Trapped in space

by Williamson, Jack, 1908-2006

  With his thumb, he squeezed the code key. The instant blade of bright green hght shced the wire.

  The cut wire contracted Hke a broken rubber band, dragging him into a cloud of rocks. Half blind and stiff with pain, he held to his plan. He bent his stuck leg, as he spun through the rocks. He moved his right arm to bring the whipping wire into reach. Then he cut at the web with his blade of light. Green fire flashed.

  He was free!

  The taste of blood was in his mouth, where he had bitten his lip. His body was cold and weak and quaking. For a long time, all he could do was fight for his breath.

  When he could move again, he used the laser to slice bits of wire from the sole of his boot and the metal around his leg. He tried to cut the web from the grip of his steel glove, but only burned his hand. His right hand was still a useless fist.

  He clipped the machine back to his belt and looked for the broken web. One end of the wire was lost somewhere in a dim swarm of rocks, but he found the other. A gleaming thread, with its rough beads of captured metal, it led away into the rocks.

  He followed it.

  Keeping a careful distance from it, he watched the rocks that touched the web and bounced or stuck. He

  watched behind him and ahead. He was looking for the keeper of the web, which he thought would come out to see what had happened.

  Miles down the wire, he saw a knot. Something bright was wrapped in coils of wire. Gleaming strands stretched in four directions from it. When he came close enough, he could see that the captured thing was Ben's star ship.

  Ugly wounds had been cut in its bright skin. Some were patched and some were not. Looped many times around it, the coils held it fast. He saw no sign of life.

  Ben had to be alive, because they had heard his voice. Jeff gripped the laser machine with his right arm. He twisted the knob back to VOICE and slid the range to NEAR. He pointed the machine at the trapped wreck—

  "Star Man Ben Stone, calling anybody."

  The loud call rang in Jeff's helmet, before he could speak.

  "—under laser attack." The voice was Ben's, the words were those he had heard before, "—in the rocks around Topaz, caught in a rock hopper's web—"

  Ben's strained voice broke off, exactly where it always did, but Jeff had seen the dull red flicker of the signal. It wasn't in the captured ship. It was far off in the

  no

  roclcs, out along a strand of the web. How could that be?

  Had Ben been forced to abandon his ship?

  Jeff pointed the machine toward that dying flicker in the cloud. He was about to answer, to tell Ben he was here—but doubt checked him.

  Too many times, his own calls had brought deadly fire. That was hard to understand, because he knew his brother's voice. He stopped to think. He had come a long way to earn this chance to rescue Ben, and he couldn't afford to throw it away.

  A huge rock was sailing slowly past the web, too far away to touch the tangling wires. He steered the suit toward it. Floating behind it, he pointed the machine again into the rocks where he had seen that flicker.

  "Ben!" he shouted into the machine. "It's Jeff—"

  The flicker came back, far off in the gloomy blue. It grew brighter, terribly bright. He ducked behind the rock, just in time. Blinding red fire shattered chips off the rock.

  Jeff drifted in his stiff suit behind the rock, holding the machine with his sore left hand. The bright flicker had given him one glimpse of the thing that had been calling him with Ben's voice and shooting at him.

  It wasn't Ben. It was not a man. It was something dim and strange. Jeff couldn't see it clearly through the great cloud of blue rocks. But he knew it had to be the hopper.

  CHAPTER 9

  The Keeper of the Web

  It was a long minute before Jeff could move. Then he swam to the other side of the shattered rock and looked out.

  All he saw at first were broken rocks whirling through dim blue gloom. When he caught sight of the captured star ship in the web, it was far behind him. The rock he was holding onto had already carried him past it.

  Ahead of him, light shone on bright wire. His eyes followed that light, and he found the heart of the web. He stared at it in wonder. Many bright strands came together there, all beaded with sharp chunks of captured metal. Where they joined, they were woven into a kind of ball. The ball was covered with bits of dark ore and

  11

  gray rock, so that it was hard to see. It looked hollow. Jeff thought it must be a kind of den. The keeper of the web, he thought, must live inside.

  But the rock hopper was not there.

  Jeff saw another dull flicker out in the cloud, far beyond that woven ball. Ben's hoarse voice was again in his helmet, carried to him on the shivering red light.

  "—in the rocks around Topaz, caught in a rock hopper's web—"

  The voice was Ben's, but now he knew that the call for help was just another trick. He didn't answer. Instead, he floated close behind the flying rock, his right fist anchored in a crack, waiting for the hopper.

  In a few moments he saw it. It was coming home, climbing along a beaded wire toward the gray ball at the center of the web. It was big, and coming fast

  Nothing Jeff had ever seen was like it. Its five arms were thick and powerful where they joined its body, but thin as whips where they wrapped around the beaded wire. The arms were bright as silver, but the body was black—black, round, flat and with no head.

  A dull red light winked at him suddenly from the top of its body. Ben's stolen voice rumbled like thunder in his helmet.

  "—rocks around Topaz, caught—"

  Jeff pulled himself farther back out of sight, but kept

  his eyes on the hopper. The red winking stopped. The creature chmbed on again toward that dark ball. Although it was travelling fast, Jeff saw that it had a queer sort of limp.

  Four of the arms whipped their quick thin tips around the beaded cable to pull it along, but the fifth arm dragged behind like a broken snake. Jeff realized the hopper must have been hurt.

  It came to the central ball and stopped there, outside a dark flat patch that he thought might be a sort of door. He watched it from his rock, waiting for his chance.

  If it went on to mend its web where he had cut it, he might have time to slip down to Ben's ship. He might have time to see what had really happened to Ben and his star men. With luck, if his power held out, he might be able to cut the ship free.

  But the hopper didn't go on. It bent down suddenly, the fifth arm trailing limply. For a moment Jeff thought it was creeping into the den, perhaps to nurse its hurt arm.

  Instead, it jumped at his rock.

  Perhaps it had seen Jeff's head. Perhaps it had figured out where he had been when he answered its call. Jeff didn't wait to wonder. He picked another rock behind him and flew for it at the full thrust of his jets.

  The sharp surface of the second rock shone red. He

  saw his own black shadow hke a flat animal crawling on it. The hopper's light had cast the shadow, and it brought him Ben's booming voice.

  He didn't look back. He shut his eyes and crossed his arms over the face plate of his helmet, waiting for the hopper to send out its beam.

  When it came, it covered him with red fire. It burned his face in the helmet and hurt his shut eyes. It battered his suit like hail. Its full force struck the fuel tank and the power cell packed on his back. He felt the jets fire and quit.

  When the hammering stopped, everything looked dim and green, but he could see that he was whirling toward the rock ahead, out of control. His jets were dead.

  Yet Jeff had expected something worse. He had expected a bolt strong enough to kill him. Feeling lucky to be alive, he twisted his body to reach for a point of the rock as he sailed by. He caught it with his left hand and hung on. His stiff glove slipped and held. He pulled himself behind the rock.

  The hopper was very close. Strangely, Jeff thought, it had a kind of beauty, too. Its coiled silver arms we
re bright and graceful, and the scales of its body were like black jewels.

  Without the jets, he couldn't run. He had to fight. The admiral's policy of peace among the stars meant

  nothing to him now. Trying not to hurry, he turned the knob of his machine back to CODE and pushed the range as high as possible. Leaning carefully around the rock, he fired at the middle of the hopper's flat body.

  The machine was not meant to be a weapon. He was not expecting to hurt the hopper much, but he saw dark puffs of smoke where his small darts of bright green light hit the shiny scales. He saw the silver arms knotting, twisting up to shield the body.

  Jeff tried to duck back behind the rock. But his frozen right fist slipped when he tried to push against it. The red glare of the hopper's fire caught half his body.

  Heat blazed through his suit, searing his body. He slipped the machine back under his right arm. Snatching wildly with his free left hand, he caught a corner of the rock and pulled himself to cover.

  He hung there behind the rock until the pain went away, wondering why the bolt hadn't killed him. He couldn't believe that his own shots had really hurt the hopper. Perhaps its strange strength had been used up.

  When he could move, Jeff looked up and saw that the hopper had reached his rock. Four thin silver coils were looped over the sharp points of the rock to anchor the hopper. A quick bright tip reared up from the rock, searched back and forth, and whipped at Jeff.

  Jeff fired wildly with the green blade of his sender. Dark smoke puffed from the bright coils. They moved back away from him.

  The hopper's black body must have crept around the rock behind him, while he fought its arms. The red glare of its laser struck him from behind. Jeff leaned against the rock and tried to shoot back, but the fire blinded him.

  When he could see again, the black body was near him on a flat face of the rock. All its limbs were gone. It was shaped like a round black cushion, three yards across and one yard tall. Five big yellow eyes were spaced around it, one just above the short gray stump of each missing arm. The hopper's arms were moving away through the rocks, swimming like silver snakes in an icy river.

  Jeff saw a faint red glow in the middle of the black cushion. It was the laser. He knew now that it was no machine, but a living part of the hopper.

  The hopper moved itself to point toward him. He tried to scramble out of the way of its red bolt, but his jets were dead and his battered body wouldn't move. All he could do was wait.

  ". . . lost air and power. . . ."

  Tlie red glow faded, until Ben's captured voice was only a dying whisper in his helmet.

  . . . caught. . . .

  The hopper, Jeff realized, had used up all its power. This was his chance to kill it, to even the score for what it had done to Ben and Ty. He pointed the machine into the nearest yellow eye. Furiously, he thumbed the firing key.

  The hopper's wide eye blinked, but nothing else happened. Jeff's machine had caught the full force of that last bolt from the hopper's laser. Now it was dead. He dropped it and looked back into that great yellow eye,

  "Now what?" he muttered at the hopper, though he knew it couldn't hear him. "I'm not sure about the rules of the game. But I can't hurt you. I hope you can't hurt me."

  His air smelled stale and the battered suit cramped his body. He couldn't think of anything to do. With the jets dead, he couldn't get away. With the laser dead, he couldn't fight.

  All he could do was watch the hopper.

  It glared back at him, but it couldn't move, with its silver arms gone. And now that its power was dead, it couldn't hurt him.

  Jeff breathed his bad air. He twisted in the stiff metal of his suit. How had this queer kind of life been born, here in the ring of Topaz? Life on Earth had come out of the warm and friendly sea. Life would have to be

  different, he thought, to hve in this cloud of cruel rocks with no air. It would have to be as marvelous, he thought, in its own strange way, as the living things of Earth.

  He wondered if the hopper was really metal, or partly metal, as it looked. Was the life of the rocks based on metal, the way the life of Earth was based on water? Did it eat the scraps of metal collected in its web? Was that its source of energy? Was that deadly web spun out of its own metal body, as a spider spins its web?

  He wondered how the hopper was made, to let it come apart. For he knew that his own weak fire had not cut off its silver arms. They had simply turned loose and flown away, like separate beings. No wounds were left where they had been, just smooth gray stumps.

  He wondered why the creature had come to meet him alone. He thought it must have mates, perhaps by the million. Certainly the attack on his own star ship, out beyond the ring, must have been begun by other beings, because this crippled thing couldn't have come so far.

  Where had the other hoppers gone?

  He wondered what had crippled this one. His own machine had done no more than sting it. He wondered if it had been hurt in the battle with Ben's ship.

  Wondering, he almost forgot to be afraid.

  Pushing at the rock with his stiff right claw, he moved

  closer to the hopper. He peered into the nearest yellow eye, wondering what the hopper was thinking about him. He saw the great eye shrink, as the shivering scales closed over it.

  The hopper was afraid!

  Suddenly a lot of things were clear to Jeff. Fear of men was the reason the hoppers had been waiting to fire at his ship, so far outside the ring of Topaz. Fear was the reason they had kept out of sight, baited their web with Ben's voice, and fired at every signal.

  This hopper, he guessed, had been left to keep the web because it had been injured. All the others had Hed. But here it was, three feet from the thing it feared, hurt and desperate, and he felt a little sorry for it.

  He wished for a way to make peace with it. Perhaps if Buzz and Lupe were here. . . .

  But it was far too late for thoughts of peace. At least, Jeff knew, it was getting late for him. He caught himself yawning in the helmet. He could see the gray film of moisture spreading across the face plate, slowly shutting off his view. Dimly, he realized that the life support of his suit had been damaged in the fight.

  Somehow he didn't care. He wanted to rip his helmet off, so that he could get one breath of good air, but he knew there was no air around him. For a long time he couldn't think of anything, except his need for air.

  A pale red flicker reminded him of the hopper. He blinked through the fog on his face plate. He made out the cushion of black scales, the yellow eyes, the flashing laser.

  But the great eyes weren't looking at him. They were staring off into the cloud. Following the red flash of its laser, Jeff found another huge rock. It was moving toward them, fast.

  His old sense of mass and force and motion was working slowly now, but at last it told him why the hopper's laser was burning so wildly. It told him exactly where this new rock would strike the one where they were. He himself was safe, but the hopper wasn't.

  It was going to be crushed between the rocks and it couldn't get out of the way. It was trying with its laser to break up the rock, but all of its power had been used. Jeff figured it had exactly 12 seconds left.

  Jeff knew he ought to get farther back before the rock hit. He gripped a point of rock with his good left hand, to shove himself away. But something stopped him. He hung staring through his fogged face plate at the helpless, twisting hopper. Jeff knew he couldn't let it die.

  Slowly, he moved toward it. The bright black scales pulled away from his gloves, shivering. The bright eye

  beneath him drew back into a sht. The dark laser turned toward him, glowing like a dying coal.

  ". . . caught. ..." A far ghost of Ben's voice whispered in his helmet. ". . . web. . . ."

  The hopper feared him more than it did the rushing rock. He knew it hated him. That dying whisper reminded him that it had trapped Ben's ship, possibly killed Ben and all his star men. Yet he couldn't just watch it be crushed.

/>   He caught it under a thick gray stump, with his left hand and his frozen fist. He drew a gasping breath of the bad air in his helmet and pulled.

  The fat cushion moved a little, half sliding, and half rolling across the rock. Though it weighed almost nothing, here in the rocks, its mass was almost too much for him. He had to pull and pull again, and he hardly knew when it was safe.

  Dimly, he felt his fist slip from under that flat stump, and the iron soles of his boots scrape across the face of the rock. He knew that he was lying where the rock would hit.

  He tried to look for the hopper and the rock, but gray mist had filled all his face plate. He tried to breathe. His air was almost gone. He made an effort to move his body out of the way, a yard or a foot or just an inch, but his energy was used up.

  What happened then was hke a dim gray dream. He couldn't see what was going on, and he felt too weak and sick to care. But he thought one long silver arm had come back to the hopper. He thought he felt its quick tip whipping around his body to drag him from under that smashing rock.

  CHAPTER 10

  ''First Man to Topaz

  99

  In his dream, Jeff was fighting to rescue Ben. He dived his jet suit into the ring around Topaz. He flew between rocks and searched through endless clouds. At last he came to the lost star ship caught in the rock hopper's web.

  Hot blue sparks stung him when he drew near the web. But he used his laser to cut the captured ship out of the web. He tore the coils from around the ship and opened the lock to look for Ben.

  What he found was a yellow eye, bigger than his head, riirimed with shining scales. The hopper was waiting for him. A cold silver arm snaked out of the lock and whipped around his throat.

  It choked him so that he couldn't breathe.

  "Hi, Jeff." Ty's calm, strong voice called from somewhere. "Need some help?"