Asteroid H277—Plus
Date: 2020-04-06T00:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Science fiction; Short stories; Space ships -- Fiction; Asteroids -- Fiction; Space pirates -- Fiction

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Title: Asteroid H277—Plus

Author: Harry Walton

Illustrator: Leo Morey

Release date: April 6, 2020 [eBook #61766]
Most recently updated: October 17, 2024

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/61766

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ASTEROID H277—PLUS ***

Asteroid H277—Plus

By HARRY WALTON

It was a pretty web that Akars spun aboard
the Sun-freighter Cinnabar.... Mass
murder and piracy! But he wasn't clever
enough to allow for the innocent-sounding
asteroid charted as "H277—Plus."

[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Planet Stories Summer 1940.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

Jon Akars, petty officer of the Sun Line freighter Cinnabar, backed away from the jimmied manifold of the air circulators and hastily felt for the emergency mask at his belt. Any moment now the Venusian kui-knor he had filched from the ship's medicine cabinet and dropped into the circulators would take effect. Without warning men would drop at their posts, apparently insensible, rigid of muscle, eyes staring fixedly. Actually, they would be keenly aware of everything about them, their senses sharpened rather than dulled by the drug. But it was no part of Akars' plans to be one of them. He strapped on the mask, and, at the sound of approaching footsteps, shrank back into the shadows of the machines.

An officer peered into the circulator chamber for an instant, then marched on down the corridor. Akars chuckled. Box Jordan was part of his plan; in a way, he had a star role. But not an enviable one. Nor, to be sure, were the remainder of the Cinnabar's crew going to be particularly lucky. The luck of the scheme was reserved for Akars himself, and it involved four kilos of precious Urulium which Box Jordan had unearthed during an emergency landing on an unexplored planetoid. Jordan had been fool enough to turn the stuff over as a ship's prize, to be equally divided. But with the metal on board, it was inevitable that a smarter man would see and grasp the chance that was offered. Akars was that man.

He waited until the circulation meters told him that the kui-knor had been diffused through every cubic foot of air in the ship, then softly trod the steelene-walled corridor back to the navigating compartment. The sight there was a gruesome one. Captain Cardigan was slumped over the chart table, glassy-eyed, to all appearance dead. But he wasn't dead, Akars knew. The captain and the chief petty officer and the second navigator and the supercargo—all sprawled in grotesque attitudes about the compartment, all staring vacantly into space, were in the grip of an artificially induced coma.

Deliberately Akars walked over and kicked Captain Cardigan in the chest. Cardigan's face remained impassive, the eyes expressionless, yet there was a barely perceptible quiver that told the blow had hurt. Akars grinned and landed another, then scowled and rubbed his ear with the back of a hairy hand. It was the first navigator, Box Jordan, whom he owed a special grudge. He'd nursed special ideas for Jordan, the agony of broken bones, of a merciless beating, before death should wipe him out. But Jordan wasn't here.

Built into the chart table was the fireproof compartment that held the ship's log. Akars removed the bulky volume, opened it upon the table, and ripped out the last four page entries, crumpling the thin metallic foil before throwing it to the floor. With the log would perish all records of the Urulium find; if any spaceman's notes or diary held mention of it the Cinnabar's fate would destroy that also.

Akars moved toward the control board, grasped the refrigeration controls, swung them to "off." Immediately alarm bells clanged warning. He could feel the horror which his act engendered in the men who helplessly watched it—something of that horror chilled even him. For without refrigeration the fuel tanks would quickly warm up. The compressed gaseous fuel, held inert only by refrigeration, would spontaneously explode. The Cinnabar, by that simple movement of two levers, was doomed.

The alarm bells echoed madly about him as he left the navigation compartment and walked further aft, to the stern deck where the ship's tender nestled against her hull. An airtight telescoping tube connected parent ship and life ship, and Akars saw that the manhole cover was slid aside. Someone was either in the tender or had just left it—perhaps one of the spacemen now lying beside the manhole—on a routine maintenance job.

Akars climbed the short ladder into the life ship's tiny control compartment. Lamps were burning, but there was nobody in the compartment, nor in the little vessel's supply compartment, engine room, or living quarters. Satisfied, Akars checked food stores, fuel and air gauges with keen satisfaction. Everything was in perfect order. His scheme couldn't fail. Only a fool would have let a chance like this slip by.

Then, thinking of Jordan again, Akars cursed. The lean, red-headed first navigator had been poison to him ever since joining the ship. Jordan hadn't been afraid of him. Other officers had excused or overlooked badly done or neglected work—Box Jordan never. The red-head had tongue-lashed Akars too often, and Akars had promised himself a meeting with Jordan—Jordan helpless, paralyzed, but fully conscious and able to feel every blow that fury could inflict. Now it seemed he was to be cheated of that.

The clanging alarm reminded him that time was dangerously short. Soon the tanks would let go; he couldn't afford to be near the doomed freighter when the exploding fuel did its work. Without glancing back, he shut the entrance port, pressed the button that collapsed the escape tube, and took his place at the glowing controls of the little vessel.

The Cinnabar's death knell was muffled now. Like a tocsin of the dead, it rang dully in his ears as he reached for the levers. But confidence returned as he felt the familiar handles beneath him. The life ship was complete, self-sufficient. Charts were reduced to a simple form, instruments were direct-reading, course plotting almost automatic, so that the commonest spaceman could navigate the tender at need. He had himself operated it during the Cinnabar's emergency landing a month ago.

He punched the internal-combustion engines into life, watched the generator output mount, then cut in a weak repulsion field. With a lurch the little ship tore free from its parent vessel and retreated from the long, gleaming shape of the freighter. He switched over to the space-induction field coils. Power thrummed in the depths of the tiny craft; it swerved about and obediently plunged ahead, fleeing the coming tragedy. After ten minutes at full field he turned it around and held it motionless in space with respect to the now distant Cinnabar.

The slim freighter, gleaming gold in the light of the distant sun, seemed to float upon a soft, star-sprinkled darkness. There was no trace of movement, although she was still flying, with untended engines, at three-quarters field. He bit his lips, waiting. Then, soundlessly, catastrophe struck!

From amidships flowered a terrible, consuming blossom of blue-white flame, a petalled fire that engulfed the Cinnabar from bow to stem and limned itself fantastically against the velvet heavens behind. Streamers of white-hot gas, sunlike in intensity, burst and flared in the brief glory of destruction, then as swiftly collapsed upon themselves, dimmed to the lesser glow of molten metal. The Cinnabar, a slender, white-hot needle, broke into a thousand dripping fragments, droplets of fire spattering the sky.

Akars chuckled uneasily, swore, rubbed his ear with the back of a hand. That was that. Somewhere in the swirling, far-flung wreckage he must find the tiny block of unbelievably heavy, practically indestructible Urulium, flung out of the shattered strong room which he could have penetrated in no other way. The explosion should have released the treasure and wiped out all evidence against him at the same time. Like the rest of his plan it was simple, direct, foolproof.

He flung the little tender back through space toward the glowing debris which now milled about itself, spinning about a common center. A few fragments had ripped free from the gravitational whirlpool of the rest. He dodged a piece half as large as the life ship itself. Red hot still, it swept past the port, more like a blazing meteor than anything, made by man. Past other wreckage he swept, evidence of the terrific energy of spontaneously exploded fuel—gruesome human debris as well as that of the Cinnabar itself. The temperature within the tender climbed slowly as it absorbed heat from glowing fragments outside. Uneasily he checked his own fuel refrigerator, turned thermostatic controls to maintain a lower temperature.

Something swept into his field of vision with startling speed. He ripped the helm over, swearing in sudden panic. The tender swerved, but not sharply enough. A grating shock, a metallic crash, told that the vessel had been hit. The jar of the concussion almost threw him from the control seat.

His temples throbbing madly, Akars waited for the dread hiss of escaping air, the drop in pressure which his ear drums would quickly detect. The tender was small; a gash in the hull plates would empty it of air rapidly.

But the pressure remained normal, and he relaxed at last, certain that the collision had done no more than dent the hull plates. He forgot the incident upon spying what had been the strong room door. Cautiously he worked the tender alongside it, scanning nearby debris closely.

It took him fifteen minutes to find the thick-walled copper casket containing the treasure, scarred by impact, half fused by the terrific heat even though it had been protected by the walls of the strong room from the brunt of it. He knew that its precious contents could have suffered no harm, and carefully manipulated the ship's grappling mechanism until the casket was safely inside the tender's loading port. He swung the life ship about and drove for clear space.

So easy it had been! A few minutes of effort had won him ten times as much as other men earned during a lifetime of hard, dangerous work in the space-lanes. Lucky he wasn't squeamish by nature. This way he was safe. Every witness against him was dead. His own word would be taken as gospel truth. Already he had planned every detail of the story—how he had been on routine inspection of the tender when the explosion started forward, in the fuel tanks. How the life ship, with him aboard, had been blown free by the blast—how he had barely managed to close the port in time to escape suffocation—how from the tender he had witnessed the destruction of the Cinnabar, and how—a touching detail this—he had cruised back into the wreckage in search of survivors, but found none. He would not try to explain the explosion. The lethally dangerous nature of the fuel would answer all doubts. Nobody could suspect him.

Just before landing he would transfer the Urulium to his own duffle bag—a new one, of course, stocked with clothing taken from the tender's supplies. A welding torch would reduce the copper casket to a lump of reddish metal. He would dispose of a little Urulium illegally, outfit a one-man ship with the proceeds, and go on a prospecting cruise from which he could return with a legitimate store of the precious stuff. Disposed of to the Martians, who valued it as a healing agent, the four kilograms would bring a fortune.

He pushed the little ship to top speed, which was slow at best. Hour after hour he hurled its silvery nose toward the distant stars, on a course which his charts told him led to earth. Mars, smaller than his own world, was on the other side of the sun. It was on earth that automatic cameras would have snapped the explosion of the Cinnabar. Perhaps salvage ships were already on their way; in a few hours he might meet them.

Glancing at the chronometer, he saw that it was safe to remove his mask. The last vestige of kui-knor which might have entered the tender from the Cinnabar would have decomposed by now. By this time it would also have decomposed in the blood of the drugged men had any remained alive to experience it.

"Akars! Blast my orbit, what happened?"

He whirled at the voice, all his fear surging up within him, choking him. In the doorway stood Box Jordan, his tall, lean figure swaying a little, keen eyes questioning.

"Jordan! I—where d'you come from?"

"Routine inspection forward. I was checking the fuel tanks, started to back out of the tank compartment when I froze up. Couldn't move a toe." The navigator's sharp eyes narrowed. "What happened?"

"Happened?" Akars fought the panic in his voice, the fear of this man who was not afraid of him. "Nothing much—just that the Cinnabar blew up."

"Blew up! You mean we're the only survivors?"

Akars shrugged. "I thought I was, until you popped up. Of course I looked around. There wasn't anybody else—" He stood up, stretching. "If you'll take over a while, I'll get the kinks out of me."

For an instant Jordan hesitated. Akars watched him closely. He suspected, of course—knew that he had been drugged. Even when under the kui-knor, he must have felt the tender pull away from the Cinnabar, and that without any evidence of an explosion. In a moment he would add things up, reaching the only possible conclusion. Desperately Akars glanced about for a weapon.

And Jordan, with a queer twisted smile, walked forward—not toward the pilot's seat, but toward Akars. Those big bony hands of his were working. His very silence was terrible.

Akars flattened himself against a wall. Big as he was, he knew himself to be no match for the hard-muscled first navigator. Aroused as the latter now was, he would be doubly dangerous. Akars clawed the bare wall, breathing hard.

"You drugged the air-cycle," said Jordan. "You shut off the refrigerators and took off in the tender. You stood by while the Cinnabar went to hell, with every man aboard her. Then you went back and picked up the Urulium—"

"No!" screamed Akars. "No! I swear I didn't—"

Jordan's hard fingers closed over his windpipe, crushed in his throat like a steel clamp tightened about it. He could feel his eyes bulging from their sockets, his body turning cold and dwindling away from him.

He slumped suddenly, as though unconscious. A moment longer Jordan held him in that terrible grip, then flung him away. Akars hit the wall, collapsed into a huddled heap, gasping and retching as breath passed his bruised throat. He took his time, gathering strength, sure that Jordan would not attack him while he was down. Desperation lent him courage. Concerned, there was nothing to do but fight it out. He wouldn't let the navigator get another throat hold.

Pretending to be weaker than he was, Akars lurched to his feet. He had a plan now, and warily circled Jordan before closing in. Then he plunged forward, ducked a swift uppercut, took a solid body blow that left him gasping—but reached the wall behind Jordan which was his objective. A rack of oxygen tanks for use with space suits was fastened there. Akar's hands tore one free—a slender, blunt-ended cylinder, massive enough to be a dangerous club. As Jordan closed in Akars brought it down on the navigator's left arm, which fell limp. With a bellow of triumph Akars struck for the head.

Jordan, still drug-hazy and crippled in one arm, took the blow on a temple. It stopped him like a shot; he crumpled to one knee and fell. Breath rattling in his swollen throat, Akars stared into the hated face and wondered whether he should finish the job with a few more blows. Caution whispered consent, but still he hesitated. This was Box Jordan. Box Jordan! Why kill him like this? He wanted Jordan to know what was coming—to know it as long as possible.

It struck him then that killing Jordan wasn't as simple as it seemed. Found aboard the tender, Jordan's body would convict him. Flung into space, this far from the Cinnabar disaster, it would provoke awkward questions—unanswerable questions—when discovered. Here was an unexpected flaw in a scheme that had looked foolproof! Cursing, Akars pulled the chart book toward him.

He had tied Jordan's feet and fastened his hands behind him, lashed to a wall railing. In a supply closet he had found a paralysis gun, which he now wore in a side holster. For these and other reasons he was as confident, when Jordan showed signs of returning life, as he had been at first. Grinning, he watched the navigator stir and weakly sit up.

"Coming out of it, are you? Listen to me, Jordan. I've got the Urulium aboard. Want to come in on this with me?"

Jordan rubbed his temple tenderly. "I suppose there isn't much choice—"

Akars chuckled. "You'll come in, huh? And spill the first chance you get. I'd be asking for the mercury mines if I took you back. Skip it, Jordan. I was kidding."

"So was I." The navigator smiled crookedly. "But when it comes to teaming up with a rat, I'm ashamed of myself for even kidding about it."

Akars struck out—a hard flat hand blow that rocked Jordan's head and left red welts on his cheek. "You know what? I've got your spot picked out. Nice and cool. No air, except what'll be in your suit tank. And about as much chance of rescue as an ice cube in hell—"

He picked up the chart book and with ruffled brow turned its alumin-foil pages, his tongue between his lips. The page found, he held it before Jordan.

"See that? A dinky space-apple that's been passed up by every claiming bureau in the system. Ten miles through. Just big enough to keep you from drifting free where a nosy patrolship might find you. It's the nearest asteroid—I'd dump you on Pluto if it weren't out of my way."

"Asteroid H277 plus," read Jordan calmly. "Not exactly exciting. Why not ray me here and chuck out the remains?"

Akars swore. "Because you're supposed to be with what's left of the Cinnabar—damn you. I can't take you back there—salvage ships may be out by now. And I can't throw you out where you may be picked up by a patrol. I've got to ditch you where you'll stay put—"

"So it's H277 plus for me?" murmured Jordan. "The plus part of it sounds interesting. What does it mean, Akars?"

"How the hell would I know? And what do you care? You won't live long enough to worry about it."

But Akars himself was worrying as the asteroid floated into sight. He'd had to go off-course to reach it, when he should be making a bee-line for earth. There was a slight chance that the tender might be observed stopping here—a risk he had to take, but which could be minimized by haste. To cut the time shorter he'd let Jordan wear a space suit and walk out of the airlock. That would save time. Otherwise, if he killed Jordan on board, there would be some delay while he disposed of the body. Besides, there was a savage satisfaction in marooning the navigator alive, in letting him live out those last hopeless hours in slow torture of body and mind. Akars himself shuddered as he thought of it—the fate reserved for murderers taken aboard ship. A ten hour tank of oxygen—and a barren island of the sky such as this.

Asteroid H277 plus was a bleak lump of pitted rock, roughly oval in shape, gleaming where the sunlight fell, pitch-black in the shadows. No ship would ever come close enough to it to make out a man's body, even if it lay in the light. In fact, space-ships avoided such masses as this just as the ancient steamers avoided icebergs. The chance of rescue was practically non-existent.

"Almost there, aren't we?" asked Jordan from the floor. "What do I do—a swan dive from the emergency lock?"

Akars shut off power, held the tender immovable by a weak repulsion field, and freed the navigator's feet.

"You get in a suit—and don't try any tricks or I'll beam you." He watched sharply as Jordan meekly obeyed and climbed into the stiff canvas garment. Akars set the helmet over his head and fastened the rim studs, tearing off the collar bridge bearing the legend "SS Cinnabar."

"If you ever are found, you won't be recognized. They say a body loses heat slowly enough for decomposition to make a good start, in one of these suits. When we land, you close your face plate and go out through the lock."

He watched Jordan narrowly as he jockeyed the ship closer to the tiny asteroid. Without knowing why, he was uneasy. Jordan was a fighter. Funny he'd go out like this, the hard way, without a scrap. But what could he do? If he didn't march out of the lock under his own power, Akars could beam him and throw him out through the loading port.

Asteroid H277 plus swam up to meet the ship. Akars picked his landing spot and reduced his repulsion field carefully. The ship settled. Jordan seemed to stiffen expectantly. Akars lifted the paralysis gun from its holster.

Directly beneath the basalt blackness of the asteroid shimmered oddly with a strange translucent light. Akars swore softly. There couldn't be anything down there. A trick of the sunlight—perhaps the shadow of the ship? But it was queer. Maybe he shouldn't land—just make Jordan jump from the ship. That was it.

His eyes flickered to the navigator, stiff as a ramrod now, with that tense air of waiting for something to happen. Akars tightened his grip on the gun, jerked his eyes back to the asteroid—and froze with fear.

From the basalt surface leaped a fountain of fire—cold leaping fire licking upward at the ship. He jerked the controls over to full repulsion, screamed in terror as the ship dipped further instead of rising. An electrical flame sprang to meet it—a snapping, snarling fury of saw-edged lightning. Incredulously he saw it leave the prow of the vessel, flicker back to strike white flame from the hull plates just over the fuel tanks forward.

A muffled roar beat upon his ears. Flame billowed forth before the pilot glass. The ship trembled and shuddered to the force of unleashed gases; acrid fumes swirled over the control board and seeped from the very floor plates beneath his feet. Through drifting smoke he saw the deck curl back, white hot, and drift lazily out of sight like a burnt leaf. His ear drums snapped as air fled into space. Vaguely he saw the black surface of the asteroid fly upward, felt a crunch and crash of metal as it exploded in his face, and fell through senseless darkness....

"So you're alive?"

It was Box Jordan's voice, Akars realized as he awoke to painful consciousness. Parts of him seemed to be on fire. He was wearing a space suit, as Jordan was, and they were no longer in the ship, but on the asteroid.

"Hard time getting you into a suit when the ship's air went," remarked the navigator, his voice loud in Akars' earphones. "Of course I knew what was coming and had only to close my face plate, just as you told me. But I wanted to save you particularly. They need good, tough murderers like you at the mines. Some last as long as five years, I hear."

Akars tried to sit up, discovered that he was bound—and that Jordan had the paralysis gun now.

"I found the Urulium," continued the navigator. "The Cinnabar's widows and orphans will get their share, after all."

"What happened?" asked Akars thickly. "That explosion—"

"Only a feeble imitation of the Cinnabar's. Don't forget that her fuel exploded spontaneously—with a thousand times the force. In our case the fuel was inert, because our refrigeration didn't fail. It burnt, once ignited, but without an explosion—just as I expected. What I didn't tell you, Akars, was that the collision you had near the wrecked Cinnabar knocked a hole in one fuel tank. I was lying almost against it—almost froze, too—and for hours I could hear fuel leaking out through the rip. Not much—just enough to catch fire when that spark hit us, and to carry back and ignite the whole tank."

Akars groaned. "That spark—that damn spark!"

Jordan was staring into space. He rose and looked long, then sat down again.

"We're rescued, Akars. Naturally the salvage ships kept a lookout for the missing life ship and saw the flare-up here. They'll arrive soon."

"That spark!" groaned Akars. "What the devil was it?"

"That was what you weren't interested in, Akars. The 'plus' of H277 plus. Did you know that the earth and most planets are negatively charged—have a surplus of electrons? And that our ships are also negatively charged—in fact super-charged because of the driving fields we use? A planetoid or asteroid with a simple name or number is also negative and no precautions are necessary. But a 'plus' following the designation means it is positively charged, whether because of interacting gravitational fields, internal radio-activity, or induction between the body and an atmosphere or some other reason. When an accredited navigator has to land on a 'plus' body he orders a careful check of all fuel tanks, because he knows there will be a heavy electrical discharge between it and the ship just before landing. But you didn't know that—

"Another thing you didn't know, being a petty and not a commissioned officer, is that a new I.T.C. ruling requires an exact duplicate of the ship's log to be kept aboard life tenders at all times. Just before I went back to the tanks I replaced that duplicate log book. You took it along, Akars, and I found it when I found the Urulium, safe and sound in its fireproof case. That's what will convict you, Akars—not my words, but the story of the Urulium find and my turning it over as a ship's prize, written and signed by Captain Cardigan himself. The I.T.C. would have found that duplicate log anyhow, Akars. You never really had a chance to get away with it. Funny, isn't it? Funny how dumb a smart guy can be...."

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