The Collected Stories

by Earl

  “I’m hungry.” Osgood vouchsafed.

  “And the solid material of the ring system is one sixteenth of what it would be if it were a solid sheet, or about one thousandth if it were your head.”

  “Ugh!”

  “What’s eating you?”

  “Eating—that’s the word. I just reached for a bottle of stew that wasn’t there.” Osgood’s stubby-haired head emerged from the food closet, face wry. “Take it like a man, Wade. There isn’t a single bottle of stew or soup left. All we have there is steak dinners, alias dried biscuit.”

  Welton broke out in laughter, when his natural reaction should have been deep disgust. “Good! Wish there were more.” His glee was strangely unsarcastic.

  “What—dried biscuit?”

  “No. More of them.” Welton pointed out the side port. A stubby ship, similar to theirs, nosed its way over the region of ‘toids, paralleling their course.

  “What’s so funny? It’s another ’toid hopper. The latest figures quote our clan up in the ten thousands.”

  “Sure, but most of them scout around in Ring B, which is most densely packed, widest, and has always yielded the best finds. Or else Ring A. This skimpy Ring C attracts few hoppers, except those who aren’t so sure of their navigation and want plenty of room to land when they land. You’ll remember we’re here in the Crape Ring to change our luck, and to find Old Pete’s diamond ‘toid. We changed our luck, from bad to worse. And, of course, we’ll find the diamond ‘toid: Old Pete’s only half blind and totally cracked.”

  Welton glowered, then laughed again. “But evidently Old Pete talked others into trying it. as witness that boat out there. It’s probably Gentle Jasper and his cronies. Old Pete was talking to them that night, panhandling. Now don’t look so worried, Archie. They’re going to have just as hard a time finding a myth as we are.”

  Osgood completed the gunning of the next planetoid before speaking. “Welton, all kidding aside, I’m sure that diamond ‘toid is around here somewhere. Old Pete wasn’t the first to spot one here, you know. The liner Lincoln saw a colored blaze in this zone, a type of spectrum refraction that is unmistakably associated with the diamond and that alone, in all the universe. It blinked on and off several times, due to the rotation of the few natural facets it has. Uncut diamonds, you know, are dull, like any other mineral.

  “Then the late Jimson, who went out once too often, followed a trail of dazzling beams in this zone for five hundred miles, then finally lost it. It’s here, all right, Wade. Somebody’s got to find it some day.”

  “Un huh,” Welton said soothingly. Then his mouth opened wider for the emission of a robust yawn. “Let’s toss out the anchor and hit the hay. Tomorrow is another day.”

  A short but merry series of rocket discharges brought the ship to a halt with regard to the rings, safely cradled in the vacuum high above. They had learned to fall instantly asleep and to sleep hard, for time in space was a precious thing.

  “LORD!” Welton came out of a sound sleep to see Osgood’s face six inches from his own.

  Osgood shook him once more for good measure.

  “Quit it. Archie. I’m awake, and what in the blue blazes is it?”

  “Can’t you come out of a sleep gracefully? Wade—I saw it! Just one glimpse, but enough to satisfy me it’s within reach.”

  “What’s within reach? How about some food within reach.”

  “The diamond ’toid, Wade! It flashed in my eyes while I was asleep, and then once more when I had them open. Nothing else in the cosmos but a giant diamond could flash like that. It was green, Wade, and purple and rose and cerulean. Glorious!”

  “No pink spots? Look, Archie, have you ever heard of space lightning—it flashes too, from one electron cluster to another.”

  “Space lightning,” argued Osgood, “is always blue. It’s in that direction, to the left of our course yesterday. All right, suppose it isn’t the diamond ’toid We have to go somewhere, don’t we, and does it matter much which way?”

  “I am won by your eloquence, not by the bullheadedness I know reposes in you.”

  Welton shot the ship in the direction indicated, with a storm of rocket power. An hour later a blinding shaft of multicolored light centered their craft for a moment before flicking away. It seemed to eat their eyes out with its intensity. Welton jerked his head aside with a startled curse.

  “That was it!” Osgood gurgled happily.

  “That was—something.” Welton passed from half acceptance to unreasoning skepticism. “It could be a ’toid of ice. Remember Jakes who came in with one, thinking it was diamond. He died of a brain hemorrhage when it melted at the docks. Or it could be one of super-compressed glass. It——”

  “Wade, we didn’t even see it, maybe,” Osgood said sourly. He lingered the handle of his X gun nervously. “Bring me close enough to shoot it and I’ll tell you what it is right enough. Just romp up near it.”

  IN the next half hour similar rays of stabbing light flicked momentarily into their cabin. Each time it happened Osgood trilled aloud. He sobered rapidly though when Welton suddenly announced that no more beams of light were to be seen to guide him.

  Osgood’s groan might have been the wail of a space banshee, till he caught a flicker out of the corner of his eye. “Turn around. Wade. boy. We passed it. It’s back that way, from whence we came.”

  Welton drapped the trailing flares of his rockets over a tremendous parabolic sector of space. “That was almost an Immelmann,” he said when the terrific deceleration let up enough to clear his head of excess blood. He took a swig of oxygen.

  Osgood did, too. though lie was generally averse to using stimulants of any kind. “You see, that diamond ’toid isn’t as easy to find as one would think. You get the trail only when the factors of Saturn light, facets, and its own cute little rotation line up with your course.”

  This was borne out graphically when once more the dark reaches of space ahead remained dark, and a belated flash at the left rear showed they had passed it among the legions of other planetoids. “Try creeping up on it, Wade,” Osgood suggested. “Or else we’ll shuttle back and forth like this till we wear a groove in space.”

  At last a group of tinted rays shot through their bottom port. Welton followed so closely with a unanimous burst from his front rockets that both he and Osgood felt the flesh curl around the broad straps of the seats. The ship came to a shivering slop in relation to the planetoids below.

  “My stomach and tonsils shook hands that time,” gasped Osgood.

  “Well.” growled Welton. “we don’t have to imitate a pendulum any more. Now line up your popgun and——”

  “I’ll be damned!” Osgood followed this vociferous phrase with an explosive: “Look!”

  In line with his pointing finger, Welton saw the pyrotechnic trail of a rocket ship far in the distance. It was gradually approaching. “So what? It’s probably that ship we saw yesterday. Gentle Jasper maybe. Some other chumps in our haystack looking for the same needle. Why the gray-hair look?”

  Osgood gave his companion a pitying look. “My naive friend, has it ever occurred to you that a five-foot diamond ’toid is a mighty valuable thing. The most valuable conceivable, gram for gram, fistful for fistful, atom for atom. At least commercially it is. Gentle Jasper knows that, too. And he has a notorious past—semipiratical. Just our rotten luck to have him around. Those birds are going to look on rather hungrily as we tow it away—if they just look.”

  “Yeah. If we find it. And if it exists. Can you suggest anything better right now than looking for it, before they get here?”

  Osgood was already training his X gun below. He watched a gamma Fraunhofer with leaping pulse, till it sharpened into the usual calcium line. The second planetoid etched a triple iodine line on the translucence of the spectrum chart. Curses gargled in his throat at the irony of it. Any other time he would have whooped in joy at an iodine find. But what was iodine to diamond? He frowned as he surveyed the region below.
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  “How in the seven blue hells can that diamond ‘toid hide itself.”

  Welton tossed a thumb to the left. Osgood looked and nodded. A planetoid a quarter mile Saturnward threw its cone of shadow directly across their path. It was one of the few ring bodies large enough to bear up under the title of ring satellite. All of two hundred feet in diameter, it’s appreciable gravitational field held a nice little flock of pebbly planetoids in its grip. They were dancing in private orbital gyrations, while obeying the master influence of mighty Saturn without a hitch.

  “Neat little problem for you, Archie. Figure out the daily curve of one of those flea ‘toids with relation to one of Saturn’s moons.”

  OSGOOD was in the process of strangling himself with curses, as another planetoid turned out to be highly calcified and slightly carbonized. Then a shining bit of black matter, like a lump of polished coal, passed from the umbra to the penumbra of shadow below. Osgood gunned it without anticipation.

  “Wade—Wade! Look at this——”

  His voice got so hoarse that Welton could barely hear him say: “Carbon gamma and nothing but!”

  “You telling me?” Welton shouted, as the planetoid below rolled into unshadowed space and changed with miraculous suddenness into a glowing, sparkling, pulsating sun. While they watched, half blinded, it dimmed to dull whiteness, only to flash forth gloriously again as its several natural facets slowly rotated.

  “Wade—it’s pure ice!” Osgood cried with a shred of voice.

  “Huh? Ice! Wha——”

  “Ice in the vernacular, you imbecile. Diamond to you. A piece of the Pearly Gates. Look at it!”

  “You look. I’m blind.”

  “What a rock! Crystallized carbon, made in Nature’s laboratory.”

  “But after all, just carbon, the same stuff we don’t like in chimneys. Still it——”

  “What a beauty—the gem of gems, the king of all jewels. The supertreasure of all time. Wade, do you see it! It’s right there!”

  “No. You’re kidding me. If I’m not dreaming this, though. I’d like to have that thing set in platinum on Myra’s finger. Would she be amazed.”

  “No wonder Old Pete spoke of it in an awed voice, with a dazed look in his eyes. It’s inconceivable. Say, quit shaking me like that, Wade.”

  “I’ve been shaking you for five minutes,” Welton moaned. “Wake up and let’s collect it. See——”

  Osgood sobered at sight of a rocket trail in the near distance, approaching rapidly. “Like a vulture at the kill—our kill. That’s Gentle Jasper’s ship all right and I’ll bet you he’ll be green outside and black inside when he sees us kicking this thing along. Look, Wade, we’re going to claim our prize and ignore them, even if it hurts their feelings.”

  While speaking, Osgood had been rummaging in the wall closet. Wade took the zero gun Osgood handed him. “Hm-m-m, I see.” He grinned, but unhumorously. “While you tie up our bit of pristine self, I ignore them. How close do I ignore them, Archie?”

  “That depends on their degree of interference.” Osgood spoke further, after he had ceased grunting himself into his vacuum suit. “I’ll be out there working on the chains. You’ll be in the outer lock chamber with that gun. and don’t look at it as if you’d never seen one before. You were a dead shot at the practice galleries. Now get the buggy in position.”

  Welton played an overture of precision and blasting to bring the ship tailward at the diamond ’toid. When he had closed the gap to twenty feet and satisfied himself that there was no more than a foot-por-minute driftage, he locked the pilot gear. Then he helped Osgood with his glassite helmet.

  He zippered it three quarters way around but left his finger in the open space. “Say, Archie, I wish our transmitter was working. Maybe we could talk them out of it. This may lead to bloodshed. Isn’t there any other way of scotching them?”

  “No, Wade, I’m afraid not.” Osgood’s voice came hollowly from the helmet, but none the less firmly. “We want a hands-off policy, even if we have to gun ’em away. Might makes right out here. If they come nearer than looks kosher, spang a bullet off their hull, as warning. Use your own judgment if they don’t high-tail pronto. Man to man, Wade, what else can we do? Sure, I’m taking the chance of playing tag with a bullet, but if I don’t, they’ll see we’re hesitating and try a bluff.”

  “Yeah. Guess you’re right.” Welton removed his finger and finished the job of sealing Osgood into his suit. Then he stuffed himself into his own vacuum suit.

  Osgood was clumsy with his gauntleted hands but managed to do a fair job of smearing rubber cement on the zippers of Welton’s suit.

  OSGOOD grabbed up a mess of chain that would have broken his back in any decent surface gravity. Welton picked up the zero gun by its thick barrel. Its vacuum-protected firing chamber allowed it to be used in the near zero of space without danger of ruin.

  With an exchange of grim looks through their helmets, they made for the lock. When the outer seal had swung out, Osgood pointed at the ship that was decelerating for a stop. Then he pushed with his hands against the upper edge of the lock, using enough muscular force to propel himself all the way to the diamond ’toid.

  Welton’s eyes remained on the ship rocketing up. He could not risk looking at the ’toid and becoming half blinded. Not at this time. The ship finally halted some three hundred yards away. Within himself Welton felt a hollow wonder. He had read and heard of these situations in lawless space, these times when men eyed the treasure between them and——

  Fifteen minutes passed—time enough for the nimble Osgood to chain up the diamond ’toid securely, thought Welton. He waited tensely for his figure to come up from below, but never took his eyes from the ship near by.

  The ship moved then, idled closer on low blast. Welton brought up his gun, took aim for the upper curve of the hull. The sudden blasting halt assured Welton that his bullet had struck all right. “Must’ve sounded like the bells of hell inside there,” he mused. “Hope the damn fools scoot.”

  But they didn’t. Instead, the lock opened. Welton could see a vacuum suit, though at an odd angle. He strained his eyes. If that was the barrel of a gun——

  Welton hissed through his teeth as the bright flare of a shot lighted up the other lock and the length of a gun pointed, not his way but toward the diamond ’toid—toward the exposed Osgood!

  Welton leaned over the edge of the lock and took a quick glance below. The sight of Osgood’s vacuum suit still inflated brought a gasp of relief. Then he straightened grimly. “All right, rat!” He was aided by a beam from the ’toid below that lime-lighted his target for the instant that he aimed. He fired, and had the sickening intuition that his bullet had gone true.

  He was able to make out a second figure crawling into the lock, picking up the crumpled shape and dragging it inside. If the wound was not vital, the man might live, even though he had had a minute of airlessness and space coldness with the puncturing of his vacuum suit.

  Welton hoped he would live. But he hoped more fervently that the ship would leave. Instead, he again saw the unexpected flash of a shot from their lock, and felt the vibration through his heels of a bullet spanging against the hull near him.

  “Some people just can’t let well enough alone.” Welton aimed again for the lock, but had the vague feeling he had missed. He was dead certain of it when a second shot from his duelist spanged to his right.

  “You fool! You can’t hit me. You’re blinded by the ‘toid. Take this——”

  The shot told, for again a second party came out to drag the victim in. “Three of ’em, eh? No. 3 had better not trade shots, because no one will be left to drag him in.”

  A MOMENT LATER the ship gave a blast from its rear tubes and shot toward Welton. “Great—jumpin’—horn-spoon—Scott!” Each ejaculation marked a phase in his flight from the outer lock to his controls. Through the bottom port he waved wildly at Osgood to clear off the ’toid. “Archie, for John’s sake, get away—anywhere but t
here!” Osgood’s vacuum-suited figure lumbered away from the diamond ’toid, as though he had heard.

  Then a glance at the onrushing ship, bent on ramming their ship galvanized Welton into action. He flailed at the levers with gauntleted hands. The offside rear rockets burst out sulphurously, along with his throaty imprecations, equally sulphurous, on “Gentle Jasper” and his rough-house ways.

  Welton heard the tattoo of bullets at the bow and understood its meaning at the same nauseating moment. Jasper and his unscrupulous cronies were trying to shoot out the forward port, to maroon them in space with a derelict hulk, to wait for slow death in vacuum suits. And if that failed, they would undoubtedly ram them amidships with their reenforced bow, to gain the same foul goal.

  Welton’s face whitened and grew ugly. “O.K., Jasper. I see I’ll have to get violent. I c’n play rough, too and——”

  Welton’s ferocious pull at a long lever sloughed the ship around so abruptly that his death grip on the safety belt snapped it off cleanly. He hung onto the shreds grimly, ears roaring from the rush of blood brain ward, eyes popping in the direction of Jasper’s looming hulk. “Wheee—catch!” spat Welton as he saw the diamond ‘toid, at the end of its thirty-foot chain, slew around like a stone on a string.

  “You want the diamond ’toid so bad—well, here it is!” yelled Welton, now more than half a madman. The five-foot mass of adamantine, a weightless but momentum-massed Juggernaut, crashed against the other ship just back of the nose and staved it in like an eggshell.

  Only split timing allowed Welton to pound his ship aside with rocket hammers. The battered hulk careened by, looking horribly like a dead body with its head bashed in. “Thank the Lor——”

  A titanic wrench of the floor under his feet catapulted him soggily against the nearer wall. Bones that should have been broken were protected by the air cushion in the vacuum suit. After he had stopped bouncing, his eyes were in line with the side port. Blearily, his eyes made out the diamond ’toid, a rapidly diminishing speck of cold incandescence. spinning armaturelike in a course that would lose it in the far reaches of open space.