_Marooned on an Asteroid_
A fair little world. I had thought so before; and I thought so now as I
gazed at the asteroid hanging so close before our bow. A huge, thin
crescent, with the Sun off to one side behind it. A silver crescent,
tinged with red. From this near viewpoint, all of the little globe's
disc was visible. The shadowed portion lay dimly red, mysteriously; the
sunlit crescent--widening visibly is we approached--was gleaming silver.
Inky moonlike shadows in the hollows, brilliant light upon the mountain
heights. The seas lay in gray patches. The convexity of the disc was
sharply defined. So small a world! Fair and beautiful, shrouded with
clouded areas.
"Where is Miko?"
"In the lounge, Gregg."
"Can we stop there?"
Moa turned into the lounge archway. Strange, tense scene. I saw Anita at
once. Her robed figure lurked in an inconspicuous corner; her eyes were
upon me as Moa and I entered, but she did not move. The thirty-odd
passengers were huddled in a group. Solemn, white-faced men, frightened
women. Some of them were sobbing. One Earth-woman--a young widow--sat
holding her little girl, and wailing with uncontrolled hysteria. The
child knew me. As I appeared now, with my gold-laced white coat over my
shoulders, the little child seemed to see in my uniform a mark of
authority. She left her mother and ran to me.
"You, please--you will help us? My moms is crying."
I sent her gently back. But there came upon me then a compassion for
these innocent passengers, fated to have embarked upon this ill-starred
voyage. Herded here in this cabin, with brigands like pirates of old
guarding them. Waiting now to be marooned on an uninhabited asteroid
roaming in space. A sense of responsibility swept me. I swung upon Miko.
He stood with a nonchalant grace, lounging against the wall with a
cylinder dangling in his hand. He anticipated me.
"So, Haljan--she put some sense into your head? No more trouble? Then
get into the turret. Moa, stay there with him. Send Hahn here. Where is
that ass Coniston? We will be in the atmosphere shortly."
I said, "No more trouble from me, Miko. But these passengers--what
preparation are you making for them on the asteroid?"
* * * * *
He stared in surprise. Then he laughed. "I am no murderer. The crew is
preparing food, all we can spare. And tools. They can build themselves
shelter--they will be picked up in a few weeks."
Dr. Frank was here. I caught his gaze, but he did not speak. On the
lounge couches there still lay the quarter-score bodies. Rankin, who
had been killed by Blackstone in the fight; a man passenger killed; a
woman and a man wounded.
Miko added, "Dr. Frank will take his medical supplies--he will care for
the wounded. There are other bodies among the crew." His gesture was
deprecating. "I have not buried them. We will put them ashore; easier
that way."
The passengers were all eyeing me. I said:
"You have nothing to fear. I will guarantee you the best equipment we
can spare. You will give them apparatus with which to signal?" I
demanded of Miko.
"Yes. Get to the turret."
I turned away, with Moa after me. Again the little girl ran forward.
"Come--speak to my moms! She is crying."
It was across the cabin from Miko. Coniston had appeared from the deck;
it created a slight diversion. He joined Miko.
"Wait," I said to Moa. "She is afraid of you. This is humanity."
I pushed Moa back. I followed the child. I had seen that Venza was
sitting with the child's weeping mother. This was a ruse to get word
with me.
I stood before the terrified woman while the little girl clung to my
legs.
I said gently, "Don't be so frightened. Dr. Frank will take care of you.
There is no danger--you will be safer on the asteroid than here on the
ship."
I leaned down and touched her shoulder. "There is no danger."
* * * * *
I was between Venza and the open cabin. Venza whispered swiftly, "When
we are landing, Gregg, I want you to make a commotion--anything--just as
the women passengers go ashore."
"Why? No, of course you will have food, Mrs. Francis."
"Never mind! An instant. Just confusion. Go, Gregg--don't speak now!"
I raised the child. "You take care of mother." I kissed her.
From across the cabin Miko's sardonic voice made me turn. "Touching
sentimentality, Haljan! Get to your post in the turret!"
His rasping note of annoyance brooked no delay. I set the child down. I
said, "I will land us in an hour. Depend on it."
Hahn was at the controls when Moa and I reached the turret.
"You will land us safely, Haljan?" he demanded anxiously.
I pushed him away. "Miko wants you in the lounge."
"You take command here?"
"Of course, Hahn. I am no more anxious for a crash than you."
He sighed with relief. "That is true. I am no expert at atmospheric
entry, Haljan--nor Coniston, nor Miko."
"Have no fear. Sit down, Moa."
I waved to the look-out in the forward watch-tower, and got his routine
gesture. I rang the corridor bells, and the normal signals came promptly
back.
"It's correct, Hahn. Get away with you." I called after him. "Tell Miko
that things are all right here."
Hahn's small dark figure, lithe as a leopard in his tight fitting
trousers and jacket with his robe now discarded, went swiftly down the
spider incline and across the deck.
"Moa, where is Snap? By the infernal, if he has been injured!--"
* * * * *
Up on the helio-room bridge the brigand guard still sat. Then I saw that
Snap was out there sitting with him. I waved from the turret window, and
Snap's cheery gesture answered me. His voice carried down through the
silver moonlight: "Land us safely, Gregg. These weird amateur
navigators!"
Within the hour I had us dropping into the asteroid's atmosphere. The
ship heated steadily. The pressure went up. It kept me busy with the
instruments and the calculations. But my signals were always promptly
answered from below. The brigand crew did its part efficiently.
At a hundred and fifty thousand feet I shifted the gravity plates to the
landing combinations, and started the electronic engines.
"All safe, Gregg?" Moa sat at my elbow; her eyes, with what seemed a
glow of admiration in them, followed my busy routine activities.
"Yes. The crew works well."
The electronic streams flowed out like a rocket tail behind us. The
_Planetara_ caught their impetus. In the rarified air, our bow lifted
slightly, like a ship riding a gentle ground swell. At a hundred
thousand feet we sailed gently forward, hull down to the asteroid's
surface, cruising to seek a landing space.
A little sea was now beneath us. A shadowed sea, deep purple in the
night down there. Occasional green-verdured islands showed, with the
lines of white surf marking them. Beyond the sea, a curving coastline
was visible. Rocky headlines, behind which mountain foothills rose in
serrated, verdured ranks. The sunlight edged the distant mountains; and
presently this rapidly turning little world brought the sunlight
forward.
* * * * *
It was day beneath us. We slid gently downward. Thirty thousand feet
now, above a sparkling blue ocean. The coastline was just ahead: green
with a lush, tropical vegetation. Giant trees, huge-leaved. Long
dangling vines; air plants, with giant pods and vivid orchidlike
blossoms.
I sat at the turret window, staring through my glasses. A fair little
world, yet obviously uninhabited. I could fancy that all this was
newly-sprung vegetation. This asteroid had whirled in from the cold of
the interplanetary space far outside our Solar System. A few years
ago--as time might be measured astronomically, it was no more than
yesterday--this fair landscape was congealed white and bleak, with a
sweep of glacial ice. But the seeds of life miraculously were here. The
miracle of life! Under the warming, germinating sunlight, the verdure
sprung.
"Can you find landing space, Gregg?"
Moa's question brought back my wandering fancies. I saw an upland glade,
a level spread of ferns with the forest banked around it. A cliff-height
nearby, frowning down at the sea.
"Yes. I can land us there." I showed her through the glasses. I rang the
sirens, and we spiraled, descending further. The mountain tops were now
close beneath us. Clouds were overhead, white masses with blue sky
behind them. A day of brilliant sunlight. But soon, with our forward
cruising, it was night. The sunlight dropped beneath the sharply convex
horizon; the sea and the land went purple.
A night of brilliant stars; the Earth was a blazing blue-red point of
light. The heavens visibly were revolving; in an hour or so it would be
daylight again.
On the forward deck now Coniston had appeared, commanding half a dozen
of the crew. They were carrying up caskets of food and the equipment
which was to be given the marooned passengers. And making ready the
disembarking incline, loosening the seals of the side-dome windows.
Sternward on the deck, by the lounge oval, I could see Miko standing.
And occasionally the roar of his voice at the passengers sounded.
* * * * *
My vagrant thought flung back into Earth's history. Like this, ancient
travelers of the surface of the sea were herded by pirates to walk the
plank, or put ashore, marooned upon some fair desert island of the
tropic Spanish main.
Hahn came mounting our turret incline. "All is well, Gregg Haljan?"
"Get to your work," Moa told him sharply. "We land in an hour-quadrant."
He retreated, joining the bustle and confusion which now was beginning
on the deck. It struck me--could I turn that confusion to account? Would
it be possible, now at the last moment, to attack these brigands? Snap
still sat outside the helio-room doorway. But his guard was alert, with
upraised projector. And that guard, I saw, in his position high
amidships, commanded all the deck.
And I saw too, as the passengers now were herded in a line from the
lounge oval, that Miko had roped and bound all of the men. And a
clanking chain connected them. They came like a line of convicts,
marching forward, and stopped on the open deck-space near the base of
the turret. Dr. Frank's grim face gazed up at me.
Miko ordered the women and children in a group beside the chained men.
His words to them reached me: "You are in no danger. When we land, be
careful. You will find gravity very different--this is a very small
world."
I flung on the landing lights; the deck glowed with the blue radiance;
the search-beams shot down beside our hull. We hung now a thousand feet
above the forest glade. I cut off the electronic streams. We poised,
with the gravity-plates set at normal, and only a gentle night-breeze to
give us a slight side drift. This I could control with the lateral
propeller rudders.
For all my busy landing routine, my mind was on other things. Venza's
swift words back there in the lounge. I was to create a commotion while
the passengers were landing. Why? Had she and Dr. Frank, perhaps, some
last minute desperate purposes?
* * * * *
I determined I would do what she said. Shout, or mis-order the lights.
That would be easy. But to what advantage?
I was glad it was night--I had, indeed, calculated our descent so that
the landing would be in darkness. But to what purpose? These brigands
were very alert. There was nothing I could think of to do which would
avail us anything more than a possible swift death under Miko's anger.
"Well done, Gregg!" said Moa.
I cut off the last of the propellers. With scarcely a perceptible jar,
the _Planetara_ grounded, rose like a feather and settled to rest in the
glade. The deep purple night with stars overhead was around us. I hissed
out our interior air through the dome and hull-ports, and admitted the
night-air of the asteroid. My calculations--of necessity mere
mathematical approximations--proved fairly accurate. In temperature and
pressure there was no radical change as the dome-windows slid back.
We had landed. Whatever Venza's purpose, her moment was at hand. I was
tense. But I was aware also, that beside me Moa was very alert. I had
thought her unarmed. She was not. She sat back from me; in her hand was
a small thin knife-blade.
She murmured tensely, "You have done your part, Gregg. Well and
skillfully done. Now we will sit here quietly and watch them land."
Snap's guard was standing, keenly watching. The look-outs in the forward
and stern towers were also armed; I could see them both gazing keenly
down at the confusion of the blue-lit deck.
The incline went over the hull-side and touched the ground.
"Enough!" Miko roared. "The men first. Hahn, move the women back!
Coniston, pile those caskets to the side. Get out of the way, Prince."
* * * * *
Anita was down there. I saw her at the edge of the group of women. Venza
was near her.
Miko shoved her. "Get out of the way, Prince. You can help Coniston.
Have the things ready to throw off."
Five of the steward-crew were at the head of the incline. Miko shouted
up at me:
"Haljan, hold our shipboard gravity normal."
"Yes," I responded.
I had done so. Our magnitizers had been adjusted to the shifting
calculations of our landing. They were holding now at intensities, so
that upon the _Planetara_ no change from fairly normal Earth-gravity
was apparent. I rang a tentative inquiry signal; the operator in the
hull-magnetizer control answered that he was at his post.
The line of men were first to descend. Dr. Frank led them. He flashed a
look of farewell up at me and Snap as he went down the incline with the
chained men passengers after him.
Motley procession! Twenty odd, dishevelled, half-clothed men of three
worlds. The changing, lightening gravity on the incline caught them. Dr.
Frank bounded up to the rail under the impetus of his step: caught and
held himself, drew himself back. The line swayed. In the dim, blue-lit
glare it seemed unreal, crazy. A grotesque dream of men descending a
plank.
They reached the forest glade. Stood swaying, afraid at first to move.
The purple night crowded them; they stood gazing at this strange world,
their new prison.
"Now the women."
Miko was shoving the women to the head of the incline. I could feel
Moa's steady gaze upon me. Her knife-blade gleamed in the turret light.
She murmured again, "In a few minutes you can ring us away, Gregg."
* * * * *
I felt like an actor awaiting his cue in the wings of some turgid drama
the plot of which he did not know. Venza was near the head of the
incline. Some of the women and children were on it. A woman screamed.
Her child had slipped from her hand, bounded up over the rail, and
fallen. Hardly fallen--floated down to the ground, with flailing arms
and legs, landing in the dark ferns, unharmed. Its terrified wail came
up.
There was a confusion on the incline. Venza, still on the deck, seemed
to send a look of appeal to the turret. My cue?
I slid my hand to the light switchboard. It was near my knees. I pulled
a switch. The blue-lit deck beneath the turret went dark.
I recall an instant of horrible, tense silence, and in the gloom beside
me I was aware of Moa moving. I felt a thrill of instinctive fear--would
she plunge that knife into me?
The silence of the darkened deck was broken with a confusion of sounds.
A babble of voices; a woman passenger's scream; shuffling of feet; and
above it all, Miko's roar:
"Stand quiet! Everyone! No movement!"
On the descending incline there was chaos. The disembarking women were
clinging to the gang-rail; some of them had evidently surged over it and
fallen. Down on the ground in the purple-shadowed starlight I could
vaguely see the chained line of men. They too were in confusion, trying
to shove themselves toward the fallen women.
Miko roared:
"Light those tubes! Gregg Haljan! By the Almighty, Moa, are you up
there? What is wrong? The light-tubes--"
Dark drama of unknown plot! I wonder if I should try and leave the
turret. Where was Anita? She had been down there on the deck when I
flung out the lights.
I think twenty seconds would have covered it all. I had not moved. I
thought, "Is Snap concerned with this?"
Moa's knife could have stabbed me. I felt her lunge against me; and
suddenly I was gripping her, twisting her wrist. But she flung the knife
away. Her strength was almost the equal of my own. Her hand went for my
throat, and with the other hand she was fumbling.
* * * * *
The deck abruptly sprang into light again. Moa had found the switch and
threw it back.
"Gregg!"
She fought me as I tried to reach the switch. I saw down on the deck
Miko gazing up at us. Moa panted, "Gregg--stop! If he--sees you doing
this, he'll kill you--"
The scene down there was almost unchanged. I had answered my cue. To
what purpose? I saw Anita near Miko. The last of the women were on the
plank.
I had stopped struggling with Moa. She sat back, panting; and then she
called: "Sorry, Miko. It will not happen again."
Miko was in a towering rage. But he was too busy to bother with me; his
anger swung on those nearest him. He shoved the last of the women
violently at the incline. She bounded over. Her body, with the
gravity-pull of only a few Earth-pounds, sailed in an arc and dropped to
the sward near the swaying line of men.
Miko swung back. "Get out of my way!" A sweep of his huge arm knocked
Anita sidewise. "Prince, damn you, help me with those boxes!"
The frightened stewards were lifting the boxes, square metal
storage-chests each as long as a man, packed with food, tools, and
equipment.
"Here, get out of my way, all of you!"
My breath came again; Anita nimbly retreated before Miko's angry rush.
He dashed at the stewards. Three of them held a box. He took it from
them; raised it at the top of the incline. Poised it over his head an
instant, with his massive arms like gray pillars beneath it. And flung
it. The box catapulted, dropped; and then, passing the Planetara's
gravity area, it sailed in a long flat arc over the forest glade and
crashed into the purple underbrush.
"Give me another!"
* * * * *
The stewards pushed another at him. Like an angry Titan, he flung it.
And another. One by one the chests sailed out and crashed.
"There is your food--go pick it up! Haljan, make ready to ring us away!"
On the deck lay the dead body of Rance Rankin, which the stewards had
carried out. Miko seized it, flung it.
"There! Go to your last resting place!"
And the other bodies. Balch Blackstone, Captain Carter, Johnson--Miko
flung them. And the course masters and those of our crew who had been
killed; the stewards appeared with them; Miko unceremoniously cast them
off.
The passengers were all on the ground now. It was dim down there. I
tried to distinguish Venza, but could not. I could see Dr. Frank's
figure at the end of the chained line of men. The passengers were gazing
in horror at the bodies hurtling over them.
"Ready, Haljan?"
Moa prompted me. "Tell him yes!"
I called, "Yes!" Had Venza failed in her unknown purpose? It seemed so.
On the helio-room bridge Snap and his guard stood like silent statues in
the blue-lit gloom.
The disembarkation was over.
"Close the ports," Miko commanded.
The incline came folding up with a clatter. The port and dome-windows
slid closed. Moa hissed against my ear:
"If you want life, Gregg Haljan, you will start your duties!"
Venza had failed. Whatever it was, it had come to nothing. Down in the
purple forest, disconnected now from the ship, the last of our friends
stood marooned. I could distinguish them through the blur of the closed
dome--only a swaying, huddled group was visible. But my fancy pictured
this last sight of them--Dr. Frank, Venza, Shac and Dud Ardley.
They were gone. There were left only Snap, Anita, and myself.
* * * * *
I was mechanically ringing us away. I heard my sirens sounding down
below, with the answering clangs here in the turret. The _Planetara's_
respiratory controls started; the pressure equalizers began operating,
and the gravity plates shifted into lifting combinations.
The ship was hissing and quivering with it, combined with the grating of
the last of the dome ports. And Miko's command:
"Lift, Haljan."
Hahn had been mingled with the confusion of the deck, though I had
hardly noticed him; Coniston had remained below, with the crew answering
my signals. Hahn stood now with Miko, gazing down through a deck window.
Anita was alone at another.
"Lift, Haljan."
I lifted us gently, bow first, with a repulsion of the bow plates. And
started the central electronic engine. Its thrust from our stern moved
us diagonally over the purple forest trees.
The glade slid downward and away. I caught a last vague glimpse of the
huddled group of marooned passengers, staring up at us. Left to their
fate, alone on this deserted little world.
With the three engines going we slid smoothly upward. The forest
dropped, a purple spread of tree-tops, edged with starlight and
Earth-light. The sharply curving horizon seemed following us up. I swung
on all the power. We mounted at a forty degree angle, slowly circling,
with a bank of clouds over us to the side and the shining little sea
beneath.
"Very good, Gregg." In the turret light Moa's eyes blazed at me. "I do
not know what you meant by darkening the deck-lights." Her fingers dug
at my shoulders. "I will tell my brother it was an error."
I said, "An error--yes."
"An error? I don't know what it was. But you have me to deal with now.
You understand? I will tell my brother so. You said, 'On Earth a man may
kill the thing he loves.' A woman of Mars may do that! Beware of me,
Gregg Haljan."
Her passion-filled eyes bored into me. Love? Hate? The venom of a woman
scorned--a mingling of turgid emotions....
* * * * *
I twisted away from her grip and ignored her; she sat back, silently
watching my busy activities; the calculations of the shifting conditions
of gravity, pressures, temperatures; a checking of the score or more of
instruments on the board before me.
Mechanical routine. My mind went to Venza, back there on the asteroid.
The wandering little world was already shrinking to a convex surface
beneath us. Venza, with her last unknown play, gone to failure. Had I
failed my cue? Whatever my part, it seemed now that I must have horribly
mis-acted it.
The crescent Earth was presently swinging over our bow. We rocketed out
of the asteroid's shadow. The glowing, flaming Sun appeared, making a
crescent of the Earth. With the glass I could see our tiny Moon,
visually seeming to hug the limb of its parent Earth.
We were away upon our course for the Moon. My mind flung ahead.
Grantline with his treasure, unsuspecting this brigand ship. And
suddenly, beyond all thought of Grantline and his treasure, there came
to me a fear for Anita. In God's truth I had been, so far, a very
stumbling inept champion--doomed to failure with everything I tried. It
swept me, so that I cursed my own incapacity. Why had I not contrived to
have Anita desert at the asteroid? Would it not have been far better for
her there? Taking her chance for rescue with Dr. Frank, Venza and the
others?
But no! I had, like an inept fool, never thought of that! Had left her
here on board at the mercy of these outlaws.
And I swore now that, beyond everything, I would protect her.
Futile oath! If I could have seen ahead a few hours! But I sensed the
catastrophe. There was a shudder within me as I sat in that turret,
docilely guiding us out through the asteroid's atmosphere, heading us
upon our course for the Moon.