"But suppose Dad did, somehow, and whoever killed him couldn't find it?
It would be too late to make him tell them. They'd _have_ to come back
and look again, wouldn't they? And from the way they went about it, it
looks as though they weren't having much luck."
"Then whatever Dad found would still be here, somewhere," Greg said.
"That's right."
"But where? There's nothing on this ship."
"Maybe not," Tom said, "but I'd like to take a look at that asteroid
before we give up."
* * * * *
They paused in the big ore-loading lock to reclamp their pressure
suit helmets, and looked down at the jagged chunk of rock a hundred
yards below them. In the lock they had found scooters ... the little
one-man propulsion units so commonly used for short distance work in
space ... but decided not to use them. "They're clumsy," Johnny said,
"and the bumper units in your suits will do just as well for this
distance." He looked down at the rock. "I'll take the center section.
You each take an edge and work in. Look for any signs of work on the
surface ... chisel marks, Murexide charges, anything."
"What about the dark side?" Greg asked.
"If we want to see anything there, we'll either have to rig up lights or
turn the rock around," Johnny said. "Let's cover this side first and see
what we come up with."
He turned and leaped from the airlock, moving gracefully down toward
the surface, using the bumper unit to guide himself with short bursts
of compressed CO_{2}, from the nozzle. Greg followed, pushing off
harder and passing Johnny halfway down. Tom hesitated. It looked easy
enough ... but he remembered the violent nausea of his first few hours
of free fall.
Finally he gritted his teeth and jumped off after Greg. Instantly he
knew that he had jumped too hard. He shot away from the orbit-ship like
a bullet; the jagged asteroid surface leaped up at him. Frantically he
grabbed for the bumper nozzle and pulled the trigger, trying to break
his fall.
He felt the nozzle jerk in his hand, and then, abruptly, he was spinning
off at a wild tangent from the asteroid, head over heels. For a moment
it seemed that asteroid, orbit-ship and stars were all wheeling crazily
around him. Then he realized what had happened. He fired the bumper
again, and went spinning twice as fast. The third time he timed the
blast, aiming the nozzle carefully, and the spinning almost stopped.
He fought down nausea, trying to get his bearings. He was three hundred
yards out from the asteroid, almost twice as far from the orbit-ship. He
stared down at the rock as he moved slowly away from it. Before, from
the orbit-ship, he had been able to see only the bright side of the huge
rock; now he could see the sharp line of darkness across one side.
But there was something else....
He fired the bumper again to steady himself, peering into the blackness
beyond the light-line on the rock. He snapped on his helmet lamp, aimed
the spotlight beam down to the dark rock surface. Greg and Johnny were
landing now on the bright side, with Greg almost out of sight over the
"horizon" ... but Tom's attention was focussed on something he could see
only now as he moved away from the asteroid surface.
His spotlight caught it ... something bright and metallic, completely
hidden on the dark side, lying in close to the surface but not quite on
the surface. Then suddenly Tom knew what it was ... the braking jets of
a Class I Ranger, crouching beyond the reach of sunlight in the shadow
of the asteroid....
Swiftly he fired the bumper again, turning back toward the orbit-ship.
His hand went to the speaker-switch, but he caught himself in time. Any
warning shouted to Greg and Johnny would certainly be picked up by the
ship. But he had to give warning somehow.
He tumbled into the airlock, searching for a flare in his web belt. It
was a risk ... the Ranger ship might pick up the flash ... but he had to
take it. He was unscrewing the fuse cap from the flare when he saw Greg
and Johnny leap up from the asteroid surface.
Then he saw what had alarmed them. Slowly, the Ranger was moving out
from its hiding place behind the rock. Tom reached out to catch Greg as
he came plummeting into the lock. There was a flash from the Ranger's
side, and Johnny Coombs' voice boomed in his earphones: "Get inside! Get
the lock closed, fast ... hurry up, can't waste a second."
Johnny caught the lip of the lock, dragged himself inside frantically.
They were spinning the airlock door closed when they heard the
thundering explosion, felt the ship lurch under their feet, and all
three of them went crashing to the deck.