The Runaway Asteroid, Michael D. Cooper [mobi reader android TXT] 📗

as to Oritz Konig, SE's Head of Security in Mars Base.

Konig's report to Richard Starlight included these words: "It looks probable that the pirates have taken some sort of action in the Belt. There are no population centers of any size within 10,000 miles of the place, and no known solitary miners. It's a completely dead spot, and sats are spaced very thinly there. Yet fourteen sats in a sphere at least a thousand miles in diameter were put out within a ten-minute period. No natural phenomenon can explain that. Space Command has the closest ship, but it won't get to the site for a little more than 22 hours. The nearest backup ship is more than three hours after that. SE doesn't have a ship of any kind at all within four days of the site, so we'll have to depend on Space Command for the first reports."

"Wake up! Everybody wake up!" Starman Joe Taylor was shouting.

"What is it? What's wrong?" Voices came from several men, jerked awake by Joe's outburst.

"Food! There's food here!" he burst out. "And water! Someone brought us food and water! Lots of it!"

Within seconds everyone was up and crowding around Joe. Now that he had roused his companions, he was bent over a half dozen large boxes, one of which was partially open. He reached in and took out a container filled with fruit. He handed it to one of George St. George's men, reached into the box again, and withdrew a vessel with water in it. It had a spigot on it as if it were made for traveling. The men began passing it around, drinking deeply. Joe dug in again and brought out another box. He opened it and held it up so that others could see. It contained several layers of items like large crackers.

"Where did it come from, Joe?" Zip asked.

"I don't know, Zip! I woke up before anyone else and noticed these crates. I jumped up, looked around but didn't see anybody. I opened the first one and saw the fruit. That's the whole story."

"You don't know it's safe! You took a chance, Joe!"

"What kind of chance, David? Where were we going to find water, much less food? We were done for without this."

"Not too much of a chance, I think, Zip," whispered Mark to the red-haired Starman. Zip turned his head and looked at Mark curiously. "The food's okay. Let the men distribute it and I'll tell you what I know."

"Okay," Zip nodded. He turned to George. "Let the men take the crates apart and see what we've got here. We'll eat and then we'll make plans." George took over operations while the three Starmen stepped aside.

"What do you know, Mark?" asked Zip. Mark told the other Starmen what he had seen in the middle of the night.

"Hmmm. Hard to credit it, that the original builders of this wonder are still here," mused Zip. "Why would they let Earthmen come in and take over? I gather from what we've learned and what we've overheard that the pirates have been active here for over a dozen years, and George found this place over fifteen years ago."

"The pirates haven't really taken over, Zip," said Joe. "It looks as if they haven't gone beyond the first few levels! Something's kept them out. Only George was able to get beyond the floor where the warehouse is. Maybe that's why Zimbardo wanted to find him and keep him alive. George doesn't know too much about this, this, I don't know what to call this place, but he knows more than any human living."

"Whatever the truth is, we have some friends," contributed Mark. "They don't want to be seen, but they'll help us. I'll bet a golden asteroid that they're the ones who destroyed the airbot. I think we need to be ready to see what happens next."

"You're right, Mark," said Zip. "We'll have to be prepared to move." The Starmen went back to the group. Everyone was seated on the floor or on chairs, eating a welcome and refreshing breakfast. The four men who had been rendered unconscious by the airbot had benefited from a good night's sleep and were back to normal.

Mark reached into one of the crates and took out one of the items that looked like a large cracker. He saw that several of the miners were eating them. Zip had also taken a bite out of one and was chewing thoughtfully.

"What do you think of these crackers?" Mark asked.

"Survival food," opined Zip. "The fruit is delicious, though."

When everyone had finished breakfast, George St. George asked, "What should we do now, Mr. Foster?"

"I was just going to ask you the same question, George," answered Zip. "Let's get the men together and make some plans." George called the miners together. Zip delivered a short speech, informing them that he, Joe, and Mark were Starmen and gave a brief summary of their assignment. With a nod, Zip asked Mark to tell what he had seen during the night. Then a number of men began to ask questions.

All at once the room dimmed. The voices stopped suddenly. After a few seconds, one of the corridors lit up with a soft, pleasant light. "That's the way we go, I think," said Zip. "Pack up the food." The contents of the remaining cartons were distributed among the men and Zip led the way. He felt more hopeful than he had since the Starmen had landed on Z25.

The corridor extended for several hundred yards in a straight line. Many doors and other passages led off in different directions, each marked with one or more figures, none of which was familiar. The passageway was plain and utilitarian. After more than five minutes of walking, the men came to an intersection of passages in a large, faintly illuminated room. The lights in the corridor faded behind them. Across the room was a row of elevator doors. A row of lights lit up over one of them. Zip strode boldly across the floor to the elevator that had been indicated, and the others followed without a word. When he was within twenty feet of the door, it opened. After the men entered the compartment and laid down their burdens, the door closed.

On a control panel, one light gleamed and Zip pressed it. When he had done so, another light went on. He pressed that one. After he had pressed six lights, no more came on, and the elevator began to descend. After about a minute, the movement stopped and a door behind the men slid open, opposite to that through which they had entered. The men turned and inhaled sharply.

"Oh my! Oh my!" exclaimed Zip, but no one heard him.

In front of the men was a power plant of impossibly immense size, in dusky darkness. There were low murmurs as of engines pulsing far away or of winds passing through trees, but they were quiet sounds. The ceiling was out of view, lost in blackness above them. A seamless iron floor, perfectly level, stretched out before the men as far as they could see. The left wall was beyond their vision; the right wall was about thirty yards away. Lights were located sparsely throughout the facility.

Gargantuan tubes, gleaming silver in the lights and ribbed like a torso of a dragon, snaked through a heavy latticework of girders. Iron pipes a foot in diameter ran by the dozens through the open spaces. There were catwalks, elevators, and enclosed spiral staircases in strategic places. Great metal containers bearing dials and lights of various colors took up much of the space.

"Go," said Zip. His voice came out as a whisper, which he had not intended. He swallowed and said it again, a little louder this time. "Go on, move out. It's okay." The men stumbled forward, filled with awe so overwhelming that it paralyzed their vocal cords.

Finally Joe caught his voice. "This is great! Wow! This is GREAT! FANTASTIC!!" He pushed through the miners in front of him and ran forward about twenty feet. He shouted as loudly as he could. "HEYYY!!"

There was no echo. His yell disappeared as if it had been damped. He suddenly felt chilled and afraid. He turned back to the others and rejoined the crowd. He sidled over to Mark. "This place is great," he whispered with a smile. Mark's eyes were upturned and shining with appreciative wonder.

Zip moved to the front of the company. In a quiet but determined voice he said, "Let's go. We'll just follow the main aisle, straight in front of us." He began to walk and the others followed. "Don't forget the food," he threw over his shoulder. Two men turned back to retrieve their supplies and then ran to join the others.

Joe moved up to the front and walked next to Zip. The Starman leader was setting a brisk pace.

"Isn't this place fantastic, Zip? Just think of the people who can build a thing like this!"

"I am thinking of them," answered Zip. His brow wore the characteristic furrow that showed he was not completely at ease.

"What's wrong?" asked Joe, as if he hadn't a care.

"Something bothers me. Our unseen friends, if they are the ones who built and maintain this asteroid, are highly advanced technologically-far in advance of anything we're likely to achieve for centuries. But from what Mark told us, it's obvious that they're afraid of something. I can't see that they'd be afraid of Zimbardo and his cronies. They're afraid of something else, something we don't know about yet-and that makes me afraid."

He continued his fast pace and Joe kept up with him, but Joe's eyes glanced into the shadows as they walked.

11: An Asteroid is Missing

THERE was a breeze. A very light breeze, a mere breath. Mark could feel it on his cheek, just a slight chill that was pleasant. He had not felt air moving since he had been on Mars.

"Surely, the air cannot move in here," he thought to himself. He lifted his eyes upward. As he expected, the lights failed before they revealed the ceiling immensely far above. "How far?" he wondered. "A half a mile? A mile? More?" The lights looked almost like stars, placed in the strategic joints and balconied work areas of the monstrous iron latticework.

The refugees from Lurton Zimbardo's prison had been walking through the power plant for some time-long enough to have covered at least a mile, and probably closer to two. Though the surroundings were obviously nothing more than the power station of the asteroid, the men were as hushed as if they were in a cathedral. They were small figures in an enormous place, reminded of their smallness and overwhelmed with a sense of the numinous.

Mark sifted through his memories to a time when he was a child of about six, and his parents had brought him to Carlsbad Caverns in New Mexico. He had stood in an immense room below ground, large enough to contain several football fields. He had exulted then, identifying for the first time his restlessness inside, his search for something larger than himself, something that could fill a universe.

He spoke aloud to no one in particular. "When I was in Carlsbad Caverns about a dozen years ago, the ranger told us that the temperature inside the caverns was constant. This is like that."

"Sure," responded Joe. "This is a kind of cave. Look at the floor. Perfectly smooth, like glass. Artificially shaped, of course, and sealed, but it is the substance of the asteroid-no manufactured flooring. We must be in the deepest part of the complex here. I feel almost as if we are on the bottom of an ocean."

"Joe! Mark!" called Zip from the front of the procession. The men stopped walking and the two Starmen joined Zip. "Look at that," said Zip, with a lift of his chin.

A computer screen about four feet square was set into the side of a huge, gray fabrication of metal, shaped like a cube at least fifteen feet on a side and made of thick plates held together with rivets. Dozens of pipes in a tremendous variety of sizes came into the cube and extended away, disappearing into the dark distance. Some were the diameter of soda straws and a few were large enough for a man to crawl through. Most were as thick as a man's wrist.

Mark stepped up to the screen at once. Below it was a keyboard without markings. He pressed the button which was located in the same place on the board as the button