"Time," Johnny Coombs said. "If we just used the three linear
dimensions ... length, width and depth ... we'd end up at the place where
the asteroid _was_, but that wouldn't help us much because it's been
moving in orbit ever since the Patrol Ship last pinpointed it. So we
figure in a fourth dimension ... the time that's passed since it was last
spotted ... and we can chart a collision course with it, figure out just
where _we'll_ have to be to meet it."
It was the first time that the idea of time as a "dimension" had ever
made sense to Tom. They talked some more, until Johnny started bringing
in fifth and sixth dimensions, and problems of irrational space and
hyperspace, and got even himself confused.
"Anyway," Tom said, "I'm glad we've got a computer aboard."
"And a navigator," Johnny added. "Don't sell your brother short."
"Fat chance of that. Greg would never stand for it."
Johnny frowned. "You lads don't like each other very much, do you?" he
said.
Tom was silent for a moment. Then he looked away. "We get along, I
guess."
"Maybe. But sometimes just gettin' along isn't enough. Especially when
there's trouble. Give it a thought, when you've got a minute or two...."
Later, the three of them went over the computer results together. Johnny
and Greg fed the navigation data into the ship's drive mechanism,
checking and rechecking speeds and inclination angles. Already the
Dutchman's orbital speed was matching the speed of Roger Hunter's
asteroid ... but the orbit had to be tracked so that they would arrive
at the exact point in space to make contact. Tom was assigned to the
viewscreen, and the long wait began.
He spotted their destination point an hour before the computer had
predicted contact ... at first a tiny pinpoint of reflected light in the
scope, gradually resolving into two pinpoints, then three in a tiny
cluster. Greg cut in the rear and lateral jets momentarily, stabilizing
their contact course; the dots grew larger.
Ten minutes later, Tom could see their goal clearly in the
viewscreen ... the place where Roger Hunter had died.
* * * * *
It was neither large nor small for an asteroid, an irregular chunk of
rock and metal, perhaps five miles in diameter, lighted only by the dull
reddish glow from the dime-sized sun. Like many such jagged chunks of
debris that sprinkled the Belt, this asteroid did not spin on any axis,
but constantly presented the same face to the sun.
Just off the bright side the orbit-ship floated, stable in its orbit
next to the big rock, but so small in comparison that it looked like a
tiny glittering toy balloon. And clamped on its rack on the orbit-ship's
side, airlock to airlock, was the _Scavenger_, the little scout ship
that Roger Hunter had brought out from Mars on his last journey.
While Greg maneuvered the Dutchman into the empty landing rack below the
_Scavenger_ on the hull of the orbit-ship, Johnny scanned the blackness
around them through the viewscope, a frown wrinkling his forehead.
"Do you see anybody?" Tom asked.
"Not a sign ... but I'm really looking for other rocks. I can see three
that aren't too far away, but none of them have claim marks. This one
must have been the only one Roger was working."
They stared at the ragged surface of the planetoid. Raw veins of
metallic ore cut through it with streaks of color, but most of the
sun-side showed only the dull gray of iron and granite. There was
nothing unusual about the surface that Tom could see. "Could there be
anything on the dark side?"
"Could be," Johnny said. "We'll have to go over it foot by foot ... but
first, we should go through the orbit-ship and the _Scavenger_. If the
Patrol ship missed anything, we want to know it."
The interior of the orbit-ship was dark. It spun slowly on its axis,
giving them just enough weight so they would not float free whenever
they moved. Their boots clanged on the metal decks as they climbed up
the curving corridor toward the control cabin.
Then Johnny threw a light switch, and they stared around them in
amazement.
The cabin was a shambles. Everything that was not bolted down had been
ripped open and thrown aside.
Greg whistled through his teeth. "The Major said the Patrol crew had
gone through the ship ... but he didn't say they'd wrecked it."
"They didn't," Johnny said grimly. "No Patrol ship would ever do this.
Somebody else has been here since." He turned to the control panel,
flipped switches, checked gauges. "Hydroponics are all right. Atmosphere
is still good; we can take off these helmets. Fuel looks all right,
storage holds ..." He shook his head. "They weren't looting, but they
were looking for something, all right. Let's look around and see if they
missed anything."
It took them an hour to survey the wreckage. Not a compartment had been
missed. Even the mattresses on the accelleration cots had been torn
open, the spring-stuffing tossed about helter-skelter. Tom went through
the lock into the _Scavenger_; the scout ship too had been searched,
rapidly but thoroughly.
But there was no sign of anything that Roger Hunter might have found.
Back in the control cabin Johnny was checking the ship's log. The old
entries were on microfilm, stored on their spools near the reader. More
recent entries were still recorded on tape. From the jumbled order,
there was no doubt that marauders had examined them. Johnny ran through
them nevertheless, but there was nothing of interest. Routine
navigational data; a record of the time of contact with the asteroid; a
log of preliminary observations on the rock; nothing more. The last tape
recorded the call-schedule Roger Hunter had set up with the Patrol, a
routine precaution used by all miners, to bring help if for some reason
they should fail to check in on schedule.
There was no hint in the log of any extraordinary discovery.
"Are any tapes missing?" Greg wanted to know.
"Doesn't look like it. There's one here for each day-period."
"I wonder," Tom said. "Dad always kept a personal log. You know, a sort
of a diary, on microfilm." He peered into the film storage bin, checked
through the spools. Then, from down beneath the last row of spools he
pulled out a slightly smaller spool. "Here's something our friends
missed, I bet."
It was not really a diary, just a sequence of notes, calculations and
ideas that Roger Hunter had jotted down and microfilmed from time to
time. The entries on the one spool went back for several years. Tom fed
the spool into the reader, and they stared eagerly at the last few
entries.
A series of calculations, covering several pages, but with no notes to
indicate what, exactly, Roger Hunter had been calculating. "Looks like
he was plotting an orbit," Greg said. "But what orbit? And why? Nothing
here to tell."
"It must have been important, though, or Dad wouldn't have filmed the
pages," Tom said. "Anything else?"
Another sheet with more calculations. Then a short paragraph written in
Roger Hunter's hurried scrawl. "No doubt now what it is," the words
said. "Wish Johnny were here, show him a _real_ bonanza, but he'll know
soon enough if...."
They stared at the scribbled, uncompleted sentence. Then Johnny Coombs
let out a whoop. "I told you he found something! And he found it _here_,
not somewhere else."
"Hold it," Greg said, peering at the film reader. "There's something
more on the last page, but I can't read it."
Tom blinked at the entry. "'Inter Jovem et Martem planetam interposui,'"
he read. He scratched his head. "That's Latin, and it's famous, too.
Kepler wrote it, back before the asteroids were discovered. 'Between
Jupiter and Mars I will put a planet.'"
Greg and Johnny looked at each other. "I don't get it," Greg said.
"Dad told me about that once," Tom said. "Kepler couldn't understand
the long jump between Mars and Jupiter, when Venus and Earth and Mars
were so close together. He figured there ought to be a planet out
here ... and he was right, in a way. There wasn't any one planet, unless
you'd call Ceres a planet, but it wasn't just empty space between Mars
and Jupiter either. The asteroids were here."
"But why would Dad be writing that down?" Greg asked. "And what has it
got to do with what he found out here?" He snapped off the reader switch
angrily. "I don't understand any of this, and I don't like it. If Dad
found something out here, where is it? And who tore this ship apart
after the Patrol ship left?"
"Probably the same ones that caused the 'accident' in the first place,"
Johnny said.
"But why did they come back?" Greg protested. "If they killed Dad, they
must have known what he'd found before they killed him."
"You'd think so," Johnny conceded.
"Then why take the risk of coming back here again?"
"Maybe they _didn't_ know," Tom said thoughtfully.
"What do you mean?"
"I mean maybe they killed him too soon. Maybe they thought they knew
what he'd found and where it was ... and then found out that they
didn't, after all. Maybe Dad hid it...."