Burt scrambled up out of the airlock, cursing when his trousers caught
on an edge of rusted metal. He tugged at them and heard them rip. Then
he was clear and running toward Marcia.
With a great grinding crashing sound the rock plowed into the Havelock,
smashing it and crushing the half-corroded metal flat. Burt looked back
at a big cloud of dust, and when it cleared, the Havelock looked like
so much scrap. If he had been inside he would have been crushed to a
pulp. Less than a pulp, they never would have found him.
"Burt! Burt--" Marcia was sobbing against his chest. "Of all the freak
accidents--"
"Uh-uh." He shook his head as they walked back to the broken remains of
the Havelock. "That was no accident."
He pointed to the little hill. "That hasn't got a slope of more than
ten degrees, honey. It couldn't have been an accident. The rock never
could have gathered so much momentum on that hill."
"Not an accident?"
"No. Someone--something--pushed that rock."
The boulder was unmoving now, fifty yards from the scrap heap which had
been the Havelock Cruiser.
Marcia said, "Someone pushed _that_? It's as big as the ship, Burt. It
weighs five tons if it weighs an ounce. Maybe in this slight gravity--"
Burt shook his head. "Even that wouldn't account for it. That rock was
pushed."
Marcia clung to him, shuddering. "Burt, let's get the children and
leave this place!"
He nodded, and he was about to call Johnny, when something bounded high
into the air over the horizon, then floated down, gently. "Johnny!"
Marcia cried.
"He's detached his equalizer," Burt said. "That crazy kid--"
Each of them had one of the little gravity equalizers at his belt. It
was a clever invention: you wore it in space flight, and you never
became weightless as space-travelers did in the old days. And you wore
it on any planet, creating earth-norm gravity. Now Johnny had detached
his, and he weighed no more than a couple of pounds here on the tiny
asteroid.
Something else bounded high into the air, came floating down. Johnny
called: "Lookit us. We're birds, that's what we are. We're birds!"
Burt knew that Johnny had removed Joan's equalizer as well. Two forms
came bouncing toward them over the wild terrain. "Just press the button
to the left," Burt pleaded. "Press it to the left like a good boy,
Johnny. You do it and we'll give you a present."
"Naa. This is fun. You try and get me."
But Joan was crying, and she did not know what to do. Every time she
landed, she tried to take a step forward and she soared high into the
air again. Closer bounded the two figures, and Johnny soared right by,
almost near enough to touch. Burt dove for him, and came up clutching
air. Johnny bounded away again, and, calling threats and taunts behind
him, he disappeared over the hill, in the direction from which the
boulder had come.
Marcia had been luckier. She held Joan by one arm now, re-adjusting the
equalizer with her free hand. Joan sat down, crying. "I have Joan,"
Marcia told her husband. "You go and get Johnny, Burt. Get him--quick.
I don't like this place."