Clyde Beck

“ I was glad before morning that the nights on Vesta were only six hours long. Soon after Betty left, a couple of Stony's gorillas went over to the ship and sent back the two that had been left on watch. The new ones weren't any prettier to look at, and they scoffed up just as big a share of rations as the others had, and with even less manners, if possible. After that one of them got out a deck of mouldy-looking cards, and the whole crew sat down to a game of poker. ”

“ A jet scorch it was, and a few hundred yards away the sunlight glittered on a round lump that couldn't be anything but a Mitchell blister. Of all the rocks in the Belt, I would bump into one with a station on it. Nice catch, Denby!
I crawled into the bulger again in case I might set her down a little heavy, and got at the controls. Landing on the steering jets is tricky, especially when there is no atmosphere to help you brake down. I never would have made it if it had been a full-sized planet. ”

“ It takes a very fancy kind of fool to rot four years in the Girdle swamps on Venus, getting drunk only every second month so he can save up enough of his pay to put himself through Space Tech, and then, when he has graduated second in his class, to throw away a plushy job with Translunar and go barging off into space in an ancient can and get himself wrecked just because he lets a girl talk him into making a magnificent gesture. ”

“ The period of the Aspera's orbit was seven and a half years, and seven and a half years Earth time make four Mars years within a few days. That was how much hope I had—in seven and a half years I would be back in the immediate vicinity of Mars, and I might have enough power in the steering jets to claw my way in to one of the moons. If I didn't bump into an asteroid. If Jupiter didn't pull me too far off course. If I didn't go star-happy in the meanwhile, or starve. Before seven and a half years were up I'd be eating the air plant. ”

“ Stony gritted. "Look, how do I even know you got a slug?"
"You don't," I agreed. "That's the chance you take."
"Yeah. And you know the chance you're taking if you don't produce?"
"I can imagine," I assured him.
"Okay," he decided. "I'll play. But I'm warning you, chum, if you're trying to run a bluff—you'll be sorry!" He turned to Betty. "Come on, babe, climb into your rubber pants and scram!"
Betty didn't even glance in my direction while she was putting on her space-suit. She gave me one look as she went out through the air lock, and one was enough. It was pure poison. ”

“ One of the moons of Jupiter would make a fine hideout for them. Air, water, and a livable climate. When any one comes snooping around, they see to it that they never get back. We blame it on the Warp and stay away and leave them alone."
"They would never get there in the first place. The Warp isn't just somebody's wild guess, you know. It follows from Heuvelstad's work. He derived Bode's law from quantum theory, and showed that a warp in space is the only explanation for the family of asteroids between Mars and Jupiter where there should be a single planet. No one can doubt it." ”

“ It was practically disdain. "I should think Translunar could do better than that. It's practically landlocked. You aren't going to take it, are you?"
"Why not? Six thousand is a nice sackful of cash, and besides, I get a piece of the company. Not a very big one, but it will grow."
"Oh, Tom!" It was pure disdain this time. "It isn't the money! You should have a ship. You should be out doing things. They can't make you into a glorified slug monkey on the moon!" ”

“ Under this light gravity, the leap took me well above the cliffs. I could see a glint of sunlight on the Mitchell in the distance, and a spacesuit-clad figure coming over the surface in long leaps. One jump had been enough for me—I hung onto my ribs and did my best to walk. That isn't easy with a gravity a couple of hundredths Earth normal, but at least when you fall you don't hit very hard.
In a minute or two I came up with my rescuer, and we touched helmets to talk. I stared through the faceplate of the other suit. "Hello, Betty," I said. ”

“ Maybe it's all true. One thing it really does is make your clothes smell like a vacant lot on fire so people can say, "Ah, he's a spaceman," without having to ask.
No inspiration. Okay, Denby, think it out with your own brains. You've got a brain, haven't you?
Not being very eager to do any thinking about the situation I was in, I dragged the bulger out from under the seat and crawled into it. I had a vague idea that I might fake up some sort of patch for the tube and maybe limp back to Mars. ”

“ There is no time for social life at Space Tech. You go there for the training and you get your money's worth. Not that I cared—the work was hard, but it was exciting, and you could see the purpose of it as you went along. I would have worked even harder and not minded, because Betty Day was alongside in every class I had. ”

“ Aside from that he made no comment until Betty had finished. Then he turned on me, and his eye was harder than ever.
"Well, Denby? I realize that you're not sworn in as a Patrolman, and I suppose you thought you were acting chivalrously. But it's rather a tradition that all spacemen consider themselves unofficial deputies of the Patrol when the occasion arises, and it seems to me that even a civilian might have kept his mouth shut about that slug. As for their shooting us out of the sky, we would have something to say about that. We know how to operate against land batteries." ”

“ He sighted the pirate camp on Callisto, and would have had pictures to prove it if all his film hadn't been raystruck. Maybe he could have got somebody to listen to him anyway if he had tried a little harder, but he wanted to make a research job of it. He sold out all his claims and built the Astra and loaded it up with equipment to bring back all the proof that even the Patrol could ask for. Then he blasted off and no one ever heard of him again."
"But the idea of pirates doesn't make sense, Tom. There are no cargoes worth stealing beyond the Belt. ”

“ I hardly minded even when it became obvious that I would come so close to the asteroid as to be perturbed out of all possibility of making the contact with Mars that I had projected. I hadn't really believed in that anyway. And, when I discovered that I was in a collision orbit, it was more of a relief than otherwise. Get it over with in a hurry. Starvation is a slow and tedious way to blast off. A short life and a merry one, Denby, that's what you always said. ”

“ No one used to doubt that the earth was flat, or to bring it a little more up to date, that the craters of the moon were volcanoes, or that the red shift in the nebular spectra meant that the universe is expanding. A theory is good only as long as it explains all the facts, and Heuvelstad overlooked the fact that my father circled Jupiter and came back. He will just have to revise his mathematics."
"Maybe we'll know more about that after the Vesta expedition comes back." ”

“ About noon the next day, Vesta time, we picked up the jet-flare of a ship breaking in. She came in fast, under about three G's of acceleration. That looked like Patrol style to me, and sure enough, as soon as the dust settled I could see the blue star on her nose. That was good. I was afraid it might be the expedition ship coming back, and guns were indicated for the next hand in this game.
We didn't even wait for them to get out the ladder. Betty leaped for the port as soon as they cracked the hatch, and I was right after her. ”

“ That was queer—you'd think the Patrol would have brains and money enough to put in a new power slug when it was needed. That one could go dead any time. But the pilot was good. He set down easy, right in the center of the scorch.
As soon as she was down the hatch swung open and half a dozen men in bulgers stepped out and floated to the ground. Betty had the outer air lock door open for them already. They crossed the ground quickly, in the long leaps of men accustomed to low gravity. ”

“ I pushed some of Betty's hair out of my eyes and looked up.
"Right!" I said. "I have a personal matter to settle with Stoneface. And anyway, I want to be along to see you don't shoot up Astra too bad. She was Lance Denby's ship, you know, and she's mine now, and I'm going to need her if I'm going to be the first space-rat on the ground in the moons of Jupiter."
Allison goggled at this, but made a quick recovery. "Okay, Denby. And you know there's a reward out for Hassley or any of his group. I think that will take care of any repairs." ”

“ The one great discovery he did make no one will even believe."
"I never met Lance Denby, but I know he was a great spaceman, Tom, even if you do seem to have forgotten it. I never thought a son of his would ever turn out to be a company man. Let's go inside."
We went inside, and I went home. The punch bowl was empty by now so I didn't even stop.
It was probably a mistake, but I flew down to Mojave Outport the day the Vesta Expedition blasted off. Betty was very friendly when we said goodbye, and her hand in mine was small and firm, and the fingers were quite cold. ”

“ Spaceships don't carry spare drive tubes.
Not little wagons like the Aspera, anyway. If you could get a spare inside the hull you would have to leave out the air plant or the groceries or else stay home yourself, and even then there would be no room for the tools to make the change. Retubing is a dock job, and the nearest docks were a million miles away on Phobos and getting farther fast. ”

“ And besides, you never need a spare. Tubes don't blow in space. Diamondized graphite is tough—you caliper the throat every time you dock, and after a few thousand G-hours you find enough erosion to cut down efficiency to the point where it's a good idea to put in a new liner.
I knew all this, but at the same time I knew the main tube had blown. ”

“ Smoking quabba is the prime attribute of a spaceman—it has the reputation of being a specific against spacesickness, toughening the cerebral meninges against high acceleration, cutting down reaction time when you have to act fast in a meteor field. ”

“ Try it yourself some time. We crashed in a gully some sixty feet deep, about a mile from the station. The shock broke my belt and threw me against the control panel, and I felt a couple of ribs crack. That was cheap. When my head cleared a little I could hear rocks rattling on the hull and air whistling out through a hole in her somewhere. I made a dash for the lock and kicked the emergency hatch release and blew outside with the rest of the air. ”

“ I had my sextant and watch on them, and was writing down data on my knee-pad as fast as I could take them. I was using Altair and Vega for a fix, and throwing in Polaris every now and then for good measure. ”