_First we discovered the Willy Maloon category. Then we
discovered Willy himself. Then we data-researched, and
postulated a theory. Everything was easy, until it came to
the question of proof._
[Illustration]
* * * * *
This thing really started before the time I had Willy Maloon under
observation when he gunned the small runabout well past cruising speed
in order to reach the little asteroid as soon as he could. At times
like that he showed undue impatience. I was following at a discreet
distance behind him, homing in on the rock, too. I had to find out
what he was up to.
Archie Crosby, the obliging scoundrel, had "lent" Willy the homer unit
out of supply. But, of course, he (Willy) had requested it in words to
the effect that it was to replace a defective one in the cache. And
Archie didn't doubt Willy for a moment, Willy being the kind of fellow
he is.
Willy had worked a couple of hours on the homer unit, which is nothing
more than a small radio transmitter. He tuned it to a frequency on the
high side of the band used by the homer units in the cache. This was
so no one would be likely to inadvertently tune the frequency and get
curious. Tuning any of the vehicle receivers to that particular
transmitter frequency was a simple matter. Then he had taken the
transmitter out among the asteroids and hunted around until he had
found one about two miles or thereabouts in diameter, only it couldn't
be said to have a diameter because it was quite irregular in shape.
But to Willy it must have been as fascinating as a jewel. So he
planted the homer on it so that he could find it again when he wanted
to. Of course, he hadn't yet thought of a reason for wanting an
asteroid, but he would. He usually found reasons for the strange
things he did.
And he did. It must have been just after Ollie Hadaway lost control of
his tug. It had been headed in the direction of a rather large
asteroid. Ollie had tried to unjumble the steering jets, but he
couldn't, so he bailed out and was picked up a little later. The tug
went on and shattered on the surface of the asteroid. Then later,
Willy, at my directions, investigated the accident, examined the tug,
and wrote up an accident report on it. And the inspection part of it
must have gone something like this:
When Willy arrived to examine the shattered tug on the surface of the
asteroid, he must have been pleasantly surprised to note that the hull
was a battered mess, but miraculously some of the innards were intact.
He must have looked closer and saw that the drive unit had escaped
destruction. The drive unit of a tug is a super-heavy duty workhorse
of a unit chock full of more power than would ever be packed or needed
in a conventional ship of the same size. But as I said before, this
was a propulsion unit from a tug, and tugs like ones we use need
plenty of power.
And that must have been when Willy decided on a reason for having his
own private asteroid. He would add the drive unit to it and make it
mobile. He must have sparkled with the idea for the rest of the day. I
recall his accident report saying the tug was a total loss. Of course,
no one checked Willy's decision on that.
* * * * *
I also had Willy under observation the time he retrieved the drive
unit and took it to his newly acquired privately owned (now) asteroid.
The peculiar shape of the asteroid would lend itself to adaptation to
mobility. So Willy blasted off the tip of the elongated end with some
explosives he had diverted from some other project, drilled it out
with some small charges, and fitted the drive unit in it, and anchored
it down. It had taken quite a while to do all that, but Willy had
interminable patience once he started a project. The entire procedure
would seem impossible for one man, but bulk and weight were no
problems in space. And Willy constantly worked miracles.
The question of what value a mobile asteroid would be among swarms of
non-mobile asteroids way out in space where there was no place to go
never seemed to have entered Willy's mind.
(Now when I speak of "night" and "day," I speak of those periods of
the twenty-four hour clock set forth as working and non-working
periods. The working part was the "day" part of the twenty-four hours,
during which we all engaged in our contracted occupations. The rest of
the time until the twenty-four hour period ended was considered
"night." Naturally, among the asteroids there was no rising and
setting of the sun to help designate the passage of time. The
reference to night and day is a habit which persists with space men no
matter which part of the system they happen to be in.)
A few days after Willy had finished installing the drive unit in his
asteroid, a small company speedster came to a near-halt at the outer
fringes of our section of the asteroid belt. For the next eighty hours
it felt its way by radar through the belt, dodging and going around
the larger bodies, and slowing its speed whenever it became necessary
to shoulder its way through masses of smaller debris and dust.
Finally it had our station in sight visually, and in a matter of hours
later, it was edging its sleek sixty feet of length into a side gantry
attached to the station.
Mr. Garfield Goil disembarked from the speedster with a small
retinue. He was greeted on the inside of the lock by Mr. Orrin, our
station manager. As operations engineer-foreman, I was there with
Orrin to greet Mr. Goil.
Mr. Goil's presence had been expected for the past several days, but
not especially looked forward to. His status and stature with the
Extraterrestrial Mining Company was well known to all of us, and
certainly respected. His volatile temperament was well known also; it
commanded our concern. And if ever Mr. Goil's temperament was to be
put to a test, it was during one of his inspection visits. And that
was what he had come for--his first to this station.
As I remember, there had always been conjecture on whether Mr. Goil's
temperament was the result of his physical topography, or whether his
physical topography had been altered by his temperament. In either
case, Mr. Garfield Goil was representative of that only appellation
inevitable to him because of his facial features and his name. And Mr.
Goil was perpetually bitter and approached the world--any world--with
a chip welded to his shoulder.
* * * * *
I tagged along as Orrin escorted Goil to his quarters and broke the
seal on a bottle of bourbon he had been saving for this particular
occasion.
It had been the wrong thing to do. Goil promptly informed Orrin that
not only was he (Goil) a teetotaler, but also that he was opposed to
drinking by anyone else, especially by company employees during duty
hours, and in a place other than an authorized area such as the
recreation room or the station bar. He told him further that he would
not condone such practices while he was around; his immediate job was
to inspect operations personally. His accompanying teams would dig
deeply into other matters such as personnel, supplies, overall
operations efficiency, and so on. Work would begin as soon as
possible.
Goil then excused himself coldly and left for the VIP quarters.
Point number one for the opposition, I thought. Why hadn't someone
warned us about the peculiarities of the man?
I hoped nothing would go wrong with the inspection. If things went
well, Goil and his cohorts could get their business over with and get
away from here that much faster. I was more than a little concerned
about Willy and what he was doing.
Willy had spent two days, mostly off-duty time, visiting and working
on the asteroid he had adopted, his two miles of irregular
monstrosity. In his spurt of activity to install the drive unit, he
had over-calculated a charge of explosives and blown out too much of
the end section of the asteroid. That caused him some concern for a
little while. In a flash of what he probably considered to be pure
genius, he solved that minor problem by deciding to fill in the hole
by installing a sub-space energizer. This first flash of genius was
apparently followed by another inspirational flash. He could, with
both installations, and some additional work, send the thing back to
Earth. He must have been proud of the thought, for private satellites
around Earth were all the rage now; no one who was Anyone was without
one. Besides that, it would make a wonderful birthday present for his
wife. Her birthday was only a matter of days away.
* * * * *
Goil's first request was to observe a day's operation. I had made what
few arrangements were necessary, and Goil and I started out early so
we could get into position and see the operations from the start.
We had one of the observation flitters. I took it about twenty
thousand miles out from the area of operations and parked with the
forward port facing the area. I said:
"We'll watch from here, Mr. Goil. You can see the debris floating down
there." I pointed, and Goil looked at the little pin points of light
reflecting from a great volume of dust, nebula-like in its dim
luminosity. "When the crew starts actual operation, we will turn on
the magnification screens and get some close-up views of the process."
"Please explain this to me," said Goil. "I've never seen an asteroid's
operation before."
"Of course, Mr. Goil. I didn't know. This asteroid patch, or vein, as
we like to call it, has a better than average content of metal ores
and compounds. As you can see, we have swept the loose ends, so to
speak, together. And there you see the result. In the center of that
nebulous sort of mass is a large asteroid. There is at least one in
almost every patch. We use that as the core, and by planting a large
gravity generator on it and feeding it a great deal of power, it and
the asteroid attracts most of the nearby debris. The gravity generator
has been souped up tremendously. It burns out rather quickly, but it
operates long enough for our purposes. There is a respectable layer of
assorted sizes of asteroids hugging the core. And there are several
miles of dust surrounding everything. After the gravity generator has
burned out, the big attraction dies out, of course. But the
proximity of the debris is still enough to hold them together for some
time."
[Illustration]
"What is that stray body off to one side?"
"That is the trigger asteroid," I answered.
A couple of minutes before triggering time, I reached over and punched
the channel button on operations frequency. Immediately the usual
operations chatter came rushing out at us from the speaker. Suddenly a
voice blasted out saying, "Ready, Sam? Clear, everybody! Eyes off! Ten
to go!" A countdown was started.
I had switched on four screens, each a different magnification. I
pointed to a spheroid on one of the screens and said, "There's the
trigger body. It's equipped with a sub-space energizer big enough to
get it into sub-space and return it to normal. Then there is a small
propulsor unit with just enough energy to send it to the center of
that mess. Then it returns to normal space smack dab in the center of
the core asteroid. And when the asteroid matter and the trigger body
matter try to occupy the same space at the same time.... Watch it go
out."
It did. Just disappeared.
The debris-encrusted mass vaporized. It seemed to do it slowly,
lazily. Much of the debris was flung out from the mass, but raw energy
of boiling vapors chased it, overtook it, and then it too was vapor.
The light emitted from the vaporizing collection of bodies would have
been optic nerve searing if Goil and I had not been looking at it
through the screens. The vapor continued to expand and spread until it
looked like a miniature nebula.
I said, "The triggering body is about half the size of the core body.
The heat that results from the explosion vaporizes nearly a hundred
per cent of the material. What little solid matter that escapes is of
little consequence."
Goil watched in fascination. The spectrum of colors displayed were
unbelievably, indescribably beautiful. The brilliant cloud masses that
boiled and leaped around were like things alive trying to escape the
terrible inner torment.
* * * * *
A long time passed, but the sight was so hypnotizing that Goil seemed
to be unaware of just how long he had been watching. Finally I broke
the silence.
"Watch the specks on the far left screen. They are the gravitor tugs.
They are ready to move in."
I stepped up the magnification on the screen. Goil watched a number of
great, ugly ships line abreast, head for the glowing clouds, enter,
and disappear from sight.
"Those tugs are modifications of the scientific ships that sweep close
to the sun to observe solar phenomena first hand. They are impervious
to the relatively low heat of the vapor. They will do the fringes
first. The center is still too turbulent. By the time they complete
the fringes, the center will be calm enough to sweep. They work their
way inward all the time."
"How long will it take to complete the operation?" Goil asked.
"With a cloud this size, about a week. It's best to get on it right
away. The tougher metals come out sooner than the softer and lighter
metals with lower vaporizing points. Recovery has to be made while the
metals are in the vapor state or the gravitors won't work
efficiently."
"Exactly how does it work?" asked Goil.
"Well, I guess you might remotely compare it to fractional
distillation," I said. "Only we gather metals instead of fluids. The
reason for vaporizing the solids is to make the ships accessible to
the metals. It spreads the matter out thin. The gravitors work very
well in the hot vapor. Behind each ship is towed a gravitor. Each
gravitor is set to attract a particular metal, somewhat the way a
magnet attracts iron, again loosely comparing. A magnet, as you know,
attracts by magnetic force. The gravitors are adjusted to attract a
metal by selecting its gravitic attraction. As the gravitor ships pass
through the vapor, the gravitors behind them attract the metal they
are set for. When load size has been reached, they are taken to the
cache near the station."
* * * * *
We watched the operation for three more hours. Goil wanted to see the
first of the gravitor tugs emerge with its load. Finally a ship
emerged from the cloud mass and headed for the station.
"What is it carrying?" Goil asked, looking at the tremendous mass of
incandescent material being towed a mile behind the tug.
"Tungsten," I said. "Would you like to see our cache?"
I steered the little observation ship past the station. When we
arrived at the cache area I eased the speed of the ship until it was
barely moving around among tremendous masses of various metals. Goil
recognized small spheroids of gold and silver. I pointed out other
metals, some in greater quantities than others, all floating in space,
with thick cables connecting them. I saw Goil looking at the cables
curiously.
"Keeps them from drifting apart," I said.
For another twenty minutes we cruised around the cache. Goil said
only a word now and then. He was visibly impressed by the mountains of
metal all around, all representing untold potential wealth. I think he
better understood how such an expensive operation so far from Earth
could be quite profitable.
"You may wonder," I said, "just how I located this cache. There are
several little transmitters among the piles. I just home in on any one
of them. Each metal cache has its own frequency. Gold, silver,
tungsten, beryllium...."