This time the Shooting Starrs acceleration was on full.
It lasted fifteen minutes. Toward the end Bigman was scarcely conscious. Then it relaxed and life crept back.
Lucky was shaking his head and panting for breath.
Bigman said, "Hey, that wasn't funny."
"I know," said Lucky.
"What's the idea? Weren't we going fast enough?"
"Not quite. But it's all right now. We've shaken them."
"Shaken whom?"
"Whoever was following us. We were being followed, Bigman, from the minute you stepped foot on the deck of the old Shooter. Look at the Ergometer."
Bigman did so. The Ergometer resembled the one on the Atlas in name only. The one on the Atlas had been a primitive model designed to pick up motor radiation for the purpose of releasing the lifeboats. That had been its only purpose. The Ergometer on the Shooting Starr could pick up the radiation pattern of a hyperatomic motor on ships no larger than an ordinary lifeboat and do it at a distance of better than two million miles.
Even now the inked line on the graphed paper jiggled very faintly, but periodically.
"That isn't anything," said Bigman.
"It was, a while ago. Look for yourself." Lucky unreeled the cylinder of paper that had already passed the needle. The jigglings grew deeper, more characteristic. "See that, Bigman?"
"It could be any ship. It could be a Ceres freighter."
"No. For one thing, it tried to follow us and did a good job of it, too, which means it had a pretty good Ergom-eter of its own. Besides that, did you ever see an energy pattern like this?"
"Not exactly like this, Lucky."
"I did, you see, in the case of the ship that boarded the Atlas. This Ergometer does a much better job of pattern analysis, but the resemblance is definite. The motor of the ship that's following us is of Sirian design."
"You mean it's Anton's ship."
"That or a similar one. It doesn't matter. We've lost them."
* * *
"At the moment," said Lucky, "we're right where the hermit's rock should be, plus or minus, say, a hundred thousand miles."
"Nothing's here," said Bigman.
"That's right. The gravities register no asteroidal mass anywhere near us. We're in what the astronomers call a forbidden zone."
"Uh-huh," said Bigman wisely, "I see."
Lucky smiled. There was nothing to see. A forbidden zone in the asteroid belt looked no different from a portion of the belt that was thickly strewn with rocks, at least not to the naked eye. Unless an asteroid happened to be within a hundred miles or so, the view was the same. Stars or things that looked like stars filled the heavens. If some of them were asteroids and not stars, there was no way of telling the difference short of watching intently for several hours to see which "stars" changed relative position, or using a telescope to begin with.
Bigman said, "Well, what do we do?"
"Look around the neighborhood. It may take us a few days."
The path of the Shooting Starr grew erratic. It headed outward from the Sun, away from the forbidden zone and into the nearest constellation of asteroids. The gravities jumped their needles at the pull of distant mass.
Tiny world after tiny world slid into the field of the visiplate, was allowed to remain there while it rotated, and was then permitted to slip out. The Shooting Starr's velocity had decelerated to a relative crawl, but the miles still passed by the hundreds of thousands and into the millions. The hours passed. A dozen asteroids came and went.
"You better eat," said Bigman.
But Lucky contented himself with sandwiches and catnaps while he and Bigman watched visiplate, gravities and Ergometer in turn.
Then, with an asteroid in view, Lucky said in a strained voice, "I'm going down."
Bigman was caught by surprise. "Is that the asteroid?" He looked at its angularity. "Do you recognize it?"
"I think I do, Bigman. In any case, it's going to be investigated."
It took half an hour to manipulate the ship into the asteroid's shadow.
"Keep it here,".Lucky said. "Someone's got to stay with the ship and you're the one. Don't forget it. It can be detected, but if it's in the shadow, with the lights out and the motors at minimum, it will make it as hard as possible for them. According to the Ergometer, there's no ship in space near us now. Right?"
"Right!"
"The most important thing to remember is this: Don't come down after me for any reason. When I'm through, I'll come up to you. If I'm not back in twelve hours and haven't called, either, back you go to Ceres with a report, after taking photographs of this asteroid at every angle."
Bigman's face grew sullenly stubborn. "No."
"This is the report," said Lucky calmly. He withdrew a personal capsule from an inner pocket. "This capsule is keyed to Dr. Conway. He's the only one who can open it. He's got to get the information, regardless of me. Do you understand?"
"What's in it?" asked Bigman, making no move to take it.
"Just theories, I'm afraid. I've told no one of them, because I've come out here to try to get facts to back them up. If I can't make it, the theories, at least, must get through. Conway may believe them and he may get the government to act upon them."
"I won't do it," said Bigman. "I won't leave you."
"Bigman, if I can't trust you to do what's right regardless of yourself and myself, you won't be much use to me after this if I come through safely."
Bigman held out his hand. The personal capsule was dropped into it.
"All right," he said.
* * *
Lucky dropped through vacuum to the asteroid's surface, hastening the drop by use of the suit's push-gun.
He knew the asteroid to be about the right size. It was roughly the shape he remembered it to be. It was jagged enough and the sunlit portion looked the right color. All that, however, might have held true for any asteroid.
But there was the other item. That was not likely to be duplicated very often.
From his waist pouch he took out a small instrument that looked like a compass. Actually it was a pocket radar unit. Its enclosed emission source could put out r
adio short waves of almost any range. Certain octaves could be partially reflected by rock and partially transmitted through reasonable distances.
In the presence of a thick layer of rock the reflection of radiation activated a needle on the dial. In the presence of a thin layer of rock, as, for instance, on a surface under which lay a cave or hollow, some radiation was reflected, but some penetrated into the hollow and was reflected from the further wall. In this way a double reflection occurred, one component of which was much weaker than the second. In response to such a double reflection the needle responded with a characteristic double quiver.
Lucky watched the instrument as he leaped easily over the stony peaks. The needle's smooth pulsing gained a quiver, and then a distinct subsidiary movement. Lucky's heart bounded. The asteroid was hollow. Find where the subsidiary movements were strongest and there the hollow would be nearest the surface. There would be the air-lock.
For a few moments all of Lucky's faculties were concentrated on the needle. He was unaware of the magnetic cable snaking its way toward him from the near horizon.
He was unaware of it until it snapped about him in coil after coil, clinging close, its momentum tossing his nearly weightless body first clear of the asteroid and then down to the rock, where he lay helpless.
Chapter 11
At Close Quarters
Three lights came over the horizon and toward the prostrate Lucky. In the darkness of the asteroid's night he could not see the figures that accompanied the lights.
Then there was a voice in his ear and the voice was the well-known hoarseness of the pirate, Dingo. It said, "Don't call your pal upstairs. I've got a jigger here that can pick up your carrier wave. If you try to, I'll blast you out of your suit right now, nark!"
He spat out the final word; the contemptuous term of all lawbreakers for those they considered to be spies of the law-enforcement agencies.