Asteroid Man

by R. L. Fanthorpe

  He thought of some words of Jerome K. Jerome's "Three Men in a Boat." Strange how a man's writings can survive five centuries, and still be as brilliant and as funny as when first written. He recalled the incident where the three friends tried to make the kettle boil.

  The technique had been to say to each other loudly, so that the kettle could overhear, "I don't want any tea, do you, old man?" And the kettle would then suddenly boil ebulliently over!

  Greg tried the same technique now. He tried to feign some kind of interest in the exhibits, forced his mind to empty itself of all thoughts of doors and escape from the museum. He cleared his mind, as far as possible, of all thoughts relevant to an exit. He concentrated hard upon the machine he was looking at now: a gleaming barrel-like structure, standing on eight beryllium legs. A series of lenses flashed and crackled along the side, looking like the eye of Kitchener on the 1914-18 war poster… It followed him wherever he went. He wondered if it was some kind of warning or spying device. Yet it didn't look as though it was connected to anything.

  He debated for a moment whether he ought to smash the lenses. He decided against it.

  A few more steps and he was looking at a new machine. He was quite certain he had not seen this before. So he was making progress now he had stopped concentrating on it. That was good. Out of the corner of his eye he glanced around the new exhibit… and saw a door.

  He stopped and turned his head slowly. The door was still there!

  "Amazing!" he whispered.

  He edged toward it, almost afraid that it would disappear in some miraculous and dangerous way. He reached it without incident. Why, he wondered, had the museum been designed in that peculiar way?

  He was quite sure that if he had gone on walking round it, he could not have found the door. Yet as soon as he had stopped looking it had come to him, almost.

  There must be some mental force at work in the place.

  Throwing caution to the wind, he put his arms and shoulder under the door and gave an almighty heave. It began somewhere near his toes, rippled up through the strong muscles of his calves, his legs and back, till it exploded rather like dynamite in the rippling strength of his shoulders.

  The handle came up and the door swung.

  He let it swing and leapt back out of harm's way.

  There might be something hiding on the other side. There was no means of knowing for certain. He was glad that he had jumped back, for something exploded with a devastating roar. He felt the blast of it above his head as it passed. There, framed in the doorway, was a metal colossus. A humanoid effigy in steel, his hands, if one could call such talon-like monstrosities hands, held a large and very lethal-looking blaster. The eyes in the metal skull were flashing green and red sparks. It swivelled on metal heels till the hand blaster pointed toward him again. He threw himself flat as another charge whistled over his head. Greg drew his own blaster with the speed of lightning and loosed off a shot in the direction of the robot. The atomic power charge blasted grooves in the side of the doorway and blackened the monster's legs, but the robot stood its ground unflinchingly and steered its own weapon at Greg.

  Masterson was really in his element now. No longer was it a peculiar game of mental catch-as-catch-can, with the incomprehensible asteroid man. Here was something that he could fight.

  . This was a straightforward battle with the gun as the weapon. Something here was so important that in this area the force field was switched off.

  Greg watched for the metallic finger to tighten on the trigger. He saw it begin to move jerkily, and rolled clear. He wondered how many power charges the blaster held, or whether, like his own, it recharged itself. He thought that was more than likely the case. The asteroid man's technology was superior to his, not vice versa. If his gun would last almost indefinitely, it was pretty certain that the robot's would. The thing fired again, and Greg rolled clear.

  It was firing at him again, advancing as it fired. He saw its finger tighten on the trigger, and its gun failed to go off. Taking a great chance, he raced up to it, and before the sluggish arm could move up, he crashed the butt of his gun into the lenses. The robot jerked spasmodically and turned, walking blindly into the nearest exhibit.

  Done it, thought Greg. Now if only he's within range. Slowly and calmly he raised his own weapon and dissolved the head of the robot in a blast of atomic heat and power. The creature sank to its knees, kicked one leg in an ungainly fashion and crashed to a prone position.

  Greg raced through the doorway which the monster had guarded. On the other side lay a room of immense size, filled with apparatus which, though advanced, could only serve one possible purpose. It was the central power room of the entire asteroid.

  Greg drew a deep breath. Now he had the thing.

  If he could only shut off that power, the asteroid man would be unable to guide the asteroid. Of course he would be able to repair it, but his repair technicians would not be able to get in as long as Greg guarded the door. Once the power was off, Greg's gun would work, and with Greg's gun working, it would need a very powerful number of aliens to rush that door. The asteroid man had obviously believed the robot was sufficient guard. Greg had stumbled, by chance, upon the one part of this miniature world that would put it into his command. He suddenly felt big.

  From now on it looked as if he could dictate terms to the asteroid man.

  Then, quite suddenly, a loudspeaker behind him roared and crackled, and he turned round to face a gigantic televiewer screen. On it was a picture of his enemy sitting amid the shadows of its lights.

  "You have done surprisingly well, Masterson, for a mere mortal, for a mere savage, for a primitive," came the voice of the asteroid man. "But you have not done well enough, for I am undefeatable and indestructible. You have forgotten that there remains in my hands one exceptionally important factor in this game."

  "And what's that?" said Masterson.

  "The woman! The Princess Astra! I understand your puny mind! I know how you feel about that."

  "What do you mean? What about the Princess Astra?"

  "She is at the moment in the hands of my servants," said the man. "Unless you throw down your gun and surrender to my servants who are even now approaching you, she will be killed very slowly and very painfully in front of your eyes on this screen."

  "You wouldn't dare!" said Greg. "Not even you!"

  "Wouldn't I? You have pressed me too far! You assaulted me! You dared to do that to Ultimus, the god of the Universe! Then, in your puny mind, you thought, having reached my power room, you would hold me to ransom…"

  Greg realized that in his moment of triumph, victory had been snatched from him.

  "What guarantee do I have that you won't exact any kind of vengeance on the girl?" he said quietly.

  "You have no guarantee other than my word," said Ultimus.

  "And can that be relied on?"

  "In this instance you will have to rely on it," said Ultimus. "I believe my servants are almost at the door of the power chamber. I was very foolish to leave it in the charge of a robot, which I see has proved dangerously inefficient. I shall take more stringent precautions in the future."

  Greg lapsed into bitter, silent thought. There was nothing to do but fall in with the wishes of the asteroid man. The bitter irony of the situation was like a physical blow.

  The door opened, and two of the hideous caricature men slouched in, laughing foully.

  Just for a moment, Greg wondered whether to shoot them down, shoot the screen, blast the asteroid man's power chamber and go on a rampage of carnage through the ship, killing anyone and everything in his path. But it was only for an instant. He knew that the first false move would be the end of Astra, and that to him would be a thousand times worse than his own end.

  Slowly he reversed the gun in his hand and held it out meekly toward the nearer of the two creatures.

  CHAPTER XIII

  The two ships began maneuvering for position. Rotherson looked keen and alert and aliv
e.

  "It's not terribly unlike us in some ways," he said to Jonga.

  Jonga nodded. "I should imagine they're about the same culture level. Funny we always imagine the Out-worlders as being either ahead of, or behind us. I don't know why. Still, there's no guarantee that he is an Out-worlder in a strict sense; he might be from somewhere a lot nearer. He's not from Proxima; we've explored that. How about Altair?"

  "It is only sixteen light years away," said Krull. "If there's a planetary system there that developed at about the same rate as ours has, they could be humanoid types. Do you think we're right to go into the attack?"

  Krull's was the only dissenting voice; the others were in favor of shooting first and asking questions afterward.

  "Okay," said Rotherson, "stand by!"

  The two ships circled each other warily, neither being willing to fire the first broadside, both wanting to let the opponent come to them to test out his weapons and fire power.

  "Let's put a shot across the bows, shall we?" said Krull. "If we're going to do anything, make it a warning shot; don't aim for them."

  "Right you are," said Rotherson. "I suppose it's the chivalrous thing to do. They might want to heave to and surrender. They may be unarmed."

  He fired the forr'ard cannon of the dart ship. The atomic shell burst with spectacular brilliance a couple of miles ahead of the alien. The alien responded by hurling a green light beam about an equal distance away from the dart ship.

  "Hmm. In that case, tit for tat," said the general. "That's certainly not a surrender signal; that's green for danger."

  "Do you think we could go into radio contact before we go into a head-on fight with them?"

  "I don't know," said Rotherson. "There's no guarantee that they'd understand us."

  "Yet again, they might—"

  "Try sending out a simple signal."

  "What do you suggest, sir?" said the young wireless operator.

  "Flash out in English and then in Galactic code, 'We are friends! We would prefer to speak with you.' There's no set signal for this purpose," he said ruefully. "It's never happened before. These chaps possibly won't understand the Galactic code anyway; it's rather an ambitious title, for what really only applies to our own world and Proxima, isn't it?"

  "Never mind; let's try."

  The message was duly sent, on general beam. An unintelligible answer came back!

  Krull's feeling of foreboding had been growing gradually stronger.

  "You know, I don't think we ought to attack, sir. Don't fire any more and see what their reaction is."

  "I don't know," said Rotherson. "I think we ought to go ahead and shoot it out with them, then go across and pick up any survivors later."

  "Yes, but what if they're friendly. If they have no connection with that asteroid, they may not have."

  Suddenly an inspiration flashed into Krull's mind. "I don't see why they might not be from another system like ours, which has also been raided by that asteroid. They may be looking for it in the same way that we are."

  "There's a slim possibility, I agree," said Jonga. "In that case we could join forces. Our two technologies together might be much more effective than one of us alone. Launch the dinghy."

  "All right," said Krull. "I don't think we all ought to go—"

  "Volunteer for the dinghy," said Rotherson, looking round.

  "It was my idea that they're friendly; I ought to take the risk. I'll go," said Krull.

  "Are you sure?" said Rotherson.

  Krull got into his suit and made his way through the airlock. Rotherson pressed the dinghy release; slowly and carefully Krull crossed the intervening spaces, keeping in radio touch all the time. He reached the alien ship without incident. He saw all along the portals of the stranger a line of tubes with peculiar lenses. It was obviously from these that the green light emanated. He fetched up in front of what was obviously the alien's lock—and waited.

  They must have seen him; they must know he was there. He got carefully out of the dinghy with his hands upraised and stood by the airlock. He stood there for what seemed ages, and nothing happened.

  "All right so far," he signaled back to his ship. "They've done nothing hostile. The airlock's opening."

  It was indeed. The portal, which seemed to be of a beryllium type compound similar to their own, slid back, and Krull, rather apprehensively, moved into the aperture. He wondered what was waiting on the other side. He imagined a bug-eyed monster with green and yellow pseudopods, intelligent octopi, one-eyed gorillas, almost anything from a science fiction author's nightmare to an ordinary man like himself. Yet the ship was so like their own that he couldn't help hoping they would be recognizably humanoid. The lock slid to behind him, and the inner door opened. He was greeted by a tall, ebony-skinned individual, who looked at him curiously and gestured to him to enter.

  Krull tapped the breathing space on his helmet and then made a circular movement with his hands, indicating the atmosphere inside their ship. The dark one understood and nodded. Very cautiously Krull slipped back the visor and sniffed carefully. The air seemed pretty good. It was certainly as dense as the atmosphere he was used to. He gave a sign of greeting. It was difficult to communicate when he was on the inside of a suit and they were not. He slid the visor back and lifted the helmet carefully.

  Pointing to himself he said: "Krull."

  The black superman facing him repeated the gesture and tapped his own muscular chest and said "Pythol." The other members of the alien ships' crew were gathering round in the central cabin. A green man, a light, bottle-green man whose skin seemed almost to glow, was the next to introduce himself. "Rashak," he said. There was a red man among them, too, looking like a cross between a yoga from Tibet and a North American priest. "Andos." His voice was deep. His eyes looked mystic and spiritual.

  The fourth member of the alien's crew was a white man. He might almost have been an earth man, so similar was he in every respect to Krull. "Valstar," he said, repeating the now characteristic gesture. Krull held out his hand; apparently the symbol was understood. Valstar took it in his own for a moment and smiled. That was also understood. Krull retrieved his helmet and radioed back to his ship. "There are four of them, and they are friendly. We haven't got over the language barrier yet."

  Rashak the green man was looking at him intently; then, taking him gently by the arm, he led him gently into a forward cabin where a very complex electronic device was screwed to a table. Something that was very obviously a microphone surmounted the contraption. He himself put on the headphone and adjusted a dial on the side of the machine. Krull, speaking very slowly and clearly, began:

  "We are from the planet earth of the solar system. There are nine planets on our system, and we evolve round a white-yellow sun of the G-type. We are four light years distant from the next nearest star which we call Proxima. Beyond that lies a star which we have not yet visited, which we believe may contain intelligent life. Possibly it is your home world; we call it Altair." As he said Altair, smiles broke out on the faces of the others, and there were nods of affirmation. So I was right, thought Krull, they are Altairians.

  The green man gestured to him to go on speaking while he himself fiddled among the dials. Realizing that the machine was some kind of language analyzer, working on an electric computer principle, slightly in advance of their own, Krull went through the letters of the alphabet, and then counted slowly up to a hundred, after that he began to say anything that came into his head. He recited as much as he could remember of the galactic convention act. He talked about space ships and space pilots; he spoke about earth and its cities. He pointed to the various parts of his body, hand, arm, leg, foot, head, giving the appropriate word at the same time. The green man was nodding happily now; within half an hour the computer had broken down the common vocabulary of English to Altarian. Armed with this, the green man began feeding more tapes back into his machine, and at the end of another hour they were able to understand one another well enough.


  The tale that the four aliens had to tell was fascinating and exciting…

  Krull learned that they, too, were victims, as he had intuitively suspected, of the raid of the weird asteroid. They had lost practically an entire colony to this fantastic individual. They had also lost their king and their princess, a beautiful girl named Astra. There were four races living harmoniously on the seven planets of their system, and each was noted for some particular forte, or specialty. The green were the intellectuals, the blacks were the athletics, the reds were the psyhic-esthetic priests, and the whites were a combination of all three qualities. The green had just developed, and Rashak in particular had brought on this project a new weapon which they hoped might be capable of destroying, or at least rendering powerless, the terrible asteroid man. They were even now searching for the asteroid, and on first sight of the earth ship had been suspicious lest it was connected with the alien. The green ray which the earthmen had seen provisionally demonstrated was a small and rather modified version of the weapon which the Altairians were going to use against their deadly and powerful enemy.

  Now that the language barrier had been broken down, the two parties were only too glad to join forces. The ships moved into convoy, one behind the other, and set off again, searching for the alien. Rashak spoke to General Rotherson, explaining some of the principles of their weapon and the way in which they hoped to use it when they met the asteroid.

  CHAPTER XIV

  "We have an old saying in my world that two heads are better than one," said Rotherson, "even if they are only sheep's heads. A sheep is a rather stupid animal, and none of us are stupid. We've got nine heads between us. There are fields of technology which our people have explored and yours haven't. The same holds good in your science. In some fields we are head of you; in others you are ahead of us. If we put our knowledge together, we shall have the combined understanding of the nine planets of our system and the seven of yours. That gives us the combined comprehension of sixteen different worlds, and their separate developments. Some of my party have unexpected gifts." He was thinking of Dolores and her fantastic strength.