He closed a switch and a flexible diaphragm sucked inward high above, closing about the shaft of "Bertha," a hundred-twenty-inch telescope used for close work. The diaphragm made an air-tight seal, and above it Lucky could make out the smooth whir of the surface-lock opening. Bertha's large eye lifted upward, the diaphragm clinging, and was exposed to the heavens.
"Mostly," explained Charlie, "we use Bertha for photographic work. Ceres' rotation is too rapid for convenient optical observations. The point you're interested in is over the horizon, which is lucky."
He took his seat near the eyepiece, riding the telescope's shaft as though it were the stiff trunk of a giant elephant. The telescope angled and the young astronomer lifted high. Carefully he adjusted the focus.
He lifted out of his perch then and stepped down the rungs of a wall ladder. At the touch of his finger a partition directly below the telescope moved aside to show a black-lined pit. Into it a series of mirrors and lenses could focus and magnify the telescopic image.
There was only blackness.
Charlie said, "That's it." He used a meter stick as a point. "That little speck is Metis, which is a pretty big rock. It's twenty-five miles across, but it's millions of miles away. Here you have a few specks within a million miles of the point you're interested in, but they're to one side, outside the forbidden zone. We've got the stars blanked out by phase polarization or they'd confuse everything."
"Thank you," said Lucky. He sounded stunned.
"Any time. Glad to help whenever I can."
* * *
They were in the elevator, headed downward, before Lucky spoke again. He said distantly, "It can't be."
"Why not?" said Henree. "Your figures were wrong."
"How could they be? I got to Ceres."
"You may have intended one figure and put d wn another by mistake, then made a correction by eye and forgot to correct the paper."
Lucky shook his head. "I couldn't have done that. 1
just don't-Wait. Great Galaxy!" He stared at them
wildly.
"What's the matter, Lucky?"
"It works out! Space, it fits in! Look, I was wrong. It's not early in the game at all; it's darned late in the game. It may be too late. I've underestimated them again."
The elevator had reached the proper level. The door opened and Lucky was out with a rapid stride.
Conway ran after, seized his elbow, swung him about. "What are you talking about?"
"I'm going out there. Don't even think of stopping me. And if I don't come back, for Earth's sake, force the government to begin major preparations. Otherwise the pirates may be in control of the entire System within a year. Perhaps sooner."
"Why?" demanded Conway violently. "Because you couldn't find an asteroid?"
"Exactly," said Lucky.
Chapter 10
The Asteroid That Was
Bigman had brought Conway and Henree to Ceres on Lucky's own ship, the Shooting Starr, and for that Lucky was grateful. It meant he could go out into space with it, feel its deck beneath his feet, hold its controls in his hands.
The Shooting Starr was a two-man cruiser, built this last year after Lucky's exploits among the farm boys of Mars. Its appearance was as deceptive as modern science could make it. It had almost the appearance of a space-yacht in its graceful lines, and its extreme length was not more than twice that of Hansen's little rowboat. No traveler in space, meeting the Shooting Starr, would have estimated it to be anything more than a rich man's plaything, speedy perhaps but thin-skinned and unequal to hard knocks. Certainly it would not have seemed the type of vessel to trust in the dangerous reaches of the asteroid belt.
An investigation of the interior of the vessel might have changed some of those notions, however. The gleaming hyperatomic motors were the equal of those on armored space-cruisers ten times the Shooting Starr's weight. Its energy reserve was tremendous and the capacity of its hysteretic shield was sufficient to stop the largest projectile that could be put out against it by anything short of a dreadnought. Offensively its limited mass prevented it from being first-class, but weight for weight it could outfight any ship.
* * *
It was no wonder that Bigman capered with delight once he had entered the air-lock and thrown off his space-suit.
"Space," Bigman said, "I'm glad to get off that other tub. What do we do with it?"
"I'll have them send up a ship from Ceres to scoop it. ยป in.
Ceres was behind them, a hundred thousand miles away. In appearance it was about half the diameter of the Moon as seen from Earth.
Bigman said curiously, "How about letting me in on all this, Lucky? Why the sudden change of plans? I was heading out all by myself, the last I heard."
"There aren't any co-ordinates for you to head to," said Lucky. Grimly he told him the events of the last several hours.
Bigman whistled. "Then where are we going?"
"I'm not sure," said Lucky, "but we begin by aiming at the place where the hermit's rock ought to be now."
He studied the dials, and added, "And we leave here fast, too."
He meant fast. Acceleration on the Shooting Starr went high as velocity built up. Bigman and Lucky were pinned back to their diamagnetically cushioned chairs and the growing pressure spread evenly over their entire body surfaces. The oxygen concentration in the cabin was built up by the acceleration-sensitive air-purifier controls and allowed shallower breathing without oxygen starvation. The g-harness (g being the usual scientific symbol for acceleration) they both wore was light and did not hamper their movements, but under the stress of increasing velocity it stiffened and protected the bones, particularly the spine, from breaking. A nylotex-mesh girdle kept the abdominal viscera from undue harm.
In every respect the cabin accessories had been designed by experts at the Council of Science to allow of twenty to thirty per cent greater acceleration on the Shooting Starr than on even the most advanced vessels of the fleet.
Even on this occasion the acceleration, though high, was less than half of that of which the ship was capable.
When velocity leveled off, the Shooting Starr was five million miles from Ceres, and, if Lucky or Bigman had been interested in looking for it, they would have found it to have become, in appearance, merely a speck of light, dimmer than many of the stars.
Bigman said, "Say, Lucky, I've been wanting to ask you. Do you have your glimmer shield?"
Lucky nodded and Bigman looked grieved.
"Well, you big dumb ox," the little fellow said, "why in space didn't you take it with you when you went out pirate-hunting then?"
"I did have it with me," said Lucky calmly. "I've had it with me since the day the Martians gave it to me."
As Lucky and Bigman (but no one else in the Galaxy) knew, the Martians to whom Lucky referred were not the farm boys and ranchers of Mars. They were rather a race of immaterial creatures who were the direct descendants of the ancient intelligences that once inhabited the surface of Mars in the ages before it had lost its oxygen and water. Excavating huge caverns below Mars' surface by destroying cubic miles of rock, converting the matter so destroyed into energy and storing that energy for future use, they now lived in comfortable isolation. Abandoning their material bodies and living as pure energy, their existence remained unsuspected by Mankind. Only Lucky Starr had penetrated their fastnesses and as the one souvenir of that eerie trip* he had obtained what Bigman called the "glimmer shield."
Bigman's annoyance increased. "Well, if you had it, why didn't you use it? What's wrong with you?"
"You have the wrong idea of the shield, Bigman. It won't do everything. It won't feed me and wipe my lips when I'm through."
"I've seen what it can do. It can do plenty."
"It can, in certain ways. It can soak up all types of energy."
"Like the energy of a blaster bolt. You're not going to kick about that, are you?"
"No, I admit I'd be immune to blasters. The shield would soak up potential energy, too, if the m
ass of a body weren't too great or too small. For instance, a knife or an ordinary bullet couldn't penetrate, though the bullet might knock me down. A good sledge hammer would swing right through the shield, though, and even if it didn't its momentum would crush me. And what's more, molecules of air can go through the shield as if it weren't there because they're too small to be handled. I'm telling you this so that you'll understand that if I were wearing the shield and Dingo had broken my face-plate when we were both tangled up in space, I would have died anyway. The shield wouldn't have prevented the air in my suit from scattering away in a split second."
"If you had used it in the first place, Lucky, you wouldn't have had any trouble. Don't I remember when you used it on Mars?" Bigman chuckled at the reminiscence. "It glimmered all over you, smoky-like, only luminous, so you could just be seen in a haze. All except your face anyway. That was just a sheet of white light."
"Yes," said Lucky dryly, "I would have scared them. They would have hit at me with blasters and I wouldn't have been hurt. So they would have all high-tailed it off the Atlas, gone off about ten miles, and blasted the ship. I would have been stone dead. Don't forget that the shield is only a shield. It doesn't give me any offensive powers whatever."
"Aren't you ever going to use it again?" asked Bigman.
"When it's necessary. Not till then. If I use it too much, the effect would be lost. Its weaknesses would be found out and I would be just a target for anyone I came up against."
Lucky studied the instruments. Calmly he said, "Ready for acceleration again."
Bigman said, "Hey-"
Then, as he was pushed back into his seat, he found himself fighting for breath and could say nothing more.
The redness was rising to his eyes and he could feel the skin drawing backward as though it were trying to peel off his bones.