* * * * *
"Take it easy," Gramps advised us. "Now, just you both relax. There has
to be a way outa this, only we ain't found it yet."
The only part of his statement I could agree with was the very last,
only I had to admit he had a point there. Just wasn't any use, as
Gramps would say, for Clair and me to go running around like a couple
of chickens without their heads, the way we'd been doing for the past
few hours.
"Okay," I said. "Let's look at this thing. Let's see exactly where we
stand."
"More like it," Gramps nodded his head.
Clair said, "Whoever they are, they landed here illegally. And they
want our copper...."
I brightened, but only for a moment. "No. I think you're off the beam,
honey. If it's our claim alone they're after, why just this stinking
little asteroid? There are lots bigger and lots richer, yet they chose
this one. They want something else. But what?"
Clair said we'd come back to that later. "First," she said, "just what
can we expect them to do? I mean now, or in the immediate future."
I considered. "Well, temporarily at least, they probably won't do a
thing. Or will they?"
"You're durned right they won't," Gramps said. "They won't bust this
dome up right away to get at us, nossir. First they'll see if they can
get us without doing that."
It made good sense. Whatever their purpose, both domes could be a
valuable asset, and maybe they'd play with us, cat and mouse, before
they applied the disintegrators to our dome.
"Sure," said Gramps. "Just like the old days of the East-West war when
it spread out to the planets. An army can't be everyplace at once,
'specially not all over the System. Right?"
"Right," Clair said, and I nodded.
"Hey," Gramps suggested, "you don't suppose they are Ruskies, do you?"
"No," I said, smiling. I reminded him that the war had been over before
I was born.
"Hmm-m, yes. Did I ever tell you the time I was fighting near Gossena
on Ganymede? I was a foot-soldier, y'know."
* * * * *
He had told us many times and I said so, but he didn't bat an eyelash.
"Anyway," he said, "it was a war of nerves. We tried to scare them, and
they tried to scare us, one way or another, and the side that did the
most scaring won. Us."
Clair wanted to know what all that had to do with this.
"Easy, kid. Just hold your horses. These guys on the other side of 4270
will be using a war of nerves with us, a real simple one. They know
it'll be maybe a month before the government ship comes--"
"What about the radio?" I said. "Won't they think we called for help?"
"Nossirree. Not if they're smart. If we did call for help they could
hightail it out of here, pronto. The way Clair describes that ship,
they could beat anything the Government has in the Belt, anything short
of a battle-cruiser, and there ain't none out beyond Mars. No, if
they're smart they'll have to figure that something went wrong with our
radio, or we'd a called for help right away. It's an easy gamble for
them to take--they can always zoom away."
Everything Gramps had said was beginning to make a lot of good sense,
and I motioned him to continue.
"Sooo, their war of nerves is easy. They just wait for us to make
the first wrong move, and then they get us. Blop! Real simple with a
disintegrator."
He wasn't kidding. All you had to do was disintegrate a person, his
ship, his belongings, and you'd have committed a pretty air-tight
murder. Of course, the old legality about a corpse had been chucked out
the window years ago when the first disintegrators were developed, but
in a case like this, the only thing the government would have to go on
was the fact that our landing here on 4270 had been recorded. Not much.
Pitifully inadequate. And I told them that now.
"Swell," Clair said. "Only please, Jerry, cut it out. You sound like
you're crying at your own funeral. I'm scared...."
"Sure," said Gramps, "we ain't licked. We'll just have to figure out
a war of nerves just a bit better than theirs. War of nerves, that's
it. I can remember, outside Gossena.... The Ruskies employed Martian
mercenaries, y'know...."
"That won't be easy," Clair reminded him. "Especially since we don't
even know why that ship came here. We can't even find out."
I grinned. "Who says we can't?" I picked up my fishbowl helmet and
plopped it ungently over my head.
"What the heck are you doing?" Clair asked me.
My voice must have sounded muffled from under the helmet as I said:
"Simple. Our intercom can pick up theirs. As soon as some of them pop
outside their dome and start talking, we'll know."
That much was true. The intercom could pick up any similar conversation
on the entire tiny planet. It could do that, but it wasn't directional.
In other words, you'd hear voices, all right, only you wouldn't know
where they were coming from. One trouble, however, marred the idea: you
couldn't tell how long it would be before some of our visitors decided
to lift themselves up and venture outside the dome. Might be any time
now, or it might not be for days, or it might be just once, and then
briefly, for as long as it would take them to stroll to our dome,
disintegrate the lock, march through, and turn us into three specks of
molecular dust.
I sat grimly with the helmet over my head, waiting. All I got was
static.
* * * * *
We took turns, and our hopes for a happy home life out here on 4270
were shot to hell. One of us would sit listening, head buried in his
helmet, another would bustle about, keeping the functions of the dome
in order, and the third would sleep.
It was my turn to sleep, and I can remember the beginning of what would
have been a corker of a dream. The visitors in the other spaceship
weren't men at all, but hideous monsters from some nameless extra-Solar
place, trying to decide where in the Solar System they'd like to live.
They seemed ornery enough to decide on crowded Earth.
I never knew for sure. One of them was breathing down my neck, then
poking me, and I sat up fast. It was Gramps, and he was scowling at me
frantically inside his fishbowl helmet.
I didn't have to be told. My own helmet sat securely on my shoulders in
a matter of seconds, and I listened. You could hardly tell the voices
apart, but from the conversation you knew that there were two of them.
"... all over this planetoid. Aw, what's the use? The boss just had a
wrong notion, that's all."
"I dunno. Can't be sure. This is a small place, yeah: but there's
enough wrinkles and folds to keep you looking for months. We ain't
covered nothing yet. Also, how's about inside the other dome. It
could be there, eh?"
"Well, it better not be. If those guys in there find it before us...."
I didn't know what "it" was but I liked this voice better. It was
pessimistic, and the more pessimistic our visitors were, the better I'd
like it.
"No, it ain't in the other dome." The rat, I thought. "It wouldn't be
in either dome, stupid, or the miners here before the depression woulda
found it. I was wrong--it's outside somewhere, all right."
Clair sat with us now, hunched over elbows on knees, listening through
her own helmet.
"So we just march around this lousy rock until we find it."
"Yeah. But take it easy, stupid. It'll be worth it. A weapon like that,
what power...."
"I don't know. We better find it soon. The wife's in Chawka City on Io,
and there's a damn saloon-keeper there--"
"Haw, haw, haw! A family man, a regular family man, that's what we
got with us. But don't worry, we'll find it. The Ruskies left that
thing here someplace, and don't worry, we'll get it. The boss ain't no
dodo...."
"Well, I'd feel a lot better if we got rid of those guys in the other
dome. It'd be a lot safer."
"Just shut up. When the boss tells us to do something, we'll do it.
Otherwise, stop yammering."
So our pessimistic friend wanted us dead too? I hoped that his wife
would commit the unpardonable crime with every man-jack in Chawka City.
It would serve the rat right.
Then there was a lot of garbled static and no more talking. Evidently
the two men had entered their dome again and had removed their helmets.
No more talking, exactly as if they had ceased to exist. And after the
one way contact had been established, it was almost eerie.
* * * * *