The pumps of their air-restorers and moisture-reclaimers were dependent
on current. Gradually the atmosphere they breathed was getting worse.
But from reports they had read and TV programs they had seen long ago,
they found themselves another faint hope, and worked on it. With only
solar power--derived through worn-out thermocouple units--to feed their
uncertain ionics, they could change course only very slowly, now.
Yet maybe they had used up their bad luck. At last they came to a
surface-fragment a couple of hundred yards long. They climbed over its
edge. The thin sunshine hit dried soil, and something like corn-stubble
in rows. Ahead was a solid stone structure, half flattened. Beside it a
fallen trunk showed its roots. Vegetation was charred black by the
absolute dryness of space. There was a fragment of a road, a wall, a
hillside.
Here, there must have been blue sky, thin, frosty wind. The small,
Mars-sized planet had been far from the sun. Yet perhaps the greenhouse
effect of a high percentage of carbon dioxide in its atmosphere and the
radioactive heat of its interior had helped warm it. At least it had
been warm enough to evolve life of the highest order, eons ago.
Poof had gone the blue sky and this whole world, all in a moment, the
scattered pieces forming the asteroids. Accident? More likely it was a
huge, interplanetary missile from competing Mars. The Martians had died,
too--as surely, though less spectacularly. Radioactive poison,
perhaps... Here, there had been an instant of unimaginable concussion,
and of swift-passing flame. The drying out was soon ended. Then, what
was left had been preserved in a vacuum through sixty millions of years.
Frank Nelsen had glimpsed ancient Mars, preserved on the Moon. Now he
glimpsed its opponent culture, about which more was generally known.
"It's real," Ramos grunted. "Hoppers find surface-fragments like this,
quite often."
Nelsen hardly cared about the archeological aspects just then.
Excitement and hope that became certainty, enlivened his dulled brain.
"An energy source," he grated joyfully. "The Big Answer to Everything,
out here! And it's always self-contained in their buildings..."
They pushed the collapsed and blackened thing with the slender bones,
aside. They crept into the flat, horizontal spaces of the dwelling--much
more like chinks than the rooms that humans would inhabit. They shoved
away soft, multi-colored fabrics spun from glass-wool, a metal case with
graduated dials and a lens, baubles of gold and glinting mineral.
In a recess in the masonry, ribboned with glazed copper strips that led
to clear globes and curious household appliances, they found what they
wanted. Six little oblong boxes bunched together. Their outsides were
blue ceramic.
Frank Nelsen and Miguel Ramos began to work gingerly, though the gloves
of their old Archer Threes were insulated. Here, sixty million years of
stopped time had made no difference to these nuclear batteries, that,
because of the universal character of physical laws, almost had to be
similar in principle to their own. They had almost known that it would
make no difference. There had been no drain of power through the
automatic safety switches.
"DC current, huh?" Ramos said, breathing hard of the rotten air in his
helmet.
"Yeah--gotta be," Frank answered quickly. "Same as from a thermocouple.
Voltage about two hundred. Lots of current, though. Hope these old
ionics'll take it."
"We can tap off lower, if we have to... Here--I'll fix you, first...
Grab this end..."
They had a sweating two hours of rewiring to get done.
With power available, they might even have found a way to distill and
collect the water, usually held in the form of frost, deep-buried in the
soil of any large surface-fragment. They might have broken down some of
the water electrolytically, to provide themselves with more oxygen to
breathe. But perhaps now such efforts were not necessary.
When they switched in the new current, the pumps of their equipment
worked better at once. The internal lights of their air-restorers could
be used again, augmenting the action of the pale sunshine on the
photosynthetic processes of the chlorophane. The air they breathed
improved immediately. They tested the power on the shaky ionics, and got
a good thrust reaction.
"We can make it--I think," Frank Nelsen said, speaking low and quick,
and with the boldness of an enlivened body and brain. "We'll shoot up,
out of the Belt entirely, then move parallel to it, backwards--contrary
to its orbital flow, that is. But being outside of it, we won't chance
getting splattered by any fragments. Probably avoid some slobs, too.
We'll decelerate, and cut back in, near Pallas. There'll be a way to
find the Kuzak twins."
Ramos chuckled recklessly. "Let's not forget to pack these historical
objects in our nets. Especially that camera, or whatever it is. Money in
the bank at last, boy..."
But after they set out, it wasn't long before they knew that two people
were following them. There was no place to hide. And a mocking voice
came into their phones.
"Hey, Nelsen... Oh, Mex... Wait up... I've been looking for you for over
three months..."
They tried first to ignore the hail. They tried to speed up. But their
pursuers still had better propulsion. Nelsen gritted his teeth. He felt
the certainty of disaster closing in.
"There's just two of them--so far," Ramos hissed. "Maybe here's our
chance, Frank, to really smear that rat!" Ramos' eyes had a battlelight.
"All right, Tiflin--approach. These guns are lined up and loaded."
"Aw--is _that_ friendship, Mex?" the renegade seemed to wheedle. But
insolently, he and his larger companion came on.
"Toss us your pistols," Ramos commanded, as they drifted close, checking
speed.
Tiflin flashed a smirk that showed that his front teeth were missing.
"Honest, Mex--do you expect us to do that? Be cavalier--I haven't even
got a pistol, right now. Neither has Igor, here. Come look-see... Hi,
Frankie!"
"Just stay there," Nelsen gruffed.
Tiflin cocked his head inside the helmet of a brand-new Archer Six, in a
burlesqued pose for inspection. He looked bad. His face had turned hard
and lean. There were scars on it. The nervous, explosive-tempered kid,
who couldn't have survived out here, had been burned out of him. For a
second, Nelsen almost thought that the change could be for the good. But
it was naive to hope that that could happen. Glen Tiflin had become
passive, yielding, mocking, with an air of secret knowledge withheld.
What did an attitude like that suggest? Treachery, or, perhaps worse, a
kind of poised--and poisonous--mental judo?
Nelsen looked at the other man, who wore a Tovie armor. Tall,
starvation-lean. Horse-faced, with a lugubrious, bumpkinish smile that
almost had a whimsical appeal.
"Honest--I just picked up Igor--which ain't his real name--in the course
of my travels," Tiflin offered lightly. "He used to be a comic back in
Eurasia. He got bored with life on Ceres, and sort of tumbled away."
With his body stiff as a stick, Igor toppled forward, his mouth gaping
in dismay. He turned completely over, his great boots kicking awkwardly.
His angular elbows flapped like crow-wings. He righted himself, looked
astonished, then beatifically self-approving. He burped delicately,
patted his chest plate, then sniffed in sad protest at the leveled
pistols.
Now Nelsen and Ramos cast off the loaded nets they had been towing, and
closed in on this strange pair. Nelsen did the searching, while Ramos
pointed the guns.
"Haven't even got my shiv anymore, Frankie," Tiflin remarked, casually.
"Threw it at a guy named Fessler, once. Missed by an inch. Guess it's
still going--round and round the sun, for millions of years. Longest
knife throw there ever was."
"Fessler!" Frank snapped. "Now we're getting places, you S.O.B.! The
funny character that robbed and dumped Ramos and me, I'll bet. Probably
with your help! You know him, huh?"
"_Knew_--for a while--past tense," Tiflin chuckled wickedly. "Nope--it
wasn't me that stripped off his armor in space. He wasn't even around,
anymore, when you beauties got caught. They come and they go."
"But _you_ were around, Tiflin!"
"Maybe not. Maybe I was twenty million miles off."
"Like hell!" Nelsen gritted his teeth, grabbed Tiflin's shoulder, and
swung his gloved fist as hard as he could against the thin layer of
rubber and wire over Tiflin's stomach. He struck three times.
"Damn you!" Nelsen snarled. "I promised myself I'd get you good, Tiflin!
Now tell us what else you and your friends are cooking for us, or by the
Big Silence, you'll be a drifting, explosively decompressed mummy!"
Frank Nelsen didn't know till now, after exerting himself, how weak
privations had made him. He felt dizzy.
Tiflin's eyes had glazed slightly, as he and Frank did a slow roll,
together. He gasped. But that insulting smirk came back.
"Haven't had your Wheaties lately, have you, Frank? Go ahead--hit, knock
yourself out. You, too, Mex. I've been slugged before, by big men, in
shape...! Could be I'm not cooking anything. Except I notice that you
two have found yourselves some very interesting local objects of ancient
history, worth a little money. Also, some good, raw metal... Well, I
suppose you want to get the load and yourselves to the famous twins, Art
and Joe. That's easy--with luck. Though the region is a trifle
disturbed, right now. But I can tell you where they are. You won't have
to fiddle around, hunting."
"Here, hold these guns, Frank. Lemme have a couple of pokes at the
slob," Ramos snapped.
"Aw-right, aw-right--who's asking you guys to believe me?" Tiflin cut
in. "I'll beam the twins for you--since I'd guess your transmitter won't
reach. You can listen in, and talk back through my set. Okay?"
"Let's see what happens--just for kicks," Ramos said softly. "If you're
calling some friends to come and get us, or anything, Tif--well, you've
had it!"
They watched Tiflin spin and focus the antenna. "Kuzak... Kuzak...
Kuzak... Kuzak..." he said into his phone. "Missing boys alive and
coming to you. Mex and old Guess Which... Kicking and independent, but
very hungry, I think... Put on the coffee pot, you storekeepers...
Kuzak... Kuzak... Kuzak... Talk up, Frank and Miguel. Your voices will
relay through my phone..."
"Hi, Art and Joe--it's us," Ramos almost apologized.
"Yeah--we don't quite know yet what Tiflin is pulling. But here we
are--if it's you we're talking to..."
There was the usual long wait as impulses bridged the light-minutes.
Then Art Kuzak's voice snarled guardedly. "I hear you, Ram and Nel. Come
in, if you can...! Tif, you garbage! Someday...! This is all. This is
all..." The message broke off.
Tiflin smirked. "Third quadrant of the Belt," he said, giving a position
in space almost like latitude and longitude on Earth. "About twenty
minutes of the thirty-first degree. Three degrees above median orbital
plane. Approximately two hundred hours from here. Can Igor and I leave
you, now, or do you want us to escort you in?"
"_We'll_ escort _you_," Ramos said.
So it was, until, near the end of a long ride, a cluster of bubbs was in
view in the near distance, and Ramos and Nelsen could contact Art Kuzak
themselves.
"We've got Tiflin and his Tovie pal with us, Art," Frank Nelsen said.
"They showed us the way, more or less because we made them. But Tif did
give us the right position at the start. A favor, maybe. I don't know.
And now he's saying, 'Be cavalier--it might be awkward for me to meet
Art and Joe just at present.' Do you want to fix this character's wagon
bad enough? Your customers could get mean--if he ever did them dirt."
"Just one thing I've got against Tiflin!" Art snarled back. "Every time
I hear his voice, it means trouble. But I've never seen the crumb
face-to-face since that Moonhop. Okay, let's not spoil my stomach. Turn
him loose. It can't make much difference. Or maybe I'm sentimental about
the old Bunch. He was our cracked, space-wild punk."
"Thanks, Art," Tiflin laughed.
In a minute he, and his comic, scarecrow pal who originated from the
dark side of trouble, on Earth and out here, too, were fading against
the stars.
Nelsen and Ramos, the long-lost, glided in, past some grim hoppers. A
bubb and sweet air were around them once more. They shed their stinking
Archer Threes. Hot showers--miraculous luxury--played over them. They
rubbed disinfectant salves into their fungus-ridden hides.
Then there was a clean, white table, with plates, knives, forks. They
had to treat their shrunken stomachs gently--just a little of
everything--beer, steak, vegetables, fruit... Somewhere during the past,
unmarked days Frank Nelsen had gotten to be twenty years old. Only
twenty? Well--maybe this was his celebration.
Ramos and he told their story very briefly. Little time was wasted on
congratulations for survival or talk of losses long past. The Kuzaks
looked leaner and tougher, now, and there were plenty of present
difficulties to worry them. Joe Kuzak hurried out to argue with the
miners at the raw metal receiving bins and at the store bubbs. Art
stayed to explain the present situation.
"Three big loads of supplies were shipped through to us from the Moon,"
he growled. "We did fine, trading for metal. We sent J. John Reynolds
his percentage--a fair fraction of his entire loan. We sent old Paul
five thousand dollars. But the fourth and fifth loads of trade stuff got
pirated en route. When there's trouble on Earth, it comes out here, too.
Ceres, colonized by our socialist Tovie friends of northern Eurasia,
helps stir up the bums, who think up plenty of hell on their own. It's a
force-out attempt aimed at us or at anybody who thinks our way. After
two lost shipments, and a lot of new installations here at the Post,
we're about broke, again. Worse, we've got the asteroid-hoppers
expecting us to come through with pay for the new metal in their nets,
and with stuff they need. Back home, some people used to raise hell
about a trifle like a delayed letter. How about a spaceman's reaction,
when what is delayed may be something to keep him alive? They could get
really annoyed, and kick this place apart."
Art Kuzak blew air up past his pug nose, and continued. "Finance--here
we go again, Frank!" he chuckled. "Gimp Hines is helping us. After Mars,
he came here without trouble. He's in Pallastown, now, trying to raise
some fast cash, and to rush supplies through from there, under Space
Force guard. You know he's got a head for commerce as well as science.
But our post, here, perhaps isn't considered secure enough to back a
loan, anymore."
Art grinned wryly at Nelsen and Ramos. His hint was plain. He had seen
the museum pieces that they had brought in.
"Should we, Frank?" Ramos chuckled after a moment.
"Possibly... We've got some collateral, Art. Lots more valuable per unit
mass than any raw metal, I should think."
"So you might want to work for us?" Art inquired blandly.
"Not 'for'," Nelsen chuckled. "We might say 'with'."
"Okay, Cuties," Art laughed.
Joe Kuzak had just come back into the dwelling and office bubb.
"Don't let my twin sell you any rotten apples, fellas," he warned
lightly. "He might be expecting you to transport your collateral to
Pallastown. Naturally anybody trying to strangle this Post will be
blocking the route. You might get robbed again. Also murdered."
Ramos' gaunt face still had its daring grin. "Frank and I know that," he
said. "I'm past bragging. But we've had experience. Now, we might be
smart enough to get through. A few more days out there won't hurt. How
about it, Frank?"
"Ten hours sleep and breakfast," Frank said. "Then a little camouflage
material, new weapons, a pair of Archers in condition--got any left?"
"Five in stock," Joe answered.
"Settled, then?" Art asked.
"Here, it is," Ramos answered, and Nelsen nodded.
It would have been rough going for them to try to sleep in beds. They
had lost the habit. They slept inside their new Archer Fives.
Afterwards they painted their armor a dark grey, like chunks of mesoderm
stone. They did likewise to the two bundles in which they wrapped their
relics.
They were as careful as possible to get away from the post without being
observed, visually or by radar. But of course you could never be sure.
Huddled up to resemble stray fragments, they curved out of the
Belt--toward the Pole Star, north of its orbital plane. Moving in a
parallel course, they proceeded toward Pallastown. The only thing that
would seem odd was that they were moving contrary to the general orbital
rotation of most of the permanent bodies of the solar system. Of course
they and their bundles _might_ have been stray meteors from deep in
space.
Four watchful, armored figures seemed to notice the peculiarity of their
direction, and to become suspicious. These figures seemed too wary for
honesty as they approached. They got within twenty-five miles.
Even without the memory that Tiflin might make guesses about what they
meant to do, Nelsen and Ramos would have taken no chances. They had to
be brutal. Homing darts pierced armor. The four went to sleep.
VI
The asteroid, Pallas, was a chunk of rich core material, two
hundred-some miles in its greatest dimension. It had a mottled, pinkish
shine, partly from untarnished lead, osmium, considerable uranium, some
iron, nickel, silver, copper. The metals were alloyed, here; almost
pure, there. There was even a little rock. But thirty-five percent of
Pallas' roughly spherical mass was said to be gold.
Gold is not rare at the cores of the worlds, to which most of the heavy
elements must inevitably sink, during the molten stage of planetary
developments. On Earth it must be the same, though who could dig three
thousand miles into a zone of such heat and pressure? But the asteroid
world had exploded. Pallas was an exposed and cooled piece of its heart.
Pallas had a day of twenty-four hours because men, working with great
ion jets angling toward the stars, had adjusted its natural rate of
rotation for their own convenience to match the terrestrial. A greater
change was Pallastown.
Frank Nelsen and Miguel Ramos made the considerable journey to it
without further incident. Because he was tense with hurry, Nelsen's
impressions were superficial: Something like Serene, but bigger and more
fantastic. A man weighed only a few ounces, here. Spidery guidance
towers could loom impossibly high. There were great storage bins for raw
metal brought in from all over the Belt. There were rows of water tanks.
As on the Moon, the water came mostly from gypsum rock or occasionally
from soil frost, both found on nearby crustal asteroids. Beyond the
refineries bulged the domes of the city itself, housing factories,
gardens, recreation centers, and sections that got considerably lost and
divergent trying to imitate the apartment house areas of Earth.
Frank Nelsen's wonder was hurried and dulled.
Gimp Hines and David Lester were waiting inside the stellene reception
dome when Nelsen and Ramos landed lightly at the port on their own feet,
with no more braking assistance than their own shoulder-ionics.
Greetings were curiously breathless yet casual, but without any
backslapping.
"We'd about given you two up," Gimp said. "But an hour ago Joe Kuzak
beamed me, and said you'd be along with some museum stuff... Les lives
here, now, working with the new Archeological Institute."
"Hi-hi--good to see you guys," Ramos said.
"Likewise. Hello, Les," Frank put in.
While Frank was gripping David Lester's limp, diffident hand, which
seemed almost to apologize for his having come so far from home, Gimp
teased a little. "So you latched onto Art Kuzak, too. Or was it the
other way around?"
Frank's smile was lopsided. "I didn't analyze motives. Art's a pretty
good guy. I suppose we just wanted to help Joe and him out. Or maybe it
was instinct. Anyhow, what's wrong with latching onto--or being latched
onto by--somebody whom you feel will get himself and you ahead, and make
you both a buck?"
"Check. Not a darn thing," Gimp laughed. "Now let's go to my hotel and
have a look at what you brought in. Did you really examine it, yet?"
"Some--on the way. Not very much," Ramos said. "There's a camera."
In the privacy of Gimp's quarters, the bundles were opened; the
contents, some of them dried and gruesome, all of them rather wonderful,
were exposed.
David Lester and Gimp Hines were both quietly avid. Lester knew the most
about these things, but Gimp's hands, on the strange camera, were more
skillful. The cautious scrutiny of dials and controls marked with
cryptic numerals and symbols, and the probing of detail parts and their
functions, took about an hour.
"What do you think, Les?" Gimp asked.
"I'm not an expert, yet," Lester answered. "But as far as I know, this
is the first undamaged camera that has yet been found. That makes it
unique. Of course by now, hoppers are bringing in quite a lot of
artifacts from surface-asteroids. But there's not much in the way of new
principle for our camera manufacturers to buy. Lens systems, shutters,
shock mountings, self-developing, integral viewing, projecting and sonic
features, all turn out to be similar to ours. It's usually that way with
other devices, too. It's as if all their history, and ours, were
parallel."
"Well, dammit--let's see what the thing can show!" Ramos gruffed.
In the darkened room, the device threw a rectangle of light on the wall.
Then there was shape, motion, and color, kept crystallized from sixty
million years before. A cloud, pinked by sunrise, floating high in a
thin, expanded atmosphere. Did clouds everywhere in the universe always
look much the same? Wolfish, glinting darts, vanishing away. Then a
mountainside covered with spiny growths that, from a distance, seemed
half cactus and half pine. A road, a field, a dull-hued cylinder
pointing upward. Shapes of soft, bluish grey, topped like rounded roofs,
unfolding out of a chink, and swaying off in a kind of run--with little
clinkings of equipment, for there were sounds, too. Two eyelike organs
projecting upward, the pupils clear and watchful. A tendril with a
ridged, dark hide, waving what might have been a large, blue flower,
which was attached to the end of a metal tube by means of a bit of fibre
tied in a granny knot. A sunburst of white fire in the distance...
It could have gone on, perhaps for many hours. Reality, with every
detail sharp. Parallels with Earthly life. Maybe even sentiment was
there, if you only knew how it was shown. But in the differences you got
lost, as if in a vivid dream that you couldn't fully understand. Though
what was pictured here was certainly from the last beautiful days of a
competing planet.
Frank Nelsen's mouth often hung open with fascination. But his own
realities kept intruding. They prodded him.
"I hate to break this off," he said. "But a lot of asteroid-hoppers are
out at the post, waiting for Ramos and me to bring stuff back. It's a
long ride through a troubled region. There's plenty to get arranged
beforehand... So first, what do we do to realize some quick funds out of
these relics?"
Hines terminated the pictured sequence. "Frank--Ramos--I'd keep this
camera," he said urgently. "It's a little bit special, at least. History
is here, to be investigated. Offers--bids--could come up. Okay--I'm
talking about dough, again. Still, who wants to detach himself, right
away, from something pretty marvelous, by selling it? I'd dump most of
the other things. Getting a loan--the hock-shop approach--is no good...
Am I telling it right, Les?"
Lester nodded. "More of the same will be brought in. Prices will drop.
Archeological Survey has a buying service for museums back home. I've
been working for them for a month. I don't claim to love them entirely,
but they'll give you the safest break. You should get enough, for your
purposes, without the camera. With a load like this, you can see Doc
Linford, the boss, any time."
"Right now, then," Frank said.
"Hey, you impolite slobs!" Ramos laughed. "When do you consult me,
co-discoverer and -owner? Awright, skip it--you're the Wizards of Oz.
I'll just grab out a few items for my Ma and the kids, and maybe a girl
or two I'll meet someplace. You guys might as well do the same."