IV

I gasped, listening to Irene. I didn't know what surprised and confused

me most--her being alive and safe, or what she'd done about old Art

Haynes. Could I trust old Art? I had no way of telling. Had Irene

told him about his nephew, or had she kept silent? Did he know he was

opposed to Norman Haynes, or did he think it was somebody else who had

sabotaged the project? Where would his loyalties be, if he found out?

It was a ticklish situation.

As soon as Irene's ragged, excited breathing died away in the speaker,

Norman Haynes took it upon himself to clarify his own stand, and my

uncertainties. He looked at Geedeh and Pa and me, tense and suffering

in the grip of the gravity, and tortured with doubt.

"Uncle Art is an old fool," he said. "So he thinks he'll come back to

the asteroids, and replace me in the business, does he? Well, he should

have died long ago, and now is as good a time as any! He might as well

be part of the accident, too, along with those space bums of yours.

Nobody'll ever know!"

It was tragic that old Art couldn't have heard that. But his nephew

wasn't broadcasting. He was just listening quietly. And now his uncle's

voice was coming through:

"We're blasting in to land, Wallace, if you're listening. There won't

be any more trouble, now. I'll see to that! We'll find out who's back

of this sabotage. We'll put an end to it!"

For me it was bitter, black irony--old Art proving himself our friend,

now! He didn't know his enemy. He was nearly ninety--a grim old

fighter, with real vision. Irene too, who meant everything to me. She

didn't know that with the intensified gravity those incoming ships

would be smashed and blazing!

My mind was growing a bit dim in the strangling pressure of

the artificial gravitation. Sweat was streaming from me in the

smothering heat that added to the oppressiveness of the heavy air. Pa

Mavrocordatus was groaning the name of his daughter. Geedeh's great

eyes were fixed on me in helpless suffering.

Through the shrill sounds of the engines I listened for more words

from Irene and old Art. But none came. They must know their doom by

now. They must be fighting savagely and hopelessly to get away. Still

some distance from 487, they were already caught, deep in the web of

invisible force.

After some moments, I heard a distant crash, a roll of sound. What was

it? A huge rocket, hitting the jagged crags above, at meteoric speed?

Crumpling, destroying itself and those inside it? I thought my heart

would burst with the added weight of my anxiety.

The first crash was only the beginning. Others followed in quick

succession--inexorably. And there was a faint, far-off roar, coming

down from ten miles above.

And that roar was the roar of titanic rain. Of floods of water coming

down this shaft, where the gravity machine was! All the countless tons

of water that we'd baked from ancient rocks, and which had been mostly

suspended as vapor in our synthetic atmosphere, was condensing now,

coming down in torrents!

* * * * *

Norman Haynes kept grinning satanically, while he and his aides

attended to the gravity machine. Triumph showed in his eyes. But

presently he began to look puzzled, as that soughing roar that

accompanied the crashing din, increased. It was a little early for the

space ships to be smashing up, anyway.

I could feel a grim smile coming over my lips, against my will. Had my

guesses and hopes, which had seemed so unsubstantial, been correct?

Norman Haynes was glancing doubtfully at the reproducer. I could see

that he was wondering why his surface watchers didn't communicate any

more--and tell him what was happening up there on the crust of 487.

I knew the answers, now! Geedeh did, too. The excitement of knowledge

was in his withered, pain-wracked face. Those distant crashes were not

what I'd feared they might be, but part of what I'd hoped for. They

were gigantic thunder-claps--the noise of terrific lightning bolts!

Norman Haynes had made a simple oversight in his plan to destroy those

incoming space craft. There was a fearsome electrical storm going on

above--one of inconceivable proportions--utterly beyond the Earthly!

Doubtless all of Norman Haynes' surface watchers, up above, had been

killed by that sudden deluge of electricity! The multiplied gravitation

up there, had pinned them down, so that they could neither escape, nor

warn their chief!

Before Norman Haynes understood what was happening, foam-flecked muddy

water was at the door of the machinery room, rushing and gurgling past

the threshold! He and his helpers stared at it stupidly, and I laughed

at them.

"You didn't realize it, did you, Haynes?" I grunted. "You didn't

realize that increased gravity would increase the weight of the

atmosphere, as well as of everything else! And increased weight of

the air, means increased atmospheric pressure, too, pushing molecules

together, creating greater density. And what happens? Go back to your

high school physics, Haynes! It's like when you store air in the tank

of a compressor pump. The moisture in it liquifies. And in the case

of an atmosphere as big as 487 has now, static electricity would be

suddenly and violently condensed, besides."

Norman Haynes stared at me, stunned with consternation. But his

recovery was fairly prompt. His sudden sneer had a rattish desperation.

"Hell," he said. "Just a thunder storm. A lot of rain. What of it? The

gravity machine still works. The ships will still be destroyed."

I knew that that was true--unless what I'd planned happened. Those

rockets, manned by our old construction crew, and Irene, and old Art

Haynes, had been too close to asteroid 487 for the last couple of

minutes, to effect an escape, even if the sudden dark clouds had warned

them that something dangerous was afoot.

"Watch this--Haynes," Geedeh panted, and it was hard for the acting

head of the Haynes Shipping Company to guess what the little Martian

meant, at first.

* * * * *

Under the pull of that terrific gravity, the water was coming into that

room like an avalanche. Geedeh and Pa and I were floundering in it

feebly, held to the floor by that awful weight. I was sure we'd drown.

But as we coughed and sputtered, the flood found its way through the

hole I'd kicked, low down in the side of the crystal dome that covered

that gigantic machinery. There was a flash of electrical flame, as the

water interfered with the functioning of the apparatus.

It was pandemonium, then. Every man for himself. Geedeh, the scientist,

and I, who, under the force of grim need, had somehow contrived to plan

this finale, had the advantage of knowledge. We'd figured out a little

of what to do.

The gravity winked off suddenly--reaching the low of practically

nothing, here at the center of this tiny world, whose normal

attraction, even at the surface, was very small. We struggled to our

feet, in a muddy swirl that was now a yard in depth. But before we

could take advantage of our sudden lightness, and leap clear, the

gravity machines gave a last gasp of power, and we were pulled down

again, smothering. Then, with a grating roar, the apparatus stopped.

The bedlam ceased, except for a low whine of expanding atmosphere, and

screams from Haynes and his men.

Presently, I felt all hell stabbing through me. My ears rang as

with the after effects of some colossal explosion. My whole body

ached. I clutched at Geedeh, who seemed on the point of collapse. Pa

Mavrocordatus managed to help me....

But strained by gravity vastly stronger than that of Mars, and now

facing a circumstance even more dangerous, tough little Geedeh still

had his wits, fortunately for us all. He pointed to an airtight crystal

cage at one edge of the chamber. The cage was necessary in routine

testing of the machinery here, which called for variations in the

output of the gravity generators, and consequent great variations in

air pressure.

"Inside the cage--all of us!" Geedeh squeaked. "Quickly! Bends!..."

Do you know what the air pressure is, at the bottom of a ten-mile

shaft, even at normal Earth gravity? Yeah, something pretty high! Then

you can imagine what it had just been like, here, at six or seven

gravities! But when the generators had quit entirely, there had been

that sudden loss of weight in the air, sudden expansion, thinning, loss

of pressure!

The three of us got inside the cage, and sealed the door. I spun

valves. There was a hiss of entering atmosphere, and the pressure rose

again, far above the norm of sea-level, on Earth. I felt better at

once, but I knew it had been a close call.

We looked out at Norman Haynes and his henchmen. They weren't drowning,

now. Tottering, they stood with their heads well above the flood. It

was something else that was killing them. Not suffocation, either.

Their faces were bloated and congested in the glow of illuminators.

Their bodies seemed to swell.

Norman Haynes raised his blast tube, as did several of the others,

trying to fire at the crystal shelter where we had taken refuge. Norman

Haynes must have known his failure, then. Why had it happened. How we

had won. It may be that he even realized some justice in his hideous

punishment. He had tried to obstruct progress and fair play.

The blast tube dropped from his fingers. He opened his mouth to shriek

in his agony. But dark blood gushed forth, and, with his henchmen, he

toppled back into the water.

* * * * *

"Bends!" Geedeh said again. "Haynes had a worse case of bends than any

deep-sea diver ever experienced."

The flood had almost stopped, now, outside the cage. We waited.

Vengeance was complete. And it wasn't quite as satisfying as I might

once have thought.

Presently they were with us. Irene. And old Art--proving that the

Haynes name was still great, even though one who bore it had soiled it

some. We emerged from our sealed cage, after the pressure around us was

gradually lowered to normal.

"I didn't think it was Norman who was guilty," old Art breathed sadly

when he spoke to us. "I knew he was high-handed, but I didn't realize

it was as bad as it was. I guess Norman got what he deserved," he

finished, and there were tears in his heavy voice.

We went to the surface in the elevator. We needed space suits again,

up there, with the air as expanded as it was. A lot of the atmosphere

was leaking away from 487, being held down only by the tiny natural

gravity. But there was nothing that couldn't be repaired and replaced.

"We must have pumps rigged to draw the water out of the vault, so that

we can dry and repair the gravity machinery, and start it again,"

Geedeh stated.

We started again, almost as we had done at the first, for quite a

bit of the air and water had been whisked into space. We lived in

space-suits for days, rebuilding and repairing the damaged machinery.

Then with the aid of Art Haynes, and with extended credit now that our

plans were made fully known and approved, we imported machinery to pump

the water from the vault.

We hired specialists to come in, each of them with a trained crew of

men to do the work that our old crews lacked the technical skill to do.

Slowly, our planet of hope grew again, and there were bulletins sent

through the asteroid belt that workers were wanted again on Paradise

Asteroid.

The specialists left, replaced by the crews that had worked on the

asteroid before. With unlimited credit, our great freighting ships

piled materials in regular formation, and the returning crews set their

ships down on the landing fields, the men pouring eagerly forth, ready

to set up the buildings that would be the nucleus of another Earth in

space.

With our old crews returned, it took about a hundred hours to

accomplish this. Asteroid 487 was almost the same as before the final

trouble with Norman Haynes, now, except that the air was a little

thinner. But that could be quickly taken care of. Pa Mavrocordatus

was working with his vineyards and trees, and his tomato and cabbage

patches, again. The big trouble was all finished, now. The dream was

coming true. A little Earth, fresh and green, for tired miners of the

Path of Minor Planets. Space madness could never be so common now. And

cheap, fresh products would be theirs.

V

Irene and I walked in the warm night. The crews were whooping it up

in the lighted barracks. Somebody was playing a harmonica. The stars

were brilliant, and there were a thousand things to think of. How

we'd all struggled. How Nick Mavrocordatus, had dreamed and worked

and died. How once the asteroids had been a planet, with almost human

inhabitants, dreaming, planning, struggling, too. Their rock carvings

were everywhere.

"It's the beginning, Chet," Irene whispered. "Asteroid 487 is the

first. But there'll be others--other small, beautiful, living planets.

There's a lot of work to be done. And when it's all finished that will

be almost unfortunate--too tame."

I knew what she meant. She was pioneer stuff, just as all of us were.

The greatness of life was in its battles. On and on, to vaster and

vaster heights. That was what had driven us into the interplanetary

void in the first place.

I kissed her. "Don't worry, Honey," I said. "There's no end to it. No

point of final stagnation. It goes on and on. There'll always be a

frontier--something bigger to reach and conquer...."

And we looked up in awe toward the infinite stars.