[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Amazing Stories January 1964.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
It was a particularly good asteroid, a great jagged rock roughly four
miles square on one side and two miles at its thickest. Within five
minutes of sighting it they knew that its flatter side turned away from
the sun more than seven times an Earth day. That meant they should be
able to land for mineral specimens and still be off in time to avoid
the heating phase for which they were not equipped.
"I'll go out," said Warrant Officer Cramer, a tan-skinned young man who
was peering ahead even more earnestly than usual.
"I'm Captain of this tin crate so it's up to me," said Hartley. "Right?"
"Right in a wrong sort of way, _sir_. Just two men on board and you're
pulling rank!"
For a moment Hartley looked irritated, then his blue eyes twinkled
with laughter. "Give me one reason why I shouldn't."
"I've never been on an asteroid and I've been a little nervous about
it. I don't want to keep barrelling around space with that kind of a
faze-factor bugging the back of my mind."
The great flat side had just turned into shadow and Hartley started to
ease the ship down. He said, suddenly bitter, "With all my experience
the only thing the political brass lets me captain is a two-man
scouter. Consider my rank unpulled--it's all yours Will."
Cramer gave him an appreciative glance and put on his outside gear.
"Let the Boy Scout have the dirty jobs," Hartley muttered, a nervous
sneer twisting one side of his mouth. He idly adjusted for the descent
onto the sheared stone face and, once Cramer was in the exit chamber,
exchanged a parting wave with him through the quartz window.
_Queer duck, saying a thing like that_, Cramer thought as he opened
the outer hatch. _A little too bitter about things for his own good
sometimes._
But then his foot touched solid rock and he was too busy chipping
specimens to worry about poor Nick. After each tiny chisel stroke
his body bounced slightly away and, gripping the lead rope, he had
to retrojet himself back into the circular light patch thrown by
Scout III. The stuff was hard composition but, fortunately, with many
straight stress lines so pieces slowly did come loose. One carefully
placed blow, then a whirl of stars streaming across jet blackness, then
a swing back into the light and another blow and another outward swing.
Suddenly a voice crackled in his ear. "You've been out fifty minutes,
Will."
"It can't be!"
"Asteroid time's tricky when you're busy. How many chips you have?"
"About a dozen."
"How many do you want? Don't be such a glory boy, get in right now!"
* * * * *
As he pulled himself along the line and up through the hatch he
realized that not only had he been undisturbed while on the rock but
he hadn't even considered the possibility of becoming frightened!
Pleased with himself, he closed the hatch door, raising the current
in each magnetic lock to sealing maximum. As soon as the last bolt
was sucked into place, his suit started decompressing while chamber
pressure mounted in precise compensation. For a second he thought he
saw a white speck eddy out of the specimen box attached to his belt but
another did not follow. Anyway, suit vizors had a way of clouding up on
the inside during chamber compression and that could play funny tricks.
Five minutes later, though, when he pulled off his helmet a little
swarm of white specks welled up toward the ceiling. Then they were
gone. _Funny_, he laughed to himself. "Funny, funny," he suddenly
laughed aloud, "Talcum powder from the void!"
There was Hartley's face at the window, peering anxiously at him, and,
for some inexplicable reason, that sight was even funnier. Shaking
helplessly, Cramer slapped his knee and kept pointing at the face.
_Life is so wonderfully wonderful!_ he said to himself, unable to utter
anything aloud now. _Wonderful wonderfully!_
After a while Hartley opened the door to the front cabin and helped
him to his cockpit seat. "Sorry, old man," Cramer gasped happily.
"Don't know why I did that."
It was surprising how undisturbed by the private joke Hartley looked.
He seemed to be too abstracted for that. "Feeling all right?" he
finally asked.
"Perfect!" Cramer grinned, greeting the galactic reaches with a wave of
his hand. "Isn't it a beautiful universe? I think I could count all the
visible light sources out there in ten minutes if I wanted to. No, I
don't want to count anything but my blessings, I just want to look."
"Not from here, though. This rock makes its crazy wobble into sunlight
soon and I'd rather be off it when the surface starts heating up."
Hartley eased the craft upwards, pulling her back a few dozen miles.
Then he balanced the power exhausts into hover and took the specimen
box from Cramer's belt. "You've got ecstasy of the space deeps, never
can tell when that'll strike a man out there." He studied the little
slate-blue chips inside. "You notice that white stuff, Will?"
"First thought it was just vizor clouding." He was thinking with
extraordinary clarity even though he still felt wildly elated. "Seemed
to happen after the temperature moved above water-freezing."
"Yeah. You did everything by the book, son, except the thing that
justified your excursion in the first place. When you came in you
merely forgot to seal the specimen box and set its cryogenic cell for
deep freeze. Bringing the chips into human temperature range may have
destroyed some of the specimen's value. Usually doesn't matter but in
this case I wonder--"
"Gosh, that's awful! I'd be glad to go out again."
"No, you may have stupidly done a smart thing. But you'll really boggle
it this time with the ecstasy clouding your mind."
"I'm thinking clearly, really I am."
"Can't be."
"Okay," he said, "test me. Give me some digits to multiply while you
punch them on the computer."
"All right," Hartley muttered impatiently. "38,373 times 14,621 times
322. Satisfied?"