What was Sam Knox up to now--drifting helplessly
in a tiny eggshell across black oceans of space
with two weeks' grub? Was this the way the
great man-hunter deftly snagged his prey?
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Planet Stories Fall 1947.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Sam Knox touched a button in the control room of the _Wanderer_, and
the draperies slid back from her transparent nose. He stood a moment, a
sturdy compact figure, gazing into the dark.
"Look at them!" he said bitterly. "They hang there like stars."
Before the _Wanderer_ he could see the mining fleet at the edge of
the Asteroid Belt, their identification lights twinkling out from the
enshrouding ebon mantle of space.
They might as well be stars, for all the progress he had made with
them. He had been here a week, spreading his nets for asteroid
fragments like the rest of them, and never a sign of his presence had
they shown. They hung there, cold and aloof--almost suspicious, he
would have thought, had they any reason to be suspicious.
Not that they were unfriendly by nature, these men who spread their
nets to trap the errant meteors; but they were a clannish tribe, known
to one another from season to season, more snobbish than any social
ruling class. They were close-knit, bound together by bonds of danger
and hazard, and the dream of sudden wealth.
Perhaps it is only a matter of time, he thought. Perhaps time will make
me one of them. He must win their friendship soon, if he were to find
Pell.
And that was his job, to find Pell. His was not the hunt for wealth
in the heart of some fragment of asteroid. Yet the excitement of the
search had long been a part of his life. What Sam Knox hunted he found.
Sam Knox hunted men.
He had two bosses. The most lenient of these was the Department of
Terran Justice. His other boss lay deep inside himself, demanding
much--expecting everything.
Through the left lower quadrant of the transparent nose he saw one of
the nets flare into quick acceleration. It was too far away to be his
own, and he watched it, each corner of the net a flaming ribbon of
rocket fire in the velvet black of space.
A moment later he knew whose net it was, for the mining ship
_Fleetblast_ slid by him in pursuit, controlling the rocket-powered net
from the remote controls in her maw. The _Fleetblast_ sped on, unable
to equal the instant acceleration that the touch of the meteor sent
into the rockets of the net.
But she was soon catching up. With her remote controls she was
slowing the rockets of the net, as she increased her own speed. In a
few minutes both ship and netted meteor would be hanging motionless
alongside, the meteor caught and halted just as a small boy catches a
swift ball in his cap.
Sam grimaced. What would it contain when they melted it open with the
heat rod? Probably nothing. Possibly mineral ore, to be refined into
metal for new heat rod tips, for from this the miner fishers of the
Asteroid Belt eked out their precarious existence.
But perhaps--PERHAPS--there was wealth and fortune. Here might be the
dream come true. Here by the luck of space, might lie one of the rare
jewels of the asteroids, spawned in some once-fiery sun, and flung into
space in the heart of a fragment. For this the eternal hope of man
yearned, and men spent their lives fishing and mining here. For this
they risked the swift and horrible infections of life in the Asteroid
Belt.
* * * * *
The visaphone sprang into life. Sam recognized the voice as that of a
woman.... "_Fleetblast calling Aeries...._"
The _Fleetblast_ lay some fifty miles ahead, a speck of light, where
the chase of her net had led her. Just to her right, closer, lay the
only near ship, the _Aeries_.
"_Aeries speaking--go ahead...._"
Before the _Aeries_ her net spurted four ribbons of flame. In a surge
of power the _Aeries_ was off, acceleration full, straining like a
hound after a rabbit. There would be no more conversation from the
_Aeries_, Sam knew, until the catch was landed.
The woman was unaware of this development, unaware that the _Aeries'_
flaming jets were bearing her far away.
"... _father is hurt ... an open wound and we have no more penicillin
X...._"
No penicillin X! No ship took to ether for the "Belt" without a supply
of that important penicillin derivative.
Sam touched the controls. This was the break, this was the luck of Sam
Knox. The jets responded with a trail of flame. He pulled alongside the
_Fleetblast_ in a few minutes.
He could spare a hundred thousand units of the drug, he figured. He got
it from the storeroom. He was quite close to the other ship, so decided
against using the ship's lifeboat, a tiny space-dory, and simply donned
his space-suit. He then yelled into the visaphone, "_Fleetblast_--open
your port ... I'm bringing the drug." He saw the lock open on the
_Fleetblast_ and opened his own, propelling himself into space and
across the void. A few guiding blasts of his hand rocket and he was
inside the lock of the other ship.
A woman helped him out of the space-suit. "Come quickly," she urged.
Sam had time to note that she was young and had red hair as he followed
her to the living quarters.
An old man lay there on a bed. His trouser had been cut away from his
right leg, revealing a crushed and bleeding condition below the knee.
Already the leg was beginning to show the faint greyness that indicated
the start of the quick infection.
The miner's name, Sam found as he treated the leg, was Timas Rorke.
There was a faint trace of Irish blood in him, responsible perhaps for
the red hair of his daughter. He lay back in the bed, complaining at
the foolishness that had put him there.
"That damned meteor! I was in too big a hurry to load it, and it
slipped and crushed my leg." Timas looked at his daughter. "What do
you say, Nancy, shall we call it a season and run back to Terra?"
"There are a few more weeks of good fishing. I can make out."
Sam looked at her, this slip of a girl who was undertaking a man's
work. For all her courage she was still a woman, slim and lissome. She
was not too tall, rounded sweetly, and well-formed. Under Sam's gaze
she lifted her eyes to his, eyes as brown as new-plowed soil.
He had been long away from women, and the sight of her set a wildness
coursing in his blood. Strong as she was he could crush her in his
arms. He had strength to take care of both of them.
She might have let him too, in other circumstances. Her eyes had
already noted the compact sturdiness of his body, noted and approved.
But he was Sam Knox, and in his hunt for men a hundred women had tried
to deceive him, so that he set his mind against this weakness, and
looked away across the room.
* * * * *
Fool! He was a fool to have not seen it sooner. The photograph of a
white-haired man stared from a lucite frame. It was Pell.
The report was true. Here was Pell, inventor of the heat rod, hiding
where the metal was mined. If he were here, he must be found, and
returned to Terra to finish the sentence he had escaped three years
before.
He might not have to finish that prison sentence. Only one thing was
certain now. In the investigation of the illegal operations of Terran
Metals Corporation, the truth had been concealed by the fact that a way
had been found to deceive the mind-probe.
When that shattering fact was discovered, that the basis of justice was
not dependable, action was swift. The mind-probe was analyzed, and the
defect removed. But the truth of the facts in the Terran Metals Trial
was now uncertain. Guilty or not, the Department of Terran Justice
wanted Pell.
Sam took a step toward the picture. The girl's voice shocked him from
these thoughts. "I don't know how to thank you, Mister--?" She paused
expectantly.
"Knox, Sam Knox."