“THEY’RE getting closer! They’re almost on us! We won’t make it into the
Belt on time!” The navigator of the _Silver Spear_ was on the verge of
panic. His frenzied hands moved over the controls.
“Keep going! Keep up full speed! Make sure that we get there ahead of
them!” Lurton Zimbardo’s voice was even and controlled, but it was
obvious that he was barely containing his volatile fury. His commands
were not to be questioned. His nostrils flared, the muscles around his
lips were taut, he kept his fists clenched and pounded a persistent
rhythm on his ship’s control panel. His breath sounded as if he could
inhale and exhale the room’s entire atmosphere. It was only his iron
self-control that kept his crew from giving in to their fears.
Behind them just moments away Starman David “Zip” Foster’s ship, the
_Star Ranger_, was closing the gap. The pursuit had been going on for
two days, since the _Silver Spear_ had blasted off from Eagle City on
Mars and escaped while the rest of the pirates were rounded up by
Earth’s forces. Zip Foster, accompanied by Starmen Mark Seaton and Joe
Taylor and their companion Steve Cliff, had followed less than fifteen
minutes later. The brief lead that Lurton Zimbardo’s ship had was enough
to keep the _Silver Spear_ out of the clutches of their pursuers, but
not by much. The crew of the _Spear_ was suffering acutely from
sleeplessness and mounting anxiety.
Only days earlier, Lurton Zimbardo had been second-in-command under Troy
Putnam. Together they had organized over 500 men and attempted to take
control of the capital city of Mars in a sudden attack. Had they
succeeded, the pirates could have held the people of the Earth-Moon
system hostage to their demands. The Starmen and their allies had
thwarted the pirates’ plan. Most of the pirates, including their leader,
had been captured. Zimbardo, however, had escaped with a few others.
With the Starmen in close pursuit, he was desperately trying to outrun
them and return to the pirates’ base in the Asteroid Belt.
The Belt loomed up. The first few chunks of rock were visible now to the
unaided eyes of those on the deck of the _Silver Spear_. In seconds,
they were among them. The navigator screamed as the ship whipped by a
pitted rock a quarter of a mile long, missing it by a few yards.
“Fool!” shouted Zimbardo. “Turn on the automatic pilot!” The navigator’s
eyes were the size of saucers. Immobile with terror, he didn’t respond
to Zimbardo’s command. The former second-in-command of the pirates
pushed him out of the chair, took over, and activated the switch that
cut in the automatic pilot. Lurton Zimbardo was not physically imposing,
but more than made up for his slight build with an immensely strong will
and a decisive nature that was merciless whenever it served him.
He knew they were going too fast even for the automatic pilot to keep
the ship safe once they entered the thick sweep of the asteroids. He
also knew that the Belt was their only hope of escaping the Starmen on
their trail. Powered by adrenaline, his senses were functioning at their
peak. With amazing alacrity and intensity, Zimbardo aided the automatic
pilot and threaded the _Silver Spear_ through the weaving asteroids. It
almost seemed as if he were in a trance.
Soon a dark asteroid loomed ahead, roughly shaped like a potato,
forty-five miles long and twenty-five wide, rotating slowly around its
longest axis. It was nearly invisible both to the eye and to the
instruments, but Zimbardo knew where it was. He barked out a command.
The _Silver Spear_ slowed quickly, and moments later a huge airlock door
opened in one of the poles of the asteroid. Zimbardo piloted the ship
into the airlock, through the stone tunnel that led into the interior of
the asteroid, and then touched down.
The thin, wiry man raced for the control room as fast as he could run,
pushing men out of the way and heeding no one who called out to him.
Once inside, he quickly pressed a series of buttons and entered a
numeric code. Once it was entered and confirmed, he made a fist and
slammed it hard on a large red button. Immediately all the radar screens
were covered with snow.
Zimbardo relaxed for the first time in days. He exhaled quietly and
actually smiled. He took a deep breath and smiled more broadly.
“Sir?” asked one of the technicians who had watched the procedure.
“I detonated a hydrogen bomb on a neighboring asteroid a couple of
hundred miles from here. Part of a backup plan for keeping this place
hidden. It will clog all radar screens for a few minutes. By the time
they clear, no one will be able to find us or this asteroid.”
Zimbardo’s relaxed state did not last long. He swelled up with energy
again, strode to another console, and tapped in a series of commands.
“Come here, Gene,” he ordered as his fingers flew over the keyboard. The
man he addressed quickly came to stand by the pirate leader. He was a
well-built young man in his late twenties with short curly brown hair,
finely chiseled features, and an obvious desire to please. He was well
trained in the technology of space control systems. After he had proven
his competence in the field, Troy Putnam had made him his chief control
officer.
Zimbardo continued. “Follow these coordinates at this speed. Don’t alter
the course for any reason without my permission.”
Gene looked at the planning board where the numbers were posted in a
pleasant green light. “That course will take us out of the Belt, Mr.
Zimbardo. Is that what you want?”
“That’s what I want. It’s time to move away from here. If anything out
of the ordinary happens, let me know immediately. Find me by using my
personal code on the communicator--no general announcement. Keep watch
especially for any spacecraft--especially _any_ spacecraft!”
“Yes sir!” Gene took his place and the others returned to their duties.
Once he saw that the crew members were well settled, he picked up the
intercom and ordered his leaders to assemble in a meeting room in five
minutes. From the few dozen pirates left, he had hand-selected five
competent leaders to be his lieutenants: Gebbeth, Crass, Lather,
Bolcher, and Slant.
In less than that time, Lurton Zimbardo was sitting at a table with the
five other men. All but Zimbardo looked haggard. The pirates were
demoralized and upset. Victory on Mars and beyond had been within their
grasp, but it had all been blundered away. A band of several hundred men
who had planned and worked for several years had been reduced to a few
dozen. Their dreams of power and prominence, shaped and fueled by their
captain Troy Putnam, had been utterly destroyed. Now Putnam was in
custody on Mars, along with the rest of the pirates who had been
captured by Earth’s forces.
“Troy Putnam was a fool,” Zimbardo announced in a quiet voice edged with
steel. “His plan might have worked--_might_ have worked, if I had had
more part in planning--but he was no more than a conceited ignoramus!
The Starmen walked in on him and took him completely by surprise! I can
just imagine how his face must have looked as he realized his plan was
over and he was led off to jail. A fool! We are better off without him!”
“Better off without him?” asked one man in a dull voice. “What do you
mean, Lurton? Better off for what?”
“Don’t be a fool yourself, Crass!” Zimbardo sneered. “You think we’re
finished here? We will still get what we want and it won’t be very
difficult! We don’t need Putnam and we don’t need a few hundred men,
either! You can be thankful you’re here instead of locked in a stone
room in Eagle City eating square, plain, healthy meals off of a metal
tray! The collapse of Putnam’s big dream is the best thing that could
have happened for us!”
A muscular, unsmiling man on Zimbardo’s right swung his gaze to the
speaker. “It sounds as if you have a plan, Mr. Zimbardo.” The man was in
his early thirties and resembled a street fighter. His carefully combed
dark hair made him look almost strikingly handsome, but his eyes were
black and humorless.
Zimbardo turned toward the man. “Yes, I have a plan. You, Gebbeth, will
be my chief assistant and the pilot of the _Tartarus_, my personal ship.
I can depend on you. Space Command’s celebration on Mars will be
extremely short-lived.”
“You were always the strong one, Lurton,” said another. “I kind of
always figured you for the real leader, and I always wished it was you
instead of Putnam.”
“Now you got your wish, Bolcher. I’ve taken charge. I’m moving this
asteroid out of its orbit into a place outside the Belt. Here’s my
plan.”
Almost an hour later, the men left the meeting room, smiling, joking,
and stepping lightly. Their fatigue was gone, their discouragement
forgotten.
Lurton Zimbardo was the last to leave. Now that things were moving in
the direction he wanted, he allowed his fatigue to take over. Encouraged
by the support of his assistants, he felt he could rest at last. He
walked down the halls, past various doors and entered an elevator. The
display screen offered only the few floors in use by the pirates but
Zimbardo had another destination in mind. Alone in the elevator, he
punched in a special code which only he knew. When the proper sequence
was displayed, he pressed “Enter.” As the elevator began to move, the
new leader of the pirates relaxed even further. The others would not
know where he was, and he would be undisturbed.
He could barely sense the elevator’s motion. He didn’t know how far into
the asteroid’s interior he was moving, but he knew what he would find
when he reached his destination. The door opened and Zimbardo stepped
out. A quick walk down a short corridor brought him to a double door.
Embossed on the doors was a huge, rich, golden symbol--a lush planet
with about 80% blue oceans, a few continents, and thick cloud cover.
Three small moons were arranged at the upper left, set at the points of
an equilateral triangle. Zimbardo had been intrigued by the design when
he’d first found it, but now he hastened through the doors without
noticing it. He was eager to get into the Chamber beyond.
As Lurton stepped into the room, he gasped. His dozen prior visits still
had not taken the surprise out of the room. Each time he stepped into
the Chamber he seemed to be setting foot into another world; he knew he
was still inside the asteroid but his senses told him otherwise.
Lurton seemed to be standing on a high mountain overlooking a vast plain
on some forgotten planet. A pale blue sky was overhead and a light wind
was blowing. Down below on the plain he saw a river snaking its way
through a green forest; if he listened carefully he could hear the
water. In the distance he saw a fantastic alien metropolis of beautiful
glass skyscrapers; he could just barely make out ships hovering over it
and small vehicles driving around in the distance. Clouds sailed gently
overhead; it was near dusk.
He knew that the room was actually no more than about a hundred feet
square, but the display was seamless. For all the world he seemed to be
standing on another planet on a late, peaceful afternoon. He had never
been able to find out how the room worked or where the wind came from,
but he suspected the display was generated by some sort of holographic
projectors far in advance of anything he had ever seen or heard of.
Lurton guessed that the scene was from the home planet of the asteroid’s
builders; perhaps the distant city was their capital. He had spent hours
watching the room and never tired of it, for the scene always changed.
After a certain number of hours dusk fell and the city lights came on.
He had watched different kinds of weather and seen glorious sunsets and
sunrises. Occasionally he caught a glimpse of a huge alien starship. He
had seen many strange things in the Chamber and he was sure that he had
not seen them all.
Lurton liked coming here when he was upset or annoyed; the room had a
peaceful air that rested and soothed him. He was certainly in need of
that now. He hadn’t slept in over fifty hours and could easily have lain
down in what seemed like soft turf and fallen deeply asleep, but the
ethereal beauty of the Chamber’s vision was restful and he didn’t want
to close his eyes for an instant while he was inside.
He thought back to the day when he’d found the room. The asteroid had
been drifting and uninhabited for who knows how many thousands of years
when a solitary asteroid miner had found it and discovered that it was
hollow. He had told a few others about his find and eventually Troy
Putnam learned of it. Zimbardo grudgingly admitted to himself that Troy
was a genius--a weak, impractical genius, but a genius nonetheless.
Putnam had found the miner and persuaded him to bring him to the
nearly-invisible asteroid. He had even learned how to use many of the
asteroid’s capabilities, and then had made it the base for his foolish
attempt to take over Mars.
Shortly after the pirates had taken residence, Troy Putnam had directed
Lurton to explore the asteroid beyond the few floors the pirates used
and find out everything he could about it. It was a trying assignment.
The first few floors comprised a connected unit and the elevator codes
were easy to learn. Moving anywhere else was a matter of trial and
error, and the access codes were complex.
One day Zimbardo had found the Chamber. There was very little that could
arouse any kind of sensitivity in the wiry, energetic man, but the
Chamber could do so. Maybe it was because no one else knew about it and
no one could see him wrapped in the depths of the emotions the room
could inspire. The Chamber was not the only secret of the asteroid which
Lurton had retained for himself, but it was certainly the best one.
At last the peace and enchantment of the Chamber overcame Lurton’s
resistance to slumber. He sat down and rested with his back against a
tree, gazing over the landscape at the alien city. The massive trunk was
slightly rough but not uncomfortable. Huge roots spread out in all
directions before disappearing into the grassy soil. Branches laden with
broad leaves made a shadow-filled canopy over the pirate leader.
As he felt sleep coming on, he fumed one more time at the Starmen and
the stupidity of Troy Putnam. He mulled over his plan and smiled a
little. The Starmen would live to regret what they had done to him. His
eyes closed and his breathing became deep and regular. At last the
pirates’ new leader slept.
Above him a few birds chirped peacefully. A short distance away a brook
murmured in lyric gentleness. The sky over the city gradually turned
from flawless blue through lavender into violet, and silver stars
emerged.