Lucky Starr and the Pirates of the Asteroids

by Isaac Asimov

  Anton said, "Come here."

  They approached. One wiped a grizzled mustache with the back of his hand and said, "No one else on board this ship, Captain."

  "All right. What do you think of the ship?"

  There were four of them. The number increased as more men joined the group.

  Anton's voice grew edgy. "What do any of you think of the ship?"

  Dingo pushed his way forward. He had got rid of his space-suit and Lucky could see him as a man. It was not altogether a pleasant sight. He was broad and heavy and his arms were slightly bowed as they hung loosely from bulging shoulders. There were tufts of dark hair on the back of his fingers and the scar on his upper lip twitched. His eyes glared at Lucky.

  He said, "I don't like it."

  "You don't like the ship?" Anton asked sharply.

  Dingo hesitated. He straightened his arms, threw back his shoulders. "It stinks."

  "Why? Why do you say that?"

  "I could take it apart with a can opener. Ask the rest and see if they don't agree with me. This crate is put together with toothpicks. It wouldn't hold together for three months."

  There were murmurs of agreement. The man with the gray mustache said, "Beg your pardon, Captain, but the wiring is taped in place. It's a two-bit job. The insulation is almost burnt through already."

  "All the welding was done in a real hurry," said another. "The seams stand out like that." He held out a thick and dirty thumb.

  "What about repairs?" asked Anton.

  Dingo said, "It would take a year and a Sunday. It isn't worth it. Anyway, we couldn't do it here. We'd have to take it to one of the rocks."

  Anton turned to Lucky, explaining suavely, "We always refer to the asteroids as 'rocks,' you understand."

  Lucky nodded.

  Anton said, "Apparently my men feel that they wouldn't care to ride this ship. Why do you suppose the Earth government would send out an empty ship and such a jerry-built job to boot?"

  "It keeps getting more and more confusing," said Lucky.

  "Let's complete our investigation, then."

  Anton walked first. Lucky followed closely. The men tagged behind silently. The back of Lucky's neck prickled. Anton's back was straight and fearless, as though he expected no attack from Lucky. He might well feel so. Ten armed men were on Lucky's heels.

  They glanced through the small rooms, each designed for utmost economy in space. There was the computation room, the small observatory, the photographic laboratory, the galley and the bunk rooms.

  They slipped down to the lower level through a narrow curving tube within which the pseudo-grav field was neutralized so that either direction could be "up" or "down" at will. Lucky was motioned down first, Anton following so closely that Lucky barely had time to scramble out of the way (his legs buckling slightly with the sudden access of weight) before the pirate chief was upon him. Hard, heavy space-boots missed his face by inches.

  Lucky regained his balance and whirled angrily, but Anton was standing there smiling pleasantly, his blaster lined up straight and true at Lucky's heart.

  "A thousand apologies," he said. "Fortunately you are quite agile."

  "Yes," muttered Lucky.

  On the lower level were the engine room and the power plant; the empty berths where the lifeboats had been. There were the fuels store, the food and water stores, the air fresheners, and the atomic shielding.

  Anton murmured, "Well, what do you think of it all? Shoddy, perhaps, but I see nothing out of order."

  "It's hard to tell like this," said Lucky.

  "But you must have lived on this ship for days."

  "Sure, but I didn't spend time looking it over. I just waited for it to get somewhere."

  "I see. Well, back to upper level."

  Lucky was first "down" the travel tube again. This time he landed lightly and sprang six feet to one side with the grace of a cat.

  Seconds passed before Anton popped out of the tube. "Jumpy?" he asked.

  Lucky flushed.

  One by one the pirates appeared. Anton did not wait for all of them, but started down the corridor again.

  "You know," he said, "you'd think we'd been all over this ship. Most people would say so. Wouldn't you say so?"

  "No," said Lucky calmly, "I wouldn't. We haven't been in the washroom."

  Anton scowled and for more than just a moment the pleasantness was gone from his face, and only a tight, white anger flashed in its place.

  Then it passed. He adjusted a stray lock of hair on his head, then regarded the back of his hand with interest. "Well, let's look there."

  Several of the men whistled and the rest exclaimed in a variety of ways when the appropriate door clicked open.

  "Very nice," murmured Anton. "Very nice. Luxurious, I would say."

  It was! There was no question of that. There were separate stall showers, three of them, with their plumbing arranged for sudsing water (hike-warm) and rinsing water (hot or cold). There were also half a dozen washbowls in ivory-chrome, with shampoo stands, hair driers and needle-jet skin stimulators. Nothing that was necessary was missing.

  "There's certainly nothing shoddy about this," said Anton. "It's like a show on the sub-etherics, eh, Williams? What do you make of this?"

  "I'm confused."

  Anton's smile vanished like the fleeting flash of a speeding space-ship across a visiplate. "I'm not. Dingo, come in here."

  The pirate chief said to Lucky, "It's a simple problem, you. We have a ship here with no one aboard, thrown together in the cheapest possible way, as though it were done in a hurry, but with a washroom that is the last word. Why? I think it's just in order to have as many pipes as possible in the washroom. And why that? So that we'd never suspect that one or two of them were dummies… Dingo, which pipe is it?"

  Dingo kicked one.

  "Well, don't kick it, you misbegotten fool. Take it apart."

  Dingo did so, a micro-heatgun flashing briefly. He yanked out wires.

  "What's that, Williams?" demanded Anton.

  "Wires," said Lucky briefly.

  "I know that, you lump." He was suddenly furious. "What else? I'll tell you what else. Those wires are set to explode every ounce of the atomite on board ship as soon as we take the ship back to base."

  Lucky jumped. "How can you tell that?"

  "You're surprised? You didn't know this was one big trap? You didn't know we were supposed to take this back to base for repairs? You didn't know we were supposed to explode ourselves and the base, too, into hot dust? Why, you're here as the bait to make sure we were-properly fooled. Only I'm not a fool!"

  His men were crowding close. Dingo licked his lips.

  With a snap Anton brought up his blaster and there was no mercy, no dream of mercy, in his eyes.

  "Wait! Great Galaxy, wait! I know nothing about this. You have no right to shoot me without cause." He tensed for a jump, one last fight before death.

  "No right!" Anton, eyes glaring, lowered his blaster suddenly. "How dare you say no right. I have all rights on this ship."

  "You can't kill a good man. The men of the asteroids need good men. Don't throw one away for nothing."

  A sudden, unexpected murmur came from some of the pirates.

  A voice said, "He's got guts, Cap'n. Maybe we could use-"

  It died away as Anton turned.

  He turned back. "What makes you a good man, Williams? Answer that and I'll consider."

  "I'll hold my own against anyone here. Bare fists or any weapon."

  "So?" Anton's teeth bared themselves. "You hear that, men?"

  There was an affirmative roar.

  "It's your challenge, Williams. Any weapon. Good! Come out of this alive and you won't be shot. You'll be considered for membership in my crew."

  "I have your word, Captain?"

  "You have my word, and I never break my word. The crew hears me. If you come out of this alive."

  "Whom do I fight?" demanded Lucky.

  "Dingo her
e. A good man. Anyone who can beat him is a very good man."

  Lucky measured the huge lump of gristle and sinew standing before him, its little eyes glittering with anticipation, and glumly agreed with the captain.

  But he said firmly, "What weapons? Or is it bare fists?"

  "Weapons! Push-tubes, to be exact. Push-tubes in open space."

  For a moment Lucky found it difficult to maintain an appropriate stolidity.

  Anton smiled. "Are you afraid it won't be a proper test for you? Don't be. Dingo is the best man with a push-gun in our entire fleet."

  Lucky's heart plummeted. A push-gun duel required an expert. Notoriously so! Played as he had played it in college days, it was a sport. Fought by professionals, it was deadly!

  And he was no professional!

  Chapter 4

  Duel In Deed

  Pirates crowded the outer skin of the Atlas and of their own Sirian-designed ship. Some were standing, held by the magnetic field of their boots. Others had cast themselves loose for better viewing, maintaining their place by means of a short magnetic cable attached to the ship's hull.

  Fifty miles apart two metal-foil goal posts had been set. Not more than three feet square in their collapsed state aboard ship, they opened into a hundred feet either way of thin-beaten beryl-magnesium sheets. Undimmed and undamaged in the great emptiness of space, they were set spinning, and the flickering reflections of the sun on their gleaming surfaces sent beams that were visible for miles.

  "You know the rules." Anton's voice was loud in Lucky's ears, and presumably in Dingo's ears as well.

  Lucky could make out the other's space-suited shape as a sunlit speck half a mile away. The lifeboat that had brought them here was racing away now, back toward the pirate ship.

  "You know the rules," said Anton's voice. "The one who gets pushed back to his own goal post is the loser. If neither gets pushed back, the one whose push-gun expires first is the loser. No time limit. No off-side. You have five minutes to get set. The push-gun can't be used till the word is given."

  No off-side, thought Lucky. That was the giveaway. Push duels as a legal sport could not take place more than a hundred miles from an asteroid at least fifty miles in diameter. This would place a definite, though small, gravitational pull on the players. It would not be enough to affect mobility. It would be enough, however, to rescue a contestant who found himself miles out in space with an expired push-gun. Even if not picked up by the rescue boat he had only to remain quiet and in a matter of hours or, at most, one or two days, he would drift back to the asteroid's surface.

  Here, on the other hand, there was no sizable asteroid within hundreds of thousands of miles. A real push would continue indefinitely. It would end, as likely as not, in the sun, long after the unlucky contestant had smothered to death when his oxygen gave out. Under such conditions it was usually understood that, when one contestant or another passed outside certain set limits, time was called until their return.

  Saying "no off-side" was saying "to the death."

  Anton's voice came clear and sharp across the miles of space between himself and the radio receiver in Lucky's helmet. He said, "Two minutes to go. Adjust body signals."

  Lucky brought his hand up and closed the switch set into his chest. The colored metal foil which had earlier been magnet-set into his helmet was spinning. It was a miniature goal post. Dingo's figure, a moment before merely a dim dot, now sprang into flickering ruddy hie.

  His own signal, Lucky knew, was a flashing green. And the goal posts were pure white.

  Even now a fraction of Lucky's mind was far away. He had tried to make one objection at the very beginning. He had said, "Look, this all suits me, you understand. But while we're fooling around, a government patrol ship might-"

  Anton barked contemptuously, "Forget it. No patrol ship would have the guts to get this far into the rocks. We've a hundred ships within call, a thousand rocks to hold us if we had to make a getaway. Get into your suit."

  A hundred ships! A thousand rocks! If true, the pirates had never yet shown their full hand. What was going on?

  "One minute left!" said Anton's voice through space.

  Grimly Lucky brought up his two push-guns. They were L-shaped objects connected by springy, gummed-f abric tubing to the doughnutlike gas cylinders (containing carbon dioxide liquid under great pressure) that had been adjusted about his waist. In the old days the connecting tubing had been metal mesh. But that, though stronger, had also been more massive and had added to the momentum and inertia of the guns. In push duels rapid aiming and firing was essential. Once a fluorinated silicone had been invented which could remain a flexible gum at space temperatures and yet not become tacky in the direct rays of the sun, the lighter tubing material was universally used.

  "Fire when ready!" cried Anton.

  One of Dingo's push-guns triggered for an instant. The liquid carbon dioxide of his gas cylinder bubbled into violent gas and spurted out through the push-gun's needlelike orifice. The gas froze into a line of tiny crystals within six inches of its point of emersion. Even in the half second allowed for release a line of crystals, miles long, had been formed. As they pushed out one way, Dingo was pushed in the other. It was a spaceship and its rocket blast in miniature.

  Three times the "crystal line" flashed and faded in the distance. It pointed into space directly away from Lucky, and each time Dingo gained speed toward Lucky. The actual state of affairs was deceptive. The only change visible to the eye was the slow brightening of Dingo's suit signal, but Lucky knew that the distance between them was closing with hurtling velocity.

  What Lucky did not know was the proper strategy to expect; the appropriate defense. He waited to let the other's offensive moves unfold.

  Dingo was large enough now to see as a humanoid shape with head and four limbs. He was passing to one side, and making no move to adjust his aim. He seemed content to bear far to Lucky's left.

  Lucky still waited. The chorus of confused cries that rang in his helmet had died down. They came from the open transmitters of the audience. Though these were too far away to see the contestants, they could still follow the passage of the body signals and the flashes of the carbon dioxide streams. They were expecting something, Lucky thought.

  It came suddenly.

  A blast of carbon dioxide, then another appeared to Dingo's right, and his line of flight veered toward the young Councilman's position. Lucky brought his push-gun up, ready to flash downward and avoid close quarters. The safest strategy, he thought, was to do just that, and to move as slowly and as little as possible otherwise, in order to conserve carbon dioxide.

  But Dingo's flight did not continue toward Lucky. He fired straight ahead of himself, a long streak, and began to recede. Lucky watched him, and only too late the streak of light met his eyes.

  The line of carbon dioxide that Dingo had last fired traveled forward, yes, but he had been moving leftward at the time and so it did likewise. The two motions together moved it directly toward Lucky and it struck his left shoulder bull's-eye.

  To Lucky it felt like a sharp blow pounding him. The crystals were tiny, but they extended for miles and they were traveling at miles per second. They all hit his suit in the space of what seemed a fraction of an eyelid's flicker. Lucky's suit trembled and the roar of the audience was in his ear.

  "You got him, Dingo!"

  "What a blast!"

  "Straight toward goal post. Look at him!"

  "It was beautiful. Beautiful!"

  "Look at the joker spin!"

  Underneath that there were murmurs that seemed, somehow, less exuberant.

  Lucky was spinning or, rather, it seemed to his eyes that the heavens and all the stars in it were spinning. Across the face plate of his helmet the stars were white streaks, as though they were sparkles of trillions of carbon dioxide crystals themselves.

  He could see nothing but the numerous blurs. For a moment it was as though the blow had knocked the power of thinking out
of him.

  A blow in the midriff and one in the back sent him, still spinning, further on his hurtling way through space.

  He had to do something or Dingo would make a football of him from one end of the Solar System to the other. The first thing was to stop the spin and get his bearings. He was tumbling diagonally, left shoulder over right hip. He pointed the push-gun in the direction counter to that twist, and in lightning releases pumped out streams of carbon dioxide.

  The stars slowed until their turning was a stately march that left them sharply defined points. The sky became the familiar sky of space.

  One star flickered and was too bright. Lucky knew it to be his own goal post. Almost diametrically opposed was the angry red of Dingo's body signal. Lucky could not fling himself backward beyond the goal post or the duel would be over and he would have lost. Beyond the goal post and within a mile of it was the standard rule for a goal ending. Nor, on the other hand, could he afford to get closer to his opponent.

  He brought his push-gun straight up over his head, closed contact, and held it so. He counted a full minute before he released contact, and through all the sixty seconds he felt the pressure against the top of his helmet as he accelerated downward.

  It was a desperate maneuver, for he threw away a half hour's supply of gas in that one minute.

  Dingo, in outrage, yelled hoarsely, "You flumstered coward! You yellow mugger!"

  The cries of the audience also rose to a crescendo.

  "Look at him run."

  "He got past Dingo. Dingo, get him."

  "Hey, Williams. Put up a fight."

  Lucky saw the crimson blur of his enemy again.

  He had to keep on the move. There was nothing else he could do. Dingo was an expert and could hit a one-inch meteorite as it flashed by. He himself, Lucky thought ruefully, would do well to hit Ceres at a mile.

  He used his push-guns alternately. To the left, to the right; then quickly, to the right, to the left and to the right again.

  It made no difference. It was as though Dingo could foretell his moves, cut across the corners, move in inexorably.

  Lucky felt the perspiration beading out upon his forehead, and suddenly he was aware of the silence. He could not remember the exact moment it had come, but it had come like the breaking of a thread. One moment there had been the yells and laughter of the pirates, and the next moment only the dead silence of space where sound could never be heard.