Asteroid Man Read online

  "Yes, but what the devil has it proved, exactly?" said the general. "I've proved that there's something out there dangerous enough to destroy five dart ships, but we're still no nearer finding out what the devil it is."

  "Yes, but without your system, sir, we wouldn't even have known there was anything there. Instead of five ships being lost, it might have been five planets."

  "I suppose there's something in that. Now what do you suggest we try and do now? Let's go over the ground and try to clarify things."

  "I've been going over," said Jonga, "over and over it, but nothing seems to come up. We spot one asteroid too many."

  "Right!"

  "We send up a survey force, five dart ships under the command of Squadron-Leader Greg Masterson, the finest man we've got. Masterson goes up; we lose radio contact for about fifteen hours. We take another check, and the asteroid is gone apparently having spirited away Masterson and his five ships with it. We're up against something here that has a technology considerably ahead of ours."

  "Or," broke in Krull, "we're up against a freak accident. It doesn't have to be anything intelligent, anything that's leveled against the empire."

  "I see what you mean," said the general. "It could be some kind of unnatural or accidental warp in the continuum in which they have all been sucked. Maybe that's what gave the impression of an asteroid too many."

  "I wonder how a warp would show up on this screen."

  "I don't think it would show up at all," said Krull.

  "Well, that's put the tin hat on that one. On the other hand, this odd asteroid might have come through the warp. The ships might have spotted at once there was something odd about it and flown at once to intercept. The asteroid disappears back through the warp, and the ships go through after it."

  "That again is a possibility, in which case, what happened to them?"

  "Well, they've finished up on the other side of nowhere, perhaps thousands and thousands of light years away, on the other side of the galaxy, out among the Out-worlders."

  "In that case, was it really an accident, sir?" asked Jonga. "Do you think this warp is a weapon, a new kind of spy weapon the Other Worlders have got? You see, just imagine that they could control hyperspace, the grey spaces between the galaxies. Imagine they've got some way of short-circuiting mileage and space and time as we understand it. The first thing they'd want to know is what kind of people we are, and what kind of weapons we've got. So they send out one of these decoy asteroids, with something rather odd about it, to decoy us into sending up a small interception squadron. Having done that, our squadron attacks, goes in to investigate, is promptly whisked away through their vortex, or whatever they've got and finishes up on the other side of the grey spaces, thousands of years and millions of miles from home."

  "Precisely," said Rotherson. "That's a very terrifying possibility. If they could get a lot of ships through the continuum, they could probably get a planet through if they wanted to."

  Jonga shuddered. "Wouldn't be much use sending a fleet out to intercept, then, would it, sir?"

  "It certainly wouldn't," agreed the general. "The loss of five ships we can stand; the loss of five thousand ships would leave us defenseless."

  "Suppose we sent half the fleet?"

  "Maybe that's just what they want. Imagine that for a weapon. You trick the enemy into sending half his fleet, shall we say on a wild goose chase after some phoney asteroid. Soon as he gets up there, what happens? You suck them through your vortex; you blow them out on the other end of the universe, on some completely unknown corner of nethermost space, and having gotten them out there out of the way, you proceed with your attack. If any of the survivors manage to crawl back—perhaps fifty thousand years too late for the battle—or rather the descendants of the fleet's survivors, they find that their old world has been in enemy hands for so long that your empire's probably decayed as well. They've arrived just in time to remember some prehistoric legend as fact."

  "I see what you mean."

  "Let's go back and take a concrete example," said the general. "When Hannibal fought the Romans, they had the same sort of trick. Just imagine that they were technological creatures instead of being prehistoric ones. The Romans send up a decoy asteroid, and they lure off half of Hannibal's army. Half his space fleet goes off and disappears. The romans go in and fight his drastically reduced forces and beat them. Any time now the descendants of those men who were lured away, and swept through the space-time vortex, would probably be limping back. Just imagine how they would feel, perhaps not having developed technically at all since they were swept away. Just imagine them coming back to an earth of the 23rd century. The would wonder whose side they were on. They would want to take part in the war that was fought so long ago. Just imagine men wanting to fight for a Carthaginian empire that doesn't exist any longer! That's going to be a problem in loyalties for them."

  "So the answer seems to be then, sir, that we don't send the fleet?" said Krull.

  "No, we don't send the fleet, not yet," said the general. "There's a lot more to find out yet. I'm sick and tired of sitting behind this desk. I'm a straightforward soldier at heart, and I like a soldier's straightforward job. Give me a gun, and an enemy to shoot, and a bit of open ground to shoot him in."

  "What are you hinting at, sir?" asked Krull.

  "I'm not hinting; I'm going to come out in the open with it in a minute," said Rotherson. "I'm tired of trying to play this game on the other man's ground. I'm going to bring it on to my ground. I'm going to take one of those dart ships, and I'm going to call for volunteers, and I'm going out there to investigate the asteroid belt personally first hand." He looked from one to the other. "This is about the most irregular thing I've ever done. But this isn't the kind of problem that's going to be solved by sitting behind a desk. I can hand over the reins here to General Foster in the next section—simply tell him that as from now he's in command of both till I return—if I return. Shouldn't be difficult to get enough volunteers to man one dart ship. Every man on the base has been through basic space training before he was drafted into his own department. What about you two chaps?"

  The idea had come like a bolt from the blue. Krull sat for several moments deep in silent thought. Jonga, younger and more impulsive than his colleague, leapt at the chance with both hands.

  "I'll come, sir; delighted to!"

  "Right! We'll take Dolores as well. If we get a chance to come to grips with these beggars, she'll be more than handy."

  So I was right, thought Krull. She was trained on Jupiter.

  "Who else? We only need another man," said the general softly. "I'll ring through to the radio room and see if I can get one of the chaps there to come as a 'sparks.'" He picked up the televiewer on his desk and flashed through to the radio room. A young technician was in the office within three minutes.

  "Right!" said the general, with the sudden decisiveness that made him the man he was. "This is the kind of thing I like. This is action. This I can handle." He rattled off a memo to Foster on the teleprinter and led the way out of the office. The section of the fleet under his command lay gleaming and silent in the moonlight on the landing field. It looked for all the world like a pool of great silver fish, basking in the silent stillness of a quiet river.

  "We'll go and catch us a minnow," said the general. He walked across to the nearest of the dart ships, and rang the emergency handle for two field mechanics. They hurried over.

  "I want this thing operational," said the general, slapping the side of a ship.

  "She's ready now, sir," said the mechanic who had reached him first.

  "Good! Suits on board?"

  "Yes, sir!"

  "Nothing much else to be done, then, is there?" He looked at Krull. "Will you astrogate?"

  "O.K., Chief."

  "Climb aboard," said the general. He pressed the ramp release button at the side of the ship, and the collapsible beryllium ramp slid down. He gave an almost schoolboyish grin to his companions
.

  "We'll probably get court-martialed over this. Still, that'll be a new experience, if nothing else! Right-o, chaps; we're going aboard!"

  With mixed feelings the party climbed aboard the ship. The general moved forward.

  "It's a long time since these old hands got hold of a control button," he said, half to the others and half to himself. "It's the only cure for that itch, though, to get out there and fly the thing!" They settled back in the deep upholstery of the anti-grav couches, settled back and waited for blast-off.

  The dart ship eased her nose gently up toward the sky, and then when the indicator showed they were exactly aligned with the take-off angle, Rotherson depressed the firing studs and eased himself back in the deep foam of the pilot's chair. One, two, three, three and a half, four G's mounted on the indicator. It was over in a matter of seconds, and the indicator began sinking back again.

  None of them blacked out—the designers had seen to that—but the strain had been quite something.

  "That's another offense we can put down in the book," remarked the general cheerfully.

  "What's that, sir?" asked Krull.

  "Taking off without the monthly medical check," retorted the general with an impish grin. "Wonder how many days C.B. we shall get for that? Anyway, a lot of this brass is too heavy to carry around."

  The human side of him was coming out now, coming out very distinctly. The more they saw of him as a man, not just as a commanding officer, the more Krull and Jonga warmed to their leader. He was an immense personality, but he had been all too obviously a fish out of water. He was a proper son-of-a-gun of the old school, straightforward, direct, fighting soldier, completely out of his element in a chair behind a desk. His mind was not equipped to deal with complex problems, any more than Jonga was built to sit and watch charts. They were like men who had come home, those two, Jonga and his general. They belonged out there in space. They would have belonged in Spitfires three hundred years earlier. They would have belonged aboard a pirate ship or a covered wagon. They would have belonged in the army of Charles I, those dashing, flashing, sword-slashing cavaliers! They belonged anywhere where there was life, and excitement and adventure. They didn't belong behind desks. Paper was anathema to them. They didn't want second-hand life. They didn't want charts and computers. They wanted horses and swords, space ships and hand blasters, adventure with a capital A. It was life and breath to them. It was more essential to their mental well-being, than blood!

  The ship lifted on its plume of flame, dancing like some silver bird without wings, dancing higher and higher, probing, thrusting, against the blue dome above it. The blue dome of sky and space—seeking escape from the cage called gravity. Up and on, ever upwards and onwards, higher and farther and faster flew the ship. She was well away from escape velocity now, and earth was receding behind her, a great green and blue and brown ball, like some ancient geographical globe spinning on its stand—the invisible stand called space.

  The ship sped on, out and up, far out beyond the orbit of the moon. And as General Rotherson's enormous, powerful hands played over the control buttons, nursing every ounce of speed from the supremely fast dart ship, the orbit of Mars flicked its way onto the orbit computer. Then they were out beyond the orbit of Mars, heading for the fringes of the asteroid belt itself, heading for mystery and the unknown.

  Looking for the spot where the deadly, unknown planetoid had disappeared, taking with it the five ships of the survey expedition.

  CHAPTER IX

  All was excitement in the great seven-planet empire of Altair. Excitement because, after months of preparation, the green races had developed a weapon which was hoped to be proof against the apparently infallible monster in control of the devastating asteroid which had wrecked one of their colonial outposts and carried off their beautiful and beloved Princess Astra.

  Its inventor was a man named Rashak. Rashak of the green skin, the high-domed forehead, and the penetrating, intelligent eyes. Rashak, with a brain as fast and as delicate as an electronic computer. The three dominant races in the Altairian empire were the green scientific intelligentsia, a kind of mental aristocracy; the black athletic, vigorous, muscular breed; and the red, with their copper-colored skins, their aesthetic features and strange psychic abilities. It would have been thought almost impossible for three such vastly different races to have lived and moved and had their being together without conflict and discord. And yet, in the Altairian empire this was very definitely the case. The history of their empire itself made a brilliant sociological study in its own right. Long, long ago in the remote past there had been discords—savage, bloodthirsty discords, but the Altarian empire was an old one and these were long forgotten. The oldest mythology, in which traces of history could be seen like gold threads through the fabric of myth and fable, stated that in the beginning the black races had been dominant. They, because of their athletic prowess and warrior ability, had held sway over the planet of their birth when conflicts were decided with broadsword, shield and spear, as in the days of the early Spartan armies of earth, the epoch of Greek superiority, so the athletic races had triumphed in the early days of Altair. These colored giants, stronger than earthly heroes, had cut their way through all opposition, until there had been no race anywhere on their home world who had been able to stand against them. Then, in far-away, hidden corners, the red men had begun to rise. The red men, with their thin esthetic faces, their strange contemplative ways, their weird abilities to control both their own bodies and the powers of nature. You could bury a red man alive for a month, dig him up, and by the incantation of certain spells and charms, and the application to his face of certain secret herbal preparations, he would rise to his feet and resume his normal life. It had even been rumored in the old days of myth and legend, that a past master in the secret arts of the red men, could be buried for centuries. They could divine the future by means of stones and bones, and the entrails of animals. They could gaze into crystal spheres and see the dim, unwritten might-have-been, unfolding. They could go into a trance-like state and send their soul, or astral body, on a fantastic journey, across the universe itself if necessary. There seemed no limit to the powers of the mind of the red men. The dark race, despite their physical prowess, were superstitious and highly awestruck by these feats and magical mental performances. The red men could levitate, could make themselves appear and disappear, could teleport objects for short distances, and in consequence the black race regarded them as demi-gods or demons. As the centuries rolled by, they gradually infiltrated, and like Greeks in the Roman world, they became the power behind the scenes. They were not yet openly kings—but they were kingmakers. They pulled the strings to make the nominal black chiefs dance to their bidding, and then, as more centuries rolled by, the masquerade was over, and the red men held the superior position. Now they were no longer the chief's advisers; they were the kings and the emperors and the rulers of the planet. But the weapons were still the sword and the spear and the shield. During that period of transition of power from black to red, there were many blood-soaked fields of carnage. The red were not so numerical as the black, and what the darker-colored race lacked in mental ability, they made up for in courage and strength.

  The bloody centuries drew to a close, with the red men firmly in the saddle and the blacks subservient to their priestly hierarchy. More centuries rolled by, and a new race came from hiding, came from the remote corners of the planet—the technological green race. Where the black races had relied upon courage and muscle, and where the red had relied upon mysticism and superstition and the power which could best be described as psychic—so the green used technology.

  The reds could discover what was happening in a distant part of the planet by going into a trance and transporting their astral body to any place they desired. The greens duplicated this trick by inventing television and taking a camera to any part of the world they needed. The red could bury themselves alive by a stupendous effort of will over mind, of mind over m
atter… the greens did the same thing by taking with them a supply of food and oxygen. Anything the reds could do by mental power, the greens did by technology. Whereas there is a limit to mental power, there is no limit to an expanding technological movement. It was a kind of scientific Renaissance that swept across Altair. First came the steam engine, then internal combustion; from internal combustion came the jet; and from the jet, ultimately the jet-rocket, and atomic power was established.

  Once the green races had developed atomic power, there was nothing they couldn't do. The crown began to slip from the red foreheads. The greens had very little time for the so-called psychic powers of those they had deposed, and a singularly materialistic philosophy became dominant. If there was a god at all, it was the great god science. The great science appeared to know all the answers—or did it? Something else had to be found.

  It was not till the green discovered that there was something lacking that they made a serious effort to solve it scientifically. They discovered that there was some fatal flaw in their system of life and government. Their questing ships began to look for it on the other six planets of the seven-planet Altairian system.

  They found it at last in the white race… the white race with jet black hair and jet black eyes; the white race who seemed to combine the three factors which their own race had to a limited degree. The white had almost as much technical ability as the green, but not quite. They recognized the importance of worship and religion and development of the soul, as did the reds, but they lacked the finer points of aestheticism which the reds had developed to a supreme art. They were strong and tough and athletic, but not quite so strong and muscular and robust or courageous as the blacks. They were very much an amalgam of all three, and they had, being an amalgum of all three—the realization that supremacy by one race was very wrong, and that their empire could only develop if their races worked together, realizing their dependence on each other.