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

the enormous asteroid Lurton Zimbardo had unleashed.

"There they are!" announced Mr. Lather, pilot of the Silver Cloud, as he looked at the radar screen. He was followed closely by five other pirate spacecraft. Two other groups of six pirate ships were nearby, also searching the area of space in front of them for the convoy. "Inform Bolcher and Crass and give them the coordinates. Tell them that since I was the first to locate the freighters, I will attack first. Their ships will follow me according to our plan."

"Yes sir, Mr. Lather," responded the Silver Cloud's navigator. The communication was completed and the details of the plan agreed upon. Then the intership communications system was deactivated. The pirates' ships, being sheathed to radar, were equally invisible to each other as to the men of Space Command, but each pirate captain knew where the others were supposed to be. The ships usually communicated by closed-system radio and thereby kept in close contact with each other, but now they could not risk revealing their position by engaging in radio contact when they were in the proximity of other ships.

Moments went by without a word being said. Lather could feel the adrenaline surging through him. He was eager to give the command to attack.

"One minute!" he announced to his own crew. "All hands prepare for battle!" After the designated time had elapsed, he shouted, "Go!"

Followed by five spaceships protected by the radar bender, he sped undetected through the sphere of Space Command warships. On the screen before him the massive freighters loomed up. "Fire!" he shouted. "Fire! Fire!"

A laser cannon locked onto one freighter and ripped open its hull. In seconds the Silver Cloud was past it and through the other side of the sphere. Behind him came another pirate ship, and then another. As each passed through the sphere, it fired laser cannons at the freighters.

None of the lasers struck a vital point in any freighter's fuel system, but the potent cannons, each set on highest power, ripped into the unmanned ships and tore them open to the vacuum. Lather's six ships shot through the sphere of guard ships without being detected or even shot it, but none of the freighters had exploded. Lather cursed when he saw that the damage he had inflicted was not crippling.

The Space Command warships were immediately aware of the attack and began to scatter the freighters by remote control. Some freighters decelerated, others accelerated, still others moved away from the center. Now the pirates would have a more difficult challenge to destroy the NME ships.

As his fleet circled, Lather waited to see what Bolcher's ships would do. He knew where Bolcher was supposed to be but could not communicate with him without revealing his position to the warships of Space Command. Lather could only watch the screen.

Suddenly one of the freighters exploded into incandescent fury. The detonation destroyed the two freighters closest to the one that Bolcher's ship had hit. Within seconds a fourth freighter erupted into flame as its fuel system ignited. The three remaining freighters began to weave in a random pattern, and the Space Command warships began to close in, reducing the window of access to the center of the field.

Crass' ships began to zoom toward the remaining freighters, laser cannons ready. Being the most experienced pilot, Crass was confident that his team could eliminate the last three ships. Coming in at a fast clip, each pirate ship only seconds after its predecessor, Crass' crew strafed the freighters, scoring two direct hits.

With a grin of satisfaction, Lather saw that he would have one more chance to attack. The protective warships had drawn into a very tight formation to protect the last freighter. Its hulk was already torn with a long rip, but its engine still worked and it responded to controls. The freighter turned and twisted in a random, spiraling forward motion with the warships close around it. Lather brought the Silver Cloud in for the kill.

Shooting smoothly through an opening in the protecting ships' formation, he saw his target and fired. The last freighter blew up almost in his face. All seven freighters-and their contents-had been turned into diminutive pieces of whirling space junk. The Silver Cloud sped through the detritus and passed the far boundary of warships. As soon as he had passed the last Space Command ship, three of them fired at him almost at once. Though he was invisible to radar, he was visible to the eye at the moment he was close to the exploding freighter.

One Space Command laser pierced the Silver Cloud-a narrow but tight beam. The shaft of weaponlight punctured the crew's living quarters, and air began to escape from the pirates' spacecraft. Automatic seals quickly stopped the leak and Lather sped on. The exultation he had felt at having fired the final destructive bolt had instantly changed into a cold dread at his narrow escape. Followed by the other pirate ships, he sped on, back toward the great asteroid where Lurton Zimbardo awaited news of their successful mission.

Commander Benjamin Bennett of the Space Command ship Ignis sat motionless for ten minutes after the last freighter had blown up. He was a topflight career space pilot who governed one of the few standard Space Command Fleets of Twelve. His black hair showed no signs of gray. Because of his unspotted record and eminent trustworthiness, he had been given the responsibility for guarding the freighters. Usually looking much younger than his forty-one years, now he appeared much older.

No one approached him. Then he spoke, as if into the air.

"I suppose the pirates are gone now."

"So it would appear, sir," said a crewman.

"Obviously they weren't concerned with destroying us-just the freighters. I suppose in the long run it amounts to the same thing, though." No one responded. "Please raise headquarters and hand me the communicator." A crew member complied. Commander Bennett took the communicator. His message was terse but complete: pirates had attacked the convoy and all seven freighters had been lost.

Twelve minutes later the news came into Starlight Enterprise and was tranferred immediately to Richard Starlight, who was at work in his office. He finished listening to the message, then turned and looked out over the stark moonscape. Slowly, he smiled.

The next day, just after noon, Richard was again in his office. Joining him for lunch were John Rwakatare, Robert Nolan, Beowulf Denn, and Commander John Lewis and a few other visitors from Space Command. Though the food was delicious, the meal was a dismal affair. Long faces and few words expressed the atmosphere of the gathering.

Richard, however, and Robert seemed not to share the gloom. Richard was an attentive host, carefully seeing to his guests' needs. "A little more water, John?" he asked, offering the crystal decanter. "Could you please pass the biscuits, Robert? Thank you. Good, aren't they?"

"Yes, Rick, they are, especially for biscuits made on the Moon," responded the head of NME. "Your chef is highly skilled."

Beowulf Denn couldn't take it any more. "You seem awfully lighthearted about everything, Richard," he said in a tone that verged almost on disrespect. Richard smiled but said nothing.

When the lunch things had been cleared away, Richard spoke.

"Thank you for coming, gentlemen. I apologize for not sharing your distress. Please forgive me for what must appear to be an appalling lack of empathy. When you learn why I have brought you here, you will forgive me, I think. I am expecting a message any moment now, and I wanted you to be here when it came in. It is coming from the commander of a large fleet of Starlight Enterprise ships." Richard glanced at Robert. The two friends shared a subtle smile.

"Encrypted message from Captain Marks-Owens, sir," came an artificial, mellow voice through the high-level communication system.

"Ah!" said Richard. "Transmit to my office."

The large screen on the wall behind Richard lit up. He turned his chair. The visage of a tall and slender woman appeared, with high cheekbones and honey-dark hair drawn back and held in place with a small circlet.

"Captain Mary Marks-Owens on the Starlight Enterprise ship Tempest, reporting on top security beam to Richard Starlight. Starlight fleet is in place. There were no incidents, and we are ready for your command, sir."

Richard smiled widely and said clearly, "Excellent work, Mary! Deploy the probes immediately!"

Beowulf Denn choked. "What is this?" he burst out.

"Surprised, eh?" said Richard jocularly, turning his chair back to the table. "Of course, she won't get the message for about ten minutes. But when she does, we'll be able to say, 'mission accomplished'!"

"What is this?" Commander Lewis echoed Beowulf Denn.

"It was Robert's idea, really," began Richard, "and he ought to be telling the tale, but he is too modest to do so. Robert and I cooked up the plan between us and told no one else. Just in case there was a leak somewhere-and apparently there was!-Robert made a fuss about wanting to offer his freighters to convey the probes to the deployment site. He offered rather expensive freighters for service. Robert felt badly about, well, about making a scene when we met with the President and wanted to make up for it."

Robert glanced down at the table so as not to meet anyone's eyes, but it was evident that the success of his plan was deeply gratifying to him.

"The NME freighters were decoys. The real probes were sent out on SE freighters to different spots along the face of deployment. They were sent out without any fanfare whatever on the normal delivery schedule we follow for all shipments to Mars and the Asteroid Belt. It would never have done, anyway, to send the probes out in a tight bunch as the seven NME freighters; deployment must be simultaneously effected from several sites, and this is the command I just gave Captain Marks-Owens.

"If the pirates took the bait, then they would go back to their base believing that they had stopped us. And if they didn't know about our plans or the decoy, well, no harm done. Deployment would still go on as scheduled. That's about two minutes from now."

The visitors were stunned. "Why, that's terrific!" stammered Commander
Lewis. "No one else knew about this? Not even the President?"

"No one," said Richard. "Only Robert and I. And it's a good thing we did it that way, too. Without the decoy, the launch would have gone as planned with everyone knowing about it. As it is, we're safe now."

"Not only that-" contributed John Rwakatare in his deep bass voice, "we've learned something of immense value. There is a leak somewhere. Someone informed the pirates of the launch from NME."

"Yes, there's that," said Robert Nolan with a sigh, finally speaking up. "But for now, deployment of the probes will take place successfully. We'll have to check for the leak, and I initiated a careful search as soon as we received news of the attack."

Richard turned back toward the screen. "Computer," he said. "Give me a tie-in to the master control aboard the Tempest." The screen showed a scene in space.

"There is a delay, of course, but the feed is continuous. Deployment of the probes is taking place about now, but we won't see the results for about ten minutes." Time passed.

"Coming up on the time now," announced Richard a little later, breaking into the light conversation that was going on around the table. All heads turned toward the screen.

"This is a map of the expanse of the site of the deployment. This is not the actual scene, of course; it is a computer enhancement, programmed to show us what is actually happening."

From twelve sites at once, scattered about evenly throughout the area, small points began to glow. The points marked the locations of the SE freighters that had carried the real probes. Simultaneously from every point emerged a starburst of lines, each one a fine, golden strand of light.

"Dr. Hoshino's design propels each probe at about one-twentieth the speed of light. Complete deployment should take about an hour and a half."

The men waited nervously. Some browsed Richard's books and others peered through his small telescope at the moonscape. Occasionally two or three would come together for quiet discussion.

On the screen, the golden lines gradually lengthened. From time to time one would burst into a flower of lines like summer fireworks, and then later each of those lines extended and burst again.

When deployment was complete, the entire screen was filled with a complex pattern of golden points, like dawn-illuminated mist hanging in a huge spider's web.

"Success!" said Richard quietly, but his voice trembled with excitement. "Captain