Harold L. Goodwin

The long hours passed, and only Rip's chronometer told him when the end of a day was reached. The Planeteers alternately worked on the surface and rested in the air of the landing boat compartment, while the asteroid sped steadily on its way.

When a series of sightings over several days gave Rip enough exact data to work on, he recalculated the orbit, found the amount that the course had to be corrected, and supervised the cutting of new holes in the metal.

Tubes of ordinary rocket fuel were placed in these and fired, and the thrust moved the asteroid slightly, just enough to make the corrections Rip needed. It was not necessary to take to the landing boat for these blasts. The Planeteers retired to their cave, which was now lined with nuclite as a protection against radiation.

Rip watched his dosimeter climb steadily as the radiation dosage mounted. Then he took the landing boat to the Scorpius, talked the problem over with the ship's medical department, and arranged for his men to take injections that would keep them from getting radiation sickness.

They left the asteroid belt far behind and passed within ten thousand miles of Mars. The Scorpius sent its entire complement of snapper-boats to the asteroid for protection, in case Consops made another try, then flamed off to Marsport to put in new supplies to replace those damaged when Rip had forced sudden and disastrous acceleration.

The asteroid had reached Earth's solar orbit before the cruiser returned, though Earth itself was on the other side of the sun. Rip ordered a survey and found the best place on the dark side to make a new base. The Planeteers cut out a cave with the torch, lined it with nuclite, and moved in the supplies. It would be their base to the end of the trip.

The sun was very hot now. On the sunny side of the asteroid the temperature had soared far past the boiling point of water. But on the dark side, Rip measured temperatures close to absolute zero.

When the Scorpius returned, he arranged with Commander O'Brine for the Planeteers to take turns going to the cruiser for showers and decent meals.

The asteroid approached the orbit of Venus, but the bright planet was some distance away, at its greatest elongation to the east of the sun. Mercury, however, loomed larger and larger. They would pass close to the hot planet.

O'Brine recalled Rip to the Scorpius and handed him a message.

Asteroid now within protection reach of Mercury and Terra bases. Your escort no longer required. Proceed immediately Titan, take on cargo and personnel.

The commander sighed. "Looks like I'll never get to Earth long enough to see my family."

Rip sympathized. "Tough, sir. Perhaps the cargo from Titan will be scheduled for Terra."

"That's what I hope," O'Brine agreed. "Well, here's where we part. Is there anything you need?"

Rip made a mental check on supplies. He had more than enough. "The only thing we need is a long-range communicator, sir. We'll need one to contact the planet bases."

"I'll see that you get one." The Irishman thrust out his hand. "Stay out of high vack, Foster. Too bad you didn't join us instead of the Planeteers. I might have made a decent officer out of you."

Rip grinned. "That's a real compliment, sir. I might return it by saying that you have the makings of a Planeteer officer yourself."

O'Brine chuckled. "All right. Let's declare a truce, Planeteer. We'll meet again. Space isn't very big."

A short time later Rip stood in front of his asteroid base and watched the great cruiser drive into space. A short distance away a snapper-boat was lashed to the landing boat. O'Brine had left it, with a word of warning.

"These Connies are plenty smart. I don't like leaving you unprotected, even within reach of Mercury and Terra, but orders are orders. Keep the snapper-boat, and you'll at least be able to put up a fight if you bump into trouble."

The asteroid sped on its lonely way for two days, and then a cruiser came out of space, its nuclear drive glowing. The Planeteers manned the rocket launcher, and Rip and Santos stood by the snapper-boat, just in case, but the cruiser was the Sagittarius, out of Mercury.

Capt. Go Sian-tek, a Chinese Planeteer officer, arrived in one of the cruiser's boats with three enlisted men.

Captain Go greeted Rip and his men, then handed over a plastic stylus plate ordering Rip to deliver six cubic meters of thorium for use on Mercury. While Koa supervised the cutting of the block, Rip and the captain chatted.

The Mercurian Planeteer base was in the twilight zone, but the Planeteers always worked on the sun side, wearing special alloy suits to mine the precious nuclite that only the hot planet provided.

At some time during its first years, Mercury had been so close to the sun that its temperature was driven high enough to permit a subatomic thermonuclear reaction. The reaction had shorn some elements of their electrons and left a thin coating of material composed almost entirely of neutrons. The nuclite was incredibly dense. It could be handled only in low gravity because of its weight. But nothing else provided the shielding against radiation and meteors half so well, and it was in great demand.

"Things aren't so bad," Go told Rip. "The base is comfortable, and we only work a two-hour shift out of each ten. We've had a plague of silly dillies recently. They got into one man's suit while we were working, but mostly they're just a nuisance."

Rip had heard of the creatures. They were like Earth armadillos, except that they were silicon animals and not carbon like those of Earth. They were drawn to oxygen like iron to a magnet, and their diamond-hard tongues, used for drilling rock in order to get the minerals on which they lived, could drive right through a space suit. Or, if these animals worked undetected for a while, they could drill through the shell of a space station.

Scralabus primus was the scientific name of the creature, but the fact that it looked like a silicon armadillo had given it the popular name of "silly dilly." Apart from its desire for oxygen, it was harmless.

Koa reported, "Sir, the block of thorium is ready. We've hung it on a line behind the landing-boat. The blast won't hurt it, and it's too big to get inside the boat."

"Fine, Koa. Well, Captain, that does it."

The Mercurian Planeteers got into their craft and blasted off, trailing the block of thorium in their exhaust. Rip watched the cruiser take the craft and thorium aboard, then drive toward Mercury, brilliant sunlight reflecting from its sleek sides. The planet was only a short distance away by spaceship. It was the largest thing in space, except for the sun, as seen from the asteroid.

Past the orbit of Mercury, the sun side of the asteroid grew dangerously hot for men in space suits. Rip and the Planeteers stayed in the bitter cold of the dark side, which ceased to be entirely dark. The temperature rose somewhat. They were close enough to the sun that the prominences, great flaming tongues of hydrogen that sped many thousands of miles into space, gave them light and enough heat to register on Rip's instruments.

Mercury was left far behind, and Earth could not be seen because of the sun. There was nothing to do now but ride out the rest of the trip as comfortably as possible, until it was time to throw the asteroid into a series of ever-tightening elliptical orbits around Earth, known as braking ellipses. The method would use Earth's gravity to slow them down to the proper speed. A single atomic bomb and a half dozen tubes of rocket fuel remained.

Then, as Rip was enjoying the comfort of air during his off-watch hour in the boat compartment, Koa beat an alarm on the door.

Rip and the Planeteers got into suits and opened up.

"It's Terra base calling on the communicator, sir," Koa reported. "Urgent message, they said, and they want to talk to you personally."

Rip hurried to the cave. The communicator indicator light was glowing bright red. He plugged in his helmet circuit and said, "This is Lieutenant Foster. Go ahead."

A voice crackled across space from Earth. "This is Terra base. Foster, a Consops cruiser has apparently been hiding behind the sun waiting for you. Our screens just picked it up, heading your way. We've sent orders to the Sagittarius on Mercury to give you cover, and the Aquila has taken off from here. But get this, Foster. The Consops cruiser will reach you first. You have about one hour. Do you understand?"

Rip understood all right. He understood too well. "Got you," he said shortly. "Now what?"

The communicator buzzed. "Take any appropriate action. You're on your own. Sorry. Sending the cruisers is all we can do. We'll stand by for word from you. If you think of any way we can help, let us know."

Rip asked, "How long before the cruisers arrive?"

"You're too close to us for them to move fast. They'll have to use time accelerating and decelerating. The Sagittarius should arrive in something less than two hours and the Aquila a few minutes later."

The communicator paused, then continued. "One thing more, Foster. The Connies know how badly we want that asteroid, but they also know we don't want it enough to start a war. Got that?"

"Got it," Rip stated wryly. "I got it good. Thanks for the warning, Terra base. Foster off."

"Terra base off. Stay out of high vack."

Fine advice, if it could be taken. Rip stared up at the brilliant stars, thinking fast. The Connie would have almost an hour's lead on the space-patrol cruisers. In that hour, if the Connie were willing to pay the price in blasted snapper-boats, Consops would have the asteroid. And Terra base had made it clear that the space patrol would not try to blast the Connie cruiser, because that would mean war.

Added together, the facts said just one thing: They had one hour in which to think of some way to hold off the Connies for an additional hour.

The Planeteers were clustered around him. Rip asked grimly, "Any of you ever study the ancient art of magic?"

The Planeteers remained silent and tense.

"Magic is what we need," Rip told them. "We have to make the whole asteroid disappear, or else we have to conjure up a space cruiser out of the thorium. Otherwise, we have barely an hour till we're either prisoners or dead!"