Asteroid Man

by R. L. Fanthorpe

  He crossed over to the computer and grinned lop-sidedly at Rotherson.

  "Do you mind if I bash out a course on the last observed check point of the fleet?"

  "No, go ahead," said the general. "I have one here." He handed back the slip and the stack of used tape at the base of the computer.

  "Thanks," said Krull. He looked at the figures. Nothing but a meaningless jumble to anyone who was not an astrogator. His own slim, wiry hands ran over the keys of the computer caressing it as a skillful violinist caresses the strings and bow of the instrument that earns him his living and provides him with his pleasure. His fingers ran over the keys of the computer, as the hands of a groom caress a horse of which he is particularly fond and which he understands well.

  Computers, for the last few years, had been his life. He could use them as he could use the physical cells in his own brain. Like a car driver who had had one vehicle for so long that it became part of him when he drove, like a motorcyclist who knew every last ounce of the weight of his machine, he knew to a tenth of a degree at what angle he could lay her over on the bends, knew how much grip his racing tires had on a wet slippery road. Knew that fraction of an angle which would mean the difference between winning a race, and the skid that would end him up as a heap of tangled bones by the side of the road. He knew these things and felt them. The electrical impulses of the computer were almost as one with the electrical impulses of his mind, with the nerve cells of his body. When he worked a computer he was part of it. He could feel it. He knew if he was using it in the right way. Something deep and intuitive that had only come from long, long practice told him he was seeking the solution in the right direction. He put in the last course that they had had from the fleet, he fed in all the possible corrections, then slowly and patiently, and leaving nothing to chance, he fed in all the possibility tracks. The computer was a machine which in the hands of a logician like Krull could answer almost any problem. In the hands of the right man, it became almost an extension of his brain. If he knew how to go about it, he could get almost anything from it.

  True science, thought Krull, was not learning all the answers, but knowing how to ask the right questions. That applied more to computer work than anything else. If you could translate a problem into computer terms, then there was no problem you couldn't answer. It all depended on a man's ability to translate, to get the feel of a problem, to sense it, to view the whole of the cosmos as a huge mathematical equation: an enormously complex, and yet perfectly solvable, quadratic.

  He kept on feeding information and corrections, looking at tapes and then re-feeding his answers. He worked in a series of concentric rectangles, coming closer and closer and narrowing it down. He was trying impossibilities, he was turning theories into computer symbols and symbols into equations. Then he was solving the equations. At last he was satisfied that he had gotten as close as flesh, blood and a computer could get.

  He turned to Rotherson with a new set of figures in his hand.

  "I think, Chief, if we head for this point here"—he indicated the course formula on the tape—"we shall find ourselves near the spot which the asteroid last occupied. Once at that spot, we can hammer out a course, taking into account the possible gravitational effects of other bodies in the vicinity. Armed with that we should know, to within very little, just how far that mysterious asteroid or planetoid, and our ships, and our friends have gone." As he said "friends" he was thinking about Greg Masterson. He and Masterson had been friends back in the old days, at college. Masterson was a few years younger than Krull, and yet there had been something in the sheer rugged strength of the space pilot that had made age a very secondary consideration. Masterson was one of these people who was all man. He had been a man before he was a child. He would still be strong and rugged and virile when he was ninety, because there was something in him that was mature. Not contemplatively and solidly mature, as there was in Krull, but something that had about it a simple directness, a forcefulness, a simple courage…

  Krull had known every man on that expedition. To a greater or lesser degree, all twenty-five of them had been his friends. In a very special sense he had been close to Greg Masterson. The loss of the other twenty-four would be a real and terrible thing if it was a reality—and things now stood as if that must be so. But they were only friends, some just acquaintances. Greg Masterson had been almost a part of Krull's very life. He and Greg had been through the experience of growing up together. They had looked at life together, and each in his own way, in those early college days, had been complementary to the other.

  When a new situation had arisen, Greg had known instinctively, intuitively, automatically, how to handle it, and having handled it, he and Krull had discussed it.

  Greg was a master at presenting the world with a fait accompli. He believed that possession was nine tenths of the law; he went straight to the heart of a problem without bothering about some of the niceties, or finesse, of civilization.

  If a man had wrongly appropriated something that belong to you, you went and took it back, even if half a dozen oily-mouthed lawyers were on his side. And when you'd gotten it back you had public opinion on your side—for public opinion at heart is not such a bad thing. Then, usually, the oily, greasy lawyers could rant and rave and discuss all sorts of serious actions which boiled down to nothing. Having produced his fait accompli, Greg would talk it over with Krull, and Krull would analyze and mentally dissect it, chop it into small cubes, feed it into a computer, and find by reasoning what Greg knew by instinct. Krull, having found it, would explain it to Greg, and Greg would see that logic was on the side of that certain indefinable something in his own mind and personality which made him act the way he did. They were like the two halves of a globe—together they made a perfect sphere.

  The loss of the other men would have been bad enough; the loss of Greg Masterson, if Greg had gone, would be something that cut out a part of Krull's own mind. He had known that, deep down, subconsciously, when he allowed himself to be thrown into this crazy, unorthodox expedition of the general's. He knew now, thinking about it calmly and reflectively up there in the cool calm, quiet of space, that that was the reason he had allowed himself to come. He knew that there had had to be something deep inside him some factor which made it possible for him to allow himself to be hurled into such precipitous action against his normal inclinations.

  That something had been his affection for Greg Masterson; his hope that Masterson, miraculously, was somehow, somewhere, still alive. Krull was telepathic, though he did not recognize it as such. He was a prosaic and scientific man and not terribly keen on the investigations of extrasensory perception. Yet he had to admit that to some degree, at least, he possessed it. He preferred to call it intuition or instinctive knowledge.

  But however he cared to wrap it up in words, something inside him told him that he would know if Masterson was dead. And nothing had told him yet…

  He had a feeling as if Masterson was in very very grave danger. He had the sensation that Masterson was in deadly peril, and that at any second a kind of dull, flat fatality would seize upon his mind, and tell him as surely as if he had seen his friend's body floating past the window in the coldness of space that Masterson no longer lived in the world of men.

  He was afraid that that knowledge would come, just as he was aware that the knowledge had not come, and that there was still hope. Krull suddenly stopped thinking about Masterson and jerked himself back to the expedition. He realized, for in his youth he had been a great student of literature and Shakespeare in particular, that he suffered—if suffered was the right word—from the same fatal malady which had afflicted Hamlet.

  Hamlet had been a highly refined, speculative meditative personality, thrown by the whims of fate into a situation which did not require meditation and speculation, but action!

  If the story of Hamlet had been true, and if he, Krull, had been the unfortunate Prince of Denmark, he would have made the same mistakes which Hamlet made. His
mind was not the kind of mind which could have coped with that kind of problem. That set him off thinking about Masterson again. For if Masterson had been at the Court of Elsinore, then he would have dealt very swiftly and efficiently with the situation. The ghost would not have had to prompt him twice, and once he knew where the guilt lay, he would have acted swiftly and surely. The reins would have been firmly in his hands, the evil-doers would have been punished, and the play would have been a straightforward history, with a reasonably happy ending.

  Krull, thinking about Hamlet's weakness—speculation—realized that he himself was far too inclined to dwell in the realm of thought instead of in the domain of reality. He had to snap himself out of these reveries which assailed him from time to time. They had their place, and were remarkably useful, but life was real, life was earnest, and the grave was not necessarily its goal.

  He had to force himself back to the present. His lips moved, and no sound came out, as his mind repeated the words over and over again. "My name is Krull, and I'm an astrophysicist. I'm in a space ship approaching the asteroid belt. I am looking for a needle in a haystack and worse. I am looking for one tiny and mysterious chunk of rock in an infinitude of space. Perhaps the one hope that Greg Masterson has of life is our ability to find that asteroid, find what happened to him and his ships and his expedition."

  Something showed up on the radar screen…

  A huge metallic blip…

  The young radio operator gave a quick surprised shout and, setting the controls to automatic course, General Rotherson left his seat and moved awkwardly back to the radar screen.

  "What's the trouble, Sparks?" The question was unnecessary; he had already seen the blip. The operator put a finger to the screen and pointed it out. He pressed the automatic tabulators under the radar, and the identifying mechanism snapped into operation.

  "Looks like the wreckage of a ship—one of ours," said the general, as he read the identifying symbols. Krull's heart missed a beat. Was this it? Where they going to find the heap of tangled beryllium wreckage and the bodies of five of their friends? Was it the Squadron-Leader's ship, or was it one of his expedition?

  If so, had the fate that had befallen one befallen the rest? Scarcely thinking what he did, Krull snapped out an interception course on the computer, passed the data across to the chief, and the steering jets began to blast. They approached the wreckage rapidly.

  "Suits on," said Rotherson. "We'll get across and investigate."

  It was the work of only a few moments to strap on the lead-impregnated, metallo-plastic suits.

  They stood in an anxious group by the airlock as they matched velocity with the floating wreckage. Looking through the observation port, Jonga saw that it was in fact the remains of a dart ship, but of a dart ship that had been crushed and tangled almost beyond recognition.

  "There's nobody alive in that lot," said the general flatly. "It'll be a wonder if we find enough bits to recognize."

  They were only a matter of yards from the wreckage now and, throwing lines across, they reduced the distance almost to feet. Although both the ship and the wreckage were traveling at several thousand miles an hour, they were relatively stationary as regarded each other.

  "Everybody ready. Suits checked?" asked Rotherson. They switched on the short-wave intercoms and gave him affirmative answers.

  "O.K., over we go." They made their way to the hawser that was holding the two ships together. Ship was rather an ambitious term to use, in relation to the heap of rubble that had once been one of the survey vessels.

  With decidedly mixed feelings, they opened the lock and made their way across those last few intervening feet and inches of space.

  Parts of the wreckage were actually drifting and scraping against their own ship. It was a pathetic sight. The proud, gleaming space Conquistadore was torn, twisted, mangled, shattered. It looked like a moth that had flown into an oxy-acetylene flame. It resembled a prizefighter who had just been in a twenty-round bout against a far bigger and stronger opponent. It looked as though it had been hit by an earthquake, smashed by a tornado, set upon by a whirlwind and finally tossed against a waterspout. There was nothing but a tangled, mangled heap of metal, plastic and beryllium that would have disgusted the foreman of the respectable breaker's yard.

  Among the inanimate objects lay the twisted, lifeless things that had once been men.

  Rotherson floated, looking at it in silent thought, wondering whose ship it had been.

  "Can you remember the identification of Greg's?" He never finished the sentence.

  "Yes." Krull's voice came crackling over the radio.

  "Was this it?" He gestured toward a fragment of identification.

  "No," said Krull, and there was relief in his voice, evident despite the short wave and its interference.

  "I'm glad of that," commented Rotherson.

  "I am, too," said Krull.

  They forced themselves to collect the identity tags from the five pieces of carnage who had such a short while earlier been their companions.

  Dolores was examining what had been a section of landing jet. Embedded in the metal-like precious stones set in a crown were some small shingly objects which had not been part of the original ship. "What do you make of these?" Her voice was unusually quiet and serious, as she held them out and propelled herself in the direction of Rotherson.

  The general took them clumsily in his great gauntleted hand, held them up to the eye-pieces and examined them closely.

  "Rock fragments, and darn queer ones too, unless the force of the impact knocked them into this shape. They're round like pebbles on a beach. What asteroid would have a surface like that?"

  They were strange granular particles, and the space-suited men gathered around their leader and examined them in turn, with equal bewilderment in their faces. "If that is part of the surface of the asteroid," said Krull, "I'll bet even money that there was something extremely artificial about it."

  "There's nothing very strange about these, surely," said Jonga. "They're just fragments of rock."

  "Yes, but look at the shape of them," said Rotherson. "They don't make sense. You don't find things like that out here. They look more like some kind of artificial coating that would be put around a phoney. A real asteroid has a surface that's mainly barren rock. It's never covered with shingle. It's more like the stucco that our ancestors used to like sticking outside houses."

  "Didn't they call that pebble-dash, or something?" asked Dolores. "I remember doing a course on architecture once, and it was very popular in the mid-20th century in some places on earth."

  "Yes," said Krull, "the study of architecture was one of my hobbies, too. You're right. Queer stuff!"

  "It tells us one thing," said the general. "Artificial or otherwise, the ship never picked these up out in space."

  "You don't think they're any kind of missile, do you?" asked the radio operator. It was a good question.

  "No, I don't think so," replied Rotherson slowly. "They're not embedded deeply enough to have been a missile. If they'd been fired at the ship, they'd have gone clean through her. They've been ground in, in the same way that they would have been ground in if the thing had crashed."

  Krull was busily putting two and two together and getting the right answers.

  "Unless I miss my guess completely," he said, "I'd say that in the first place that asteroid was artificial, or at least it wasn't completely natural. I'd say that it was maneuverable, that it was controlled by some weird intelligence or other. I'd also say that it had a kind of attractor beam—something akin to magnetism."

  "Aren't you forgetting that our ships are anti-magnetic, sir?" asked the young sparks.

  "No, I hadn't forgotten that," answered Krull, "but on the other hand, there's magnetism and magnetism. As they used to say on those old classical broadcasts: 'It all depends what you mean by magnetism.' It all depends what you mean by attraction. If you rub a small crystal of amber against a piece of silk, you produc
e a static electric charge which will attract tiny fragments of paper."

  "Yes, but magnetism and electricity are pretty closely tied in together, aren't they?" said the radio man.

  "I see what Krull is driving at," broke in Jonga, butting in on the conversation. "What it boils down to is this: gravity is a force of very powerful attraction."

  "Yes, but gravity isn't powerful enough to suck in a space sip with rockets capable of reaching escape velocity." Krull had drifted away from the group and was examining what remained of the rocket-firing mechanism. "How about this?" his voice cut in suddenly. The others turned to look in his direction.

  "There's something here that is decidedly odd. The firing button on the control panel is jammed over in the 'on' position. But these tubes weren't firing when the ship crashed."

  Rotherson joined him and began examining the tube itself, then drifted over to look into the firing mechanism.

  "You're right," he said. "They weren't. Something, somehow, somewhere, had the power of preventing the rockets from firing, even though the button had been pressed. So that creature, or creatures, appear to have the deadly, fiendish power of being able not only to prevent the rockets from firing and cutting off the escape of any ships that came near it, but also of attracting them downwards with some kind of super-gravity of its own. Perhaps—and again I'm in the field of pure speculation—that thing on the asteroid has the power of amplifying its own gravity, magnifying it, sending out as concentrated beam or wavicle…"

  "Yes, that would make sense," said Krull. "It would make horrible, fatal sense, at least as far as those poor devils were concerned." He looked again at the identification of tabs they had collected from the bodies. "What a waste, what a horrible waste, men and ship! How pathetic, how tragic, how futile!" He heaved a great sigh that was audible over the radio. "Let's get back to the ship, chief; this thing depresses me."