Rocket Jockey Page 9

  Then his fingers noticed a change in the slope of the floor; it was no longer completely flat, but seemed to slope down. There must be a depression in the bottom, leading to the drain. He followed it carefully.

  His finger touched a rough edge, and found a small hole. Kicking weakly with his legs to hold himself in position, he brought the filter to it, and seated it. Once in place, screwing it down was the matter of half a minute.

  Jerry shook his head inside his helmet, and cautiously lined himself up, before starting to swim for the top. He was doing better, even though more slowly—he came up directly under the manhole, to tap against it sharply.

  It unscrewed quickly, and he felt Tod MacLane's tough hands helping him out. The sound of the manhole being closed reached him, and then light began to strike his eyes as the engineer hastily cleaned off some of the fuel from his helmet.

  "What time?" he asked. Tod held up a watch, and he was surprised to find that they still lacked half an hour of his deadline. It had felt like fifty hours.

  He wriggled out of his suit, stuffed the messy garment into a locker, and headed up the shaft.

  He had to get the fuel off his hands before it could injure his skin. By then, Tod should have the fuel lines cleaned, with filtered fuel coming through, and Jerry belonged in the control room. He couldn't entirely trust his five-hour deadline.

  Chapter 10 Distress Signal

  ekry was still unsure of how much danger they had been in, when he finally set the controls on auto-

  U

  matic and climbed down the rail toward his hammock. It was in the past, anyhow, not worth worrying about. At least, they were out of danger now. He started to take off his worn uniform, but it was too much effort.

  His body was a mass of aching muscles when he woke under Tod's urging. The engineer was shaking his shoulder and trying to tell him something. He groaned and sat up. Then he heard the buzz of the radio, and snapped out of his stupor. He even forgot the soreness of his muscles as he scrambled up the rail to the control room.

  The signal in his headphones was the rasping buzz of an automatic signaler. "SOS! SOS! SOS!"

  It went on endlessly. He tried to answer, but the signal was constant, with no interruptions, though its speed changed. It must be cranked by hand—and that meant the ship in distress was close.

  He swept the vacuum with his radar antenna, watching for a telltale pip, while holding down the fixed response button so the screen would respond to anything, moving or not.

  He found it, less than fifty miles away, and almost exactly matching his speed. Then he focused on it with the tele-panels, and saw that it was a sleek, long ship.

  His hands cut the thrust of the rocket as he estimated their relative speeds. It was close enough for him to match course with it in a few minutes of juggling. He cut on the steering tubes, and swung delicately toward the other ship, drifting on without any flare from its rockets.

  It was surprising to find how closely their courses matched. The other ship was a trifle faster than he was, and slightly off his course. A few touches of the main blast sent him drifting closer, until he was going a few miles per hour faster than they. More would require turning end over end and braking with the big tube. It would be quicker this way.

  Tod muttered something, and pointed through the quartz ports, where the ship was now showing up plainly. "A Martian—and it looks like a racer. Must be the Martian ship!"

  Jerry studied it, and nodded. It was clearly racing built. He'd thought that the Martians were days away before now, but there was no time to speculate. He could see a gaping hole, the size of a bathtub, in one wall. Evidently the ship had been struck a glancing blow by a meteorite, and a section of one wall had buckled in.

  "Got a patch for that?" Jerry asked. Tod studied the size of the hole in the ship that was now only a few yards away, and nodded.

  The Last Hope drew closer by the second now. Jerry studied the pattern of handholds on the skin of the Martian ship, and edged closer with the steering tubes. There was a shock and grating sound as the handholds on the Last Hope caught those of the other ship. Then it was over, and they were locked together loosely.

  Jerry tried the radio again, but got no answer. He listened for a second. The SOS signals were still coming. They must have felt the shock of contact, but were continuing to send so that he'd know they were still alive.

  Tod came up from the engine room, bringing the welder and a rolled-up sheet of beryllium-aluminum alloy. He was half into his space suit, and he waited while Jerry climbed into the only other clean one.

  Jerry followed Tod out through the air lock, carrying the welder. The other ship lay a few handholds away. Tod snapped on his rope, kicked off, and drifted to the other ship, grabbing a handhold, perhaps ten feet away from the gaping hole. Jerry swallowed nervously, but he followed Tod's example, and began pulling himself along the Martian ship until he could climb in through the hole. He was careful not to let the broken metal catch his suit. A puncture here meant almost immediate death.

  Tod grinned briefly at him, and took the welder. The metal of the Martian ship was thin, as all racing hulls were, and the welder cut through it like a razor blade through paper. He cut away the rough edges in a few minutes, and began fitting the sheet he had brought over the hole.

  Jerry held it while Tod tacked it in place with a few quick welds. The automatic machinery of the ship must still be working. A second later, there was a motion of air, and the ship began filling. The pressure forced the sheet firmly into place, and Tod sprayed the edges with a can of goo that would form a temporary seal.

  Jerry pressed a flap on his helmet open and sampled the air. It was cold, but breathable, and he threw the helmet back.

  "Go look for the men," Tod told him. "I can tack this thing down in ten minutes."

  Jerry found that the hole in the inner hull of the Martian ship was barely large enough for him to crawl through. He hadn't noticed it before, though he'd known it was there. The space between hulls was usually evacuated, and the air that flowed out had proved there must be a hole. The two facing walls were polished to a mirror finish that added to the insulating properties, and the outer hull stopped most of the tiny meteorites.

  He crawled through into the unfamiliar maze of the Martian construction. It took him several minutes to find the railing between decks, located at the side of the vessel instead of down the center. He was beginning to worry now; the Martians should have come out, as soon as the air was sealed from escaping.

  He worked his way up slowly to the front. When he found the main living quarters, the door was shut tightly, and the shock of the collision seemed to have sprung it. It refused to open until he braced his legs against one edge and pulled with his full strength. Then a gust of air almost knocked him down as it came open. Apparently, there had been a slow leak through the sprung door, but full pressure hadn't yet been reached.

  The control room door was also sealed, but it opened now, bringing the smell of stale air. A stringy, tall Martian staggered out, breathing in great gulps of the pure air. Two others followed him.

  "Thanks," the Martian captain said, finally, and a taut grin spread over his dark face. "Almost got us, before we spotted your blast. Didn't know whether you'd get the signal—our power was off up there."

  Jerry could guess most of the story. They had apparently been forward when the collision came. The automatic doors had saved them, but the slow leak had finally forced them into the control room. Obviously, no suits had been near, and there had been no way for them to repair the damages. Then, after the hole was sealed, they'd had to wait until the outer quarters filled with air before they could open the control room seal.

  "Down to our last bottle of canned air, when we saw you. For once, we're glad to see you, Earthmanl"

  Jerry grinned back, nodding. "And I'll have to admit I wasn't too sorry to see you here. I thought you'd be back to the inner planets by now. You had head start enough."

  "Bad
luck—ever since we reached Jupiter." The Martian shook his black-haired head bitterly. "The meteor finished it. Do you claim salvage?"

  Jerry realized it was his right. They were almost back to the break now, and he saw Tod start to nod. Then the little man shrugged, made a face, and shook his head. Jerry agreed with him. In an emergency, even a man's worst enemy was entitled to any help that could be given. There had been cases of salvage claiming in such rescues, but it wasn't something looked on with any favor.

  "You can fix the rest," he decided. "We've got to get back to the Last Hope. No salvage."

  Even if they had caught up to the Martian, there were still six other ships to be beaten. Jerry had been forgetting them too long, taking it for granted that the Martian ship was his worst rival. Finding that they were neck and neck took some of the worry off him, but the race still had to go on.

  He picked up his welder and reached for the snaps on his helmet. The Martian exchanged sudden glances with his two companions and raised a protesting hand.

  "At least have a glass of zesto with us, Earthman. We have one bottle on board, and this is a good time to open it."

  "They'll probably poison it," Tod warned sharply. But his eyes had a curious glitter. Zesto was a rare juice from a Martian herb. It wasn't a true stimulant, but it produced an almost miraculous power to make the body recover from fatigue, and the taste was delicious.

  The Martian grinned thinly, without letting his hard face soften. "No poison. We take this race as a business; it is a business, since commerce thrives for the world that wins. You five billion Earthmen have all the advantages against our poor fifteen million. Perhaps we find strange ways to win—but the object is to win, not to embrace your neighbor! We do not kill, however!"

  He seemed to be unusually talkative for a Martian. Jerry still hesitated, and the Martian went on. "You, young man, take all this like a sport. Win for dear old Earth! You're too proud to go around the rules, but you'll kill yourself and your crew in trying to win. We are businessmen—and businessmen know how to relax and not to try too hard—that leads only to errors in judgment, which is why you lose. You'll share the zesto before we each blast off?"

  Jerry looked inquiringly at Tod, who nodded slowly. There could be no harm in that, apparently. And there was just enough truth in the Martian's words to make them worth thinking over.

  Maybe he had been trying too hard. Maybe the responsibility of knowing he was just a kid in a man's position had been getting him down. He was too conscious of being captain. He nodded doubtfully.

  The Martian slapped his hand against a leather-covered thigh, and one of the men slipped off. He was back with a little green bottle and five paper cups. "Choose your cups, and pour first," the Martian suggested.

  Jerry started to refuse such a precaution against poison, but Tod was already pouring. He filled two cups, and handed one to Jerry. The Martians filled their own.

  "Your health—and our success!"

  "Darn all Martians!" Tod said flatly. The Martians laughed shortly, and lifted the cups. Jerry swallowed his slowly, letting it trickle down.

  Almost immediately, the fatigue and soreness seemed to leave his body. It would have been a dangerous relaxation, except for the fact that the herb extract actually did improve the general tone of the body.

  Now the Martian captain glanced at a wrist watch, and seemed all business again. "Thank you for the rescue," he stated formally.

  Jerry put down his cup, and again reached for his helmet clasps. "Thanks for the zesto," he replied. Then he snapped the helmet closed and began heading toward the air lock the Martian was opening.

  The outer seal of the lock opened automatically. Jerry found that they were less than two feet above one of the handholds of the Last Hope. He reached for it and began moving carefully along the shell of his ship, heading for his own air lock. Unlike alcohol, the zesto produced no false feeling of confidence. He was careful to keep himself snapped to the handholds by the ropes and clamps on his belt as he moved along. The sound of Tod behind him reached him through the metal of the ship.

  He glanced back, to see that two of the Martians were in the air lock of their ship, pushing against the Last Hope with metal poles. Inertia still made it hard to move large bodies, even without weight, but the two ships were beginning to drift apart now. The Martians waited until the poles would no longer reach, and then closed their outer lock.

  Jerry slipped cautiously into die lock of the Last Hope and helped Tod in. They shucked off the space suits as quickly as they could, and went up to the control room. Tod was still frowning doubtfully.

  "We should have let them rot out here," he complained. "It doesn't pay to help Martians!"

  "Maybe that's what's wrong with the whole affair. Maybe if we helped them more, they'd stop pulling foul play on us," Jerry suggested. Tod made no answer, but he still stared suspiciously out at the Martian ship.

  It was maneuvering off cautiously with its steering rockets now, waiting for space enough to enable the ships to use their main blasts without danger to each other. Jerry began sliding the Last Hope away with equal care. Now a few hundred feet separated the two ships.

  "They couldn't hurt us this time, anyhow," he pointed out to Tod. "We had them all under our eyes. You can't desert a damaged ship out here."

  Tod agreed sourly. "You did the right thing, lad. I'm not saying you didn't. But you still can't trust them."

  Jerry let him fume. He was probably ready to believe that the Martians had deliberately wrecked their ship and holed themselves up just to slow down the Last Hope.

  "They got power in the control room awful fast," Tod pointed out suddenly. "Less than five minutes after we leave, they can work the steering rockets. I thought they didn't have enough current to work a radio."

  He had a point there, though Jerry couldn't see what good it could have done the Martians to go through any elaborate pretense.

  Now the Martian ship belched out a thin streak of deep violet exhaust, and began moving off rapidly. Surprisingly, it seemed to be pointing back toward Jupiter, to intercept Callisto or Ganymede at the side of the big planet.

  "Maybe they're hurt worse than they thought," he muttered.

  "Take another look," Tod snorted. The old engineer was shaking his fists at the retreating ship, hopping about in sudden fury that sent him in great jumps from the ceiling to the floor. He extended a finger, pointing. "Look at that blast'."

  Jerry tightened his fists into hard knots as it hit him. The racing rocket from Mars was using a red blast— and this was uncoloredl It couldn't have been the racer. It must have been another Martian ship, fixed up to look like a racer, and waiting out here to intercept him.

  He let his mind race back over the words he'd exchanged with the other captain. The Martian had never said that he was in the race. He'd told no lies, but had let Jerry leap to his own conclusions.

  But he could still see no sense to it. The delay had been only for half an hour, and it wasn't worth all that trouble. He should have been suspicious at the strange similarity of their speeds and courses, but such things had happened before.

  Then he stopped, staring at Tod. "We saw three of them—but we wouldn't have known if there'd been a fourth one in a space suit. And we left the Last Hope wide open. Tod, that Martian didn't want us to leave too fast—that's why he offered us the zesto!"

  Tod let out an agonized cry and jumped for the rail to rush down to inspect his engines. Jerry checked over the control panel rapidly. There seemed to be nothing wrong. A moment later, Tod's voice came over the phone.

  "Nothing here—the fuel spray we couldn't swab up before got all over the floor when you put on thrust. I can see my footprints, but there ain't any others. How about you?"

  "We'll soon see." Jerry cut on the blast. It responded perfectly, as the little steering rockets had done before.

  He checked over his instruments and found them responding properly. Nothing seemed to be disturbed.

  He se
t the ship back on automatic course, reporting to Tod. The engineer muttered something under his breath. Then he snorted. "Don't worry, lad. We'll find out soon enough what the dirty crooks were up tol"

  Jerry didn't answer. He was staring at his chart rack, and he already knew what had been taken. The asteroid chart was missing—the one chart that he'd have to have within the next few hours. Without it, it was almost suicide to try to run through the crazy belt of rocks and rubble and grinding planetoids.

  But he had to go through or quit the race.

  Chapter 11 Smallpox of Space

  I

  he asteroid belt was the roughest section in the Solar System, and only fools and ignorant men went through it, according to the books. The fools were the rocket racers, of course. And the miners who prospected the little hunks of rock and metal were mostly ignorant. Even their names for themselves showed that. Scientists had repeatedly pointed out that they couldn't mine meteors, which were only the disturbance caused by a meteorite striking an atmosphere. They should have been called meteorite miners, of course; but they were used to referring to themselves as meteor miners, and the name stuck.

  Even they were not foolish enough to try to cut through the belt at millions of miles per hour. They

  took it in short hops, at safe speeds, and they knew the section where they worked.

  Once, so astronomers believed, there had been a planet between Mars and Jupiter. Then Jupiter's pull had broken it up, and the pieces had been broken into smaller fragments, until now there were millions of rocky bits circling there in crazy, twisted orbits. Some were no bigger than pebbles, but others were tiny worlds, miles in diameter. Several thousand of the larger ones had been spotted before men ever reached the Moon.

  Jerry had spent his time working on the radar spotting device, trying to increase its sensitivity enough to make it useful at the speed with which they were traveling. He'd pored over the section they would hit in his mind, wracking his memory for the orbits of all the larger ones.