X Marks the Asteroid
Date: 2021-09-03T00:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Science fiction; Adventure stories; Man-woman relationships -- Fiction; Space ships -- Fiction; Maps -- Fiction

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Title: X Marks the Asteroid

Author: Ross Rocklynne

Illustrator: W. E. Terry

Release date: September 3, 2021 [eBook #66211]
Most recently updated: October 18, 2024

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/66211

Credits: Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK X MARKS THE ASTEROID ***

X MARKS THE ASTEROID

By Ross Rocklynne

Deep in space Ralph's ancestors lay in suspended
animation—a price on their heads. They left him a
map and a problem: awaken them—or collect the reward!...

[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Imagination Stories of Science and Fantasy
January 1954
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

The Unterzuyder map was out of hiding. Relayed on a grapevine that spanned the planets, the news caught on big in Marsport.

Bigger Bailes sat at a beer-bottle-colored glass desk in his underworld retreat, announcing his intent to claim the reward money that for eighty-five years had been piling up at compound interest in the Terra-First National Bank of New York.

"Ralph Unterzuyder is here in Marsport," he stated. "Like all Unterzuyders, he's clever and he's dangerous and he's shifty. He'll travel the crookedest course you ever saw. At the moment, he's got his identity pretty well covered up under the name of Carruthers Straley. In the last three weeks he's organized a band of settlers from Satterfield City who call themselves Titan Settlers, Ltd.

"Not that I'm fooled! I'm not saying the Unterzuyder hibernaculum is on Titan. I'm not even saying Unterzuyder has the map. But I'm willing to bet he's got a pretty good idea where the map is. I'm also willing to bet that his father died without leaving him a cent, and that he organized Titan Settlers, Ltd., just to get himself a free ride out Saturn-way. He's capable of that kind of reasoning."

Bigger Bailes smiled rosily and reached for his hat. One of his men held the door open for him.

"Right now, I'm on my way to see Carruthers Straley. Maybe he will cut in with me. If not—" he thoughtfully rubbed at the fat of his big jaw "—if not, I'll help him hang himself."

Ralph Unterzuyder, fourth generation descendant of the infamous Unterzuyders, emerged testily from the Glass & Sand Bldg. where he had just set up a law office under the name of Carruthers Straley. No sooner had he set foot to the glass sidewalk than he was aware a big, smiling man had fallen into step beside him. He backed up against the wall of the building, his eyes wide and cautious behind dark glasses.

"What do you want?" he snapped.

Bigger Bailes smiled, introduced himself. Unterzuyder looked around as if ready to make a break for it. Bailes stood in front of him. He shook his head.

"I'm not going to hurt you, Mr. Unterzuyder."

At mention of the name, Unterzuyder smiled arrogantly.

"Really, does one have no privacy? But perhaps one of your caliber is well acquainted with the advantages of using an alias!"

"There are advantages," Bigger nodded. "Your advantage lies in heading a group of settlers who don't know you're using them to help you find the asteroid where your ancestors have been sleeping for the past eighty-odd years."

Unterzuyder's cane whipped around nervously. "I know nothing about a map!"

Bigger's jowls quivered with mirth. "Seven weeks ago," he pointed out, "your father died. He told you the map was hidden in an old book called Tertium Organum, A Key To The Enigmas Of The World. By somebody named Ouspensky."

Unterzuyder's eyes moved desperately to the street, down which a single gyromobile moved.

"I have an appointment," he said stiffly. "Now if you will permit me to be on my way before they turn the rain-makers on—"

"It won't rain for ten minutes. Better let me finish—if you don't want your precious settlers to know who you really are!

"As soon as your aunt heard about your father's death, she put the old Unterzuyder house up for auction to pay your father's creditors. The furniture went mostly to junk-dealers, the rest to museums. All the books, some ten thousand of them, were bought by a big New York used-book company, Frangy & Sons, Ltd.

"Half of these books, the ones whose titles all began with the letters of the alphabet up through 'M', were kept in their New York branch. The remainder were sent to open a book store in Marsport. By the time you got to Marsport from Earth, the book was reported already sold—to a person unknown. That's all true, isn't it?

"After having failed to find the map, Mr. Unterzuyder, you then sent the story to a newspaper—anonymously."

"I did?" Unterzuyder looked arrogantly at Bailes.

"Yes." Bigger's eyes narrowed. "Why?"

Unterzuyder surged angrily away from the wall. "I am not interested in your questions. I have my chosen mission in life. It is not the making of money!"

He brandished his cane. "I warn you, Mr. Bailes," he cried, "I am a nervous man. If I am not permitted to leave—"

Bigger spread his hands, astonished. "Don't think for a minute I'm keeping you. The only suggestion I wanted to make was that you and I could work together."

Unterzuyder took off his glasses. There were red marks around his eyes where the glasses had taken hold. He had inherited the famous thin nose and receding chin of the Unterzuyders. His pale thin lips worked nervously.

"I work alone, Mr. Bailes," he said haughtily. "And I work best when such as you try to set your pitiful little traps! Threaten me as you will, nothing can keep me from my purpose. And now good-day."

Bigger's voice was filled with disgust. "Your purpose being, of course, to find asteroid X and free your ancestors so they can go to work on the Solar System again!"

Unterzuyder glared, primly returned his glasses to his nose, and stalked off.

"Scoundrel!" he muttered, putting his hand over his heart. He gasped. It was racing. And he was sweating. Trembling. His mother, the Unterzuyder matriarch, had been quite right. He should take care of his health.

By the time he caught a one-wheeled gyromobile that came bowling down the glass street, he was feeling much better.

"Take me to the Hotel de Mars," he told the driver. He leaned back comfortably, gloved hands resting on the head of his cane while he looked around him. A strange, glass-domed city, set in the heart of Mars' desert wastelands. A thriving city, with low buildings touching the glass roof of the dome.

The rain-maker went on, the first drops splattering down from the overhead sprinkler system. Unterzuyder cringed.

"Driver, driver!" he cried, rapping smartly with his cane. "Do you want me to catch my death?"

The driver hurriedly caused the separate halves of the glassteel cupola to fold over the car. Unterzuyder settled back injuredly.

At the registration desk of the Hotel de Mars, he asked for, and was shown to the room of, Mr. Nathaniel and Miss Fayette Beecher. The door was thrown open by a tanned blonde girl in smart gray jodhpurs and slick boots.

Her face at first registered a nervousness. Then it smoothed.

"Oh!" she sang out, blue eyes widening and taking him in from head to toe. "You must be Mr. Straley." She cocked her lively face cutely to one side. "Are you?"

Unterzuyder's heart banged. He bit his lip. This was exactly the kind of girl his dead mother warned him to stay away from. Coquettish. Sexy. Treacherous, like most females. And he had lately noticed, to his dismay, that he, an Unterzuyder, was becoming far too susceptible to such unhealthy influences.

"I am Mr. Straley," he said coldly. "Carruthers Straley, founder of Titan Settlers, Ltd. Shall I come in?"

"Please do. For a moment, I lost my wits."

She's making a play for me, like all females, he thought. Discouragedly, Unterzuyder went in. He sat down on a sponge-plastic chair, resting his gloved hands on his cane and looking upon the girl sternly.

"Daddy!" she sang out. "Mr. Straley is here!"

A man with a half-bald head and a deep tan lunged into the room carrying a heavy rocket-gun. His grin was wide, his voice reedy and enthusiastic. He was happy to know Mr. Straley. He laid the gun tenderly on the floor. Unterzuyder looked at it distrustfully.

Beecher's reedy laugh sounded. "It's not cocked," he explained. "You caught me right in the middle of a clean-and-polish job. That ol' gun o' mine's been everywhere, mister. Most of the Moons of Jupiter, out on the deserts—even Africa. Yessir, our exploring expeditions have taken us into every corner of the Solar System that's available."

The girl whipped open a drawer in the bottom of a boxy chair made of crystal glassteel. "And here's my pet!" She reached in to pull out a long-snouted neutron gun with a triple trigger. Unterzuyder's heart banged for the third time in an hour. In the drawer was one other object: Tertium Organum, A Key To The Enigmas Of The World.

An old book. A musty book. The book from his beloved dead father's library. The book that held the Unterzuyder map.

His breath hissed. Beecher leaned solicitously forward. "Anything wrong, Mr. Straley?"

"Oh, no, nothing," said Unterzuyder, pain wrenching his face. "But I'm not a healthy man. My heart—"

"Oh, what a shame." Fayette leaned over him, dizzying him with her perfume. She put her warm little hand on his forehead. She held his wrist to feel his pulse. She shook her blonde curls vigorously. "Nope. No fever. The pulse did seem to race a little when I held your hand. Outside of that—" She surveyed him judicially. "I'll bet you're as healthy as a Venusian peat-dog!"

"Oh, come now," protested Beecher. "If the man says he's got a galloping heart, that's what he's got. Think of the courage, the idealism, the sheer fortitude of this man, who has gathered together a group of settlers to brave the dangers of a jungle-world like Titan—a planet no one has ever attempted to colonize! I personally hand it to the man!"

There was a fawning admiration on his unshaven, grinning face.

Unterzuyder settled back in his chair, feeling put upon.

"I'm afraid of guns," he told Fayette petulantly. "If you'd please put it away—Besides—" He drew a clipping from his bill-fold. "—I am already convinced of your prowess as explorers."

The headlines on the clipping read:

EXPLORERS RETURN FROM
GANYMEDE ICE TUNDRA
Father and daughter
make unique team

"It says quite a bit about the expeditions you two have headed. Needless to say, I'm impressed! I am here, of course, to make you a proposition."

He explained his purpose at some length. For several weeks he had been engaged on a project dear to his heart. He believed in the future of the human race. He wanted to spread mankind's dominion even beyond the Moons of Jupiter. Titan had been viewed by only two men, both of whom stated it was livable. It had soil. It had vegetation. Also, it had dangerous animal life.

"That's for us!" said Fayette stoutly. She accidentally pointed the neutron gun at Unterzuyder. She was squirming around on her chair with repressed vitality. Her eyes melted on him. He wished he could get over the feeling that she was laying it on too thick. That perfume. He must not allow himself to be affected.

He cringed from the gun. She hastily put it on the floor. He wondered how accidental it might have been. Probably these cheap opportunists were perfectly capable of killing.

He would have to watch his step. They had the map, all right. The bookseller's description of Fayette had been quite correct and helpful.

Fortunately, the bookseller had been willing to accept a bribe not to give anybody else the information.

He spoke again.

"When I received your viso-call, Miss Beecher, I at once felt that Titan Settlers could work with you. I seriously discussed with them the possibility of giving you and your father titular command of the expedition."

"Uh—" said Fayette. "You've already been capitalized?"

Unterzuyder coughed delicately. "My intrepid settlers are composed of young husbands and wives and their children. I was able to sell them—that is—the magic allure of a new world was really all that was necessary to convince them that Titan is where their destiny lay. They sold all their belongings, and—ah—invested the funds with me as Treasurer of the organization."

Beecher smacked his hands together enthusiastically.

"Fine, fine! There's nothing the daughter and I like better than to push on into a new frontier. Mr. Straley, for twenty thousand credits we're bought!"

Unterzuyder sat bolt upright. "Ten thousand credits," he said severely, "is the top amount we can offer. That is final. With one thousand credits in advance!"

He whipped out a check book. He adjusted his glasses. Primly, he wrote a check and extended it with a jabbing motion, holding it for perhaps thirty seconds before Beecher's crestfallen face turned toward his daughter. Fayette was looking with intense interest at the check.

"Why not? Mr. Straley, like you, we're idealists. Money means hardly anything. I think you've made a deal!"

Beecher stowed the check in his wallet with satisfaction. "Now we'll get busy. Of course, we'll have to have a drawing account. We'll have to discuss details, such as the number of settlers to be transported so I can buy or charter the proper type of space ship. There's the matter of building supplies to be bought—grain seeds—food—a thousand details which you can leave entirely in our hands, Mr. Straley!

"And while we're at it, I'd like to shake your hand! It's very few people who'd endanger their own lives to further the progress of mankind!"

The experience left Unterzuyder weak. He looked appealingly at Fayette. "I wonder if a glass of water—" he said feebly.

Hurriedly she disappeared to the apartment kitchen. Unterzuyder slumped lower in the seat, breathing hard.

"Maybe," he told Beecher helplessly, "a shot of whiskey would do the trick better."

"Sure thing!" Beecher went after his daughter. As soon as they were both out of the room, Unterzuyder got up and pulled open the drawer containing Tertium Organum, A Key To The Enigmas Of The World. Quickly he unfolded the chart in the back of the book. The map should be there.

It wasn't.

He slapped the drawer shut, sank feebly back to his seat. The Beechers were gone an inordinately long time. He thought he heard them whispering in the kitchen. Then Beecher lunged back into the room bearing a jigger of no doubt cheap rye. Unterzuyder gulped it down and put the glass to one side.

Fayette was admiring. "For a man in poor health," she exclaimed, "you take it without a whimper—or a chaser!"

"Eh?" Unterzuyder blinked, then drew himself up stiffly. "Whiskey is the only medicine my doctor permits. And now, let's get down to the matter of the contract!"

One month later.

Ralph Unterzuyder was furious. He stalked the darkened decks of the trembling space ship Ares—a slick hundred-tonner with sixty square feet of firing surface—and reflected that the Beechers were making a worse sucker out of him than he'd expected them to.

First, they were a pair of fakers. That much had been obvious from the start, with that phony newspaper write-up, all that bragging about their knowledge of fire-arms when they didn't even know enough to keep a weapon pointed toward the floor. Well, he'd expected that much. But to discover they did not even have basic knowledge of how to outfit an expedition!

They had actually begun ordering lumber for building, until he pointed out the climate of Titan might be kinder to prefabricated glassteel sections.

They had actually paid out money for seeds, bulbs, and saplings until he showed that all farming on Titan must for the present be on an experimental or at best highly speculative basis.

Not only that, they had attempted to charter a ship twice as big as needed, one that used large quantities of chemical fuels. That ridiculous error had been amended with a smaller ship sporting atomic gas-thrust. As for the captain and crew, they had been hired by Unterzuyder himself—and, by means of the secret passage of one thousand credits from Titan Settlers' funds to Captain Foshag, the captain and crew were bought.

Unterzuyder balanced himself angrily down a companionway. As he passed a hanging ventilator, the drum-beat and skittering rhythm of a jury-rigged orchestra echoed up from the ballroom. A dance was in progress. Unterzuyder smiled sentimentally. Nothing like giving the settlers a run for their money.

Of course, he reflected dourly, Fayette Beecher had got the best of him in the matter of using the drawing account. Unterzuyder scowled. What had got into him? Somehow, Fayette's roving blue eyes and fiery touch did their work on him. Next thing he knew, he was in duress, being dragged on the arm of that fluffy creature from one dress shop to another.

An expense account to buy swirling party dresses?—with a smidgin here and there for fancy explorers' outfits? The memory of his folly made Unterzuyder squirm.

He sighed heavily as he came to C deck. Anyway, by his own cleverness, he had a ship, he had the Beechers—who had the map!

And the hibernaculum asteroid, where his dozen infamous ancestors were sleeping away the decades under the influence of a potent, forbidden drug called somnolene, was somewhere out near Titan. Or had been.

That was the one thing he remembered when, as a child, his father showed him the legendary map. At least he was headed for the area where the asteroid might be.

And so might, he reflected glumly, that arrogant, impossible Bigger Bailes!

The Beecher's double-state-room was on C deck. Just as he turned an L in the corridor, he ran head-on into a gaily running figure clad in a fluffy party dress.

For a moment they struggled in an attempt to regain their balance, and when Unterzuyder came out of it he was holding Fayette Beecher tightly, and he was kissing her warm little face. She responded just as energetically. And suddenly he woke up to the horror of the role he had assumed.

He shoved her away. She stumbled backward and there was a glassy tinkling sound.

"Ooh, your glasses!" cried Fayette, making a grab for them. He grabbed, too, suddenly convinced he had gone blind. "They're broken, Ralph, honey!" she said. "You look so much better without them." She flung her arms around him again, pressing him back to the wall. Her lips drooped disappointedly.

"I—I'm fond of you," she said unhappily. "But you're so darned peculiar. You fell all over yourself kissing me. Now you're backing off. What's wrong?"

Unterzuyder was scared. It came as a shock to him that the extreme emergency of the situation had given him, by some hypnotic process, better vision than he'd ever had. In spite of the darkness of the hall, he could see that Fayette was ravishing. She could make a strong man weak. Well, he would not give her that opportunity.

Besides, something she'd said just now, something he couldn't put his finger on, had subconsciously frightened him. What?

These treacherous Beechers!

Maybe she was using her indomitable weapon to win him over. To what?

Perhaps to cut him in on the map. X marks the spot, indeed! X was a moving asteroid. It had been moving for some eighty-odd years since the map was made. To find its present location was a problem in celestial mechanics. The map would have to be deciphered. Not only that, the original maker of the map, being an Unterzuyder, had undoubtedly confused the issue by making the job hard even for a mathematician.

Naturally, the Beechers hadn't dared take the map to anybody for deciphering. To do so, might have brought the whole criminal element in the Solar System after them. That of course, was a little thing Unterzuyder himself had arranged—when he anonymously gave the details of the story to the press.

The Beechers had been boxed in.

Now, in desperation, the Beechers probably figured that if Fayette could make Carruthers Straley fall in love with her, that he, being a lawyer, might have a devious enough mind to think like an Unterzuyder and decipher the map! And not betray them.

They did not understand that Ralph Unterzuyder, alias Carruthers Straley, worked alone.

They would find it out. And so would Bigger Bailes.

He answered her direct question stiffly. "I shall continue to back off, Fayette. Love is an emotion which can be defined in various unflattering terms. I would not care to tumble your romantic castles! My mother—"

"Aha! Your mother!" She leaped upon the word with a knowing and very wide grin. Then she took advantage of his pinned position against the bulkhead to kiss him again, determinedly and hard. For a wild half of eternity, his senses were swept away on a skittering whirlwind. Then by main force he tore away and lunged down the corridor.

"Mr. Straley!" There was a bubble of repressed laughter. "I was going to ask if you'd take me to the dance!"

He did not answer. His flight was precipitous. It was not for several minutes that he realized the loss of his glasses had not impeded his vision. He leaned weakly against a bulkhead. Very early in life, his parents had insisted that the inherited weak eyes of the Unterzuyders be made normal with ocular aids. Indeed, powerful, dark eye-glasses had grown, over the generations, to be a symbol of Unterzuyder autocracy.

His parents had been wrong.

Perhaps they had been wrong in other things.

He shuddered. Without his eye-glasses, he hardly felt himself to be an Unterzuyder.

Slowly, memory of his original purpose in ordering Captain Foshag to throw a dance came back.

In the ballroom, Beecher would be strutting to win the favor of somebody's wife.

With a bit more success, Fayette would have a dozen young husbands circling her moth-like.

Intrigue, thought Unterzuyder, and subtlety, is ever the adventurer's most potent weapon. The great general indirectly entices the foe away from his own most strongly held point!

Several minutes later, he was fitting his pass-key into the door of the Beechers' stateroom. He closed the door, switched on the radi-lights. The efficiently furnished little rooms were brightly illumined.

The map. Where? Start at the beginning. At first glance, Tertium Organum was not in the bookcase. Then he reached in back of the row of lurid fiction titles and knew he had guessed correctly.

A little too correctly!

He felt one of the few cold chills of his life traveling on his spine. He opened the book and the map fell out. He sat down weakly. His fingers trembled as he smoothed out the heavy rag parchment.

A map of the Solar System. He dizzied. X marks the asteroid. Just as he remembered seeing it that long ago day when his great father showed it to him.

His father, that stern-faced giant in whom the valiant blood of the hibernating Unterzuyders flowed, had been most explicit. One of these years, the map would be given to Ralph. He would guard it with his blood. In the course of time, Ralph would give it to his son.

At long last, the hibernaculum would be opened, the dozen hibernating Unterzuyders would be brought to life with injections of anti-somnolene, and would once more take over their rightful place of dominance in the Solar System.

The position they had been scourged from by a relentless political regime which had smashed the Unterzuyders' fabulous tri-planet cartels, leaving the remnants in the form of a thousand rigidly controlled small holding companies.

The position they had been forced to flee from, leaving only their children—and a hidden map.

Unterzuyder's fingers still shook. Sweat dribbled down his blonde hair-line. Something was wrong. Everything was wrong. The map itself was hideously out of scale.

The traced orbits of the planets were circular, not elliptical.

And the map itself.

I should not have found it so easily.

Counter-intrigue?

No time to lose.

From his inside pocket, he took the flat little duplico-camera, adjusted the frame over the map. He flipped the shutter. Seconds later, the map was back exactly where he'd taken it from.

There was only one sound in this quiet room, the tremor of the gas-thrust shoving the ship through dark void into the spaces beyond Jupiter. Suddenly, there was the scuffle of moving feet beyond the door.

Unterzuyder found himself in the position of a traveler in an alien city where savage little children had switched all the street signs. Nonetheless, he lunged for the door, threw off the lights in the stateroom, opened the door, closed it, stood with his back pressed against it.

Hurrying footsteps. Unterzuyder was after the sound.

The big, hurrying frame of Captain Foshag. Unterzuyder grabbed his arm, whipped him around. Foshag's hairy, dignified face was wrenched with astonishment.

"Mr. Straley," he said uncertainly. His brow clouded. He looked at Unterzuyder's grip on his heavy arm and frowned with displeasure. He shook off the hand. "I'm not used to being manhandled, sir! You've perhaps imbibed too much at the party?" He was being sternly insulting.

Unterzuyder crumbled. He could be wrong.

"I—haven't been well. My heart—" He touched at his chest apologetically. It wasn't too far from the truth. Pains in his chest. His mother had always assured him the Unterzuyders were prone to heart trouble. Just as she'd got around to making him wear glasses. Terrible uncertainties were crowding him. He was surrounded by treachery. Had Foshag been shadowing him?

Foshag's great frame rocked judicially on its toes.

"If you truly have a bad heart," he said measuredly, "you'd have taken the long trail when the Ares hit heaven. We humans often are plagued with strange influences. Words spoken to the unguarded mind of the child sometimes become fact to the grownup. I'd not worry about the heart. And now, the reason I am away from the turret. I've been looking for you."

He cleared his throat. "There's a king-sized ship of the Silver type on our tail, Mr. Straley. I'm not the worrying kind, however. Worry is indeed the prime cause of most kidney troubles, and, besides, beclouds the mind when there's work to be done. Therefore, not until I observed that the pursuing craft was indeed pursuing—"

"Come to the point!" Everything else was swept away. Unterzuyder was suddenly furious at this big, stupid, philosophizing blunderer. "You're trying to excuse yourself for not telling me right away. Let's get to the turret!"

Unterzuyder went at full stride, his brain in high gear. They were being pursued. That arrogant Bigger Bailes, no doubt! So what? Add one more menace to those he was collecting. In fact, mess up the mess a little more.

"Captain Foshag," he said, "you are a well-read man. Ever read Ouspensky?"

Foshag nodded his square bearded chin. "A man of vast creative mental power, Mr. Straley. A man who seemed able to step off our three dimensions and look at the universe from a new viewpoint." Tentatively: "You have an interest in the classical philosophers, perhaps?"

Unterzuyder muttered something garbled. He trotted ahead of Foshag up the ramp to the glassed-in control turret, went past several instrument men to the viewing disk assembly. Foshag hurriedly got the pursuing ship on the cross-hairs. It was a great globoid catching golden-green sun on one half, black interstellar shadow on the other.

"Raise it on the beam!" Unterzuyder ordered.

Moments later, Ralph Unterzuyder was looking into the detested face of Bigger Bailes.

"That's me," smiled Bigger, his rosy face creasing. "Bigger Bailes. And how are you, Mr. Ralph Unterzuyder?" His smile became even more rosy.

Unterzuyder gulped. He was completely dismayed. Captain Foshag showed no reaction at the unmasking. Captain Foshag kept his face turned studiously away.

Unterzuyder felt himself going into a spin.

But he drew himself up and said haughtily, "Kindly keep your inside information to yourself, Mr. Bigger Bailes. I travel under the name of Carruthers Straley merely because there is an unsavory flavor to the name of Unterzuyder!

"Now, why are you following us?"

"Following you?" Bigger Bailes appeared injured. "I'm trying to catch up with you. I intend to come aboard—"

"You will not!" Unterzuyder yelled the words so loud the crew members in back of him half-jumped from their charts.

Bigger's image wavered on the screen as he leaned forward and settled back.

"I didn't expect such a reaction, Mr.—Straley," he said. His little eyes, almost hidden by fat, were penetrating. "I'd almost think you were hiding something. Are you?"

Foshag raised a commanding hand. "That'll be enough of that," he commanded. "We're a law-abiding ship. I myself am an honest man. Secrecy gives rise to certain nervous disorders which I avoid. If you wish to come aboard, perhaps you are taking advantage of some Space Article?"

"Taking advantage? If you want to put it that way. Two of my men are down sick. The usual spastic seizures. We've run out of ATG. We're coming aboard your ship to get some. Article 10b of the Space Constitution gives us that right."

Unterzuyder brushed Foshag aside.

"I warn you, Mr. Bailes," he said thickly, "if you have any ulterior motive, such as looting this ship, we will put up a fight! Our settlers were chosen for their intrepid qualities. We have guns. We have bombs. We have a flare-cannon. You will not find us easy prey!"

Bailes leaned back easily. "Relax, Unterzuyder. As far as guns go, we've got our share. And we have got a brace of flare-cannons embrasured into the bulkheads of the Space-Queen ourselves, if you want to get tough."

He spread his fat hands. "But who wants to get tough? See you gentlemen, aboard your ship, twenty-four hours from now." With which remark he broke contact.

Unterzuyder was at Foshag instantly.

"Not a word about my identity," he breathed. "After all, I did pay you a thousand credits!"

"And for which I thanked you! Mr. Unterzuyder, I am not a secretive man. If asked a direct question, I seldom impair my health by lying. Now permit me to return to my duties."

Fuming, Unterzuyder left the control turret, went straight to the ballroom. Here, without any hesitation whatever, he cut in on Fayette, taking her away from the handsomest husband in the lot. No word of apology.

He held her very close, very tight. He danced with a mathematical precision. Even the soul of the dance, he reflected grimly, derives from a mathematical formula. The dummy four-piece band haggered out its hag-strut very effectively. He was rewarded as Fayette lost her surprised stiffness, and began to melt into him in perfect rhythm to the tune. Her blonde head gradually nestled into his shoulder, her eyes closed, a small, sweet smile on her lips.

At the first opportunity, he swung her without a break to a small observation lounge, and in the cold green glow of a million stars drew her to him, letting himself be stunned by the warmth of her and the drugging quality of her perfume. He kissed her. He was carried away into a land of intricate enchantment where Love is All, and the Girl in my Arms is You.

She opened her eyes, looking at him dreamily. "I love you," she murmured.

"I know," said Unterzuyder.

"I don't know what your intentions are. I don't care what kind of a sneaky, underhanded person you are, I still love you."

He kissed her again. She was crying. Unterzuyder took out his handkerchief and wiped away her tears. "Now don't worry, Fayette," he soothed. "Everything will turn out all right." He took her back to the dance floor. By luck he found the young husband she'd been dancing with. He gave her back.

"Sorry!" he said. He gave Fayette a fleeting smile and hurriedly took off.

He went to his cabin and feverishly got to work. Plug up the loopholes as you go along! A favorite axiom of the Unterzuyders. Now that Fayette was in love with him, he could draw on her for any emergency.

Apparently the time was coming when he would need an ally.

He ran the negative through the hypo, put it in the dryer and paced the floor. He rubbed at his lips with the back of his hand. He could still smell Fayette's perfume. He could still feel her bare warm back. Careful, careful. He went to a mirror and looked at his face. Weak. The glassless eyes red-rimmed. Thin nose and lips. His spirits dropped. How could Fayette be in love with him? Particularly when he was one of the outlawed Unterzuyders.

The finished photograph went into the automatic pantograph. He blew it up six times onto a square of Mirac paper. He smoothed the new map onto the desk. Instantly he saw why at first the map had appeared so impossibly distorted. The circles did not indicate the orbits of the planets. They were merely a logarithmic indication of the scale of the map.

Mercury, being some 43,000,000 miles from the Sun, was the basic unit. And that was necessary.

The Solar System could not be drawn to scale unless the inner planets were crowded in fractionally close to the Sun.

Here, the positions of the planets were indicated by dots whose map-distance from the Sun receded inward in logarithmic ratio to actual distance.

Pluto, for instance, being one hundred times farther from the Sun than Mercury in real distance, appeared by the map to be only, roughly, twenty times as far.

The position of the dot-planets on the map of course indicated the exact date of the day when the map was drawn.

The finely drawn X showed the position of the hibernaculum asteroid on that day.

Since then, roughly eighty-two years ago, X had moved in its orbit. Where to?

That was the problem.

Unterzuyder sweated. It was said by the Unterzuyders, with possible justification, that only an Unterzuyder could think like an Unterzuyder. How often his father had told him that. But he was confused.

Naturally. The map was meant to confuse.

What were the figures at the bottom of the map?

s-1 | .7452
c-1 | -.2020

and

(0, 3, 2)
(1, 1, 8)

And why, at the top corner, was the name unterzuyder printed with a small u?

Nobody but an Unterzuyder would know.

Well, he didn't know.

Puzzled, he paced the room. Tomorrow Bigger Bailes would force his way aboard ship. Little could be done to stop him, partly because he insisted he needed ATG, a chemical staff of life necessary for muscular action, but mostly because he had superior fire-power. Actually, he wanted the map. If he didn't get it, he would inevitably loot the ship.

He paused before the mirror, again. Glassless, he didn't feel like an Unterzuyder. Looking upon himself naked of face, he cringed. If only the whole thing were over. If only he were in the observatory under the greenly burning stars with—

Frantically he stopped that line of thought.

He hauled out a sheaf of maps. He had come prepared. He had brought the duplico-camera, the film developing equipment, the pantograph, other odds and ends. He had a shelf-full of celestial mechanic manuals, as well as books on the more ordinary arithmetics.

But he had had only one year of math. Somewhere along the line, he had outguessed his patriarch of a father and his matriarch of a mother: law had been the result.

Well suited, he had felt at the time, to the trickery, the deceit, and the orneriness of the typical Unterzuyder mind!

Anyway, he needed a slide-rule before he could tackle the equations. For the present, he would work out the date the map was made. Then it would be possible to discover X's present position.

All that was necessary was, mathematically, to rotate the present-time position of the planets backward in time—clockwise, that is—until they coincided with map-position.

The star-maps, the Emphemeris, and the Planet Catalogue should make that fairly simple.

After an hour, his nerves began to quiver. He ran his hands distractedly through his awry blonde hair. He had the answer. And it was impossible. Except that it was correct.

Apparently, the map had been drawn up in prehistoric times.

50,000 years ago!

After a virtually sleepless sleep-period, he went to breakfast. The settlers were in a happy chattering mood. Titan was only ten days away. Unterzuyder ate with the pressure of the Beechers' eyes on him.

Nathaniel Beecher showed quiet menace on a face that ordinarily held grinning, shifty-eyed comraderie. Fayette had sullen, angry shadows under her eyes. Perhaps she was smarting under a humiliation that might make her do dangerous things. He had left her rather abruptly at the dance. Unterzuyder bit his lip. Perhaps he had not covered that situation as well as he might.

Remorse was an emotion new to Unterzuyder. But then he had suffered some kind of mental upset when his glasses shattered under Fayette's heel. He could see as well as the next man, and consequently was beginning to have some shattering doubts about the wisdom of his immediate ancestors. And he was a man.

He gulped. All these were dangerous thoughts. He must continue to think like an Unterzuyder.

Something devious. Something tricky. Something that would competently accomplish the task of fooling the Beechers, Bigger Bailes, and possibly Foshag!

As he started out of the dining room, Beecher lunged after him, trailing a rocket-stream of cigar smoke.

"A minute, Straley!" Beecher held him from the door, his close-set eyes full of dislike. "Foshag told me Bigger Bailes is back there." He jerked a shoulder. "You're a man with many small tricks, Straley," he went on slowly. "Probably you're the most dangerous man I've ever encountered. I've been around."

"I'll bet you have!"

Beecher gestured with the cigar, turned on his grin, apparently to convince anybody watching that this was a friendly conversation.

"But I'm not letting you get away with anything. We have to do something about Bailes. I don't intend to be hi-jacked. Truthfully, mister, I don't see why the settlers shouldn't be forewarned. They're a decent bunch. We're not.

"In fact," his eyes were boring, "I've known from the first that you've been using these people."

"As you have—and as you've attempted to use me!"

"Yes." Beecher's lips moved hesitantly. "You and I and Fayette are all three getting a free ride to Titan, aren't we? No expenses. So now that we've almost laid our cards on the table, why shouldn't we join forces?"

Unterzuyder drew himself up disdainfully. "I work alone, Beecher."

"Yeah." Beecher showed disgust. "You mean you're working for something no decent person would help you with."

"And you mean by that?"

Beecher's eyes simmered. He said nothing.

Unterzuyder snapped. "I still work alone—unless forced to recruit help. That condition may occur. In the meantime, use some of those qualities of leadership an explorer should have. Inform these people what's up. Tell them Bailes will probably attempt to loot the ship. Line the men up at the arsenal and load them down with weapons. Make arrangements so the women and children will keep to the cabins. Can you handle that?"

Beecher flushed until his face was bright red.

Leaving him properly insulted, Unterzuyder went to the control turret where he cornered Foshag, drew him to the Solar Chart.

Unterzuyder picked up a pencil, made an indentation at random. It was considerably to the east of the Ares' present position.

"Change course immediately. To that point."

Foshag huffed rebelliously. "That won't help us outrun Bailes. The new course will but give him a hypotenuse to travel. He'll run us down quicker."

Unterzuyder's lips turned thinner. Muttering, Foshag sat down to the computations. On the way out of the turret, Unterzuyder slipped a slide-rule out of an instrument case so deftly that nobody noticed.

Another hour's work showed him that the two sets of figures, respectively, indicated X's point of origin and direction of travel. c stood for cosine, of course, s for sine.

X had been, when the map was made, some degrees below the plane of the ecliptic. Its orbit was at a steep slant to that plane.

So what? So the point of origin was located in time 50,000 years ago?

The map was a fake!

He sat at the desk a long time, thinking, and thinking fast. Foshag must have known who he was from the first. He was an observing man, but he was also a close-mouthed man, who answered only to direct questions. And the Beechers knew his identity too. Fayette had accidentally called him by his real name. Treachery!

Undoubtedly, Bigger Bailes had tipped off the Beechers, just before Unterzuyder arrived at the Beechers' apartment in Marsport. Bigger Bailes thought Unterzuyder knew where the map was, but didn't know the Beechers had it. Bigger intended to let the situation stir itself up so the asteroid's location would more easily come out of hiding.

Yes, everything was wrong. Bigger would loot the ship when he learned the map was a practical joke. Taking a ship this far beyond Jupiter would have to pay off. And there was nobody to stop him.

What was it his father told him about Unterzuyder techniques? Sell short at the top, buy long at the bottom. All events, good or bad, could be used to build a firmer superstructure!

Well, face it! Ship's course had been changed. The settlers by this time had demanded to know why. Beecher would tell them Carruthers Straley was Ralph Unterzuyder, hunting for a hibernaculum!

The settlers by this time were up in arms against him.

He paled. He leaped to the door, listened. Footsteps. Patrolling his room.

He returned to the table. Make use of the situation. Dredge it for what it's worth! He crossed shakily to the audio and called Fayette's number. Luckily, Fayette and not her father answered.

"Fayette—darling." The word came out huskily. It was hard to say. It sounded real.

"Who?" Then her voice was uneven. "You called me darling. Are you sure you're in your right mind?"

"I mean it, dear." Did he? "I couldn't forget last night."

He was falling into the self-made trap of the dishonest, unable to tell his own truth from his own falsehood.

"All right," she said unevenly. "So you couldn't forget it? So what?"

He spoke softly. Please, he had to see her in his room right away. It was urgent. Would she come now? A long silence. Yes, she would come. No, she wouldn't tell her father. Positively. Five minutes later she slipped into the room. She barely opened the door. He took her instantly into his arms. When he figured he had kissed her enough, he let her drop limply into a chair.

The circles under her eyes were worse. She looked miserable. He drew up a chair, tenderly took her hands in his.

"Look at me, Fayette. I'm going to make a confession that will shock you. I'm not Carruthers Straley. I'm Ralph Unterzuyder."

She didn't look shocked. He pretended not to notice.

He told her selected portions of the story. "I suspected you had the map. I examined Tertium Organum in your apartment yesterday when you and your father were in the kitchen."

And you wanted me to examine it! So I'd be sure to hire you and Beecher and take you with me to Saturn. That was the reason you posed as explorers, so Titan Settlers would give you a free ride to the vicinity of X!

"I broke into your room last night, Fayette, and made a copy of the map."

And you left it wide open for me, so I could put my Unterzuyder brains to work deciphering it!

"And now that I've deciphered the map—"

That shocked her. "You did? But Daddy figured out it was made roughly 50,000 years ago!"

His heart fell to the bottom of his stomach. The Beechers hadn't got over that stumbling block either. He'd made a mistake in trying to pump her. He smiled feebly. But salvage something out of it!

"50,000 years," he said druggedly, "seems to be correct—"

She was on her feet, laughing half hysterically. "You're trying to say the Unterzuyders invented a time-machine? That they aren't hibernating at all? After all the trouble we've gone to—" She giggled. "That's rich, Ralph—"

Female instability. He held her tightly. A lie, a good solid lie. His heart raced. Bigger Bailes. "Of course not, dear. The whole idea of a time-machine is fantasy—"

Is it?

"—and it'll make you feel better to know the map is purely contemporary. You noticed the ship changed course? Well, dear, we are headed toward X!"

She pushed away, her eyes amazed.

"And," he added happily, "you will also be glad to know that you and I and your father are going to collect the reward for finding the hibernaculum!"

"Really, Ralph? That was your intention all along? You weren't going to free them? Oh, I was hoping so hard you were going only after the reward—"

She switched her glance over his shoulder. Pity wrenched her face.

Something hit Ralph Unterzuyder hard on the back of the head. He fell straight down ten thousand miles, and lay there for quite a while studying patterns of light that squirmed in his head.

Captain Foshag was dragging him to a chair. His tufted eyebrows came close. He put a slopping cloth on Unterzuyder's forehead.

He said, "For the time, you're a prisoner in this cabin. I trust the experience will teach you some truths. Wickedness secretes various poisons in the body, particularly the heart and the liver. Change your ways, and you may indeed live a long life!"

The door burst open and Beecher lunged in. His shrewd eyes rested on Unterzuyder.

"Sorry I had to bop you, Unterzuyder," he said in clipped accents. "But it was the best way to get you out of the picture and keep you from talking to Bigger Bailes. You might have messed up the works. As it was, we told him the truth."

"The truth?"

"Certainly. You admitted it to Fayette. That you'd figured out the orbit and present position of X. He got the course from Foshag and made us turn around toward Titan again. Then he took off for X. So we're whipped. But at least it kept us from being looted."

Unterzuyder ripped the wet cloth from his head and threw it somewhere. He laughed. He weaved about the room, holding his head and hooting, while Foshag and Beecher looked on with open mouths. Then Foshag forced him into a chair.

"Out of his head! Mr. Unterzuyder, please be quiet. That's better. There, there! Now we're going to leave you here for your own protection, Mr. Unterzuyder. The settlers are somewhat provoked. Do you agree?"

Unterzuyder grinned widely up at him.

"I'm sick," he groaned. "Tell Fayette I need her."

There's still X to find.

An idea had come to him.

He was in bed, the white cloth on his forehead, when Fayette walked in. She looked at him without sympathy. Tentatively, she sat on the edge of the bed, curling one knee under another.

"I'm sorry if you think I played Delilah, Ralph—" she began.

He patted her knee delicately. "There, there," he soothed. "None of that matters. Actually, we're two of a kind. Not that we're naturally treacherous, but that we are indirect, the most dangerous weapon in the world. I wanted to discuss our plans. You see, marriage is a—"

She gripped his wrist, hard, to make him stop talking.

She said through her teeth, "After this, nothing but the truth!"

Inwardly he groaned.

She went on with determination. "I do love you. I do want to marry you. And settle on Titan. The important thing is, do you love me and really want to marry me? Are you going to be honest with me about things that concern only us? Of course, I don't mind if you're tricky with other people. That's life."

Well, why not?

Unfortunately, he would be unable to use her anymore for purposes of finding X. But apparently, he was in love with her.

He held her warm hands. "We'll get married and live on Titan," he said.

She leaned over and kissed him until he thought he'd be forced down through the bed.

He added, "But first I've got to get back in the good graces of the settlers." When she smiled incredulously, he said with confidence, "It should be easy."

And besides, it was necessary.

As soon as Fayette left, he leaped out of bed and grabbed an encyclopaedia out of the bookcase. He looked up Unterzuyder, tracing down until he found the expected paragraph:

The fabulous cartels of the Unterzuyders were built up through their amazing instinct on the stock market. When the market was bullish, they seemed to know when the crest was reached. Selling short in heavy amount at this point, they reaped millions in profit as the market fell, then caught the market again on the upswing. Invariably, the bulls were caught short by the Unterzuyder bears. The Unterzuyders seemed to draw some special inspiration from one famous interpretation of their name, i. e., undersiders, those who work from the underside....

Unterzuyder sent the book scurrying into a corner. His hunch had been right. But now was not the time to work out the rest of the puzzle. He dressed quickly.

When he walked into the dining room, where dinner was in progress, he was wearing the white bandage pinned around his forehead. He was also limping very slightly. Sympathy was nonetheless lacking. Complete quiet reigned in the dining room. The settlers kept their faces turned away, or looked fixedly at their plates.

Fayette's expression alone showed sympathy. He knew his own face was fiery red.

Nonetheless, he told the settlers everything he thought necessary. (They knew it anyway.) He apologized. He pointed out deviously that, after all, they were on the way to a new world. That much he had done for them.

"What you do not realize is that it was I, your leader, who diverted Bigger Bailes from looting the ship.

"Quite deliberately, I built up the feeling that the new course was the course to X, the hibernaculum of my criminal ancestors. All of you were convinced. Therefore Bailes became convinced.

"Had he known the Unterzuyder map was a fake, he would have taken it out on you by looting the ship. I sent him off on a wild goose chase!"

Some of the settlers were looking at him with cautious interest. Beecher rose at this point.

"I can say something in favor of Mr. Unterzuyder," he said. "His intentions were good. Mr. Unterzuyder was only after the reward money. He did not intend to free the Unterzuyders, even though he is an Unterzuyder himself. And half of the reward money was to go into the treasury of Titan Settlers!"

Unterzuyder looked pop-eyed at Beecher. But now the settlers were frankly staring at him. After a moment, they began eating again. In several minutes more, the hall was full of chatter again.

After the most uncomfortable meal of his life, Unterzuyder headed for the door. Beecher caught up with him, grinning companionably.

"We did a good job, mister," he said. "I had my own reasons for backing you up. This thing'll blow over. Then I've got some ideas. You and I are sharpies, Unterzuyder. We could set up in business on Titan and build up one of the biggest fortunes in the System, eventually. What do you say?"

Unterzuyder smiled wanly and said he would think it over. Then he went to his cabin. In two hours, he had plotted X's location to the dot.

Then he leaned back, nibbling nervously at the pencil eraser.

In five days, with good fortune, the infamous Unterzuyders would be awake and free....

It took him two days of cautious footwork before the settlers completely dropped their hostility toward him. Then one evening he told them simply that they still had Bigger Bailes to worry about.

"When he discovers he's been fooled, it's possible he might head for Titan and try to loot the settlement. We have to be ready. For several weeks we'll have to be on guard. The space ship will be camouflaged. For awhile we'll suspend building operations.

"We'll be ready for offense and defense. We have three life boats which are maneuverable in empty space or in an atmosphere. These life boats must be equipped with food, with water, with weapons. I'm calling for volunteers to help me with that job."

It was a rude shock to Unterzuyder when Fayette became the first volunteer.

By the fourth day, the life boats were deadly offensive craft.

Unterzuyder paid particular attention to one of the life boats himself. Quite accidentally, it became loaded down with extra weapons and supplies.

Only one thing bothered him. Fayette was underfoot all the time.

As the time of leaving approached, his nerves began to get the better of him. The time, however, did come. At 22:04 on the fifth day, in the middle of the sleeping period, he dialed open the airlock door to the blister in which the stout little life boat nestled. He closed it behind him, turned around. Fayette was standing at the hatch of the little ship, slickly dressed in shiny boots, smart beige jodphurs, and a blouse open at the throat.

She was holding her pet neutron gun with the snout pointed toward him. She was smiling confidently.

"Ralph," she said, "in my hand I hold a weapon. It is not indirect. It is not subtle. It does not practice deceit. It does not give half-answers. It says 'yes,' and it says 'no'. That's all it says.

"It also gets yes and no answers.

"But don't be afraid of me, Ralph. I'm here to help you!"

He found his voice. "Help me? I need no help! I work alone!"

"Nobody works alone, Ralph. Ask Captain Foshag. Most people run on compulsive commands given them by people who might even be dead. Parents mostly. Positive suggestion. The mind works that way.

"Sometimes people are made to feel they're unhealthy, only they aren't really. Or they're told their eyes are bad. Or that they're superior to other people.

"It's just as if—" she frowned hard as if looking for an example "—as if your parents were sitting inside that smart blonde head of yours, Ralph, and telling you to free the Unterzuyders from their sleep. It's something you feel you have to do.

"But you don't have to, Ralph. I'm here to help you."

He stared at her, stunned.

He drew himself up arrogantly. "Put down that gun, Fayette."

If anything, she held the gun more firmly, and moved it three inches toward him.

"Don't mistake me, Ralph," she said, her eyes cold. "This is a yes and no game. No maybes or ifs. If you say yes when the gun says no, that's too bad. If you say no when the gun wants yes, that's too bad. You see how straightforward the three of us are?

"But I and my pet neutron gun will give you time to think.

"Tell me how you found X."

He slumped weakly against the bulkhead, wiping at his forehead with the back of a shaking hand.

"There were enough clues," he said hoarsely.

And there had been, at that. Tertium Organum, A Key To The Enigmas Of The World, was a key. Its author, Ouspensky, looked at the universe from a different viewpoint.

The small u in unterzuyder meant that it was to be taken as a common noun.

And certainly the conclusion that the map was made 50,000 years ago was itself an obvious clue!

"We made our calculations on the assumption that the map had been made looking at the Solar System from the north—from the star Polaris, that is. It hadn't been. My ancestors drew the map from the unorthodox reference point of the Southern Cross.

"From the underside. I turned the negative upside down and made a new map. Then I got right answers."

"Very good," said Fayette. "The tricky Unterzuyders did live up to their name. Didn't they, Ralph?"

"Yes," he said shakily.

The gun wavered. Fayette was blinking. "Ralph, do you love me?"

"Yes...."

"Are you being truthful? Will you always tell me the truth, the whole truth?"

"Yes...."

"That's a good boy. Please keep on giving my pet the right answers. Ralph, don't you know that if you freed the Unterzuyders I couldn't ever look at you again?"

There were angry tears in her eyes. Unterzuyder suddenly remembered the time at the dance, when he had wiped away her tears. He should wipe them away now. He was weakening. He was an Unterzuyder. He should be strong. There was his duty....

"Fayette," he said hoarsely.

"Stand back." Her chin came up. "Answer the question! Yes or no."

"Yes."

"Do you want to marry me?"

"Yes, Fayette."

Her mouth opened and closed. Suddenly her shoulders heaved and she shook her head blindly. The gun dropped to her side. "Oh, Ralph. I can't do it. I was going to ask you if you still wanted to go ahead with it. But I can't. I can't force you. You'll have to make up your own mind!" She turned away, hiding her face with one arm. Instantly, he leaped for her, tearing the gun from her hand.

He looked at it where it lay black and ugly in his hands. He was seeing it very well, with his excellent Unterzuyder eyes. It slipped from his hand and fell to the floor. He let it lie, and took Fayette into his arms.

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