The Runaway Asteroid by Michael D. Cooper (diy ebook reader txt) 📗

"Haven't any idea, Starman. I don't mind pushing buttons at random when it comes to elevators, but you won't find me playing with any machine I don't understand. I don't want to find the ejection seat or rocket launchers by accident."

"What do you think, Mark, Joe? Let's look around here." The Starmen began to examine the keyboards and control systems spread throughout the room. There were symbols written beside most of the controls, but none of the writing was recognizable.

"Alien writing," observed Mark. "I'd sure like to know what it says."

Joe was at the next console, thoughtfully pressing buttons, but there was no response.

"We need to find food and water," said one of the others.

"Right," said Zip. "Everyone check through the shelves and cabinets. Open the doors, too, and look through, but don't go anywhere." Zip didn't speak aloud what was on his mind. The workings of the asteroid, no matter how technologically advanced, had been abandoned for probably thousands of years. There could be no water or food anywhere except where the pirates were. The Starmen and miners may have escaped captivity, but their freedom would do them no good until they found food, water, and a spaceship. Success in finding even one of those items without being recaptured was highly unlikely. And even if they could board a ship, escape from the asteroid was just about impossible. He wondered how long it would take before someone else realized these things and voiced them.

"There's nothing, Mr. Foster," said one of the men after everyone had searched thoroughly.

"Mm hmm," Zip nodded. "Well, let's sleep and start again in the morning. Maybe some of us can go back to the warehouse and open up a few of those crates. There may be food and water in some of them. Others can investigate some of the passages that lead away from here."

The men arranged themselves around the room and lay down. "I think I found the light switch, anyway," said Joe and pressed a button next to one of the doorways. The room became dark.

"I assure you, Mr. Zimbardo, there was nothing wrong with the airbot," asserted a large man, standing before the pirate leader with a half dozen of his partners. "I don't know what threw it back into the elevator shaft and I don't know what made it explode-but there was nothing wrong with it. The prisoners must have done something to it."

"These prisoners are more than asteroid miners! None of St. George's men has the capability of knocking out two armed men the way those two were knocked out. None of them has the know-how to disable a airbot!" Zimbardo turned to his chief control officer. "Gene! Get me Lather right away. Tell him to bring up all information he has on the prisoners he brought in from Z25. Tell him to bring especially the video-record of the prisoners." He turned back to the others. "You're dismissed!"

Soon Lather appeared with a handful of records.

"Let's see the video-record first," said Zimbardo, and pushed his computer a little closer to his lieutenant. The man inserted the disk. In seconds, a view of the prisoners appeared on the screen, each one shuffling by as they entered the Silver Cloud.

When all the prisoners had passed by, Zimbardo turned his head down in disgust. Lather opened a file and brought out another disk. "I've got-" he began.

"You fool!!" spat out Zimbardo through gritted teeth. "I don't need to see any more! I know who we've got now! How could you miss seeing that the three Starmen who completely destroyed our plans on Mars were your passengers for three days! How could you miss it??" He was shouting now. "They've been on the news for two weeks! How-" Zimbardo paused and tried hard to get control of himself. "They were our prisoners! -and now they've escaped! They're loose inside this asteroid, and we don't know where!"

"But sir," inserted Lather when Zimbardo paused to take a breath and clutch the air. "There aren't many places they can hide. There's not much to the inside of the complex-only five floors."

Zimbardo turned to the ship captain. With words that smoldered, he said, "The complex of this asteroid is far larger than you think! I have barely begun to explore, and St. George knows more than I do!"

Back in control now, Zimbardo punched his desk communicator. "Gene! Get a search party together and have them scour every part of the asteroid they can find." He filled in the details about the Starmen. But he knew that neither the miners nor the Starmen would be found. With George St. George leading them, they could be anywhere-anywhere but where his men would be able to search.

Mark came out of a deep sleep into a light doze. He knew he was sleeping, but he was also mindful of his surroundings. It gradually washed through him that he was hearing voices. Two voices were conversing in very low tones, far away. He had a feeling that the air was thick and the sound had to struggle to get to him. He became aware of his eyelids, and they fluttered. Fully conscious but deeply relaxed now, he slowly opened his eyes. He saw only darkness, but it was not absolute.

He turned his head slowly to the left. Through an open door, about twenty feet away along a corridor were two tall, vaguely humanoid beings wrapped in shadows. Mark's heart leaped and began to race, but outwardly he showed no trace that he was alert. His eyes narrowed in an attempt to see more clearly. He knew instinctively that the creatures were alien. They walked in utter silence and stepped into the room. Mark lay frozen. They looked around for a few seconds, then went back into the corridor to the place where he had first seen them. They manifested no ill intent toward the sleepers.

The figures began conversing in low voices. Mark sensed a deep sadness in their tone. He strained to hear what they were saying, what their words sounded like.

Suddenly he heard something that sounded familiar. "A coincidence," he thought to himself. They couldn't have said "Zimbardo." After several more exchanges, one of the figures pressed a series of buttons on the wall, next to a blank screen. It came alive with a dull silver glow. Bright green lines appeared in the configuration of a map or blueprint. Mark strove to see as well as to hear. Slender fingers pointed to one part of the screen or another as the conversation continued.

Then he heard it again, this time clearly. "Zimbardo." Mark lifted his head a little and turned so he could observe the screen better. "A plan of the surface control center," he thought. He recognized the floor plan by its telltale great doors through which the prisoners had been marched.

The scene changed as one of the figures pressed a button. A series of diagrams appeared, diagrams that indistinctly suggested a power plant to Mark. One of the tall figures began talking animatedly, pointing to various locations and repeating the word "Zimbardo" frequently.

Suddenly Mark understood what was going on: the aliens were talking about shutting down the power plant! Mark strained to get a closer look at the diagram they were examining. "The aliens!" His mind raced. "They must be the builders of this base! Shutting down the power plant-why, they must want to stop Zimbardo! They're on our side!"

Then the other figure spoke up. He seemed to agree with the animated one, but his voice had a sorrowful tone to it. He pressed a few buttons on the screen and a picture of a warship appeared. As the alien pointed to the ship and talked, all the life seemed to drain out of his companion and he began looking hopeless and despondent. He turned the screen off.

Mark didn't understand-what was that ship? Why did it bring such hopelessness?

As the panel went dark, Mark realized with a crushed heart that, for some reason, the aliens were not going to deactivate the power plant after all. He buried his face in his hands. Something was stopping them, something having to do with the spaceship that had appeared on the screen last.

Mark looked up and saw that the figures had vanished!

10: Both Sides Move

THE GREAT AIRLOCK on the pirates' asteroid opened. From the depths of the abyss five ships came forth. Emerging from the stone tunnel, they moved into formation and then headed for the Asteroid Belt. Lurton Zimbardo's lieutenant Crass held the authority over the small fleet. Each ship was sheathed with the radar bender, making it invisible to the normal means of detection used by Starlight Enterprise, Space Command, and other Earth-based entities.

As the ships came into the Belt, Crass gave the command to the other four pilots. "The target asteroid has been located. Proceed with the destruction of the sats." The sats were small, unmanned electronic satellite observers, distributed throughout the Asteroid Belt to aid in research and navigation. They monitored movement in the Belt and provided constantly updated information on the location, speed, and direction of major asteroids.

The four ships moved into pre-determined areas in the quadrants around a small, heavy, black, iron asteroid that was speeding smoothly along on its course.

Crass stood on the deck of his ship and gazed out at the small asteroid. He spoke as if to himself. "There it is, the first of five surprise packages for our beloved Mars." The pirate leader waited patiently for the pilots of the four companion ships to report back. He expected that their assignment would take about 45 minutes-maybe as long as an hour. The first report came in 42 minutes later.

"Mr. Crass, this is Slant. We located three sats in quadrant two and destroyed them all." The other reports came in only moments later. A total of fourteen sats had been located within 600 miles of the asteroid where Crass was waiting, and all had been destroyed. Crass opened the intercom on his own ship.

"We're clear. Go to it."

Over a dozen space-suited men spilled out of the airlock. They had been waiting for the order from Crass. Each carried a large crate, nearly weightless in the Asteroid Belt. They maneuvered easily through space and floated gently to the surface of the asteroid-a dark 100-yard wide clump of dirty rock. Immediately the men began to distribute the crates evenly over the surface of the rock.

The grim, forbidding, pocked asteroid became the site of frenzied work. The crewmen removed sheet after sheet of dark metal from the crates and fastened them to the floating chunk of iron. Tiny flames showed where the irregular metal of the asteroid was being shaped to fit the plates the pirates were anchoring to its surface.

In one hemisphere three other men were attaching power and propulsion units. They sank holes several feet deep and inserted tubes, fuel tanks, and a control mechanism. At one place near the asteroid's equator a technician was installing a communications unit.

The four companion ships had returned and remained on guard less than a quarter mile from the asteroid. In less than two hours the work on the asteroid was completed and the crewmen reentered their ship.

"Take us home," ordered Crass. The five ships left the Belt and began the quick journey back to their port. Crass smiled most of the way back.

On Mars in the communications tower of Eagle City, technician Mel Golden was puzzled. Some of his data had just dried up. Mel was responsible for monitoring the sats in a large segment of the Asteroid Belt, and a section over a thousand miles in diameter had gone dark. He called to his superior.

"Will, I've got something curious here." A slender, middle-aged man with long gray hair walked over to the console.

"What is it, Mel?"

"Look at this. You asked us to report anything out of the ordinary. Well, occasionally one sat will malfunction, but it looks as if at least a dozen have stopped reporting all at once. I haven't plotted out the details yet, but there's an entire section of the Belt where nothing's happening."

"When did it start?"

"Just a moment ago. So whatever occurred out there happened about…"-he thought for a second-"about eleven minutes ago."

"Thanks, Mel. This could be the surprise we've been waiting for. I'll report this immediately." Will went over to the master communicator in the tower and sent a top priority message to Space Command's headquarters on Mars, describing the situation. Space Command headquarters forwarded the information to its centers on Earth and the Moon, as well