Lucky Starr and the Pirates of the Asteroids

Lucky's eyes narrowed. He felt the muscles of his right arm tense as though to reach for a hip at which no blaster nestled. He made no actual motion.



His voice remained under strict control. He said, "Whose son? What are you talking about?"



"I'm sure of it." The hermit leaned forward, seizing Lucky's wrist earnestly. "I knew Lawrence Starr well. He was my friend. He helped me once when I needed help. And you're his image. I couldn't be wrong."



Lucky pulled his hand away. "You're not making sense."



"Listen, son, it may be important to you not to give away your identity. Maybe you don't trust me. All right, I'm not telling you to trust me. I've been working with the pirates and I've admitted it. But listen to me anyway. The men of the asteroids have a good organization. It may take them weeks, but if Anton suspects you, they won't stop till you're checked from the ground up. No phony story will fool them. They'll get the truth and they'll learn who you are. Be sure of that! They'll get your true identity. Leave, I tell you. Leave!"



Lucky said, "If I were this guy you say I am, old-timer, aren't you getting yourself into trouble? I take it you want me to use your ship."



"Yes."



"And what would you do when the pirates returned?"



"I wouldn't be here. Don't you see? I want to go with you."



"And leave all you have here?"



The old man hesitated. "Yes, it's hard. But I won't have a chance like this again. You're a man of influence; you must be. You're a member of the Council of Science, perhaps. You're here on secret work. They'll believe you. You could protect me, vouch for me. You would prevent prosecution, see that no harm came to me from the pirates. It would pay the Council, young man. I would tell them all I know about the pirates. I would co-operate in every way I could."



Lucky said, "Where do you keep your ship?"



"It's a deal, then?"



"I'm just asking to see your ship."



* * *



The ship was a small one indeed. The two reached it through a narrow corridor, walking single file, their figures grotesque again in space-suits.



Lucky said, "Is Ceres close enough to pick out by ship's telescope?"



"Yes indeed."



"You could recognize it without trouble?"



"Certainly."



"Let's get on board, then."



The fore end of the airless cavern that housed the ship opened outward as soon as the ship's motors were activated.



"Radio control," explained Hansen.



The ship was fueled and provisioned. It worked smoothly, rising out of its berth and into space with the ease and freedom possible only where gravitational forces were virtually lacking. For the first time Lucky saw Hansen's asteroid from space. He caught a glimpse of the valley of the discarded cans, brighter than the surrounding rock, just before it passed into shadow.



Hansen said, "Tell me, now. You are the son of Lawrence Starr, aren't you?"



Lucky had located a well-charged blaster and a holster belt to boot. He was strapping it on as he spoke.



"My name," he said, "is David Starr. Most people call me Lucky."



* * *



Ceres is a monster among the asteroids. It is nearly five hundred miles in diameter, and, standing upon it, the average man actually weighs two full pounds. It is quite spherical in shape, and anyone very close to it in space could easily think it a respectable planet.



Still, if the Earth were hollow, it would be possible to throw into it four thousand bodies the size of Ceres before filling it up.



Bigman stood on the surface of Ceres, his figure bloated in a space-suit which had been loaded to bursting with lead weights and on shoes the soles of which were foot-thick lead clogs. It had been his own idea, but it was quite useless. He still weighed less than four pounds and his every motion threatened to twist him up into space.



He had been on Ceres for days now, since the quick space flight with Conway and Henree from the Moon, waiting for this moment, waiting for Lucky Starr to send in the radio message that he was coming in. Gus Henree and Hector Conway had been nervous about it, fearing Lucky's death, worrying about it. He, Bigman, had known better. Lucky could come through anything. He told them that. When Lucky's message finally came, he told them again.



But just the same, out here on Ceres' frozen soil with nothing between himself and the stars, he admitted a sneaking sensation of relief.



From where he sat he was looking directly at the dome of the Observatory, its lower reaches dipping just a little below the close horizon. It was the largest observatory in the Terrestrial Empire for a very logical reason.



In that part of the Solar System inside the orbit of Jupiter, the planets Venus, Earth, and Mars had atmospheres and were by that very fact poorly suited for astronomic observation. The interfering air, even when it was as thin as that of Mars, blotted out the finer detail. It wavered and flickered star images and spoiled things generally.



The largest airless object inside Jupiter's orbit was Mercury, but that was so close to the Sun that the observatory in its twilight zone specialized in solar observations. Relatively small telescopes sufficed.



The second largest airless object was the Moon. Here again circumstances dictated specialization. Weather forecasts on Earth, for instance, had become an accurate, long-range science, since the appearance of Earth's atmosphere could be viewed as a whole from a distance of a quarter of a million miles.



And the third largest airless object was Ceres, and that was the best of the three. Its almost nonexistent gravity allowed huge lenses and mirrors to be poured without the danger of breakage, without even the question of sag, due to its own weight. The structure of the telescope tube itself needed no particular strength. Ceres was nearly three times as far from the Sun as was the Moon and sunlight was only one eighth as strong. Its rapid revolution kept Ceres' temperature almost constant. In short, Ceres was ideal for observation of the stars and of the outer planets.



Only the day before Bigman had seen Saturn through the thousand-inch reflecting telescope, the grinding of the huge mirror having consumed twenty years of painstaking and continuous labor.



"What do I look through?" he had asked.



They laughed at him. "You don't look through anything," they said.



They worked the controls carefully, three of them, each doing something that co-ordinated with the other two, until all were satisfied. The dim red lights dimmed further and in the pit of black emptiness about which they sat a blob of light sprang into being. A touch at the controls and it focused sharply.



Bigman whistled his astonishment. It was Saturn!



It was Saturn, three feet wide, exactly as he had seen it from space half a dozen times. Its triple rings were bright and he could see three marble-like moons. Behind it was a numerous dusting of stars. Bigman wanted to walk about it to see how it looked with the night shadow cutting it, but the picture didn't change as he moved.



"It's just an image," they told him, "an illusion. You see the same thing no matter where you stand."



Now, from the asteroid's surface, Bigman could spot Saturn with the naked eye. It was just a white dot, but brighter than the other white dots that were the stars. It was twice as bright as it appeared from Earth, since it was two hundred million miles closer here. Earth itself was on the other side of Ceres near the pea-size Sun. Earth wasn't a very impressive sight, since the Sun invariably dwarfed it.



Bigman's helmet suddenly rang with sound as the call flooded his left-open radio receiver.



"Hey, Shortie, get moving. There's a ship coming in."



Bigman jumped at the noise and moved straight upward, limbs flailing. He yelled, "Who're you calling Shortie?"



But the other was laughing. "Hey, how much do you charge for flying lessons, little boy?"



"I'll little boy you," screamed Bigman furiously. He had reached the peak of his parabola and was slowly and hesitatingly beginning to settle downward once more. "What's your name, wise guy? Say your name, and I'll crack your gizzard as soon as I get back and peel the suit.



"Think you can reach my gizzard?" came the mocking rejoinder, and Bigman would have exploded into tiny pieces if he had not caught sight of a ship slanting down from the horizon.



He loped in giant, clumsy strides about the leveled square mile of ground that was the asteroid's space-port, trying to judge the exact spot on which the ship would land.



It dropped down its steaming jets to a feather-touch planetary contact and when the air-locks opened and Lucky's tall, suited figure emerged, Bigman, yelling his joy, made one long leap of it, and they were together.



* * *



Conway and Henree were less effusive in their welcome, but no less joyful. Each wrung Lucky's hand as though to confirm, by sheer muscular pressure, the reality of the flesh and blood they beheld.



Lucky laughed. "Whoa, will you? Give me a chance to breathe. What's the matter? Didn't you think I was coming back?"



"Look here," said Conway, "you'd better consult us before you take off on just any old fool notion."



"Well, now, not if it's too much of a fool notion, please, or you won't let me."



"Never mind that. I can ground you for what you've done. I can have you put under detention right now. I can suspend you. I can throw you off the Council," said Conway.



"Which of them are you going to do?"



"None of them, you darned overgrown young fool. But I may beat your brains out one of these days."



Lucky turned to Augustus Henree. "You won't let him, will you?"



"Frankly, I'll help him."



"Then I give up in advance. Look, there's a gentleman here I'd like to have you meet."



Until now Hansen had remained in the background, obviously amused by the interchange of nonsense. The two older Councilmen had been too full of Lucky Starr even to be aware of his existence.



"Dr. Conway," said Lucky, "Dr. Henree, this is Mr. Joseph P. Hansen, the man whose ship I used to come back. He has been of considerable assistance to me."



The old hermit shook hands with the two scientists.



"I don't suppose you can possibly know Drs. Conway and Henree," said Lucky. The hermit shook his head.



"Well," he went on, "they're important officials in the Council of Science. After you've eaten and had a chance to rest, they'll talk to you and help you, I'm sure."



* * *



An hour later the two Councilmen faced Lucky with somber expressions. Dr. Henree tamped tobacco into his pipe with a little finger, and smoked quietly as he listened to Lucky's accounts of his adventures with the pirates.



"Have you told this to Bigman?" he asked.



"I've just spent some time talking to him," said Lucky.



"And he didn't assault you for not taking him?"



"He wasn't pleased," Lucky admitted.



But Conway's mind was more seriously oriented. "A Sirian-designed ship, eh?" he mused.



"Undoubtedly so," said Lucky. "At least we have that piece of information."



"The information wasn't worth the risk," said Conway, dryly. "I'm much more disturbed over another piece of information we have now. It's obvious that the Sirian organization penetrates into the Council of Science itself."



Henree nodded gravely. "Yes, I saw that, too. Very bad."



Lucky said, "How do you make that out?"



"Galaxy, boy, it's obvious," growled Conway. "I'll admit that we had a large construction crew working on the ship and that even with the best intentions careless slips of information can take place. It remains truth, though, that the fact of the booby-trapping and particularly the exact manner of the fusing were known only to Council members and not too many of those. Somewhere in that small group is a spy, yet I could have sworn that all were faithful." He shook his head. "I still can't believe otherwise."



"You don't have to," said Lucky.



"Oh? And why not?"



"Because the Sirian contact was quite temporary. The Sirian Embassy got their information from me"