Trapped in space (7 page)

He turned a key on the instrument board and punched a button- to drop the station. The sharp nose-cone spun away from their ship. Inside the cone, power flowed and machines came to life. Outside, a web spread to sweep objects from the entrance zone.

On tlie side of the station toward the far Earth, the neutrino beacon began flashing its signal through X-space, ready to guide new ships from Earth to Topaz—if any other ships ever came.

On the side toward Topaz, the laser beacon began winking orange and green, orange and green. Its winks could reach the nearest edge of the ring around the star. Jeff hoped they would reach Ben. He knew they would reach the waiting hopper.

"One. . . ." Under his breath, he counted the seconds. "Two . . . three. . . ."

He had opened the motor to full power and pushed the mass-reduction lever. Freed from all the tons of the station, the star ship seemed light as a bird. They darted away from the wink of the beacon.

"Five . . . six . . . seven. . . ."

He was counting to get the distance of the hopper. The light of the beacon would take time to reach it. Its laser bolt would take time to come back. Each second meant nearly a hundred thousand miles.

"Eleven . . . twelve . . . thirteen. . . ."

Behind their ship, the beacon blinked red once, instead of green. A small ball of bright yellow fire ballooned in black space. It turned pale and went out. The beacon did not wink again.

Though Jeff had expected this, he felt a shock. The

station had been an open gate on the long road back to Earth. Now it was closed. They couldn't go back.

"A flash! I saw a red flash." Lupe was pointing. "There —just above the ring of Topaz."

JeflF nodded. "That was the laser. That's where the hopper is. I think about a million miles from here."

Buzz was purring softly.

"He thinks we should head that way," Lupe said. "He must find the hoppers, to make peace with them."

"I don't think they mean to give us much time for talking peace," Jeff said, but he turned the ship toward that spot in the dark sky above the ring.

The star ship flew fast. They had covered half of that million miles when the screen picked up another laser beam. Buzz's bright blue fur turned pale.

"This is not another attack," Jeff told him. "It's too weak to harm anything."

Unlike the deadly spears of red light that had blinded Ty and wrecked the station, this was the very thinnest thread of light, as fine as the ray of a far-off star.

"A signal!" Jeff whispered. "A voice!"

He bent over the screen, working to increase the signal and shut Out the noise. At last a hoarse, hollow voice boomed in the cock pit, still mixed with the hiss and crash of noise.

"Star Man Ben Stone calling. . . ."

CHAPTER 7

Rainbow of Rocks

The hoarse voice was cut off sharply, as if the thin thread of hght had broken. Odd noises drummed and howled in the cock pit.

''Ben!" Jeff looked up at Lupe. ''He's still alive."

Quickly, he bent over the screen. His fingers worked furiously to mend the thread of light. Nothing but noise. But at last the voice came out again.

"Star Man Ben Stone, calling anybody. Our ship has been under laser attack. We've lost air and power. Now we are in the rocks around Topaz, caught in a rock hopper's web. . . ."

Roaring noise drowned the voice.

Jejff searched for it again, but all he got was the crash and hiss and scream of noise. At last he gave up.

''What does it mean?" Lupe whispered. "What's a rock hopper's web?"

''I don't know what it is." Staring at the shining ring of Topaz, Jeff felt a cold prickling at the back of his neck. ''Anyhow," he said, "we know where it is. We can chart it on the screen. Ben's voice came from the outside edge of that ring—from a point 60 million miles ahead of us. The question—"

He stopped to look at Lupe.

"The question now is, do we answer?"

"Why not?" Lupe asked. "If your brother is asking for help."

"Whoever fired at us is probably waiting just ahead," Jeff said. "If we use power enough to reach 60 million miles, he's sure to see our signal beam. I think he will shoot—"

Buzz chattered suddenly, shrinking away from Jeff.

"His body is frightened." Lupe was standing just behind his seat, and she bent to stroke his shining fur. "But his multiple mind says we must answer. His mind says we can't make peace by hiding."

"I don't see how we can make peace by letting them shoot at us," Jeff said. "But still I think we must answer. I want to let Ben know we are here."

Buzz tugged at Lupe until she sat down in tlie seat with him. He scrambled into her lap and sat blinking up at her. His fur was turning dark.

"Star Ship Topaz B, to Topaz A." Jeff's eyes were on the clock on the instrument board, watching the second hand. "Ben, we are on the way—"

Smash!

Something exploded. A red flash blinded him for a moment, so that he couldn't read the clock. There was the smell of burned paint in the cock pit, and he heard Buzz whining.

"Did they hurt us?" Lupe whispered.

"Don't know yet."

Jeff listened for leaking air. When he could see, he blinked to read the instrument board. Air pressure normal. Fuel pressure normal. Power normal. Mass-reduction normal. Everything seemed normal, until he noticed that the sound of the pumps had stopped.

"They got the screen," he said. "But we can go on without it—as long as we are lucky."

"Will they shoot again?"

"Wish I knew." He glanced at the clock. "They hit us something like six seconds after our beam went on. That would mean they're still about half a million miles ahead."

"What do we do now?"

"Ben's out beyond them/' JeE said. "We've got to keep going."

Buzz twittered in Lupe's lap. He was clinging fast to her, both thin arms wrapped around her neck. His eyes were bright green, peering at Jeff.

"If you are afraid, so am I." Jeff tried to grin at him. "I think there is good reason to be afraid. Earth has no weapon that could hit a moving star ship half a million miles away—or even a tenth that far."

He looked up at Lupe.

"If the hoppers get into X-space—if they break through Sun Point—all our planets will be at their mercy. They can stay out of range while they cut us to pieces."

Buzz chirped weakly.

"He says we must go on," Lupe said, "because we-must make peace."

They went on. Jeff pushed the mass-reduction lever as far as he dared, changing mass to speed, hoping to make them harder to hit. Watching the clock, watching the screen, he waited for another shot.

"Here we are!" He looked at Buzz. "If you want to make peace, we've come to the point where they fired at

y>

US.

Searching the space around them, Jeff saw nothing except dusty darkness and the rings of Topaz. The screen

showed nothing.

Lupe lowered her voice. "Where are they now?"

''Hard to say." JefF frowned. "We can't see far enough. They've got plenty of room to hide, until they want to shoot again."

"What now?"

"We will go on," Jeff said. "We will look for Ben's ship in that rock hopper's web."

Buzz moved around in Lupe's lap. Humming softly as she held Buzz close, she looked up with a quick smile for Jeff. He pushed the mass-reduction lever farther over.

"If we get hit, we get hit." He grinned back at her. "With our screen dead, we are just as safe at twice the speed."

That was not exactly true. At twice the speed they would hit meteors twice as fast, and each one they hit would do four times the damage. Lupe knew it and so did Jeff, but neither said anything.

They flew on toward the clean bright edge of that far ring. Lupe and Buzz were busy reporting to the admiral. Lupe questioned Jeff. She read the ship's log to Buzz. She figured out pen scratches from the recording instruments. Sometimes she spoke English to Buzz, and sometimes she talked his own language. They went all over the ship, observing the rings of Topaz through the cock pit windows, studying the instrument board,

scrambling down the ladder to examine Ty, climbing farther down to inspect the mass-reduction gear.

"I'm afraid all this won't help us find your brother." Lupe gave Jeff a look of sympathy. "But it's what the admiral wants. What we've learned won't be wasted."

Jeff said he understood. He tried to feel as cool and brave as Lupe seemed. He even pushed the speed of the ship a little higher, but he had to pull it back when he began to hear the dust.

The dust was a whisper at first, a hiss of small hits against many thousand bits of matter too small for the auto pilot to steer around. The whisper changed to a rattle of hail when they hit too many grains of dust too fast.

Their speed made each grain a small bomb that exploded against the thick shield over the cock pit. In the deadly seconds of cut out, when they were still near the speed of light, one small speck of matter could have smashed the ship. Even now, though their lower speed had cut the force each time dust exploded, they were in danger.

The admiral wanted another report.

"The dust seems to lie in clouds," Jeff said. "The closer we get to Topaz and the ring, the thicker they get. Flying through them, we have to balance two different risks. If we fly too fast, some larger grain may

crack the shield. But we are still too far from the ring. If we fly too slow, we may be too late to do anytliing for Ben and his crew."

"The admiral has your message/' Lupe repeated after Buzz's chirp.

They pushed on toward the ring.

Once Lupe took the controls to let Jeff rest while they flew between the clouds, but another storm of dust brought Jeff back to the cock pit. With every hiss and crash, his nerves tightened. The sky seemed to him like a dreadful pit. Sometimes he had a dizzy feeling that the ship was falling all the way to the hot blue heart of Topaz.

Buzz came to join Lupe in the cock pit, carrying a tube of paste. He waved it eagerly at Jeff, his bright blue face wrinkled into a grin.

"He got it out of your space bag," Lupe said. "He wants your permission to eat it."

"Help yourself, Buzz." Jeff tried not to laugh at him. "I'm glad you like it."

Buzz climbed into Lupe's lap, sucking at the tube. He squeezed it flat, carefully licked the smears from his lips and his slim hands, and then purred softly at Jeff.

"He thanks you very much," Lupe said. "It was delicious."

He was soon asleep in her lap.

"His mind is as old as his people." She smiled down

at him. "Even his body is older than I am. He hasn't grown an inch in all the time I've known him. But time is different for him and his people. In some ways he's still a baby."

Jeff leaned forward to check the screen. It showed nothing nearer than the bright ring of Topaz. When he tested the laser, all he got was a new burst of noise that made Buzz cry in his sleep.

Quickly he snapped it off again. They were flying between two clouds, where there was no roar of dust. It felt good to have a little time of quiet, with Lupe beside him. He talked to her about his life-long attempt to keep up with Ben.

"Sometimes I'm afraid that I care more about myself than I do about rescuing Ben," he told her.

Lupe sat silent for a time, watching the ring of Topaz and stroking Buzz's bright fur.

"Self does matter," she said. "But I guess I have another sort of self. Or maybe I should say I never had a self."

The dust was whispering again. Jeff pulled back the mass-reduction lever and waited for her to go on.

"You see, I grew up where nobody had a self. Not like Earth people do. Buzz was my httle brother-sister. Our larger sister-brothers nursed us and taught us and

made us behave. But they all belonged to that one great self."

She looked sharply at Jeff to see if he understood. He wasn't quite sure he did, but he nodded and waited for her to make it clear.

"Buzz has a self sometimes/' she said. ''Just because he's so very young. But when the self hurts, he can always go back to his cocoon. The self sleeps, when he's in the cocoon. It makes him part of that great mind."

''I see." Jeff nodded slowly. "Or at least I think I do."

"I always wanted to be like them, too," Lupe said. "But I had no cocoon—I nearly died once, when I crawled into Buzz's cocoon and couldn't get out. But I always knew I wasn't like Buzz and his people."

Her voice had turned solemn.

"I wasn't made like them. I couldn't think like them. I couldn't share their common mind. I couldn't learn to be the way they are, each one living for the great common self to which they all belong."

She sat silent for a time, biting her lip.

"Yet I wasn't human, either." Her troubled eyes came back to Jeff. "My parents were gone before I can remember. There were no other Earth people on the planet. I didn't see a human being until I was twelve years old. I didn't know what a human being was."

She sat up straight and tried to smile.

"Of course it has been great fun, travelling to Earth and knowing people and going to school. Earth is nearly as wonderful as the worlds of Opal." She shook her head, looking down at Buzz again. "But still sometimes I don't know who or what I am."

"I think you don't have enough feeling of self," Jeff said. *'You learned to do everything for your sister-brothers, and nothing for yourself."

He looked out at Topaz, thinking.

"Maybe I'm too much the other way," he said at last. "Maybe that's why I'm always trying to catch up with Ben—because I have to prove myself. I wish I were more like you."

"I didn't mean that," Lupe said quickly. "I like you fine the way you are."

That was all he heard, because he had seen a red flicker in the screen. Quickly, he bent to pick up the signal. Noise boomed in the cock pit. Ben's voice came out of the speaker like a shower of gravel.

"—calling anybody. . . . We've lost air and power. Now we are in the rocks around Topaz, caught in a rock hopper's web—"

The signal faded out.

Jeff searched again for the thread of light that carried it, but all he found was thunder. He snapped the speaker off and looked at Lupe.