_There Is a Meteor_
His face set and cold, Carse ran to the stores cabin, just as the
Eurasian must have hurried there a few minutes before. He took one of
Dr. Ku's self-propulsive space-suits down from the rack and slipped
into it, sticking a raygun in the belt. Still not speaking, he glided
to the rear port-lock, Leithgow and Friday running alongside and
attempting to dissuade him from the dangerous pursuit. Their words
were wasted. Carse gave them only a faint smile and a few directions.
"Keep the ship as close as you can without danger. No, Eclipse; I'm
going by myself; there's no need to risk two. If I don't come out,
you've everything needed to prove your case. Eliot--the re-embodied
brains, Ku Sui's four white assistants--"
"I tell you you're going to your death! You'll be caught inside!
Earth's attracting the asteroid now, and in a few minutes it will be
plunging through the atmosphere with terrific speed! The friction will
make it a meteor, and you'll burn. Carse! You'll die in flames! You
haven't but a few minutes to do the whole thing!"
"Have to risk that, Eliot." He swung open the inner door of the lock
and stepped into the chamber. "Remember, keep as close to the asteroid
as possible, and a steady watch for Ku Sui and me." He looked levelly
at them, white man and black, for a moment, then turned his face away.
"That's all. Good-by," he said.
The door swung shut in their faces with a hiss of compressed air.
The Hawk closed the face-plate of his helmet and rapidly spun over the
controls. Another hiss, and the outer door moved wide. He stepped with
force into space.
* * * * *
The panorama below him was breath-taking: Earth seemed almost to hit
him in the face. He had not realized it was so close. The sheer,
mighty stretch of the globe filled his eyes, and for seconds he could
not focus on anything else, so overwhelming to his vision was the
colossal map. It reached away to left and right, before and behind,
and he was so near that it seemed almost flat, a sun-gleaming plain on
which stood out in sharp outline the continent of Europe, the Atlantic
Ocean and, bordering it, the edge of North America.
To his left was the flaming orb of the sun; and directly underfoot,
rotating against the vast background of the North Atlantic, he now saw
the asteroid, glinting metallically along its craggy length as it
swung over. Carse centered every bit of power he had on it, and at
maximum acceleration began to overhaul his objective.
The asteroid was plunging free to Earth, and the rate of its
uncontrolled plunge was second by second mounting tremendously; but
Carse's power-fall quickly enabled him to overtake it. As the dome
swooped up in front of him, and the sunlight washed briefly over its
desolate buildings, he looked hard for a shape moving amongst them,
without success. Doubtless the Eurasian was well inside by now.
The job of getting into the dome was a hazardous one. About every
thirty seconds the asteroid described a complete rotation, making the
rim turn at a speed of half a mile a second, and that made the task of
entering extremely dangerous to a man whose only protection was the
metal and fabric of a space-suit. Misjudgment would either rip the
suit or dash him to instant death. He had to slip cleanly down through
the jagged tear in the dome, planning his swoop accurately to the
fraction of a second.
Never cooler, the Hawk made it. Building a parallel speed equal to
that of the rotating dome, he followed it over in a dizzy whirl; and
as the rent came below he shot curving down and in with sufficient
precision, and at once swiftly adjusted his gravity to offset the
asteroid's great centrifugal force.
* * * * *
For alternating fifteen-second periods the sunlight filled the dome
and its buildings; and on the tail of the first of these, even as the
sable tide swept all vision from him, the Hawk arrived at the door of
one wing of the central building. He had not seen Ku Sui, and he had
no time for exploration, but he did have a hunch as to where the
Eurasian had gone, and he followed that hunch. A silent, giant-gray
thing in the black silence of the corridor, grim, intent and seeming
irresistible, he swept along it; and every second he knew that a
raygun might spit from where it had been waiting in ambush to puncture
his suit and kill him. For whether or not Ku Sui was aware that he was
being tracked by his old, bitter foe, Carse did not know.
The asteroid plunged down faster and faster. Earth's atmosphere, with
all its perils of friction, coming ever closer, and the great bosom of
the planet lying waiting to receive and bury the rock hurtling towards
it. Throughout most of the leagues of space that asteroid had tracked
on its master's diverse errands, and in many distant places the trails
of Hawk Carse and Ku Sui had crossed and left blood and crossed again;
and now those three--asteroid, Eurasian and the Hawk--were drawn once
more together for the spectacular and epic climax, now only minutes
away. No power in the universe was to stop the plunge of the asteroid;
it remained to be seen how one or both of the two living humans on it
could get out in time....
But of all this, nothing was in Hawk Carse's mind except the beating,
driving realization that few minutes were left in which to play out
the last scene. With reckless haste he sped to where his hunch led
him, the secret panel in Dr. Ku's laboratory. As he reached it, faint
sunlight came filtering in from somewhere and he saw that the panel
was open.
He looked within and dimly saw a ladder reaching down into black
depths. Without hesitation he thrust through the opening and dropped
into the blackness. He dared not lose a second.
* * * * *
He hit bottom with a thud, changed his glove controls and reached out
in the darkness. He felt that he was in one end of a passageway. As
rapidly as he could, his arms stretched wide, all his nerves and
muscles and senses alert, he pressed along it.
Continually he was thrown into the rough wall at his right by the
centrifugal force of the asteroid. How far did the passageway extend?
Was Ku Sui at the end of it? It occurred to the Hawk that the asteroid
was a developing shooting star, eating up the few hundred miles of
life that remained, streaking down into the atmosphere, where waited
quick friction and incandescence--and he down in the heart of it,
blind, without clue to what lay in front of him, ignorant of
everything, and with only minutes in which to achieve his end. There'd
be no heat-warning through his insulated suit. Even now, perhaps,
there was no time to get out; already the deadline might have been
crossed; he could not know. He went on....
How far? A hundred yards; two hundred? Easily that, he thought, and
still no variation in the blackness around him! The passageway seemed
straight, so he might now be past the rim of the dome above.
Then, for just a second, he saw a faint wisp of light ahead!
Automatically Carse's raygun came up, but in the time that simple
motion took the light was gone and the blackness was as deep and
lifeless as before. But he was coming to something. He went on,
perhaps a little faster, hot to discover the last emergency resource
of Dr. Ku. He took no pains to avoid making noise, for he knew Ku Sui
could not hear him through the airless space between.
After another hundred yards or so the light from ahead winked again.
It was stronger. Only a second of it, but he now suspected that it
came at regular intervals. It was a machine, perhaps, working under
the hands of the Eurasian. On--on! With the seconds fleeting by,
building to the small total which would bring friction to the
asteroid, and incandescence, and scalding death for him within it!
Again, suddenly, the mysterious light. It left instantly as usual, but
not before it revealed, well ahead, the end of the passage. Quickly he
traversed the remaining distance and felt around with his hands. He
found what he half expected. There was an opening, a doorway, to his
right. The room beyond surely held the final secret of the asteroid.
And if Dr. Ku Sui were anywhere, he was in there.
* * * * *
Carse restrained an impulse to rush in, deciding to wait for the
recurring light. Everything in him told him that this was the climax,
that through the door to his right lay the object of his chase; and in
spite of his consciousness of the plunging asteroid, and the
up-leaping skin of Earth's atmosphere, now so close, he stood full in
the doorway, gun ready, waiting. Seconds were precious, but this was
the part of common sense. He needed the light to show him what perils
he must face; he could not go into that chamber ignorant of the
situation there.
For what seemed ages the fantastic figure stood there. The great rock
turning over and over, with awful speed dropping down. Earth nearing,
death ever closer--and he standing in silence and darkness, waiting to
finish the feud! He might never escape; he knew that; it might already
be too late to try; but the core of the man, his grim and steely will,
would not let him think of retreating towards safety until he had
faced Dr. Ku Sui and decided the account between them forever.
The wall of darkness melted. A ghostly light filtered through. He
stared, and in its brief maximum saw before him a high, bare
rectangular room, hewn out of the rock--and at its far side a man in a
space-suit. Ku Sui, brought to bay!
But Carse, for one of the few times in his life, doubted his eyes.
What trick were they playing him? For it was not a real, sharp figure
that he saw; it was an indefinite one, shimmering and elusive, like a
mirage. A prank of the strange light, perhaps. But Ku Sui
nevertheless! Ku Sui trapped!
The Hawk leaped forward with outstretched arms to seize and hold the
Eurasian's motionless figure. As he moved, the second of ghostly light
dissolved away, and in the blackness his eager reaching arms closed
on--nothing!
Surely Ku Sui had been there! Surely he had not just imagined he saw
him!
* * * * *
Baffled and coldly raging, the Hawk whirled and groped frantically.
The centrifugal force caught him off balance and hurled him into a
wall, but dizzy he continued his desperate search, sweeping his arms
all around him, over walls and floor and, rising, the ceiling. The
tumbling asteroid banged him unmercifully into the six sides of the
room, but even as he was flung he reached and felt in every
direction--felt without result.
In some incredible way, Ku Sui had eluded him. The second the light
failed, he must have slipped by and escaped down the passageway
behind. The Hawk could hardly understand how it might have been
achieved, but there was no other explanation. So, with lips firm set
in his cold, grim face, he felt to the doorway, ready to track back
through the long, unlit passage. He might still overhaul and capture
the other. If there was still time....
But _was_ there?
The passing seconds had not been idle. Inexorably they had brought him
to Earth's atmosphere. He stared around the room in sheer horror.
For its blackness was relieved by the faintest of glows. It was not
that of the recurring light; it came from the whole rock ceiling
above. Carse was overwhelmed by the realization that within numbered
seconds the surface of the asteroid would reach incandescence.
Thoughts raced like lightning through his head. He could not get free
through the corridor and dome behind: that would take at least three
minutes, and not a quarter of a minute was left. Ku Sui too, if he
were in the corridor trying to reach the dome, was trapped and
finished. A meteor flaming to Earth would be their common grave!
A searing, hideous death! Trapped within fiery walls of melting rock!
At that moment the regularly re-recurring flash of light came, and
under pressure of his great need the phenomenon meshed with
understanding in Carse's mind. That light was sunlight! It come at
definite intervals as the dome side of the asteroid rotated to face
the sun.
And that light could reach the room only by way of some channel in the
ceiling!
* * * * *
In the waxing glow of the rock above him, Carse swiftly found the
channel--a vertical bore several feet wide, in one corner of the
ceiling. Its rock sides glowed redly, and at their end was a round
black patch that caused his heart to leap with hope. Outer space!--and
a short, straight escape to it! In a flash he saw how Ku Sui perhaps
had eluded him.
The Eurasian's prepared emergency exit would also be his!
He lost not a fraction of a second. Turning his glove controls to
maximum acceleration, he rose with a rush into the bore. Despite his
good aim the asteroid's centrifugal force threw him heavily into one
red-hot side. His heart went cold; would the fabric of the suit burn
through? No time for such worries--must make the frigid air
outside--fast--fast--never mind bumps--quick out--and must stay
conscious--_must_ stay conscious to exert repulsion against Earth!
Like a projectile Hawk Carse shot out of that tunnel of hell at a
tangent to the asteroid and in a direction away from Earth, and in an
instant the doomed body was far below him, and streaking faster and
ever faster to the annihilation now so near.
He fought to come out of his dizziness. Shaking his head, he glanced
back for sight of a minute, suit-clad figure. Had Ku Sui preceded him
through the emergency exit, his shape should be visible somewhere,
etched by the sunlight.
There was no sign of him.
Carse's eyes dropped to the asteroid. He saw it already miles below,
a breath-taking celestial object, a second sun, brilliant and
increasingly brilliant as it diminished over the watery plain waiting
to receive it. His mind saw the Eurasian, caught in the long corridor
to the dome, already dead on this last flight of his extraordinary
vehicle of space....
The end came at once. The sun was quickly a great, brilliant shooting
star, then a blinding smaller one: then its straight mad flight
through the heavens was over, and it was received in the waters of the
Atlantic Ocean and buried deep.
A cataclysmic burial. A titanic meteor, an incandescent, screaming
streak in the night--a cloud of billowing steam--a wall of water
rearing back from the strange grave of the asteroid, so far come from
its accustomed orbit around Mars.... The thought came to Carse that
Dr. Ku Sui had died as he lived, spectacularly, with a brilliance and
a tidal wave and an earthquake to disturb the lives of men....
And a sadness fell over the heart of the Hawk....
* * * * *
He roused from it in a moment. He felt heat! In the rush of events he
had not before noticed that his space-suit had started to burn from
the friction of his own passage through the atmosphere. Fortunately,
it was already cooling off.
For in spite of his own leaving speed and the added centrifugal
velocity the asteroid had given him, he had hurtled down after the
doomed rock; and only then was his building repulsion neutralizing
Earth's gravity and his initial Earthward velocity. He had slowed down
just in time to keep his space suit intact.
He came to rest, in relation to the Earth, and hovered there. Again he
scrutinized the black untenanted wastes of space above. Far out,
approaching as rapidly as it dared, was the _Sandra_.
He wanted to be sure, so he cut in his mike and asked Leithgow if they
had, through their electelscope, seen, Ku Sui leave the asteroid.
The anxious scientist told him they had not.
With a slight sigh Hawk Carse snapped off his contact and waited till
the sharp, growing spot that was the _Sandra_ should come dropping
down to pick him up, and his friends learn from his own lips the story
of the passing of Ku Sui....
[Illustration: Advertisement.]
* * * * *
End of Project Gutenberg's The Passing of Ku Sui, by Anthony Gilmore