IV

Ten minutes later he slammed against Asteroid A’s surface, braked

a trifle by the bootsole gravitators, and guided by precision

calculations and his desperate need to arrive at his destination in

time.

He clawed his way upright just as Drake was lifting the girl to the

hatch of her radiation-insulated space ship.

Drake saw him at once, and sprang toward him. There was no concealment

now. Tinker knew what the cost would be if he lost. There was small

chance that Drake would let him live any longer than he thought

desirable. It would be easy to imprison him in the space ship and send

it rocketing off into outer space forever. The flatbarreled, compact

little gun in Drake’s hand made his intentions perfectly plain.

“Drop it!” Tinker yelled; and the moment’s surprise gave him the

split-second he needed.

Drake hesitated only a tiny fraction of a breath. But drawing and

aiming with space-gauntlets was slow work and before he could get the

weapon into firing position Tinker was at his knees, bringing him down.

Drake kicked out, swearing violently. The heavy boot caught Tinker in

his middle, folding him up. He coughed and gasped and squirmed erect,

clutching for the gun.

The slender metal rod wouldn’t kill him. It wasn’t built for that under

any circumstances, and the heavy shielding of the space suit would

ground most of the charge. But it would stun him at the least, put him

out for minutes--and Drake would need only a few seconds to hack a hole

in the delicate jointure between neck and shoulders, or the vulnerable

spot at the armpits. Then the air in Tinker’s suit would go hissing out

into the void, carrying Tinker’s life with it.

Drake kicked at him again, but he juggled the gun and dropped it.

Without gravity of its own the weapon spun lazily in the air, hanging

and floating slowly like a toy balloon. Drake clutched at it like a

madman grabbing at phantom flies, but Tinker was there before him.

He didn’t try to grab the gun, only to knock it away. And he succeeded.

It clattered against his helmet and bounced off, up and away--meters

high and still going. The chances were good that it was gone forever,

beyond B’s tiny gravity. At the least, it was out of reach for either

Tinker or Drake for a good long while.

Drake copied Tinker’s tactics and butted the smaller man as Tinker had

butted the gun. But Tinker anticipated the move. The moment his partner

thudded into him he switched off his gravity. He went flying against

the side of the ship and scrambled around the hull, kicking against it

until the impact sent him flying back at Drake.

Both men were out of breath by now. But that was all. It was a crazy

fight, Tinker thought, throwing himself at the other man again. The

space suits were perfect protection against anything they could do to

each other barehanded.

If one of them could have gained a moment to find a gun, a knife--even

a heavy bar--the odds would have shifted in his favor. But barehanded,

they were equal and invulnerable, like two giant herbivorous saurians

thumping each other toothlessly over a luscious patch of weed.

They each had weak spots, of course. But they were hard to get to,

except manually. The gloves were thin and flexible, by comparison, as

they had to be. But both men were aware of that and were careful to

keep their hands out of danger. The result was that neither Tinker nor

Drake, however desperately they struggled and charged, could inflict

decisive punishment. The only outcome, Tinker thought, breathlessly

resentful, would be that one of them would drop of a heart attack.

But he was wrong.

Drake’s clumsiness won him the fight. He lunged at Tinker and slipped

and wriggled free. But Tinker had caught him by the leg and whirled him

around. Drake, panicky, kicked at Tinker’s sensitive hand. And Tinker

let go. The instant he did so Drake went flying through the space above

the incurious, busy robots, straight against the side of the space ship.

Tinker leaped after him, but he was too late. He struck the side of

the ship and bounded away, and before he could right himself Drake was

scuttling into the open hatch.

Tinker, abruptly warned, came hurtling back. But by now the hatch was

closing.

Tinker leaped back a couple of yards and stared. What was Drake up to?

In a moment he found out. The little ship, no more than five yards

long, shuddered and bucked once at the touch of an unfamiliar hand on

the controls.

And then it rose gently into the void and came at Tinker. Tinker

flattened himself against the ground, and the ship missed him by a

hair. But it was small and responsive. It stopped and whirled and came

at him again. He could see Drake’s looming ugly helmet over the control

board, through the forward view plate. He dodged again and stopped down

his gravitators. He ran with zigzag, plunging strides.

But the ship swooped toward him, not fast, but with deadly persistence,

twisting around the corner of a building after him, picking up speed

on the straight-away. He tried to stay close to the building wall, but

even as clumsy a pilot as Drake could put that little ship just where

he wanted it.

Tinker dodged and ducked a fraction of a second too late, and caught

a jolt from the vessel’s underbelly on his shoulder that sent him

spinning into the wall. He rolled over, half dazed, to see the ship

stop dead, and move back toward him with rapidly increasing speed.

The chances were very good that he would be crushed to death then and

there.

There was a space in the building wall beside him. He scrambled

through, just in time. The ship’s hull shook the supporting beams

behind him.

Tinker stood up and looked around for some object that might serve

as a weapon. But it was a hope that quickly died. He could see Siria

lying, motionless, yards away beside another building, and the thought

occurred to him that it was only a question of time before Drake would

get back to her. The fear in his mind became almost unendurable.

There wasn’t much time for thinking. He felt a vibration in his

bootsoles and looked up to see the prow of the ship slicing through the

roof of the building.

There wasn’t any choice. He dodged behind a group of wiring panels,

took a deep breath, and leaped for the girl. He dodged past the

headless robots, who paid him no attention at all, and reached her

while the ship was still methodically crushing the building he had just

left.

Siria was stirring. Tinker dragged her hastily inside another building.

He shook her to get her attention, then held a gauntleted finger up

before his faceplate in an awkward “ssh” gesture. Miraculously, she

understood him. Drake might not have the ship’s radio tuned to the

helmet-talk wavelengths. But it was a circumstance he couldn’t count on.

Beneath the buildings was a partial network of tunnels, built mostly

to serve as ducts for electric and communications cables which could

not be left exposed to the radiation from the reactors and the cosmic

rays. They had been enlarged in some parts to serve as storage space,

and when Tinker hunted for an entrance he quickly found one. They were

safe, at least for the moment.

“We can talk now,” Tinker said reassuringly. “The rock will ground our

radio. How do you feel?”

Her voice sounded shaky. “I have a headache--that much I know. He hit

me with a wrench.”

Tinker nodded thoughtfully. “It had to be something like that. You’re

lucky he didn’t hit harder. But I guess he intended to spare you until

he could get the ship safely off the asteroid.”

He could feel the girl shudder. “I’ve been pursued now and then,” she

said after a moment, “but nothing like this. It’s a frightening thing,

Tinker.”

Tinker said: “I don’t think it was just you, Siria. He’s crazy but--not

that crazy. I think he’s in mortal terror of the law. I guess he

thought it would be a good idea to take you with him, but judging

from the way he’s acting now--” Tinker paused. They could feel the

vibrations of Drake’s ship, still systematically destroying the debris

of the warehouse. “I’m afraid he’s changed his mind,” Tinker went on

grimly. “He’ll probably try to kill us both.”

“But why?” the girl asked.

Tinker explained, “He’s a criminal. He has three years to go on this

asteroid before he’s technically free. I guess he can’t wait. You see,

he’s never had a chance to get away before, not until you landed in

your ship. The ship’s his passport. And consider the wealth here. These

isotopes are worth a fortune on the black radioactives market. And your

ship is a Company job, with radiation-retarded storage bins--everything

he needs.”

The girl was silent for a moment. “Does he have to kill us?”

“I’m afraid so, Siria,” Tinker said gently. “If he leaves us alive,

we’ll have the law on him in an hour, and the space patrol would nab

him. He needs at least a day’s start. He can’t even destroy the radio

on Asteroid B. If it doesn’t send an automatic check signal every ten

minutes, the Company will think we’ve blown up and the patrol will be

here anyway.”

V

Siria rested while Tinker made a scouting trip to the electronic-brain

shed. From inside its complex array of circuit boards he could see

Drake’s ship, now hovering motionless a few yards over the top of a

building a hundred yards away. Tinker watched for a long minute, but

nothing happened.

He had a worried expression on his face when he rejoined the girl and,

though his countenance was invisible to her, she could hear the strain

in the voice. “How bad is it?” she asked.

Tinker said, “Bad enough. He’s in a pretty favorable spot. So long as

he stays in the ship, we can’t touch him. I’m afraid time’s working for

him. The longer we stay here, the better off he will be. If we stay

here more than twenty-four hours, we’ll die. The radiation _could_ kill

us in fifteen hours.”

She was silent for a moment. “I see,” was all she said.

“On the other hand,” resumed Tinker, more confidently, “there must be

_something_ we can do. Maybe we don’t know what it is, but there never

was a tactical position so strong it couldn’t be attacked. At least

we’ve got that factor working for us.”

She hesitated. “Tinker,” she said uncertainly, “did I understand what

you just said? There’s a weakness in his position, and we don’t know

what it is. We don’t know, but--it helps us?”

“Certainly,” said Tinker, his voice reassuring. “Consider all the

things we might try. First, we could make a jump for the radio on

Asteroid B. That won’t work, because he’d promptly run us down in the

ship. Second, we could attack the ship with our bare hands. That’s out

too, because we couldn’t do it any damage. Third, we could just wait

here until he goes away. That won’t work, because we’d die of radiation

poisoning. Fourth, we could--”

“Tinker!” cried the girl. “You’re cracking!”

He smiled. “Not exactly, dear,” he said. “There _must_ be some weakness

in Drake’s strategic position.”

“But we don’t know what it is. You said so yourself!”

“That’s true,” he conceded. “But you see, Drake doesn’t suspect that

we don’t know. You’ll find that situation described in Clausewitz’s

_Tactics_,” he added encouragingly. “Unless I made it up myself.”

Siria might have had her doubts about Tinker’s sanity, but she grimly

followed orders. Most of her engineering knowledge was from textbooks

and the drawing board, but she put her mind to practical mechanics and

quickly erected the mechanism Tinker had specified out of spare parts

in the storage buildings.

The machine glittered and sparkled. It towered higher than her head. It

was rude and clumsy in construction, but it had a long, deadly-looking

barrel that came out of its vitals and poked threateningly into space.

And it did absolutely nothing.

She was staring at it dourly when Tinker scrambled out of the tunnel

hatch behind her. He turned his radio volume down as far as possible

and, his helmet almost touching hers, asked: “Everything all right?”

“I suppose so,” she whispered, “but--”

“Never mind. Any trouble with the robots?”

She shook her head. “They look the same as ever. But I’ve been staying

out of sight, just as you advised, even if they are perfectly harmless.”

“They aren’t,” he said, surprisingly. “But don’t worry about it right

now.”

He stood up cautiously and peered around. Drake’s ship was methodically

cruising up and down the lanes of buildings, not particularly close.

There were individual robots and groups wandering up and down, their

“heads” under their arms in their accustomed fashion.

But they were slightly different in some respects now, since Tinker had

made certain changes in the master pattern-sets in the electronic brain.

“Drake’s looking for us,” he reported to the girl, sinking down again.

“That’s good. It shows he’s getting edgy. I don’t blame him. He thinks

that once he takes care of us, he’ll be free. But the longer he waits

the greater the chance of some wandering patrol vessel or freighter

blundering in, for some message coming through from the Company that

starts them wondering. So he’s irritable--jumpy. He’s desperately

anxious to get away.”

“So am I,” the girl said.

“All right.” Tinker stood up again, took a last look. The ship was

close at hand, but none of the robots were. Conditions would never

be any better. “This is it, Siria,” he said, bending close. “In case

anything goes wrong, I love you.”

A second later, trundling the imitation machine out into the open, he

wondered just how much he had been deceiving himself. Not very much, he

decided, almost incredulously. But then he didn’t have time to think

for quite a while.

The main problem was to move the machine a substantial distance away

from any building. He hadn’t moved it quite as far as he might have

wished when he saw the nose of the ship come suddenly about and head

toward him. Drake had sighted him.

Tinker gave a splendid five-second performance of the Courageous

Ack-Ack Gunner, sticking to his weapon to the last. He tugged and

strained and twisted dials, and sighted through tubes. It was almost

too realistic to be safe, because he just barely managed to dive aside

in time to dodge Drake’s ship.

It was hare-and-hound for several frantic seconds after that, but

Tinker had picked his spot and he made it to one of the buildings and

into the tunnels. Drake had learned his lesson about the futility of

knocking down buildings. He hung irresolute for a moment, then drifted

back toward the “weapon.”

Tinker stood watching half inside the tunnel for a long moment, with

his heart in his mouth. Then, slowly, the hatch began to open.

Drake had taken the bait.