed. "For things like the hoppers, that seems—well, dull."

Lupe shook her head.

"They think," she said. "They feel. Their rocks are filled with treasures and with dangers. They have to search all through the ring for the ores they eat. They have to hide from terrible creatures that prey on them."

Resting in his firm cocoon, Jeff tried to picture that.

"Sometimes, Buzz says, they leave their rocks. They swarm out into open space. They drift down toward Topaz, soaking up the energy of its rays the way our green plants do. The pure bright light makes them happy. They fly through patterns like dances and sing songs of silent thought."

Jeff looked up at Lupe, trying hard to understand.

"Maybe they aren't so dull," he said. "Anyway, I'm glad they're our friends."

"They do want to be," she said. "They saved your life, when they gave you that sleep shot and brought you back to the probe. They even made new parts for the

boosters, when Buzz taught them how, so that we can fly the ship again. They want to help us get back home.'*

"Why?" he asked.

"Because now they see that we will help them, when they help us. Buzz says they'd always been afraid of life on other stars. Now they want to join us."

"That's great," he said. "But when can I get up?'*

"Not yet," Lupe said. "You have two more shots to take before we can get you up."