Lucky Starr and the Pirates of the Asteroids

by Isaac Asimov

  Dingo stood over him, a foot on either side. In the light of one of the flashes Lucky caught a quick glimpse of Dingo's face-plate and of the stubby goggles that covered his eyes. Lucky knew those to be infrared translators, capable of converting ordinary heat radiation into visible light. Even without flashes and in the asteroid's

  dark night they had been able to watch him by the energy of his own heaters.

  Dingo said, "What's the matter, nark? Scared?" He lifted a bulky leg with its bulkier metal swathing and brought his heel down sharply in the direction of Lucky's face-plate. Lucky turned his head swiftly away to let the blow fall on the sturdier metal of the helmet, but Dingo's heel stopped midway. He laughed whoop-

  ingly.

  "You won't get it that easy, nark," he said.

  His voice changed as he spoke to the other two pirates. "Hop over the jag and get the air-lock open."

  For a moment they hesitated. One of them said, "But, Dingo*, the captain said you were too-"

  Dingo said, "Get going, or maybe I'll start with him and finish with you."

  In the face of the threat the two hopped away. Dingo said to Lucky, "Now suppose we get you to the air-lock."

  He was still holding the butt end of the magnetic cable. With a flick at the switch he turned off its current and momentarily demagnetized it. He stepped away and pulled it sharply toward himself. Lucky dragged along the rocky floor of the asteroid, bounced upward, and rolled partly out of the cable. Dingo touched the switch again and the remaining coils suddenly clung and held.

  Dingo flicked the whip upward. Lucky traveled with it, while Dingo maneuvered skillfully to maintain his own balance. Lucky hovered in space and Dingo walked with him as though he were a child's balloon at the end of a string.

  The lights of the other two were visible again after five minutes. They were shining into a patch of darkness of which regular boundaries were proof enough that it was an open air-lock.

  Dingo called, "Watch out! I've got a package to deliver."

  He demagnetized the cable again, and flicked it downward, rising six inches into the air as he did so. Lucky rotated rapidly, spinning completely out of the cable.

  Dingo leaped upward and caught him. With the skill of a man long used to weightlessness, he avoided Lucky's attempts to break his hold, and hurled him in the direction of the air-lock. He broke his own backward tumble by a quick double spurt of his suit's push-gun and righted himself in time to see Lucky enter the air-lock cleanly.

  What followed was clearly visible in the light of the pirates' flashes. Caught in the pseudo-grav field that existed within the air-lock, Lucky was hurled suddenly downward, hitting the rocky floor with a clatter and force that knocked the breath out of him. Dingo's braying laughter filled his helmet.

  The outer door closed, the inner opened. Lucky got to his feet, actually thankful for the normality of gravity.

  "Get in, nark." Dingo was holding a blaster.

  Lucky paused as he entered the asteroid's interior. His eyes shifted quickly from side to side while the frost gathered at the rims of his face-plate. What he saw was not the soft-lit library of the hermit, Hansen, but a tremendously long hallway, the roof of which was supported by a series of pillars. He could not see to the other end. Openings to rooms pierced the wall of the corridors regularly. Men hurried to and fro and there was the smell of ozone and machine oil in the air. In the distance he could hear the characteristic drum-drum of what must have been gigantic hyperatomic motors.

  It was quite obvious that this was no hermit's cell, but a large industrial plant, inside an asteroid.

  Lucky bit his lower lip thoughtfully and wondered despondently if all this information would die with him now.

  Dingo said, "In there, nark. Get in there."

  It was a storeroom he indicated, its shelves and bins well filled, but empty of human beings other than themselves.

  "Say, Dingo," said one of the pirates nervously, "why are we showing him all this? I don't think-"

  "Then don't talk," said Dingo, and laughed. "Don't worry, he won't tell anyone about anything he sees. I guarantee that. Meanwhile I have a little something to finish with him. Get that suit off him."

  He was removing his own suit as he spoke. He stepped out, monstrously bulky. One hand rubbed slowly over the hairy back of the other. He was savoring the moment.

  Lucky said firmly, "Captain Anton never gave you orders to kill me. You're trying to finish a private feud and it will only get you into trouble. I'm a valuable man to the captain and he knows it."

  Dingo sat down on the edge of a bin of small metal objects, with a grin on his face. "To listen to you, nark, you'd think you had a case. But you didn't fool us, not for one minute. When we left you on the rock with the hermit, what do you think we did? We watched. Captain Anton's no fool. He sent me back. He said, 'Watch that rock and report back.' I saw the hermit's dinghy leave. I could have blasted you out of space then, but the order was to follow.

  "I stayed off Ceres for a day and a half and spotted the hermit's dinghy hitting out for space again. I waited some more. Then I caught this other ship coming out to meet it. The man off the dinghy got on to the other ship and I followed you when you took off."

  Lucky could not help smiling. "Tried to follow, you mean."

  Dingo's face turned a blotchy red. He spat out, "All right. You were faster. Your kind is good at running. What of it? I didn't have to chase you. I just came here and waited. I knew where you were heading. I've got you, haven't I?"

  Lucky said, "All right, but what have you got? I was unarmed on the hermit's rock. I didn't have any weapons, while the hermit had a blaster. I had to do what he said. He wanted to get back to Ceres and he forced me along so he could claim he was being kidnapped if the men of the asteroids stopped him. You admit yourself that I got off Ceres as fast as I could and tried to get back here."

  "In a nice, shiny government ship?"

  "I stole it. So? It just means that you've got another ship for your fleet. And a good one."

  Dingo looked at the other pirates. "Doesn't he throw the comet-dust, though?"

  Lucky said, "I warn you again. The captain will take anything that happens to me out on you."

  "No he won't," snarled Dingo, "because he knows who you are and so do I, Mr. David Lucky Starr. Come on, move out into the middle of the room."

  Dingo rose. He said to his two companions, "Get those bins out of the way. Pull them over to one side."

  They looked at his staring, blood-congested face once and did as he said. Dingo's bulbously thickset body was slightly stooped, his head sank down into his bulging shoulders, and his thick, somewhat bandy, legs planted themselves firmly. The scar on his upper lip was a vivid white.

  He said, "There are easy ways of finishing you and there are nice ways. I don't like a nark and I especially don't like a nark who fouls me in a push-gun fight. So before I finish you, I'm breaking you into little pieces."

  Lucky, looking tall and spindly in comparison with the other, said, "Are you man enough to take care of me alone, Dingo, or will your two friends help you?"

  "I don't need help, pretty boy." He laughed nastily. "But if you try to run, they'll stop you, and if you keep on trying to run, they've got neuronic whips that will really stop you." He raised his voice. "And use them, you two, if you have to."

  Lucky waited for the other to make his move. He knew that the one most nearly fatal tactic would be to try to mix it up at close quarters. Let the pirate enclose his chest in the hug of those enormous arms and broken ribs would be the nearly certain result.

  Dingo, right fist drawn back, ran forward. Lucky stood his ground as long as he dared, then stepped quickly to his right, seized his opponent's extended left arm, pulled backward, taking advantage of the other's forward momentum, and caught the other's ankle against his foot.

  Dingo went sprawling forward and down heavily. He was up immediately, however, one cheek scraped and little lights of madness dancing in his ey
es.

  He thundered toward Lucky, who retired nimbly toward one of the bins lining the wall.

  Lucky seized the ends of the bin and swung his legs up and out. Dingo caught them in his chest, halted momentarily. Lucky whirled out of the way and was free in the center of the room again.

  One of the pirates called out, "Hey, Dingo, let's stop fooling around."

  Dingo panted, "I'll kill him. I'll kill him."

  But he was more cautious now. His little eyes were nearly buried in the fat and gristle that surrounded his eyeballs. He crept forward, watching Lucky, waiting for the moment he might strike.

  Lucky said, "What's the matter, Dingo? Afraid of me? You get afraid very quick for such a big talker."

  As Lucky expected, Dingo roared incoherently and dashed heavily and directly at him. Lucky had no trouble in evading the bull rush. The side of his hand came sharply and swiftly down on the back of Dingo's neck.

  Lucky had seen any number of men knocked unconscious by that particular blow; he had seen more than one killed. But Dingo merely staggered. He shook it off and turned, snarling.

  He walked flat-footedly toward the dancing Lucky. Lucky lashed out with his fist, which landed sharply on Dingo's scraped cheek bone. Blood flowed, but Dingo did not so much as attempt to block the blow, nor did he blink when it landed.

  Lucky squirmed away and struck sharply twice more at the pirate. Dingo paid no attention. He came forward, always forward.

  Suddenly, unexpectedly, he went down, apparently as a man who had stumbled. But his arms shot out as he fell and one hand closed about Lucky's right ankle. Lucky went down too.

  "I've got you now," whispered Dingo.

  He reached up to catch Lucky's waist and in a moment, fast-locked, they were rolling across the floor.

  Lucky felt the growing, enclosing pressure and pain washed inward like an advancing flame. Dingo's fetid panting was in his ear.

  Lucky's right arm was free, but his left was enclosed in the numbing vise of the other's grip about his chest. With the last of his fading strength, Lucky brought his right fist up. The blow traveled no more than four inches, catching the point where Dingo's chin met his neck with a force that sent stabs of pain the length of Lucky's arm.

  Dingo's grip loosened for a moment and Lucky, writhing, flung himself out of the deadly embrace and onto his feet.

  Dingo got up more slowly. His eyes were glassy, and fresh blood was trickling out the corner of his mouth.

  He muttered thickly, "The whip! The whip!"

  Unexpectedly he turned upon one of the pirates who had been standing there a frozen onlooker. He wrested the weapon from the other's hand and send him sprawling.

  Lucky tried to duck, but the neurom'c whip was up and flashing. It caught his right side and stimulated the nerves of the area it struck into a bath of pain. Lucky's body stiffened and went down again.

  For a moment his senses recorded only confusion, and with what consciousness he possessed he expected death to be a second off. Dimly he heard a pirate's voice.

  "Look, Dingo, the captain said to make it look like an accident. He's a Council of Science man and…"

  It was all Lucky heard.

  When he swam back to consciousness with an excruciating tingle of pins and needles down the length of his side, he found himself in a space-suit again. They were just afyout to put on his helmet. Dingo, lips puffed, cheek and jaw bruised, watched malignantly.

  There was a voice in the doorway. A man was entering hurriedly, full of talk.

  Lucky heard him say, "-for Post 247. It's getting so I can't keep track of all the requisitions. I can't even keep our own orbit straight enough to keep up the co-ordinate corrections of-"

  The voice flickered out. Lucky twisted his head and caught sight of a small man with spectacles and gray hair. He was just inside the doorway, looking with mingled astonishment and disbelief at the disorder that met his eyes.

  "Get out," roared Dingo.

  "But I've got to have a requisition-"

  "Later!"

  The little man left and the helmet was fitted over Lucky's head.

  They took him out again, through the air-lock, to a surface which was now in the feeble blaze of the distant Sun. A catapult waited on a relatively flat table of rock. Its function was no mystery to Lucky. An automatic winch was drawing back a large metal lever which bent more and more slowly till its original slant had strained back into a complete horizontal at the tip. Light straps were attached to the bent lever and then buckled about Lucky's waist.

  "Lie still," said Dingo. His voice was dim and scratchy in Lucky's ear. There was something wrong with the helmet receiver, Lucky realized. "You're just wasting your oxygen. Just to make you feel better, we're sending ships up to blast your friend down before he can pick up speed, if he feels like running."

  An instant after that Lucky felt the sharp tingling vibration of the lever as it was released. It sprang elas-tically back into its original position with terrific force. The buckles about him parted smoothly and he was cast off at a speed of a mile a minute or better, with no gravitational field to slow him. There was one glimpse of the asteroid with the pirates looking up at him. The whole was shrinking rapidly even as he watched.

  He inspected his suit. He already knew that his helmet radio had been maltreated. Sure enough, the sensitivity knob hung loose. It meant his voice could penetrate no more than a few miles of space. They had left him his space-suit's push-gun. He tried it but nothing happened. Its gas stores had been drained.

  He was quite helpless. There were only the contents of one oxygen cylinder between himself and a slow, unpleasant death.

  Chapter 12

  Ship Versus Ship

  With a clammy constriction of his chest Lucky surveyed the situation. He thought he could guess the pirates' plans. On the one hand, they wished to get rid of him, since he obviously knew far too much. On the other hand, they must want him to be found dead in such a way that the Council of Science would be unable to prove conclusively that his death was by pirate violence.

  Once before, pirates had made the mistake of killing an agent of the Council and the resultant fury had been crushing. They would be more cautious this time.

  He thought, They'll rush the Shooting Starr, blanket it with interference to keep Bigman from sending out a call for help. Then they can use a cannon blast on its hull. It would make a good imitation of a meteorite collision. They can make that look better by sending their own engineers on board to hocus the shield activators. It would look as though a defect in the mechanism had prevented the shield from going up as the meteorite approached.

  They would know his own course through space, Lucky knew. There would be nothing to deflect him from whatever his original angles of flight had been. Later, with him safely dead, they would pick him up and send him whirling in an orbit about the broken Shooting Starr. The discoverers (and perhaps one of their own ships would send in an anonymous report of the find) would reach an obvious conclusion. Bigman at the controls, maneuvering to the last, killed at his post. Lucky, on the other hand, scrambling into a suit, damaging the external sensitivity knob of the suit's radio in the excitement. He would have been unable to call for help. He would have expended his push-gun's gas in a desperate and futile attempt to find a place of safety. And he would have died.

  It would not work. Neither Conway nor Henree could possibly believe that Lucky would be concerned only with his own safety while Bigman stuck loyally at the controls. But then, the failure of the scheme, would be small satisfaction to a dead Lucky Starr. Worse yet, it would not only be Lucky Starr who would die, but all the information now locked in Lucky Starr's head.

  For a moment he was sick with outrage at himself that he had not forced all his suspicions on Conway and Henree before leaving, that he had waited till he boarded the Shooting Starr before preparing the personal capsule. Then he gained control of himself. No one would have believed him without facts.

  For that very reas
on he would have to get back.

  Have to!

  But how? What good was "have to" when one was alone and helpless in space with a few hours' worth of oxygen and nothing else?

  Oxygen!

  Lucky thought, there's my oxygen. Anyone but Dingo would have drained his cylinder of all but dregs, to let death come quickly. But if Lucky knew Dingo, the pirate had sent him on his way with a loaded cylinder simply to prolong the agony.

  Good! Then he would reverse that. He would use the oxygen otherwise. And if he failed, death would come the sooner, despite Dingo.

  Only he must not fail.

  The asteroid had been crossing his line of vision periodically as he spun in space. First, it was a shrinking rock, its sunlit highlights slanting jaggedly across the blackness of space. Then it had been a bright star and a single line of light. The brightness was fading quickly now. Once the asteroid became dim enough to be simply one more in the myriad of stars, it was all over. Not many minutes were left before that would be the case.

  His clumsy, metal-covered fingers were already fumbling with the flexible tube that led from the air inlet just under the face-plate to the oxygen cylinder in back. He twisted strenuously at the bolt that held the air tube tightly fixed to the cylinder.

  It gave. He paused to fill his helmet and suit with oxygen. Ordinarily oxygen leaked slowly in from the cylinders at about the rate it was used up by human lungs. The carbon dioxide and water formed as the result of respiration were mostly absorbed by the chemicals contained in the valved canisters affixed to the inner surface of the suit's chest plates. The result was that oxygen was kept at a pressure one fifth that of Earth's atmosphere. This was exactly right, since four fifths of Earth's atmosphere is nitrogen anyway, which is useless for breathing.

  However, this left room for higher concentrations, up to somewhat more than normal atmospheric pressure, before there was danger of toxic effects. Lucky let the oxygen pour into his suit.