Rip rejoined his Planeteers in the supply room and motioned for them
to gather around him. "I know why Terra base sent us the fighting
equipment," he announced. "They were afraid word of this thorium asteroid
would leak out to Consops--and it has. A Connie cruiser blasted off from
Marsport and it's headed this way."
He watched the faces of his men carefully, to see how they would take the
news. They merely looked at each other and shrugged. Conflict with
Consops was nothing new to them.
"The freighter that found the asteroid landed at Marsport, didn't it?"
Koa asked. Getting a nod from Rip, he went on, "Then I know what probably
happened. The two things spacemen can't do are breathe high vack and keep
their mouths shut. Some of the crew blabbed about the asteroid, probably
at the Space Club. That's where they hang out. The Connies hang out
there, too. Result, we get a Connie cruiser after the asteroid."
"You hit it," Rip acknowledged.
Corporal Santos shrugged. "If the Connies try to take the asteroid away,
they'll have a real warm time. We have ten racks of rockets, twenty-four
to a rack. That's a lot of snapper-boats we can pick off if they try to
make a landing."
The Planeteers stopped talking as the voice horn sounded. "Get it! We are
going into no-weight. Prepare to stay in no-weight indefinitely. Rotation
stops in two minutes."
Rip realized why the order was given. The _Scorpius_ could not maneuver
while in a gravity spin, and O'Brine wanted to be free to take action if
necessary.
The voice horn came on again. "Now get it again. The ship may maneuver
suddenly. Prepare for acceleration or deceleration without warning. One
minute to no-weight."
Rip gave quick orders. "Get lines around the equipment and prepare to
haul it. I'll get landing boats assigned, and we can load. Then prepare
space packs. Lay out suits and bubbles. We want to be ready to go the
moment we get the word."
Lines were taken from a locker and secured to the equipment. As the
Planeteers worked, the ship's spinning slowed and stopped. They were
in no-weight. Rip grabbed for a hand cord that hung from the wall and
hauled himself out into the engine control room. The deputy commander was
at his post, waiting tensely for orders. Rip thrust against a bulkhead
with one foot and floated to his side. "I need two landing boats, sir,"
he requested. "One stays on the asteroid with us."
"Take numbers five and six. I'll assign a pilot to bring number five back
to the ship after you've landed."
"Thank you." Rip would have been surprised at the deputy's quick assent
if Commander O'Brine hadn't shown him that the spacemen were ready to do
anything possible to aid the Planeteers. He went back to the supply room
and told Koa which boats were to be used, instructed him to get the
supplies aboard, then made his way to Commander O'Brine's office.
O'Brine was not in. Rip searched and found him in the astroplot room,
watching a 'scope. Green streaks called "blips" marked the panel, each
one indicating an asteroid.
"All too small," O'Brine said. "We've only seen two large ones, and they
were too large."
"Space is certainly full of junk," Rip commented. "At least this corner
of it is pretty full."
A junior space officer overheard him. "This is nothing. We're on the edge
of the asteroid belt. Closer to the middle, there's so much stuff a ship
has to crawl through it."
Rip wandered over to the main control desk. A senior space officer was
seated before a simple panel on which there were only a dozen small
levers, a visiphone, and a radar screen. The screen was circular, with
numbers around the rim like those on an Earth clock. In the center of the
screen was a tiny circle. The central circle represented the _Scorpius_.
The rest of the screen was the area dead ahead. Rip watched and saw
several blips on it that indicated asteroids. They were all small. He
watched, interested, as the _Scorpius_ overtook them. Once, according to
the screen, the cruiser passed under an asteroid, with a clearance of
only a few hundred feet.
"You didn't miss that one by much," Rip told the space officer.
"Don't have to miss by much," he retorted. "A few feet are as good as a
mile in space. Our blast might kick them around a little, and maybe
there's a little mutual mass attraction, but we don't worry about it."
He pointed to a blip that was just swimming into view, a sharp green
point against the screen. "We do have to worry about that one." He
selected a lever and pulled it toward him.
Rip felt sudden weight against his feet. The green point on the screen
moved downward, below center. The feeling of weight ceased. He knew what
had happened, of course. Around the hull of the ship, set in evenly
spaced lines, were a series of blast holes through which steam was fired.
The steam was produced instantly by running water through the heat coils
of the nuclear engine. By using groups or combinations of steam tubes,
the control officer could move the ship in any direction, set it rolling,
spin it end over end, or whirl it in an eccentric pattern.
"How do you decide which tubes to use?" Rip asked.
"Depends on what's happening. If we were ducking missiles from an enemy,
I'd get orders from the commander. But to duck asteroids, there's no
problem. I go over them by firing the steam tubes along the bottom of the
ship. That way, you feel the acceleration on your feet. If I fired the
top tubes, the ship would drop out from under those who were standing.
They'd all end up on the overhead."
Rip watched for a while longer, then wandered back to Commander O'Brine.
He was getting anxious. At first the task of capturing an asteroid and
moving it back to Earth had been rather unreal, like some of the problems
he had worked out while training on the space platform. Now he was no
longer calm about it. He had faith in the Terra base Planeteer
specialists, but they couldn't figure out everything for him. Most of the
problems of getting the asteroid back to Earth would have to be solved by
Lt. Richard Ingalls Peter Foster.
A junior space officer suddenly called, "Sir, I have a reading at
two-seventy degrees, twenty-three degrees eight minutes high."
Commander O'Brine jumped up so fast that the action shot him to the
ceiling. He kicked down again and leaned over the officer's 'scope.
Rip got there by pulling himself right across the top of the chart table.
The green point of light on the 'scope was bigger than any other he had
seen.
"It's about the right size," O'Brine said. There was excitement in his
voice. "Correct course. Let's take a look at it."
All hands gripped something with which to steady themselves as the
cruiser spun swiftly onto the new course. The control officer called,
"I have it centered, sir. We'll reach it in about an hour at this speed."
"Jack it up," O'Brine ordered. "Heave some neutrons into it. Double
speed, then decelerate to reach it in thirty minutes."
The control officer issued orders to the engine control room. In a moment
acceleration plucked at them. O'Brine motioned to Rip. "Come on, Foster.
Let's see what Analysis makes of this rock."
Rip followed the commander to the deck below, where the technical
analysts were located. His heart was pounding a little faster than usual,
and not from acceleration, either. He found himself wetting his lips
frequently and thought, _Get hold of it, boy. You've got nothing to worry
about but high vacuum._
He didn't really believe it. There would be plenty to worry about. Like
detonating nuclear bombs and trying to figure their blast reaction. Like
figuring out the course that would take them closest to the sun without
pulling them into it. Like a thousand things--all of them up to him.
The chief analyst greeted them. "We got the orders to change course,
Commander. That gave us the location of the asteroid. We're already
working on it."
"Anything yet?"
"No, sir. We'll have the albedo measurement in a few minutes. It'll take
longer to figure the mass."
The asteroid's efficiency in reflecting sunlight was its albedo. The
efficiency depended on the material of which it was made. The albedo of
pure metallic thorium was known. If the asteroid's albedo matched it,
that would be one piece of evidence.
In the same way, the mass of thorium was known. The measurements of the
asteroid were being taken. They would be compared with a chunk of thorium
of the same size. If it worked out, that would be evidence enough.
Commander O'Brine motioned to chairs. "Might as well sit down while we're
waiting, Foster." He took one of the chairs and looked closely at Rip.
Suddenly he grinned. "I thought Planeteers never got nervous."
"Who's nervous?" Rip retorted, then answered his own question truthfully.
"I am. You're right, sir. The closer we get, the more scared I get."
"That's a good sign," O'Brine replied. "It means you'll be careful. Got
any real doubts about the job?"
Rip thought it over and didn't think so. "Not any real ones. I think we
can do it. But I'm nervous just the same. Great Cosmos, Commander! This
is my first assignment, and they give me a whole world to myself and tell
me to bring it home. Maybe it isn't a very big world, but that doesn't
change things much."
O'Brine chuckled. "I never expected to get an admission like that from a
Planeteer."
"And I," Rip retorted, "never expected to make one like that to a
spaceman."
The chief analyst returned, a sheet of computations in his hand. "Report,
sir. The albedo measurement is correct. This may be it."
"How long before we get the measurements and comparisons?"
"Ten minutes, perhaps."