Raiders From the Rings Page 17

  • • •

  Deep in the hold of the little S-80 the engines were throbbing once again, sending a barely palpable vibration through the whole ship. At the controls Ben Trefon made an occasional adjustment in course, with an uneasy eye on the radar screen, trying to fight down the panic that kept struggling for control, ever since he had moved away from the comparative safety of the asteroid.

  Elmo Peterson had been hard to convince, but Ben had convinced him finally. Only after Ben had assured him and reassured him that he would be able to run the blockade successfully had the big Spacer reluctantly agreed to go along with Ben’s plan. Ultimately it was the fact that Ben was Ivan Trefon’s son that convinced him; Elmo Peterson had seen Ben’s father accomplish many things in the past that were supposed to be impossible until he proved by doing them that they weren’t. Even then Elmo had wanted to take the Barrons back to the Spacer fleet with him, fearing for Ben’s safety with them aboard. But at last Ben had convinced him that their threat was outweighed by their possible usefulness as hostages in running the blockade, and Elmo departed with his message for Tommy Whisk.

  But now Ben was beginning to wish he had not been carried away. Convincing Elmo was easy. Convincing himself was another story, because he knew too well that he had no magic to help him move through the blockade and in to Asteroid Central safe from attack.

  All he had to help him was a black web belt around his waist. When they had first developed their plan, it had depended on the belt. The Searchers would surely be watching what they did, and the capsule in the belt was obviously a means of communication and control. If the Searchers would respond with the help Ben needed when he needed it, as they had promised they would, he knew he could run the blockade successfully. If the Searchers would not respond, everything would be lost.

  But when they had tried to find the Searchers to tell them the plan, after Elmo Peterson had departed, they were nowhere to be found. The cleft in the rock was gone, and there was no sign of the great phantom ship. Except for one thing, Ben might have been convinced the Searchers were only a figment of his imagination, so completely had they disappeared. That one thing was the belt, with the capsule that still was vibrating ever so faintly against Ben’s side.

  Now that they were committed, and had embarked on the plan, all the questions they had raised before returned to plague them. And with the disappearance of the Searchers, Ben’s doubts redoubled. For unless the belt could produce help, they were indeed on a suicide run. Ben was certain, from Elmo’s reports and his own knowledge of space logistics, that no ordinary space ship could hope to run the blockade and sneak into the Maze to the stronghold in the center without taking an enemy shell broadside. Only by becoming a phantom ship, like the ship of the Searchers themselves, could he hope to run the gauntlet successfully.

  Out of the corner of his eye Ben saw a faint blip appear and fade on the radar screen. On the next cycle the signal was stronger, and the capsule at his belt began vibrating a little more strongly. Ben motioned Tom to the ‘scope, and a moment later Tom nodded and breathed a sigh of relief. “They’re there,” he said. “Just a little behind us, but there. They have their vision screen down; I can see the ship.”

  “Then they must realize what we’re going to try to do,” Ben said. He grinned at his companion, some of the tension easing. “Who knows but we might make it yet?”

  All three of them were at the control panel now as the little ship carried them through the blackness toward the area where Asteroid Central would soon be passing in its orbit, surrounded by the great armada that held it in siege. Ben turned controls over to Tom while he ate a few bites of the meal Joyce had prepared, then lay down for an hour’s rest before resuming his vigil. Sleep was impossible, but he forced his tense muscles to relax. Presently he did doze, only to be awakened by Tom shaking his injured shoulder.

  “Better take over,” Tom said. “I think we’ve just spotted the outside ring of the blockade.”

  Back at control, Ben stared through the ‘scope, scanning the segment of space ahead for signs of the gathering of Earth ships. Somewhere up there was the great Central asteroid, but neither Ben nor Tom could see it yet in the ‘scope, nor could they see the multitude of tiny rocks and debris whirling about it to form the dense protective screen of the Maze. But the ‘scope did pick up the faint shadow of a ship up ahead, and then another and another … the first circle of blockading Earth ships that held Asteroid Central trapped and helpless.

  Carefully, Ben blacked out the ship’s lights and altered the course slightly, bringing the S-80 into the precise direction and orbital speed necessary to move parallel to the Central asteroid. Then, ever so slowly, he began edging the ship in toward the first circle of besieging ships he knew lay waiting.

  In the darkness of the cabin, the tension became almost unbearable. More and more signals appeared on the radar screen — a dozen ships, two dozen. Still Ben edged in closer to them. Once the blockade was run, the Maze would be no problem, with the key recorded in special memory circuits in the ship’s computer. Then there would only be the danger of some Earth ship following him through. But with the intervening ships in a tightly drawn circle around the asteroid, the Maze seemed a million miles away.

  A moment later Tom said, “There! I can see the asteroid now. And it looks like a swarm of bees are around it.”

  “That’s right,” Ben said. “If only I can sneak in close enough to make a run for it, we’ll be plenty happy to have that swarm of bees for protection.”

  “But it looks like we’re moving right through the blockade,” Tom said, looking at the radar screen.

  “Don’t fool yourself. Watch the pattern there for a moment.”

  The shift in the pattern was subtle, but it was there. The little S-80 had moved into the first ring of ships without opposition. But now the ships behind them were beginning to close together, until Earth ships were on all sides of them. Tom watched incredulously. “Do you suppose they haven’t spotted us?” he asked.

  “Oh, they’ve spotted us all right.”

  “Then why don’t they challenge us?”

  “There’s the reason,” Ben said, pointing to the screen. “Those two big fellows moving in on us. They’re not sure we’re Spacer yet. They want us well covered before they flush us, just in case we are. Meanwhile they’re trying to make up their minds what’s going on.”

  Suddenly there was a burst of static from the radio speaker, and then a sharp challenge. “You, there, moving in the pattern. Strike your engines and identify yourself.”

  “Sorry, I’m drifting,” Ben snapped back into the microphone. “I’m trying to correct for my drift.” He let the little ship ease deeper into the pattern of blockade ships.

  There was a moment of hesitation. Then the challenger’s voice came through again. “Identify yourself and tell me what’s wrong.”

  “Something’s wrong with one of my gyros,” Ben replied.

  “What ship are you? And who’s in command?” The voice was imperative now. “Mister, you’re warned. If you don’t kill your engines and identify yourself you’re going to be hit.”

  The two approaching ships were quite close now on the screen. Suddenly there was a flash from the forward tubes of the closest ship and a missile streaked toward them. “I guess that’s the end of their patience,” Ben said to Tom. “They’re firing now. Hold tight.” In the same breath he slammed down the four main drive switches. The tiny ship suddenly leaped forward like a frightened deer, heading straight for the center of the blockade.

  The effect on the approaching ships was electrifying. Before, there had been caution and suspicion; now there was certainty. They knew an enemy was in their midst. Their radar told them it was a single ship moving in from outside, and its action left no doubt of its intent. This was no force attacking the blockading ships. This was a blockade runner, a straggler from the Spacer fleet making a desperate run for the Maze that surrounded Asteroid Central.

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sp; Now the radio was blaring a raucous alarm, and searchlight beams pierced the blackness from a dozen surrounding ships, probing with fingers of light to pick up the intruder. On the tracking screen Ben could see that the ships ahead were closing ranks sharply, and other ships were moving above and below him as well. Tom Barron watched the movement on the screen for a moment and turned to Ben in alarm. “You’d better move,” he said. “They’re closing up the hole behind you.”

  “Let them,” Ben said tersely.

  “But they can’t miss you if they open fire!”

  “What are they going to fire with?” Ben said. “Not contact-detonating shells, that’s sure, with all the hardware they have out there. The best they can do is guide their shells until they’re sure they’re on us, and then detonate manually. And they’ve got to be able to see us to do that.”

  Ben broke off, suddenly aware of a powerful vibration at his waist. In the same moment a thought popped into his mind, and he reached a hand forward for the emergency generator switches far to the right on the control panel.

  He was already throwing the switches when he realized with a jolt that the thought had not been his own at all.

  There was a high-pitched whine from the engine room, and the lights on the control panel flickered. Behind them, incredibly, something was happening to the two great Earth cruisers which had been bearing down on the little Spacer ship so swiftly. One swerved suddenly and drew back; the other faltered in its course, moving back and forth as if in confusion. At the same time an angry wave of chatter burst forth from the radio.

  “Where did he go? Where did he go?”

  “Darned thing vanished!”

  “What do you mean, vanished? You moved between us to block my view.”

  “You’re the one that’s blocking the view, you idiot.”

  Now the whole defensive movement of the blockading ships was dissolving in confusion. Searchlights beat the darkness in wilder and wilder arcs, and the converging ships began scattering and circling as if their pilots had suddenly gone mad.

  “What’s happening?” Tom said. “The crazy fools are fumbling all over the place!”

  Ben Trefon chuckled, and hit the drive switch, moving swiftly on in toward the Maze. “It’s hard to home in on a shadow,” he said. “Remember how hard it was to see the Searchers’ ship, even when we knew exactly where it was?”

  “But we don’t have any screening devices!”

  “I think we do. Something’s hooked into the emergency power circuits, and we didn’t touch those circuits when we were repairing. But we were away from the ship for several hours while we were aboard the Searchers’ ship.”

  “You think they installed something?”

  “Our friends out there can’t see us,” Ben replied. “What do you think? There’s going to be some tall explaining in blockade headquarters tonight, I’ll bet you on that.”

  Now the blockade was thinning out on the tracking screen, and ahead the great disk of Asteroid Central was clearly visible, with its company of satellite rocks whizzing about it in dizzying confusion. As they approached, a warning signal buzzed on the control panel. “Overloading the generators,” Ben said. “Whatever their gadget is, it sucks up power. We’d better try to do without it now.” Snapping the emergency switches off again, Ben nosed the little ship into the Maze. “Hold on, now. You’re going to have a rough trip.”

  Deftly he moved the ship into a tangential arc, sliding into the edge of the Maze just as a large asteroid fragment came whirling by, rolling end-over-end. There were half a dozen possible keys to the Maze; Ben chose the avenue he knew best from experience, using the computers to outline his directional changes and maneuvers, but making the fine adjustments by the seat of his pants. Suddenly the ship was surrounded by rapidly whirling rock fragments going in all directions, some coming uncomfortably close, but none quite approaching in collision course. This was no job for a machine, when split-second errors in timing might throw a huge chunk of granite directly in a ship’s path. On each orbit, each fragment in the Maze shifted its position infinitesimally; only an alert human brain behind the controls of the ship aided by sharp eyes and reflexes could make the fine corrections necessary, using the computer’s key as a guide.

  Behind them now the blockading ships had again picked up their position. Three fast pursuit ships broke from formation and headed in after them. There was no time for Ben to keep an eye on them; he needed full concentration to weave his way between the hurtling rocks as he guided the ship deeper in to the Maze. With one arm hooked around a shock bar for support he held on for dear life as he fired side jets and breaking jets. In response, the little ship dodged and darted, dropped and skidded like a thing alive.

  “Ben, they’re trying to follow you in!” Tom said suddenly.

  Ben jerked the ship sideways to avoid a huge rock that had loomed up ahead. Beyond the Maze the Great Central asteroid was looming larger now; it was an enormous temptation to break from the key and try to make a run for it when an opening appeared, but Ben held tight to the plotted course. “They’re crazy,” he said.

  “Maybe so, but they must have tracked you. They’re following your course.”

  “Okay.” Once again Ben snapped down the emergency generator switches, heard the whine of the screening devices rise again in his ears. “What now?” he asked after a moment.

  “They don’t go for this on-again-off-again stuff one bit,” Tom said. “One’s trying to follow, but the other two are turning back.”

  For a few seconds Ben turned his eyes to the view screen. The pursuit ship that had chosen to follow was in trouble. Once off the track, there were too many moving fragments to watch at once. In the process of dodging one of the Maze asteroids, the pilot moved his ship directly into the path of another. The ship ricocheted into a third, which tore the whole front out of it, and then bounced from one rock to another, gradually beaten to pieces before their eyes.

  It looked for a moment as if the two retreating ships would make it back, but one made the mistake of running for freedom when it had reached the edge. A huge rock caught it broadside, smashing it into a thousand pieces which were hurled in every direction. The rock continued rolling along, not even budged from its course by the impact.

  A moment later Ben Trefon let out a shout of glee. The innermost of the Maze asteroids passed by just ahead of the S-80, and suddenly they were in the clear, with the great landing ports of Asteroid Central stretching out below them. Ben switched off the screening devices once again, and circled in toward the main receiving port. As the little ship hovered on null-gravity for landing, the great hatchways swung open to receive it; after a brief exchange of identification, Ben dropped the ship down into the waiting berth.

  Moments later a crowd of jubilant Spacers were greeting him on the landing ramp, pounding his back and hoisting him up on their shoulders to carry him into the stronghold, with the Barrons following under somewhat suspicious guard behind him.

  The first step of their mission was accomplished.

  10

  THE MAUKI CHANT

  THERE HAD BEEN a time, in the ages before men came into space, when Asteroid Central was no more than another moderate sized chunk of asteroidal rock, one of thousands like it making their way relentlessly in their orbits around the sun near the center of the Asteroid Belt. It was not a large asteroid, originally. Perhaps a hundred miles in diameter, it had been one of the hundreds of asteroid discoveries that had harried Earth astronomers in the 1800’s, so far down the list that it was not even given a name. It had been utterly undistinguished in appearance and size, but it had chanced to lie far enough away from mighty Jupiter, the herdsman of the Rings, to have a relatively stable and reliable orbit, and it was this chance of celestial geography that had first led the Spacers to its ragged surface in the early days of their exile.

  They had needed a way-station, far enough away from Earth to be difficult to find, yet close enough for use as a supply dump and storage war
ehouse. As the years passed it became increasingly important as a communications center, and then as a headquarters, roughly central in location, for the blossoming business and economic life that Spacers were building for themselves with the doors of Earth closed to them.

  Slowly, bit by bit, Asteroid Central had been molded to their needs. Controlled murexide bombs stolen from Earth warehouses during raids were used to cut tunnels into the surface of the asteroid to provide pressurized storage and supply areas, and drydocks for the repair of Spacer ships. As methods of mining and smelting iron under space conditions were developed, shipyards were built on Asteroid Central’s surface, and the ore from other asteroids provided girders and I-beams to build up more useable areas on the surface. Once the body of the asteroid had been tunneled and honeycombed, structural steel formed the basis for the growth of a great city of steel on the surface, and an industrial center for the Spacers began to grow.

  Furnishings were built or stolen from Earth. Laboratory space was built for the Spacer scientists, fabrication shops and other manufacturing facilities were painstakingly built up over the centuries, with each decade bringing new growth to the asteroid-city.

  As the years passed, it became more and more clear that the Spacers’ exile was not destined to come to an end, that they were doomed to become outcasts in the solar system, with no choice but to provide for their needs as best they could, or die. Throughout all history necessity had spurred men on to incredible accomplishments; it was a tribute to man’s greatness, perhaps, that the Spacer culture did not shrivel and die as the vengeful Earthmen who had forced their exile had intended it to do. Instead it had grown and flourished, and in flourishing had become steadily more hateful to the people on Earth as guilt gnawed away at their minds.

  And Asteroid Central became a symbol of that growth. Over the centuries the city had developed into the great nerve center of the culture, the main communications center, the major city and the central fortress of the Spacer clan. To Ben Trefon the asteroid city, with its winding commercial concourses, its residential wings, its shops and factories and laboratories, its schools and hospitals, was as familiar as the back of his hand. To Tom and Joyce it seemed like an incredible replica of the great steel cities on Earth that they knew so well, a world they had never dreamed that Spacers could even be acquainted with.