Short Fiction - Poul Anderson (books to read for self improvement .TXT) 📗

a hyperbola rather than an ellipse, and can still brake that speed near its destination. But the critical stage of acceleration has to be just right, or there will not be enough fuel to stop completely; the ship will be pulled into a cometary orbit and run helpless, the crew probably starving before a rescue vessel can locate them. Bo dared not risk the trouble exploding at full drive; he would drift along, capture and bind Lundgard at the first chance, and then head for Earth. He could handle the Sirius alone even if it was illegal; he could not handle her if he had to fight simultaneously.

His knuckles were white on the controls as he loosed the grapples and nudged away from the asteroid with a whisper of power. After a few minutes of low acceleration, he cut the rockets, checked position and velocity, and nodded. “On orbit,” he said mechanically. “It’s your turn to cook, Ei⁠ ⁠… Einar.”

Lundgard swooped easily through the air into the cubbyhole which served for a galley. Cooking in free fall is an art which not all spacemen master, but he could⁠—his meals were even good. Bo felt a helpless kind of rage at his own clumsy efforts.

He crouched in midair, dark of mind, a leg hooked around a stanchion to keep from drifting.

When someone touched him, his heart jumped and he whirled around.

“What’s the matter, Bo?” asked Valeria. “You look like doomsday.”

“I⁠ ⁠… I.⁠ ⁠…” He gulped noisily and twisted his mouth into a smile. “Just feeling a little off.”

“It’s more than that, I think.” Her eyes were grave. “You’ve seemed so unhappy the whole trip. Is there anything I can do to help?”

“Thanks⁠ ⁠… Dr. McKittrick⁠ ⁠… but⁠—”

“Don’t be so formal,” she said, almost wistfully. “I don’t bite. Too many men think I do. Can’t we be friends?”

“With a thickheaded clinker like me?” His whisper was raw.

“Don’t be silly. It takes brains to be a spaceman. I like a man who knows when to be quiet.” She lowered her eyes, the lashes were long and sooty black. “There’s something solid about you, something so few people seem to have these days. I wish you wouldn’t go feeling so inferior.”

At any other time it would have been a sunburst in him. Now he thought of death, and mumbled something and looked away. A hurt expression crossed her face. “I won’t bother you,” she said gently, and moved off.

The thing was to fall on Lundgard while he slept⁠—

The radar alarm buzzed during a dinner in which Lundgard’s flow of talk had battered vainly against silence and finally given up. Bo vaulted over to the control panel and checked. No red light glowed, and the autopilot wasn’t whipping them out of danger, so they weren’t on a collision course. But the object was getting close. Bo calculated it was an asteroid on an orbit almost parallel to their own, relative speed only a few feet per second; it would come within ten miles or so. In the magnifying periscope, it showed as a jagged dark cube, turning around itself and flashing hard glints of sunlight off mica beds⁠—perhaps six miles square, all crags and cracks and fracture faces, heatless and lifeless and kindless.

V

Lundgard yawned elaborately after dinner. “Excuse,” he said. “Unless somebody’s for chess?” His hopeful glance met the grimness of Bo and the odd sadness of Valeria, and he shrugged. “All right, then. Pleasant dreams.”

After ten minutes⁠—now!

Bo uncoiled himself. “Valeria,” he whispered, as if the name were holy.

“Yes?” She arched her brows expectantly.

“I can’t stop to explain now. I’ve got to do something dangerous. Get back aft of the gyro housing.”

“What?”

“Get back!” Command blazed frantically in him. “And stay there, whatever happens.”

Something like fear flickered in her eyes. It was a very long way to human help. Then she nodded, puzzled but with an obedience which held gallantry, and slipped out of sight behind the steel pillar.

Bo launched himself across the room in a single null-gee bound. One hand ripped aside Lundgard’s curtain, the other got him by the throat.

“What the hell⁠—”

Lundgard exploded into life. His fist crashed against Bo’s cheek. Bo held on with one hand and slugged with the other. Knuckles bounced on rubbery muscle. Lundgard’s arm snaked for the tunic stretched on his bunk wall; his body came lithely out of the sack. Bo snatched for that wrist. Lundgard’s free hand came around, edged out to slam him in the larynx.

Pain ripped through Bo. He let go and sailed across the room. Lundgard was pulling out his needler.

Bo hit the opposite wall and rebounded⁠—not for the armed man, but for the control panel. Lundgard spat a dart at him. It burst on the viewport over his shoulder, and Bo caught the acrid whiff of poison. Then the converter was roaring to life and whining gyros spun the ship around.

Lundgard was hurled across the room. He collected himself, catlike, grabbed a stanchion, and raised the gun again. “I’ve got the drop,” he said. “Get away from there or you’re a dead man.”

It was as if someone else had seized Bo’s body. Decision was like lightning through him. He had tried to capture Lundgard, and failed, and venom crouched at his back. But the ship was pointed for the asteroid now, where it hung gloomily a dozen miles off, and the rockets were ready to spew.

“If you shoot me,” said Bo, “I’ll live just long enough to pour on the juice. We’ll hit that rock and scatter from hell to breakfast.”

Valeria emerged. Lundgard swung the needler to cover her. “Stay where you are!” he rapped.

“What’s happening?” she said fearfully.

“I don’t know,” said Lundgard. “Bo’s gone crazy⁠—attacked me⁠—”

Wrath boiled black in the pilot. He snarled, “You killed my partner. You must’a been fixing to kill us too.”

“What do you mean?” whispered Valeria.

“How should I know?” said Lundgard. “He’s jumped his orbit, that’s all. Look, Bo, be reasonable. Get away from that panel⁠—”

“Look in his suitcase, Valeria.” Bo forced the words out of a tautened throat.