ASTEROID MAN

by R. Lionel Fanthorpe

Arcadia House 1966

Scanned and Proofed by Highroller and RyokoWerx

CHAPTER I

Jonga kicked over the chart table with a savage oath. Krull raised an eyebrow inquisitively.

"What's wrong, Jonga?"

"Everything!" retorted his colleague. "Every blasted thing in the galaxy! Every blasted thing in the universe! I'm sick and tired and fed up. Wish I'd never heard of astronomy. Wish I'd never gone to a university. Wish I'd never mastered astro-physics, and above all, I wish I'd never come here. God! What a job for a man with imagination and enthusiasm!" He sighed wearily and thrust his hands deep into the tunic pocket. "I thought space was a big job for a big man. I thought it needed men with enormous minds to run enormous ships. I thought all sorts of crazy things before I got into the service." He spat expressively onto the shining beryllium of the floor. "And when I got into the service"—his voice took on a desperate edge—"what did I find? What did I find? They stick me behind a charge table, and I count asteroids. I count 'em day in and day out! I orbit 'em! I plot 'em. I cross-check 'em! I've never been so bored in my life. I feel like a kid who left school wanting to be an engine driver, a couple of hundred years ago, and what happens? I imagine those poor little beggars of the past cleaning piston rods and other soul-destroying things! By the time you get a job that you really want to do, you've waited for it so long that you don't want it any more. If you can't have the thing that you want when you want it, it takes the edge off your appetite. Makes you sick… it does me, anyway. I'm teed off. I never want to see another asteroid. I never want to see another planetoid. I never want to look on this blasted chart again. I don't want to touch that computer any more. I'm fed up!"

"I know how you feel," said Krull. "I know exactly. But don't you realize that, in a sense, you've got the very job you wanted?"

"Have the job I wanted?" echoed Jonga incredulously. "You don't make sense, Krull."

"You said you wanted something tough," said his colleague. "Do you think there is anything tougher than this soul-destroying monotony? Any romantic kid straight out of school can get into one of those rocket ships and fly them to Lord-knows-where, imagining himself as a prehistoric 'cowboy' or something like that, with the reins of a fiery horse. You see it on television screens every day. Boys in rocket ships, boys riding atomic racing cars, sure they can do that! Crazy kids, plenty of dough, so what? It takes a man to stand here and count asteroids. Do you think any of those crazy kids has got enough depth inside his own mind to stand here day after day, week after week, year after year, doing the same job—checking, re-checking, and then checking again? You know as well as I do why we're here. You know why they have to be checked. You know that that's about the weakest point in the solar system defense!"

"You're right. I'm sorry I said anything," answered Jonga. "I realize it's got to be done."

"Then you realize why you've always got to have the same men on the job. There's no equipment designed that could do this job. We tried it, remember? The new Hickworth computer was tried, and what did it do? Every time one of those babies went erratic, it blew off a false alarm, and so what? Every ship in the inter-planetary force goes up to intercept. And what do they go and intercept? A chunk of rock! You need the human element here. You must have the human element. Even in this 21st century, there's no computer that can do this job as well as men. We've got a responsible job! And look at it the other way. Think of all the guys who'd be glad to sit back and earn as many interplanetary credits as you do, just by sitting, watching a screen!"

"Yes, I guess they would." Jonga laughed. "You know, Krull, you've got a sense of humor. Didn't one of those prehistoric writers say it was a saving grace?"

"It is! Kept me alive more than once. I remember the time I was lost on Lunar. Oh heck, it was my own silly fault! I was out there with a party. Talk about crazy kids, I was one! We weren't more than seventeen or eighteen. We'd a second-hand car, and we were trying to get across across the Sea of Rains, you know—establish some new kind of record. The car broke down, and we had to start foot-slogging it in space suits. We had no navigational gear with us. We were supposed to be steering by the landmarks. Then the night comes up and catches us, and there were no landmarks. None of us knew enough astronomy; we only kept kidding ourselves we did. We were looking at the wrong constellations, and we were trying to work out our position in relationship to earth, and how those constellations should have looked, and which was north from where we were heading, and —oh—it was fantastic. We finished up pretty well dead beat, just slugging across that vast plain of pumice dust. I wouldn't be here now, only somebody with a bit more sense than we had had been keeping a friendly watch without letting us know. When we were pretty well on our beam ends, they came and picked us up. It taught me something. It taught me a lot of things! Even while we were waiting there, slugging across that desert, slugging through that pumice dust with the water running low and the food even lower, we were making jokes over the short-wave all the time. They weren't funny jokes, they were very weak jokes, they were some of the oldest chesnuts you ever heard, but we laughed. We laughed out of a sense of duty to each other. We decided that if we were going to die, we'd try and die laughing. We were laughing when they found us, only by that time it had gotten pretty well on the verge of hysteria… They congratulated us on getting as far as we'd gotten. They said it was a greater achievement than getting there. They hadn't expected to find us laughing. I believe they stamped a gold star on the record sheets; it probably helped us to get the job later… Yes, I've had lots of reasons to be grateful to a sense of humor."

"I'll have to try to develop one," commented Jonga.

"Let's see: 'Little tiny asteroid—I'd like to give you the boid."

"Yes, that's about the standard of the jokes we were making. You must be getting pretty well to the end of your rope. I tell you what—nip down to the canteen and bring up a half-bottle of rye."

"Now that," said Jonga, "is about the best suggestion I've heard for a long time!"

"Make sure it's only a half-bottle! These things are bad enough to count when we're stone cold sober!"

"O.K." Jonga departed. He felt much better. He liked Krull. Krull was a good chap. Krull was tall and dark, with a face like the back end of a bus, one of those pleasantly ugly men with broad shoulders and grey, twinkling eyes. Krull had been around. The panel slid to behind Jonga's slim, athletic figure, and Krull returned his eyes to the chart. They danced there… thousands upon thousands of them, or so it seemed. He had another look in the computer book. Actually, there weren't thousands, as he well knew—at least, if there were, only just. Centuries ago—way back in 1942—they had been officially charted at one thousand, five hundred and thirty-nine. Now, in 2260, there were two thousand, eight hundred and twelve. Every asteroid in the belt. Dancing and twirling and swirling around, following their insane, erratic orbits. Every few hours the whole gamut had to be checked and double-checked. You couldn't keep track of their orbits. You could only keep their numbers under surveillance. The orbits were too erratic even for the computers. He recalled again what had happened when they tried to leave the Hickworth mechanism to do the job on their own. Brother! Had that caused some trouble!

All the solar system dwellers knew that far, far out beyond the galaxy were many, many other systems. Far, far beyond the known, lay the great unknown. Just what it contained was a perennial problem for the earth men and their allies on the other habitable planets of the system. Their screens worked incessantly. Any unidentified object that might have been any kind of spaceship was at once checked and intercepted. In the friendliest possible way… there was even betting that anything from out there was just as intelligent and friendly as their own colleagues in the system itself. They didn't shoot first and ask questions afterward. The stranger was always given the benefit of the doubt. But there was always the chance. It was the risk that they dare not take. The risk that somewhere out there, in the great unknown, was a lurking intelligence, with more brain power than man or his allies. Something that was evil and threatening and malevolent. Something that must not be allowed past the defenses. That was where the asteroid spotters came in. That was where the weak link had to be guarded. You could hide a space ship up there in the asteroid belt. It would just show up as one more blip among the two thousand, eight hundred and twelve other blips… That was—unless you counted the things. Krull flicked the computer onto its auto-counting mechanism and swung the directional beam on its mammoth task.

Two thousand, eight hundred and nine; two thousand, eight hundred and ten; two thousand, eight hundred and eleven; two thousand, eight hundred and twelve;—Oh, no! It had happened! It couldn't happen, but it had to happen. Krull felt his hands shaking with suppressed excitement. Two thousand, eight hundred and thirteen! No, there weren't. There couldn't be. It didn't make sense. The pointer on the computer recording dial jarred and flashed in front of his eyes like a probe of his eyes, like a probe of white-hot light. Two thousand, eight hundred and thirteen! He wished Jonga would hurry and get back. Two thousand, eight hundred and thirteen. He kept repeating it over and over to himself. It seemed to be like a figure from the Book of Doom… What had come in? Had one of them split? It could, of course, be a false alarm. The routine process would have to be put into action. The recognizables would have to be double-checked, and that would leave the uncertainty margin on the edge to be investigated…

He rang the alarm bell.

Better a false alarm than letting some invader slip through, he decided. Jonga came hurrying back, a plastic bottle in one hand.

"Did you get so thirsty you had to ring the alarm?" he cracked.

Krull shook his head. "Look here!"

Jonga flashed his eyes across to the computer with its auto-recorder. Two, eight, one, three. His voice was incredulous. "What happened? Did she blow a valve? Mechanical counting gone haywire?"

"Be your age," said Krull. "Counting mechanism doesn't go haywire. It wouldn't be here if it did!"

"Stone the crows! What are we gonna do now?"

"We'll try and sort out which one it is, now I've sounded the general alarm," said Krull. "Let's get the eccentricity charts down." They crossed their gleaming ultra-modern laboratory and began hauling at heaps of highly involved equipment. As soon as a number variation showed up, they threw every analytical scientific device they could get into trying to find the odd man out. At the moment, the only thing they knew was that there was one asteroid too many. There was one strange planetoid up there in that erratic swirling mass…

"This is crazy," said Jonga slowly. "Come off it; you know as well as I do this is what we're here for. It isn't crazy; it's just very, very unusual," retorted Krull.

"O.K. We'll skip the definitions," said Jonga. He was himself again now. Action was what he craved. Action was what he loved. It was this ceaseless counting of unvarying blips on a screen that got him. But give him the chance to do something, and he was all man…

"Right! Let's see which of these beggars we can isolate," said the scientist. "In the first place, we can cross off the first thousand known and computed's."

"Yes, and then we can add the odd five hundred and thirty-nine with calculable orbits," said Jonga. "That's all the old originals counted."

"Fair enough," replied Krull. "Which leaves us with what?"

"Why, only an odd eight hundred," said Jonga. "This thing is big, Krull, hadn't we better see the skipper about this?"

"I guess so."

They went from the observation room into the gleaming beryllium elevator, and whistled swiftly and silently down toward general control underneath.

An ash-blonde secretary with a supercilious and superior smile raised one carefully re-designed eyebrow as they approached her desk.

"General alarm?"

"Yes," snapped Krull. He didn't realize the unconscious pun he had made till afterwards. The icy wonder did. She raised the other eyebrow.

"Odd time to be supercilious."

"You should know," grinned Krull; "you've had plenty of practice. Tell the skipper we've got to see him quickly, will you?" She moved with a slow, superior kind of poise as though she were carrying a stack of books on her head.

"General Rotherson, an urgent report from the asteroid checking point. The officers wish to see you," she called over the intercom.

Rotherson's voice began somewhere below his stomach and rumbled up like a volcano.

"Come in."

Jonga and Krull made their way into the inner sanctum.

"What's the matter, chaps?" Rotherson was one of the "old school" and believed in military tradition. He sported a military moustache and a military beard, both of which were iron-grey. His hair was close-cropped to his enormous head. His eyes, strange green and amber eyes, seemed to flash lightning as he looked at the men. His chest was like a barrel. His shoulders were as broad as the desk behind which he sat. His great hands drummed a ceaseless tattoo on the blotting paper.

"What's the trouble, chaps?" His eyes darted from one to the other like a striking snake.

The men decided simultaneously that Rotherson was a good man to have on their side. As an enemy he must be devastating.

"It's the check-screen," reported Krull quietly. "We've turned up a new one, sir."

"Put it through the usual tests, have you?"

Jonga nodded.

"I see, and what did it show up?"

"Negative, sir. But I still want an alarm put out. I'd like to have a survey taken."

"Pretty big step on a negative test, isn't it?" asked Rotherson. He grinned suddenly. "Want me to get the sack?"

Krull smiled. "No, sir. I'll take responsibility for ordering the test."

"You may want to—but you can't. If I waste too much of the system's credits, it's my head that rolls, not yours. They put me here to curb any hair-brained schemes." Rotherson's voice was gruff, but he was smiling as he spoke.

"I appreciate the sentiment, sir. You're really prepared to back it to that extent, are you?"

"Yes, I am."

"It occurs to me that if there is anything out here, anything we don't want in, if it's intelligent enough suddenly to spring up there without penetrating the other radar defenses on its way in, it's also intelligent enough to disguise its ship."

"Good Lord," jerked the general. "You mean some thing from out there has managed to build a space ship with a rock garden stuck on the top of it. Some thing can control a body several miles in diameter?"

"We don't know which one it is; some of those pebbles are not more than a few hundred yards across, and they still show on the screen. Others are as big as Scotland."

"Yes, I know," replied the general. "You don't know what size the intruder is yet?"

"No, sir. It belongs, as far as I can tell, in the odd eight hundred. We checked the fifteen hundred calculables."

"Yes, I see." The general was stroking his beard with one hand, while the fingers of the other still drummed out that remorseless tattoo on the blotting paper. "Yes…" Behind the superficial action, his ice-cool, lightning-fast brain was working at tremendous speed. "We'll have to risk it, then, that's all. If the politicians blow back and say we shouldn't have spent the money, the worst that will happen is that those of us involved will get quietly demoted." He looked from one to the other. "You men live the system as much as I do; you're as loyal to it as I am. If I asked you to go out there in a scouter, and die for it, you would. I'd go and do that myself. This isn't half so dramatic. All I'm asking you to do is to risk your careers for it… Do you really think we ought to probe, no matter what blows back from some tinhorn politician with more tongue than brain?"

"I'm prepared to gamble, sir," said Krull.

"And you, Jonga?"

"Me too!"

"Right, that's settled, then. I'll get the patrol up."

"Actually, sir, it'll only bring the usual survey forward a month."

"Yes—perhaps we can wriggle out of it that way. We can usually manage to cook something up. Right, then; I'll get the patrol." He pressed a button on his desk. The icy ash-headed one moved in. It wasn't till she came through the door that Jonga realized how tall she was. She must have been almost six feet. Then he realized she was a Juiptrean, a colonist anyway, raised from stock that had lived and fought against the fantastic gravity of the giant world. He saw the double meaning of her presence now. Despite her height, she looked comparatively feminine. Yet that silky exterior was highly deceptive. She was the general's bodyguard as well as his secretary. For those smooth feminine shoulders were capable of lifting as much as a ton of earthly weight. In a roughhouse, she would be of more use than half a dozen men. And any outsider trying to raid the general's inner sanctum would never know what hit him.

"Dolores," commanded Rotherson, "get the general call out. We're sending the surveys a month early."

"Certainly, sir." She smiled and glided out through the doorway. A few moments later the landing ramps were a scene of frenzied activity…

CHAPTER II

There were five patrol ships in all, under the command of Squadron-Leader Masterson. He was a typical space fleet officer of the 23rd century. His ships and his men were the finest the solar system could provide. Long, dart-like ships, gleaming like silver in the light of the early morning sun, stood in readiness on their ramps. Masterson looked at them with justifiable pride. Fine ships—fine men, he thought to himself. Then he looked up to the grey infinity of misty morning space above him. Five ships, twenty-five men against infinity. Twenty-five over infinity. He gave a dismal laugh. What a horrible, un-funny joke. What daring little devils we are, he thought to himself. What crazy, courageous pigmies. We have plumbed the depths of the ocean in our bathospheres. We have gone out into space in our tiny little ships; we are dots in the cosmos. We are so small that we are not even measurable. We don't count for anything, and yet we've got something those stars haven't got. We've got brain, we've got mind, maybe we've got souls. I don't know. Sometimes I think we have; sometimes I think we haven't. He looked back mentally over the years that had elapsed since man had first begun to think. He imagined the first prehistoric Greek philosophers, sitting amidst the rugged grandeur of their mountains and rivers; sitting among their peaceful olive groves, looking over the calm waters of the blue Aegean, dotted with islands as the universe is dotted with stars…

He thought of how they must have pondered and reflected on the great mysteries of philosophy. How they must have considered the three elements of earth and air and fire. How they must have cogitated on the wildness of the sea, the unfathomable depths of the ocean, its uttermost reaches and outermost bounds. Poor little pigmies, he thought to himself. Pigmies with one advantage only, the advantage of a mind. Pigmies whose only salvation was the ability to say, "I am." He thought of René Descartes, and how much he had made of that one observation, "I think, therefore, I am." He had gone to prove the reality of the universe from that one supposition. A real pigmy, even among his fellow men. A little man with a mighty mind. He brought himself back swiftly and ruthlessly. In the beginning, he realized, men had speculated on the existence of the human soul and had found no real answer. And although man in the course of millennia had solved many problems, he had not solved that one. That was still the great uncertainty, the enormous enigma, the eternal question mark. A question which would, perhaps, never be answered. A mystery which would forever be unsolved. Masterson liked mysteries. He had first taken an interest in them when he had been absorbed by the fascinating hobby of genealogy. He had set off one vacation twenty years ago as a young student to trace back his own parentage. He had taken it back as far as the English registers would allow; then he had lost it. He had lost it because his family had sailed with the Mayflower. He checked again from the other side of the Atlantic, and found to his utter amazement that he could claim a pretty direct line of descent from the famous Western sheriff of the 19th century—"Bat" Masterson. He had taken a great pride in that discovery. It had meant more to him than discovering that he had been related to William the Conqueror, or Hannibal, or Alexander the Great, or Julius Caesar. For those figures, romantic as they were, had not held such personal qualities as the Western sheriff of a bygone age. From that moment he had found himself thinking more and more about his remote ancestor. He had read all he could find about the sheriff's life, about his appearance, his attributes, his courage; his strength and determination, his toughness, his tenacity; his ability to fight with or without a gun. He felt that in some small way he could understand just a little of the rather remote Oriental principal that prompted the Asiatic in his weird cult of ancestor worship.

Greg Masterson, 23rd century space pilot, had realized that he had something to live up to. He had gone advenuring all over the system and beyond. He had been one of the few who had crossed the long weary miles to Proxima Centauri with its four satellite worlds. He had been among the few who had been there and returned. He could had spent many lifetimes on those four worlds. He still had a burning curiosity to find out the whole truth about our nearest stellar neighbor. But that was as far as man had gotten. He felt as the prehistoric Scott and Amundsen must have felt when they had reached the Antarctic, when they had crossed the icy waste and achieved their ambition. They had arrived at their destination, but knew very little of what lay beneath that ice. They knew nothing of the fantastic deposits of mineral wealth that rested there. They had been the pioneers, just as the pioneers had crossed the deserts to California, not dreaming of a Hollywood that was to be born centuries later, and that was still flourishing… Not dreaming of the wealth that would one day spring up from the land that had seemed so hard beneath their weary feet. So it was now with the Outworlds, as they were called. Men had gone and taken many years of suffering, hardship and privation to reach them; had reached them, and returned and resumed their own jobs as pilots, spacemen… and yet when all was said and done, they knew no more about them than the early men had known about the polar regions of earth. They were aware of their existence, but of nothing else. That was the limit of their knowledge.

It was a strange business, he reflected, very strange.

And now, from those apparently uncrossable wastes of interstellar space, something appeared to have come…

He and the other pilots of the expedition knew why the survey had been put forward a month. He thought back grimly to an account he had read of the so-called World War II of 1939-1945. He remembered seeing some ancient films about it. One of them had been entitled "One of Our Aircraft Is Missing," a phrase that had been all too familiar to those who had lived through those troubled times. One of our asteroids is missing, he grinned to himself, only of course it wasn't missing! There was one too many. Greg Masterson wondered whether asteroids had a love life, whether those lumps of cold, hard rock had been quietly breeding there, in the depths of space, as though the things were alive; not in the sense that flesh and blood is alive, nor even as plants are alive, but in some weird way of their own. Can rock have a metabolism which we, creatures of flesh and blood, do not understand? He did not think it likely…

There was, of course, rational explanations, he assured himself as he climbed aboard his ship and made final checks with his fellow pilots. They settled back on the anti-grav couches and blasted off.

There was no real reason, no reason at all, why the asteroids shouldn't have increased their number. The most likely thing was that one orbit, rather more erratic and extended than the others, had just come into the field of vision. There was about ninety-nine to one in favor of that. They had always been notorious for erratic behavior, and after all, how long had first-class astronomic observation been going on? Certainly not more than three or four centuries at the outside. Was there any reason why one of those undisciplined bodies out there in the asteroid belt should not have decided to wander outside the range of the checking equipment for a mere four centuries? Good heaven, he told himself. What was four centuries in astronomical time? The mere ticking of a watch in the mechanism of celestial chronology. They were blasting into the early light of morning, while the earth behind them turned into a vast spinning globe, no longer flat, a huge spherical ball. A terrestrial sphere among the other spheres. Suddenly it didn't look like earth any more. It was just a receding globe behind the lightning-fast ships, streaking off, a tiny squadron of intrepid men. Tiny ants leaving their colony and going out into the great unknown. Mind you, this section wasn't as unknown as some of the other sections. They had blasted off this way before. In his analogy, he felt that it was like one of the paths leading to the ant colony, one of the paths that led to other ant hills where the ants were friendly. Paths which they were following through the media of their course computers, in the same way that ants relied upon their instincts to guide them along well-traveled ways. The journey, in the first stage, was comparatively uneventful, as uneventful as any journey through space can be. The breathtaking wonder of it was magnificent and glorious. There was freedom out here. They felt as though they had escaped from the toils of gravity. Oddly, he found himself thinking about the Three Little Fishes that Swam Over the Dam—here they were, five little fishes, swimming over the dam of gravity into the great deep space beyond. Swimming out into the unknown depths of space. It was just a routine survey, he kept telling himself. They would find either that one of the old faithfuls had collided with one of the others and split, or that one of the other bodies had wandered in. When they arrived they would find a mass of rock, dead and dull and uninteresting…

Greg always tried to imagine that what was coming would be dull and uninteresting. That way he would sometimes get a pleasant surprise…

He had decided long ago that blessed was the man who expected nothing, for he would not be disappointed.

As a boy he had often imagined space being peopled with weird, exciting, interesting things, with spider men and monsters and inter-galactic intelligentsia, but when he had grown up and gone and looked for himself, he had found that reality was exceptionally quiet, exceptionally dull. Truth had not been stranger than fiction. In fact, by the standards of fiction, truth had been decidedly disappointing. He found space explanation as dull and boring as he had found geography at school…

One planet was very much like another. Its gravity was different, its life forms were different, but they were not bizarre and weird as he had hoped they would be. It was just an extension of everyday knowledge and everyday life; at least all the world he had seen, and he had seen all the worlds the solar system had boasted of. When he got out here, he was quite content to expect there would be nothing but another asteroid which had wandered in or one that had broken from a larger parent body and caused a temporary excitement, and that was all.

Yet he could not quite subdue the lurking hope within him that there would be something different out there, something new, something frightening, something that tingled with adventure and excitement. They reached the belt. The five pilots had their work cut out, diving in and out, navigating and matching their velocity with the hurtling planetoids: those tiny, irregular-shaped objects, some smaller than their own ships, some as large as Scotland or Wales. Some were shaped like vast, rough-hewn eggs; some were triangular, some were cone-shaped. Some were almost square as though they had been hewn by the hand of galactic giants for some building that was never finished. He brought his survey equipment to bear.

Dan Richards, his second-in-command, stood beside him at the panel. Dan was a short, stocky man of Celtic descent, with a crown of vivid red hair and strange, thoughtful eyes. He was more than a scientist. He was a philosopher and a metaphysicist; he enjoyed examining the universe. He was one of the youths who had not found geography dull at school. He enjoyed the world as it was, where people like Greg Masterson found nothing but dull routine and monotony. He was a man to whom God was in His heaven, and all was right with the world. Masterson sometimes envied him his attitude. Dan was peering intently through a spectroscope and ticking marks off on a chart. He was putting out radioactivity check units and listening to the dull, regular click of the geiger counter as it registered in a dismal level. All as usual. Dan ticked off another of the wandering bodies.

"Perhaps it's not in this section, Chief," he said. "I've found nothing here that I can't identify, nothing that's behaving erratically." He held up the dimensional selector. "They're all much the same as usual." Then suddenly, "Listen! Listen to that geiger counter, Chief! There's something very seriously adrift here!"

"How do you mean?"

"The geiger counter's low-lever 'cluck' has risen to a staccato rattle, like a cosmic machine-gun."

"Where the heck is that coming from?" said Greg.

"Over here," said Dan. "This baby, as far as I can make out."

"This baby" was a chunk of rock about fifteen miles square. It was rough and irregular and superficially bore a close resemblance to all its fellows in the group, yet there was something about it which was giving the geiger counter a heart attack.

"We'd better get out of range," said Dan.

"I think we had," said Masterson, and began punching buttons with silent efficiency. The ship veered but didn't alter course…

Dan and Greg exchanged glances…

"What the devil's happened now?" exclaimed Masterson. Blessed is the man who expecteth nothing for he shall not be disappointed, he thought to himself. Stars and stripes, the blasted thing must be magnetic.

"Magnetic!" The word was torn from Masterson's lips, and then he remembered! It dawned upon him with a suddenness that was frightening in its very intensity.

"If it is magnetic," he said softly, "it can't be magnetic in any way that we understand. These ships—"

"Yes, of course! Of course!" repeated Dan. "They're protected against normal ferric magnetism. Yep."

"Whatever that thing is that's pulling us, it's not acting by any magnetism that we understand. Some sort of attractor ray, maybe."

"Do you mean a manufactured one?"

"I don't know what to think. I only know that there's something out there that's pulling us toward the surface of that asteroid. Something that's stronger than our atomic rocket drive. Something that's attracting a ship that's supposed to be unattractable. Something that's gonna smash us up like matchwood, if we can't do something about it pretty soon."

They managed to spin the ship round so that they were coming at it tail first.

"I'm going to give it the lot," said the pilot. "Sparks!" The young radio engineer dashed quickly toward him.

"Sir?"

"Get a message through to the rest. Get a message back to earth. Tell them we're in the grip of some magnetic beam that we don't understand, some kind of hazy gravitational warp. I don't know what the heck it is, but it's pulling us toward this thing out here." He pointed through the observation panel. "Tell 'em it looks as if we've had ours. Tell 'em to get back to earth and report."

"Right, sir," said Sparks. "You mean this is—?"

"I don't mean anything! We may be able to pull out yet. Just get the message through, will you, son?"

"Sir!" Sparks hurried back to his set. Dan and Greg exchanged quiet, meaningful glances.

"It looks as if that survey message wasn't a false alarm after all!"

"Is it any good blasting the thing?" asked Greg.

"See if we can break out first."

Greg threw the multi-million horse-power rocket engines with full force against the asteroid's attraction. They refused to fire.

"Darn!" he exploded savagely. "What the blazes can that be?"

"May just be a mechanical failure," volunteered Dan. Greg shook his head. "Not on your life, boy! Those engines are foolproof by the standards of our puny technology. There's something out there that's too tough for us, something that we can't handle."

Sparks darted back into the cabin, his face as white as a sheet.

"The other ships, sir."

"Yes? Go on!"

"They are also caught in the field; their engines are not responding. They're being dragged toward our sector."

"Jumping Jupiter! Get through to earth if you possibly can! Just send them as SOS. Tell them this thing has got to be blasted; us along with it if necessary! Tell them to send up two hydro warheads. Blow the thing out of space! It may get us, but it won't get the earth. If they blast it, it won't get any more ships."

"Right, sir."

Greg knew that he had just signed his own death warrant and those of his men. But the system was in danger, and it was the only thing he could do. They continued their helpless, plummeting dive.

"We've got a couple of triple megatons on board ourselves, don't forget, sir!" Dan reminded him respectfully.

"Yes, of course we have! Right. This is an emergency. If they'll still fire, we'll let go!"

Greg began pressing computer keys with savage efficiency. The deadly three megaton missiles winged away toward the asteroid. They stood by with bated breath, waiting to see the showers of debris scattered into space. The bombs struck the asteroid—and failed to explode!

CHAPTER III

There was nothing they could do but wait, with cold, quiet resignation, as the ships plummeted down toward what must be certain, inevitable death.

Dan looked at Greg, and Greg looked at Dan, and through their minds ran thoughts that were too deep for words, thoughts that came from the deepest depths of the human mind.

"Been good to know you," said Greg quietly.

"Same here," said Dan. Monosyllables, he thought. This is where fact parts company with fiction. If this was a play on the televiewer, we should be making some sort of grand speech. Funny… when real life comes to a sudden stop, all you can say is, "Cheerio," because those grand thoughts that need putting into grand words can be put into such words only if you've got time… oceans of time. We haven't got oceans of anything. We haven't even oceans of space.

"How long do you think we've got?" asked Greg.

" 'Bout ten seconds," said Dan.

"That's how I figured it. Ah well…" That "Ah well" was pregnant with meaning. It held resignation and something more. They relapsed into stony silence. Sparks left the radio and came up, looking over their shoulders through the observation port at the rough granular surface leaping to meet them.

"Shall we try the rockets again?" His voice was so flat it held scarcely any inflexion.

"I'll keep my hand on the button until we hit," said the captain. "But I don't think it'll do any good." He tried the rockets again, but there was nothing but a "click" from the button. The firing mechanism was as dead as a doornail, as dead as they reckoned they would be in a few seconds. "Get the suits on, I suppose, just in case."

"Yes, it's better than nothing. Reduces the odds from about a million to one to a million to two, I suppose. All right. Suits on, chaps!" There was no panic as they quietly donned the suits.

"Any good trying to get out through the air lock?"

"We should be still caught in that force, whatever it is. It would only mean that we hit the meteorite completely unprotected. If we stay inside the ship, there's just a chance it will take enough of the impact to leave one, or perhaps two of us alive. If we go out there without the suits, we shall be squashed like beetles."

"Yes, I see what you mean."

They stood there, weird, ungainly, plastic-clad figures, waiting for the end.

Eyes behind steel-strong plastic lenses betrayed feelings that were quite inexpressible.

"A few more seconds," said Greg quietly. Those last seconds were like centuries…

It seemed that the ship would never hit, and then everything erupted into an enormous sea of concussion and violence and destruction…

Everything erupted into a mad, tearing orgy.

Rivets screamed as they left their sockets. Bulkheads and portions of fuselage buckled and twisted and crumpled. The graceful outline of the dart ship broke and twisted and concertinaed till there was practically nothing left of it. There were five shattering impacts in all, and five heaps of twisted metal marked the end of the surveying expedition. Amidst the heaps of metal lay twenty-four mangled, space-suited bodies, as dead as the space through which they had plummeted to their deaths. One man stirred faintly and feebly among the wreckage; stirred and groaned softly and staggered to his feet. His head ached violently and abominably. His vision was blurred. He seemed to be seeing everything through a mist. He realized that the red mist was blood. Blood on the plastic lenses of his helmet. Blood from a two-inch gash on his forehead, which was still dripping. He put his hand to the helmet and realized that he was in a suit. Miraculously, after all that holocaust, the suit was not leaking.

He was alive. He had enough air and water for a long, long time.

Greg Masterson looked at the bodies in the wreckage, and slumped across what had once been a delicate instrument panel. He switched on the external auditory equipment. Something was chattering madly, gibbering like a frenzied monkey. He tried to think. Thought was difficult. His head was still spinning from the crash. What the devil was that thing, clicking and chattering. It had to make sense. Something had to make sense out of all this crazy holocaust of asteroid and distorted ships. What clicked like that? Blast, why couldn't he think!

Everything was a sea of pain, and he was a tiny cork bobbing along on its waves. He struggled upright again. A geiger counter, that was it! He looked at the thing. Odd that it had escaped the wreckage. Providential perhaps, for without it he wouldn't have recognized his danger. The whole surface of the asteroid seemed to be violently radioactive. He had to get off and get off fast. He couldn't get away. If a ship couldn't get away, how could a man alone, in a space suit?

Think, Masterson, he said to himself, think. Don't panic; think! The suit is lead-impregnated; you're all right. There's nothing to panic about if you're not exposed to it for too long. You're filtering ninety-nine percent of those radiations. They're bouncing off you.

You're safe, if you just keep your head and get off as soon as you can—or get away from the radiation…

Automatically he reached down and took up the geiger counter, knotted the broken strap and slung it over his shoulder. He turned the volume down, so that the chattering was less distracting.

What else would he need? Guns! Yes, of course, he would want guns… as many as he could comfortably carry. He stooped beside the nest of the bodies. It was Dan Richards, looking strangely peaceful in death, with his mysterious eyes wide open, staring up into the thoughtless mystery of space. Poor old Dan, thought Greg to himself. That blasted asteroid has a lot to answer for. Dan's vivid red hair was stained now a darker red with his own blood. He picked up his dead companion's gun and thrust it into the empty holster on the left-hand side of his belt. He checked his own weapon. They were both in working order. That was something to be thankful for… not that he expected to need them, and yet he was completely at a loss to understand what had happened and how it had happened. Unless… unless… no! That was fantastic—he would have to see what he could find. Time for theories later. There weren't enough facts to build a theory on. There weren't enough facts to build anything on. He moved slowly, like a man in a dream, looking more like a robot. Slowly, jerkily, like an automation, searching in the wreckage. He had guns; he had better have some more oxygen… He unplugged the cylinder from Richard's corpse, unstrapped it and put it into the spare clamp on his own back. He'd better pick up another couple of cylinders if he was going to move any distance from the wreckage. He had strong nerves, but he couldn't stand the sight of those bodies. It wouldn't have mattered so much if they had been other people's bodies, but these were his friends, his pals, his messmates, men he had lived and fought and worked with—for years, some of them. He looked at young Sparks. A kid straight from college. Poor little devil, what chance had he had? Yet he had had as much guts as any of them. Quiet and strong to the end. A real man in spite of his boyish face. Rest in peace, whispered Greg, the lot of you, God have mercy on your souls.

He staggered away out of the wreckage, moving slowly and ponderously in the suit, not really knowing where he was going or why; just feeling instinctively that he had to get away from that heap of charnel wreckage.

The asteroid was small as asteroids go, and yet he realized it must be several miles in diameter. He couldn't make out the gravity effect. It seemed to be the same as earth normal, about 1G. That didn't make sense either; too soon for theorizing. There should be practically no gravity here. Mentally he judged the size of the asteroid against the earth. Why, it should take him up to two or three miles at a bound—yet it didn't. Something to do with that force that had brought them crashing onto it, no doubt. This thing wasn't obeying the laws of time and space. It wasn't abiding by the rules; it wasn't playing the game. There was something wrong with the thing, something fiendishly wrong. He took a deep breath, sucking in lungfuls of the life-saving oxygen. It made him feel better. It cleared his head. He took another and another. He squared his shoulders inside the narrow confines of the suit. Better start thanking heaven, or Providence, or God, or whatever it was that had kept him alive… No good being bitter about the others. He couldn't understand why he was alive. They had all been standing so close together. It was just one of those odd freaks of chance. Twisting fuselage had missed him and gotten his pals. That was all there was to it. His name hadn't been written on any of those jagged sections of fuselage. Funny, life was like that. He realized that it was only in the face of death that he had begun to understand life. He had better go and check on the other ships; the last thing he had heard over the intercom was that they were coming down, too. He hadn't heard any crash before his own ship hit, possibly because he was nearer than the others. They must have hit a few seconds after…

He moved on…

He didn't know whether he had walked a mile or two miles before he came across the next tangled heap of wreckage. The odd granular surface of the asteroid gritted and grated beneath his feet. He had no idea whether there was any atmosphere clinging to the strange world. There might be—there might not. He didn't feel like opening his helmet to have a look…

It would probably be a pretty quick get-out, when he had had all he could take.

There was nothing but this hard, bare, gritty surface. The asteroid was for all the world like a great cube of sugar, square and yet not quite square; rectangular enough to look as though it might be artificial. But that was a wild theory. There was a great number of rectangular asteroids… Nobody ever suggested that they were artificial. The next crash was right ahead of him now. It told the same pitiful story as his own ship. The men were so badly shattered they were hardly recognizable—fragments of ship and fragments of crew. He turned away, feeling violently sick. Poor devils, he kept saying to himself. What chance did they have? Squadron-Leader Masterson, he hadn't a squadron any more. It made him feel bad, very bad, deep down in the pit of his stomach.

He moved on, finding nothing but rough, gritty, dark brown, granular "something" beneath his feet.

It was like walking over a shingle beach with rock beneath it.

He reached the third, and the fourth and the fifth.

And everywhere the same story. Dead ships. Dead men. He was the only survivor. The only survivor of his own ship, and the only survivor of the expedition.

Chance played funny games sometimes. Apart from the cut across his forehead, where he had crashed his head into the helmet, he didn't seem to have come to any other harm.

He kept moving.

He wondered whether he could compete the revolution of the asteroid before it passed on its erratic orbit out of the sunlight. There had to be something somewhere; it couldn't all be just like this. That wouldn't account for that radioactivity. He turned the geiger counter up again. The noise had not abated by one iota. It was louder than it had been before. He still kept moving doggedly. His strong jaw jutted with determination. He kept grinding on—the shingly stuff, hard and gritty beneath his feet, was becoming very, very aggravating. Greg wanted to destroy it, to kick it off into space, to walk on something smooth, instead of this constant slipping, sliding shingle.

He felt that there was something pretty solid just a short way down, and he wondered how far down.

On impulse, he drew the blaster from his pocket and fired. A searing destruction beam tore a jagged hole in the shingle a few yards ahead of him. The gritty stonelets spat and cracked and leapt in the air with the heat. He laughed. He felt as if he had hurt them. In an odd, twisted sort of way, it gave him a feeling of satisfaction. He'd have liked to have blasted up the whole asteroid that way.

His mind had cleared almost completely now, and he was aware that something didn't ring true. Now what was it? He sat down by the edge of his newly smashed crater and thought. He thought hard. Yes… he snapped the metallic fingers of his suit as an idea suddenly burst upon him like a flood of light. That was what was wrong. Why had the gun gone off? The gun had gone off powered by its miniature atomic blasting power. It was a microscopic miniature of the three-megaton bomb that had been released. They had not exploded. Why? He drew a deep breath and peered hard through the red mist that still blurred his vision. The stones had leapt, spat and cracked. A wide hole yawned beneath him, five or six feet in diameter. Why had the big bomb failed to go off? That was the question. Surely if there was some kind of force field operating, it would have prevented the pistol from firing, just as it had prevented the bomb from exploding. Apparently there was no force field. Then why hadn't the bombs gone off? He gritted his teeth in a desperate effort to bring every focal ounce of his concentration to bear on the problem in hand. There had to be a reason for everything, he told himself. Cause and effect. The whole universe was cause and effect. If it wasn't, then nothing made sense. Today's effects were being caused by yesterday. Tomorrow's would be caused by today's. He lapsed into a long, thoughtful silence. The enigmatical crater, and the smoking gun in his hand prodded at his mind. Prodded at him like an electric ox goad moving a sluggish beast into motion. His brain was the sluggish beast. It didn't want to think. It didn't want to trouble. It wanted to lie down and relax. But he was going to make it think. His will was stronger than his intelligence. He had to find an answer, to come up with a solution. Everything had a solution if only a man looked for it long enough.

He was convinced of that, too. If you think about a thing for long enough, you're bound to come up with an answer. He had faith in human intelligence. He believed that homo sapiens deserved the second part of his appellation…

Man had risen by brain and courage to be leader of the brute creation. He had come from primeval slime by the sweat of his brow, by his nerve, by his brains and by his courage. If he was going to stay out of the primeval slime, he needed those things more than ever in the 23rd century. He wondered if the force field was situated at a distance from the asteroid. Maybe only a small distance, and once he was through it, it was no longer operational. Yet that didn't make sense, either. Because having passed through it, the bombs would become operational again as soon as they hit the planet's surface. They were not the type of bomb that exploded in the air. There would have to be a better reason. What if the force field was operated on some sort of time basis? If the nullifying power came into effect only when it was needed? He sat thinking that one over for a time, and then, still no nearer the solution, he went over the edge of the crater he had blasted into the rock and peered down.

"Didn't know the guns were as effective as that," he muttered to himself. He kept on peering down. "By the stars, it's a hole!" It seemed to be about twelve feet deep. There wasn't much sign of a definite bottom even after that. It could have been much bigger…

He cursed the red mist fogging his helmet. "Wonder what the devil it is." He realized he was talking to himself. "Got to stop it," he said out loud. "Got to stop it. This place is getting me. It's giving me the screaming heebies, and the Mongolian habdabs." He laughed at his own joke. "First man to land on asteroid dies of Mongolian habdabs. How's that for a TV headline?" He kept peering as intently as the red mist would permit. The more he gazed, the more perplexed he became. "But I didn't fire at that angle," he whispered half to himself. He retraced his steps, stood where he had stood before, and aimed an empty hand as though he still pointed a gun at the crater. Penetration angle should have been approximately thirty degrees to the surface, away from him. It did go in this direction a matter of about three feet, which was normal limitation for that kind of power charge. After that, it tailed off in another direction. The maximum twelve-foot depth appeared to be practically vertical. He regarded the crater more closely. The edge where the power charge had cut was smooth and shining where the rocks fused and ran together under the instantaneous heat of the gun's discharge. That was to be expected. But the twelve-foot shaft, with the murky, mysterious bottom, led off in another direction altogether, and its outline appeared to have been drilled or dug—it was not seared.

Fantastic, he thought. If I wasn't functioning on about half brain power, I should have realized what I've done. By a million to one chance, his impulsive shot had uncovered the top of an artificial shaft, which had been let into the asteroid, loosely covered over, by a surface that now obviously seemed artificial, or at least, if natural, very unusual. He imagined the effect he would have gotten in the limestone hill country, had he taken a shot somewhere in the hills of Derbyshire. He imagined himself gazing down an 800-foot cavern or mine shaft. Natural or artificial was, at the moment, still a matter of conjecture. The point was that his chance shot had uncovered the lid of some kind of sub-asteroidanean passageway, cavern or tunnel.

The intelligence that lurked in the depths of his subconscious was putting things together for him, even though his conscious mind was still fogged and shaken from the crash and the shock of seeing all his friends dead… It dawned on him like a sudden idea from outside, like a sudden flash of inspiration, that here was the obvious escape route from the radioactivity. If the surface of the asteroid was radioactive, might it not be safe in its interior regions? Should he descend? Would it not be better to risk the radioactivity and remain on the surface?

The auditory receivers on the outside of his suit were tuned in to maximum reception. He suddenly became aware that there was another odd noise. It might have been imagination—but he didn't think it was. It was a very low, dull rumble as though the ground were shaking. What the devil could that be? Distant footsteps? But what manner of creature would make footsteps like that? Thud! About a four-second pause, and then—thud! Three or four seconds, and then—thud!

It told him something about the atmosphere as well. There had to be an atmosphere of some kind—albeit a thin one—otherwise he would have heard nothing, or would he have sensed a vibration? He wasn't sure. He was too muddled to think clearly. He guessed there was an atmosphere of some kind, though. Which again spoke of something unnatural, just as did the gravity. Thud! Definitely a footstep! But what a size! What kind of foot would make that sort of noise? Could it be some kind of trick of the asteroid? He wondered hopefully for a second whether someone from the ship had not been dead after all, and was even now coming to look for him—had followed his tracks through the shingle. Thud! Crunch! That was no human footstep, no matter how magnified. He made up his mind suddenly about the tunnel. It was the only place of concealment about the tunnel. Gingerly he lowered himself over the edge and hung by his hands, peering toward the horizon.

Then he saw it. And the blood congested in his veins and arteries. His eyes stood out from his head as though they were going to touch the very lenses. He felt as though an iron hand had seized him by the throat and were shaking out his life and his courage at the same time.

Something was coming, something so hideous and horrible that his first thought was that some unutterable prehistoric monster had risen from the pages of history where it belonged and was now stalking this nightmare world to destroy him. His nerveless fingers lost their grip and he found himself falling… falling sickeningly into the subterranean depths of the asteroid.

CHAPTER IV

Jonga and Krull were working round the clock! Nerves that had been previously badly frayed by monotony were now being stretched and strained by lack of sleep and anxiety.

Jonga put the computer through its paces for the fourth time during its twelve-hour schedule.

"I wish we could get some word, some report, from that patrol," he said for the tenth time.

"So do I," said Krull. "I want to hear from them more than I want to win the inter-galactic sweep. I need news of them like I need blood."

"You don't think the general's heard and hasn't told us?"

"Rotherson's not that type of guy," said Krull, "and you know it."

"Yes, yes, I know it. I'm sorry, Krull. It's just that I can't stick this waiting…"

"Well, you can take this as definite," replied Krull; "it's not just routine. If it was, we'd have heard before now."

"Yes, yes, I suppose we would."

"What d'ya mean 'suppose we would'? You know we would. It just isn't possible for a routine fight to blast off and then refuse to answer. They should have checked in every four hours. They haven't checked in for the last thirteen and a half hours. Now that's not routine. It may be that there's some kind of force field around this thing. Maybe the radio's out of action; maybe the direction locator's loose. I don't know what's happened; I've got no idea at all. I'm an astrophysicist. I'm not a spaceman! There's a thousand and one things can go wrong up there. But we do know this. Greg Masterson's in charge of that crew, and there's no trouble up in space that Greg Masterson can't handle."

"If anyone can handle it," said Jonga dolefully. "I agree, but what if it's something nobody can handle?"

"Well, if it's that bad, we shall know soon enough," said Krull.

A bell rang, summoning them to Rotherson's office.

Hello, what breaks? they wondered. Jonga's eyes flashed a question to Krull.

They made their way hurriedly to the general's office. Rotherson looked tired, and his enormous frame seemed to be sagging at the shoulders. It was obvious that nothing had come through.

"What's on your mind, Chief?" asked Krull.

"Plenty," said the general.

Dolores came in with a tray of drinks.

"Boy, can I use some of the 'hard' stuff," cracked Jonga. "Just what the doctor ordered. I'm in favor of an increased dose!"

"I reckon you'll need it by the time this is finished," said the general. "Listen, chaps, you're aware that there's been no word from the survey ships for thirteen and a half hours." He looked at the huge, deadly accurate chronometer. "Thirteen and a half hours and three and a half minutes," he corrected himself. "They should have checked in at least three times during that period. I don't like it, not one little bit! First we have this unknown meteorite, this asteroid that suddenly pops up among our two thousand eight hundred and twelve. We don't know which one it is, so we send one of the most experienced men we've got, with a fully equipped squadron of five different ships. He makes the first normal check-in four hours after blast-off, reaches the belt—and disappears. What I want to know is why? He's too good a man to lose five ships, unless there's something up there that's so far ahead of us that we might as well say 'Curtains' right away."

"I see what you mean," agreed Jonga. The general had put all their thoughts into words.

"—And so?" There was a question in Krull's voice. "What do we do now, Chief?"

"Well, I've got to the state, and I don't mind admitting it, where I want a consultation. You are two of the senior men on the post. I called you in first. Have you any ideas?"

"I appreciate the compliment, sir," said Krull, "but I'm afraid I can't come up with anything. When you rang the summons bell, we thought you had something for us."

Rotherson shook his massive bull-like head. He was biting his lip.

"There must be something we can do. I don't want to send another squadron up there if I can avoid it. If the first ran into some kind of trouble, the second would probably go the same way unless we can find out something more about it."

"On the other hand," said Jonga, "if they're in some kind of trouble from which they might be rescued, the longer we delay, the less their chances will be."

"You mean the fleet itself?" questioned Rotherson. "It's a pretty big move. I should have to call in the P.M., and we haven't got anything to go on yet. If we send a fleet up there, and it turns out to radio interference, we're going to look pretty silly. We could get away with sending a survey expedition up before it was needed— but to send the fleet up—" He shuddered at the thought of the questions that would be asked in the Inter-planetary Council. "Can't you just see some hot-headed young M.P. trying to make a reputation for himself on the back benches! You know darn well that I'm their favorite whipping-boy as far as expenses go. They never have liked spending a penny on inter-planetary development. What happens if we blast off a couple of millions credits worth of fuel and it turns out that it was just radio interference?"

"I see your point, General," said Krull. "On the other hand, what happens if we just sit here and wait, and something out there is ready to sweep on the whole system?"

"I know that, too," said the general, "and I don't want all that responsibility on my own. I think I ought to contact the President…"

"But that's going to take hours," said Jonga unhappily. "Just imagine if some of those chaps ran into a bit of difficulty, and the squadron were landed on one of those asteroids to take the men off: a stricken ship…"

"—In which case they'd have radioed back," put in the general. "Men don't just go out there and disappear. They would have made radio contact. On the other hand, we all know well enough that radio contact from space can be a very erratic thing. There's so much interference that only the finest sets will pick it up, anyway."

The others agreed, and sat sipping their drinks in a stony, brooding silence, looking from one to the other.

"I've got one suggestion," said Jonga. "It's not very original, if I go back and check the survey we're on— we're counting for the fifth time—if I finish that survey and there's still a negative result—in other words, if we still stick at 2,813, then I suggest we hang on, and regard things as normal. But if anything in the least odd shows up, we'll report back to you, and you can contact the President."

"Well, it would give us something concrete to work on, but what happens if nothing shows up?"

"Then we'll give them two more radio checks—"

"I couldn't stick another eight hours," said Rotherson.

"How do we know there isn't something already out there that's swallowed up those other ships like a sponge?"

"I know! I know!"

"Why do the wrong men get into politics?"

"Well, I suppose we've got to have someone see we don't waste the public money."

"Yes, I suppose so." Krull laughed ironically. "But how much good will the money do the public if there's a thing out there, like I imagine there might be!"

"What sort of thing are you imagining?" asked the general.

"Something with a brain as big an asteroid. Something as old as the stars themselves. Something that can control destiny. Something as terrible as a nova, something stronger than gravity. I don't know! I don't know!"

"I think we'd better be getting back to the chart room."

"O.K.," agreed Jonga, still playing with his empty glass.

"Cigarette?" asked the general suddenly.

"Thanks." They sat in that same stolid silence, watching the blue-brown spirals of smoke curl up toward the ceiling.

"I don't know what the heck we're going to do," said Jonga. "I've got no idea at all."

"I think your plan is about the best. It's better than sitting here and sweating it out."

"We couldn't send just one scout ship up to see what's happened?"

"I think it's pointless. If whatever's up there is big enough to smash five, what's the use of throwing good money after bad? It's either the fleet or nothing. The question is, is it bad enough to send the fleet? Or are they going to come crackling through on that radio beam and tell us everything is O.K.? It could be a band of cosmic rays just cut all radio contact for a time. It has happened before."

"That could be it," said Krull, but he didn't sound convinced.

"We'll leave it like that for the moment," decided the general. "There's another project here I'm supposed to be getting busy on, but I don't feel much like it."

He reached for a sheaf of papers, and gave a wave of his hand to indicate that the interview was at an end. They made their way back toward their own section.

"He's feeling the strain," said Krull. "Sometimes it helps to know that the man at the top is feeling it, too. It gives you a better perspective on yourself."

"I suppose it does," agreed Jonga. "Still—I don't like it. I don't think there is an easy explanation. I've got a nasty feeling here, in the pit of my stomach, that something's gone very badly wrong… I shall be very surprised if we ever hear anything from those ships again."

"You're a Job's comforter."

They reached the control room again, and Jonga crossed to the computer. 2,810, 2,811, 2,812, the computer crackled and stopped. "Two eight one two?" He pressed the recheck key. "Krull, come over here."

The astrophysicist crossed the room in three quick strides. "What is it, Jonga?" he asked.

Jonga pointed dumbly to the clock. "2,812. The asteroid has gone!"

"What?" exploded Krull.

"It's gone! We're back to the original number!"

"Jumping galaxies. It looks as if it's gone and taken our five ships with it." Jonga nodded silently. "Do a recheck, see if you've missed anything out anywhere."

"Sure." By the time he had completed the check, Krull's urgent ringing had brought Rotherson to the checkroom.

"It's gone," Rotherson was exploding as he came in the door. "Are you sure?"

"Was the computer all right?" asked Krull. Jonga nodded.

"As right as it's ever been. The asteroid is gone as surely as if it never came. And so have our five ships, apparently."

The general sat down—he looked suddenly old and tired…

CHAPTER V

It seemed to Greg Masterson that this was the end, and, grim as the situation was, he could not fail to see the ironical twist of it. He had escaped a crash that had killed twenty-four other men; he was the sole survivor of million to one odds. He was in the middle of a mystery so grim, so deep, so dark, and so obscure that it looked as if it were going to be the greatest thing since they invented nuclear fission nearly three centuries ago… and now he was going out like a light, either to be killed by the fall, or by the jaws and clutching talons of the beast which he had glimpsed lurching and lumbering toward his hole. He had only seen it for a few fleeting fractions of a second—but that had been enough! More than enough! It had been like something out of a nightmare! It was a sort of combination—that fleeting impression—of claws and teeth and scales and dripping slime, and foul venomous fangs. It looked to be as big as a mountain, a mountain with bloodshot, purple eyes, a mountain with tentacles. A walking death mountain, lurching toward him like a gargantuan cat in pursuit of a singularly microscopic mouse. Like the most enormous spider in pursuit of himself—the tiniest fly.

A quick death at the bottom of the hole would be far, far better than falling into the hands of that beast. His feet struck something that felt rather like a hard flooring, plastic. Then he felt a jarring sensation. The suit was flexible and tough, devilishly tough. It had to be to withstand the rigors and the pressures and the temperatures to which it was exposed. He was aware that against the pressure of the suit there was a strong tide of escaping air. Then, for a few merciful seconds, blackness engulfed him. Just before consciousness left him, he remembered wondering whether it was his own air that was escaping or whether the sound came from elsewhere, whether the feeling came from some other place—then he seemed to be taking a head-first dive; a deep, relaxing dive into an enormous black pit, a pit from which there seemed to be no awakening. He dived for what seemed an eternity—then he seemed to be surfacing again, very slowly, so slowly that he felt as though his lungs would burst, as though his chest could no longer sustain the pressure of something. What—he had no idea. At last consciousness flooded back in pain-stabbing rays of light against his eyes. He couldn't understand it. He should have been dead; it had been a long fall, far more than the twelve feet he had originally calculated. He looked up. As he did so a shadow fell across the opening of the hole through which he had fallen. It was a huge black shadow, cutting out the sunlight. The shadow of the creature! He shuddered involuntarily. Though he could only see a small fragment of it, framed in the aperture, that fragment was enough. He calculated the hole was about five or six feet across at the most. The creature was scraping at it, trying to get at him; the foremost claw was reaching down into the tiny hole, reaching for him!

As a fisherman digs for clams, down came the claw. Greg remained alive for one reason only. He was a fighting man right through. Because he was a fighting man he relied on his instincts. Instinct recovered far more quickly than intelligence did. Instinct went for his gun. Lying on his back in the narrow bottom of the shaft, he fired. The reverberating crash sounded thunderous to the auditory system of the suit. There was a wild, jerky withdrawal of the claw, and a movement as of many rocks above him. It felt as if the end of the world had come, as though the four horsemen of the Apocalypse were riding roughshod over the mountains and valleys of the earth, crashing and crushing them on top of screaming fugitives. Whatever that thing was up there, he realized grimly that it was vulnerable to his blaster. Something that might have been the remains of a claw dragged itself painfully from the hole. It was very vulnerable! The knowledge gave him a certain bloodthirsty satisfaction, a satisfaction that was not destined to last very long. A shower of hard granulated shingle rattled down on the outside of his suit. The thing was trying to bury him alive. It had more intelligence than it had originally appeared to possess. He wondered, for a fleeting instant, whether that thing could be the intelligence ruling the asteroid, governing and directing it. Surely not, he told himself. The difference between the rudimentary intelligence which the monster had demonstrated and the degree of technological development which would be necessary to move an asteroid artificially would be very far removed from one another, as different as chalk is from cheese, or as night is from day…

He was brought back to the immediate dangers of his position by the ever-increasing volley of stones which the creature was shoveling in. A few seconds more and he would be helplessly trapped beneath them. He had to get out—to get out fast. The question was—where? It would obviously be pointless to try to reascend the shaft even if he had been capable of doing it; the second his head appeared over the top it would have been cracked like a nut between those cavernous jaws. His only escape obviously lay along the tunnel which opened before him. But what lay along the tunnel? His mind was a whirl of unconnected thoughts as he crawled awkwardly toward the aperture. Seeming to sense that its prey was escaping, the creature above redoubled its efforts. Greg was aware of the air moving past the outside of his suit now, buffeting him as wind buffets, trying to force him up through that hole. The stones were forcing him down, and the wind was forcing him up. He felt like a tiny piece of driftwood caught in a maelstrom of currents. He struggled on for what seemed an eternity, but was in reality only a matter of seconds; then he was into the tunnel. The creature gave away the actual quotient of its intelligence by continuing to hurl stones down into the rapidly filling hole.

A few seconds more and the wind had ceased, telling him that to all intents and purposes the outlet was blocked. The true nature of the subterranean passageway was now borne in upon him with overwhelming clarity. It was quite obviously some kind of ventilating mechanism. He was able to stand upright in the tunnel, but for a few moments he did not recognize this. He continued to crawl doggedly along like a determined infant. He staggered as he crawled. He stretched out his hand toward the side of the tunnel, missed it, misjudged the distance, and rolled over onto his back. He was utterly exhausted, for mental and physical reasons. His nerves had already stood far more than any man's nerves could be expected to stand. He had reached the end of his rope. He almost wished what the monster had gotten him, or that the fall had killed him, or that the stones had crushed him. There comes a moment, he decided, when death is far preferable to life. He imagined death as a quietus, a calm and peaceful finish. The words of an old hymn went throbbing through his aching mind:

"If death were just a last long sleep

Then death were good, men say.

Yet so it knowing naught of sleep

Save to wake at dawning day."

The thought of sleep was an overwhelming one. He knew that he must rest. He had to rest. If he didn't he was finished, completely and utterly. He sipped in oxygen desperately. He turned the tap of the cylinder so that it was charging the suit at a rate far above the normal level. It made him feel light-headed, almost drunk.

It gave him a sensation of power and freedom. Suddenly he stopped caring about the monster. He could go back and fight it with his bare hands. He didn't care. Darn the monster. He had hit it once; he could hit it again. This time he would hit it where it really hurt. His mind threw up an odd little projected image of himself, standing on the monster's chest, one foot on its head, smoking guns in his hands, rather like Elephant Bill of by-gone days. He saw himself as a legendary big game hunter, his foot on the body of a lion, his .303 Express rifle held triumphantly but nonchalantly in the crook of an arm. Something deep down within himself told him that he was oxy-drunk. But he ignored it. He felt supremely confident, full of the knowledge that he could do anything to anything. He could fight the whole asteroid if it was alive—he didn't care. Maybe he was even now walking down one of its arteries. And the stuff he had taken for air was a kind of gaseous blood! Right; he'd give it a clot! He'd put it right! He'd find the heart chamber and blow it to bits! That would stop the asteroid destroying any more ships! He thought of himself as a germ—a singularly dangerous germ, walking down the arteries of the asteroid, a germ against which the white corpuscles—in the shape of the monster he had just injured—were unable to fight. The more he considered the analogy, the more it seemed to make sense to his oxygen-befuddled brain. That must be the obvious answer. He was a germ in the passage of an artery, and the monster he had just injured was a white corpuscle, and the way it had shoveled stones back into the hole was very similar to the way in which the body repairs cuts and minor abrasions. That was what it was. He started singing gaily to himself as he rose and walked along the passage. It was absolutely pitch black, but he seemed to take no heed of the darkness. It was darker than anything he had encountered before. The darkness was velvety black. Gradually the light-headed feeling began to leave him. The darkness pressed in upon him, tighter and harder than any darkness he had ever remembered. It seemed to be so velvety that he could almost feel the pile of it. The darkness was solid, tangible darkness. It was getting into his nose and mouth and throat, choking and suffocating him, poisoning him. He felt as though he had been buried alive in thick black mud. He coughed and spluttered. There had to be some other reason. It resulted in another cough. He realized he had overdone things with the oxygen. He'd have to strap on one of his spare cylinders, and he'd have to do it pretty quickly. Stop moving, he told himself; you're wasting your breath! Stop it, do you hear? Stop it, stop it, he was shouting to himself. Sit down and get that cylinder on, or you're dead. Why hadn't the warning indicator worked? He remembered the cylinders had taken a terrific pasting when the ship crashed. Perhaps they were leaking invisibly. Maybe that was the wind he had felt—leaking cylinders. They had taken a second battering since then. If the first one had weakened them, this would be enough to finish them. Maybe he was going to sit here and suffocate in this abysmal black tunnel. His fingers seemed slow; they wouldn't respond to the summons of his brain. I've got to get that blasted cylinder on, he thought to himself. I've got to get it on, I've got to get it on. I've got to get it on—I've—I've—he rolled over, sucking in lungfuls of foul carbon dioxide-loaded air.

Done for, he thought to himself, quite, quite done for— finished. Quite finished. His life seemed to flash before his eyes, like the life of a drowning man. This is it; this is the exodus. He remembered saying goodbye to his friends long ago before the ship crashed. Oddly, in a befuddled way, he tried to say goodbye to himself. Greg, he managed to mutter his own name. Greg is going. I am going. I'm Greg and I'm going… More pictures from his own infancy, and then a last despairing effort flashed across his mind, that the air in the tunnel, if it was air, might be breathable. He knew that he couldn't get that cylinder on in time. But he might, he just might be able to get the face-piece of his helmet up. To lie still was certain death. To open the face-piece was probably even more dangerous. But it did present just the faintest possible hope. Awkward, numbing fingers would never undo the valve latch; they might just click the face-piece up—if it hadn't stuck. He dragged his hand round toward his helmet. It seemed to take a year to get there, a year in which more of his life came and went. I can't do it, he muttered to himself.

He had his hand over the face catch, fumbling with thick, awkward, metal-gauntleted fingers, a catch that stuck and wouldn't respond.

He took a long, desperate, struggling breath, and something went "click" in front of his face. As he passed out, he was aware of something cool and fresh pouring around the suit as the hot foul air rushed out. He heaved a great sigh and sucked in lungfuls of the cool, fragrant, life-giving air! It was scented very faintly with a pine-like fragrance, sweet and delicious like the water of a mountain stream.

He had never tasted air so good! He just lay there flat on his back, sucking it in, lungful after lungful. Not oxygen. Not some bottled apology for breathing mixture, but air; real, purified, conditioned air! It was delicious, sweet beyond description to a man who had been so close to suffocation. He thought of the lines of Rudyard Kipling's poem, "Gunga Din."

"It was filthy, green, and stank

But of all the drinks I've drank,

None was sweeter than that drink from

Gunga Din."

He thought to himself that if the air he had now been breathing in had been filthy, green and poisonous, it would still have been better than the suffocation of the suit. He wasn't suffocating. It had seemed to be a one-fifth oxygen, four-fifths nitrogen mixture. It suited his lungs admirably. It was wholesome and clean. It put new life into him. But the desire to sleep became overwhelmingly strong. Something deep down inside himself told him that he mustn't sleep there, not right there where the roof had caved in a short way behind him. He had to find somewhere to hide. If whoever or whatever had built that tunnel came along to repair the hole, they'd find him there. He was asking for trouble by lying there. He had to move. Where could he move to? He knew nothing about this strange asteroid labyrinth. He only knew he had to find somewhere that was not in a direct line of approach to the tunnel. He put his hand into the assortment of tools, weapons and equipment that hung on the belt of the suit. There was an incandescent beam there, a device not unlike an electric torch. It was actually a miniature matter-energy converter, about the only practical use that anybody had found for the equation. It would throw a beautiful beam of pure white light as long as you could keep the back fed with gas. It converted hydrogen or helium into light energy, by a simple, yet devilishly powerful, transformation process. The phial of gas he had put in years ago was by no means exhausted. Normally these torches lasted a lifetime—he switched it on, and the white beam stabbed out, as powerful as ever. He heaved a sigh of relief. Why hadn't he thought of it before as he groped on through the blackness of the tunnel?

He realized then how badly he needed sleep. His mind was not working at even one tenth efficiency. It was screaming out for rest, every fibre of it. Every muscle, every nerve, every sinew, every drop of blood in every vein and artery wanted to sleep, to sleep, to sleep! It had become a crazy obsession. He had to find somewhere safe first. The two obsessions blended into one. He made his way along the Stygian darkness of the tunnel, step after step. The silver pencil of pure white radiance went before him, like the sword of some medieval knight, cutting into the very entrails of a dragon—the dragon of darkness. There was scarcely any reflection, but it saved him from crashing down a shaft that might lie in wait. It saved him striking his head on any possible protuberance from the roof. He kept moving. How he did so he didn't know. His legs had given up long ago. He was walking on his will power, walking with the automatic swing of a man who has no muscle left; only bone and nerve, and guts…

He kept on going, on and on and on, and suddenly he saw what he wanted, a glittering object reflecting up above him in the tunnel. Something was reflecting! What was it? It had to be metal of some kind—but what? Rungs of a ladder? It was difficult to tell at that distance. The light was exceptionally tricky. That hyper-powered beam of white brilliance cast no reflection around it. Something flashed back at the whiteness with almost as bright a light as the beam itself.

What the devil could it be? he asked himself over and over again. Only the length of the torch beam separated him from his objective now. He drew closer, and closer still. Then he recognized the peculiar gleaming object for what it was—a door handle!

A door handle! Quite unmistakably, yet as he saw it his heart missed a beat, for on closer inspection it was quite obvious that handle had never been intended to be turned by a human hand. It was the wrong shape. It was fixed at the wrong angle, yet there was no doubt of its being a device by which the mechanism of that mysterious portal to which it was attached was to be opened.

Greg could feel the short hairs standing vertically at the back of his neck, icy trickles of fear running down his spine. His hand rested on the butt of the gun. To open or not to open? he asked himself. He hesitated for two or three seconds, and then, gun at the ready, he seized the strange projection and twisted. There was no response.

It has to be a handle, he told himself; it couldn't have any other purpose. He wondered if it should be pulled directly toward him. But again, no response. He tried lifting, sliding, turning and pressing. No response. Finally he reholstered his gun, put two hands under the strangely curved bar, placed his feet on the floor and strained with all his might. Very reluctantly the handle began to move, and the door slid open. Beyond it he saw a network of passageways, faintly visible in the practically nonexistent reflection of his brilliant torch. He moved through and pulled the resisting door fast behind him. The realization was borne in upon him that the creature or creatures for whom that handle had been designed were as much stronger than men as men are stronger than a child. His efforts to move it reminded him of his own infant days, when he had marveled at the ease with which his father's strong hand could turn a stiff door key. He remembered as a schoolboy taking jammed fountain-pens and ink bottles with stiff stoppers for the strong hands of the teacher to undo. Suddenly he felt small and frightened.

Then, like a whisper from the long-dead past, he remembered the name of Masterson. Remembered his remote ancestor, his distant relative. Remembered that Bat would never have backed away, or backed down from anything or anybody, if it had been twenty feet high! He knew that he couldn't either. He cast a quick glance toward the multi-branching passages, with their million hiding holes; there didn't seem to be anything to choose between them. They might all be semi-derelict, and they might all be visited frequently—he had no means of knowing. Apart from that hideous monstrosity he had glimpsed as he slipped into the hole—he had no knowledge at all as to what manner of creature inhabited this labyrinthine asteroid, and he continued to stand gazing down the passages, wondering whether to turn to the right or to the left or go straight ahead. Finally he branched off to the right, walked about twelve yards down the passage and decided whichever way he went, Fate would have to take a pretty big hand in the game. He slumped down as comfortably as it was possible to slump in the suit, and then realized that he didn't need the suit any more. It occurred to him that it would make a pretty good decoy.

Accordingly he rose wearily to his feet, unbuckled it, took the gun belt and strapped it around his own waist, tucked the suit a few yards into one of the other passages, just out of sight of the door, retreating to his original sanctuary and went into a light, troubled dose.

He was awakened by the sound of footsteps.

He wasn't sure at first that they were footsteps; he was just aware that he was in the dark and something was coming.

Who or what was coming, he had no idea. The footsteps were not as heavy as he might have anticipated from the size of the door lock. They could have been human, and approximated something human in size.

He waited and wondered.

In the distance he could see a light. He wasn't sure what the light meant. It was completely unlike his own—it was a cold, faintly green light…

CHAPTER VI

The sleep, light though it had been, had given Greg a new lease on life. He was himself again, alert, active, swift, silent, and, if necessary, deadly. He crouched like a great proud jungle cat, waiting for whatever may come, ready to do battle with anything from a Colossus to a robot. The hand that held the gun was as steady as a rock. Masterson was in a fighting mood!

His great square jaw was as set as a rugged granite cliff. His eyes grew into slits of danger. Every nerve was alert. He was more like a tightly coiled steel spring than a man. This was the real Masterson tradition. He waited breathlessly. The footsteps grew closer and closer still. Something about their lightness told him intuitively that there was something quite small, quite delicate, almost dainty, but he knew that even the small, the delicate and the dainty can also be dangerous. His grip on the trigger never relaxed. It required only a micro-pressure to release a charge of blazing, explosive death. The green light came closer.

Masterson, himself no mean scientist—which in 23rd century terms spoke of very high achievement indeed— was puzzled. He was familiar with the principles of hydrogen-light conversion, but he was not familiar with this green light principle.

It seemed almost phosphorescent. The beam seemed almost to have some peculiar life force of its own. It had an odd power of going round the corners of those unreflected walls. It seemed as though the green light were like a cloud of gaseous, green, luminescent vapor. It was the ideal lumination medium in this strange, nonreflective space.

He remembered the prehistoric stage effects that had been achieved with "black" lighting. This seemed something akin to it, something far more highly developed. The atmosphere was intense, vital, electric. You could have heard a pin drop a thousand miles away! Everything was deathly still, as quiet as a windless desert; as silent as a becalmed ocean…

Masterson felt as though he had suddenly found himself transposed into the center of some two-dimensional painting in which there was no movement. Not a breath stirred, nothing except that moving light, and the very faint tapping of footsteps.

The green luminescence floated round the corner, came toward him—he found himself enveloped in it. He wondered for a second whether it was some kind of paralyzer beam; whether the light was itself some weird kind of life force. He decided it wasn't. It was only light.

The footsteps drew closer, closer still, and suddenly he stabbed his own light on. It cut through the greenness, as a red-hot knife cuts through butter. The greenness seemed to take it up, to reflect it. There was a startled ciy. Masterson caught his breath in sudden bewilderment…

The voice was a woman's voice. He took three steps swiftly forward and grabbed. He put his hand over her mouth before she could utter a sound. She looked at him with wild, frightened eyes, eyes that blinked in the powerful gleam of his torch. Her sheer beauty took Masterson's breath away. She was more like a Dresden shepherdess than anything he had ever expected to see clothed in real flesh and blood. She was beautiful, lovely, exquisite. Her jet-black hair cascaded over ivory shoulders over which a simple, toga-like garment was draped, secured at the waist with a gold clasp. The tunic ended above her knees. The perfect contours of her figure were revealed in the sharp glare of his torch. She was the most magnificent woman Masterson had ever seen.

She was like something out of a dream, like a Venus come suddenly to life. Her eyes, as black as her hair, were set in the most finely moulded face that any sculptor or painter could ever dream of. She was a Madonna, a Mona Lisa, an aristocrat, a princess. Every inch of her bespoke her noble breeding as clearly as though she wore a crown. Masterson relaxed his grip and put a warning finger to his lips for silence. She made no sound. She looked at him thoughtfully. There was no longer any fear in those noble eyes; just a great loneliness, sadness and longing. The spaceman felt his heart going out to her. She seemed somehow like a frightened deer, trapped by the hunter, like a baffled Eve in a strange subterranean Eden.

"Can you understand my language?" he whispered very softly.

She nodded. "I understand all languages."

Her voice, now that she had recovered from her fright, was mellow, exciting. It had, at one end of its register, the fascinating huskiness of a Negro "blues" singer; at the other end it tinkled with the silver magic of a mountain stream. The purity and clarity of her voice seemed to be an expression of the immaculately perfect self which was this strange woman. "How do you understand?" asked Masterson, curiosity overcoming all other instincts. "How? Are you from earth?"

She took her head; the beautiful hair rippling over the shoulders made him think of a mountain torrent, tumbling over smooth, graceful rocks. "No, I am not from earth, if that is the name of your planet. What are you doing here? Does the Master know you are here?"

"The Master?" Masterson raised one incredulous eyebrow. "Who the devil is he?"

"Then he does not know you are here."

He shook his head. "I think I'd better tell you my story first," he said. "It will be simpler. Do you know the solar system at all? Are you from any of the planets of our star: earth, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus?" At each she shook her head.

"I do not know the system of which you speak."

"Jumping Jupiter," said Masterson. "Then you're one of the Out-worlders—"

"The Out-worlders?" Again she shook her head. "I do not know what you mean."

"Never mind; I'll try and put my bit in first. I'll tell you a bit about my system—if I do you may be able catch onto it. There are nine planets and that asteroid belt. The first one is called Mercury in our language. It's fifty-seven million miles from my home world and has a diameter of about three thousand miles and a rather thin atmosphere. It's devilishly hot; you need an escape velocity of seven thousand nine hundred miles an hour to get off the place, and it has a year of eighty-eight days, and no moons. The second planet as you travel outward from the sun in Venus, it's twenty-six million miles from my planet, the earth. It has a diameter of seven thousand six hundred miles; the atmosphere is filled with choking dust, and the escape velocity you need is twenty-three thousand four hundred miles an hour. It has a year of two hundred and twenty-four days and, again, no satellite. The third planet is my home; we call it earth. It has a diameter of eight thousand miles, an atmosphere almost exactly like this one, because I'm breathing this without a pressure suit, and has an escape velocity of twenty-five thousand miles an hour; there are three hundred and sixty-five days in its year, and it has one satellite which we call the moon. That satellite is two hundred and thirty-eight thousand miles from our planet. It has no atmosphere. To get a ship from it you would need an escape velocity of five thousand two hundred miles; it completes its year in twenty-seven days; and it itself, of course, has no subsidiary satellites. The fourth planet out from the sun is Mars. It's about forty-eight million miles on an average from our own earth, has a diameter of four thousand two hundred miles, thin atmosphere, which is just breathable after you've been carefully conditioned. It has an escape velocity of twelve thousand miles an hour. There's six hundred and eighty-seven days in its year, and two moons.

"Next you come to the asteroid belt, which is where I thought we were. There's a collection of two thousand eight hundred and twelve, or rather eight hundred and thirteen, including this thing, asteroids or minor planets. They've all got very eccentric orbits. After you get past them you come to Jupiter, and then you're beginning to get some distance out. It's three hundred and ninety million miles away from us, from my home planet. It has a diameter of eighty-five thousand miles; it's a giant. The atmosphere is poisonous. Methane and various other ammoniates. You need an escape velocity of a hundred and thirty-three thousand miles an hour—it's got a terrific gravity. Its year is twelve earth years, and it has twelve moons. Saturn, which is seven hundred and ninety-three million miles from the earth, has a diameter of seventy-five thousand miles; it's another giant. Again it has the poisonous giant planet atmosphere of methane, marsh gas and the like. You need an escape velocity of seventy-nine thousand miles an hour to get clear of the place, and its year is twenty-nine earth years long. It has a ring system composed of dust particles and small meteorites, and nine satellites proper. Uranus, another giant as you travel out, is one thousand six hundred and eighty-nine million miles from earth, has a diameter of thirty-two thousand miles, the atmosphere is poisonous, and it has an escape velocity of fifty-seven thousand miles an hour. The length of its year is fifty-four earth years, and it has five moons. Neptune, the last of the giants, is two thousand six hundred and ninety-six million miles from earth. It has a diameter of thirty-three thousand miles, its atmosphere is poisonous: as with the other giants, you'd need an escape velocity of fifty-one thousand five hundred miles an hour. Its year is one hundred and sixty-four earth years long, and it has two moons. Pluto, the outermost planet, is three million five hundred and eighty-two thousand miles from earth. Its diameter is three thousand seven hundred miles—it's only a dwarf. Its atmosphere is frozen; its escape velocity, if you're on board a ship, would be about eleven thousand miles an hour. Its year is the equivalent of two hundred and eighty-four earthly years, and it has no moons. That's just giving you a rough guide to our solar system. Can you translate it into any terms which you understand?" She looked very thoughtful for a few moments.

"Yes, I think I can. We have observed your system from our own world. You are very, very far away, and we did not know that any part of it was inhabited. We are perhaps, after all, what you would call the Out-worlders, I don't know. Is travel in your system limited to those planets?"

"Apart from one or two crazy guys like myself who have been as far as Proximo, which is four light years away, it is."

"I see." She looked even more thoughtful. "Well, how did you get here? Please go on."

"Those planets that I was tell you about have been working together for many years, since space travel opened up toward the end of the 20th century—which is about three hundred years ago. We have been building up an inter-planetary empire, not an empire with one nation, or one planet, on top, but an empire of allies. Because we know that somewhere beyond our own system might lie danger, might lie other intelligences, that we couldn't cope with alone. So we worked together and tried to understand one another's differences. On worlds with poisonous atmospheres, we built vast domes and underground cities. We created artificial atmospheres of our own."

"I understand. Similar things have been done in other parts of the universe."

"Well, with all this empire we have a big defense system—"

"Please go on," she prompted. Masterson found himself fascinated by her.

"Part of this defense system means that we have to keep a very constant check on the asteroid belts, the planet fragments I was telling you about, between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. We believe that countless ages ago, astronomically speaking, there was another planet there, which tore itself to pieces because of the counter-gravitational pulls of the giant Jupiter on the one hand and the sun on the other. We believe it was a world that got spoilt in the making. Those asteroids all have very erratic orbits. They are fiendishly difficult to track down, even with electronic computers, but we do the best we can. About the only infallible system we've got is to count them electronically every few hours. If they don't tally, by one too many or one too few, we start looking around."

"I see, and you found an extra one, didn't you?" He looked at her sharply.

"Yes—we did. We found that instead of two thousand eight hundred and twelve, as there should have been, there were two thousand eight hundred and thirteen. That thirteen must have been an unlucky number. I didn't find this out—two of my pals did, back on the base—so we came out here to investigate. When I say 'we' I mean me and twenty-four other men, and five of the most superb and up-to-date dart ships you ever saw. We pulled into the belt, and we started our routine check, and then suddenly, the geiger counter started going crazy, and we saw this fellow, we leveled the geigers on it—"

"You mean this asteroid?" she interrupted.

"Yes, I mean this asteroid," he said emphatically. "We leveled the geigers and the other tele-metering equipment on it and began to observe—gave it full treatment. It looked innocent enough, apart from that concentrated radioactivity, that didn't make sense. We were coming in a bit closer to investigate, and then decided that if it was as radioactive as it appeared we'd better get the devil out of here. So I tried to turn the ship." He shrugged his shoulders. "I bet you know what happened then!"

She nodded, and something that might have been a tear moistened her beautiful eyes. "Your five ships crashed—"

"They crashed!" said Greg coldly. "They crashed, and I was the only survivor. I got out of the ship and I started walking. I picked up a couple of oxygen flasks and a spare gun, and I started high-tailing it across the surface. Then I got to the next wreck, and found five of my pals were dead. That meant nine of 'em gone. I reached the next—there were five more—that made fourteen gone. I reached the fourth wreck, still hoping that maybe I wasn't alone. There were five more as dead as mutton and as mangled and smashed as a human body can be and still be recognizable. Then I reached the last one, and by that time I wasn't hoping, and I was right not to hope, because they were all dead, too. So there 1 was, alone on an asteroid, except for five wrecks and twenty-four bodies; an asteroid that pulled us to it as though by some kind of super gravity or electro magnetism. Only it wasn't electro magnetism, because our ships aren't affected by any kind of magnetism. We're not so technologically stupid that we'd be caught in that old trick. I got to hating this asteroid. I was tired, I was shaken, I was shocked. Every nerve in my body was screaming out for action, and there was nothing I could do except walk. But my nerves kept on screaming out for action, so I decided I'd give them some. There was nothing I could hit to hurt. The only thing I could hit was the asteroid, so I fired a shot into it, and I blew a hole, as I expected to do—yet not what I expected to do, because just as our ship was crashing, we let go some three-megaton bombs. Now they by rights should have blown half this place to John o' Groats, but they didn't. They didn't go off."

"No," she agreed sadly. "They wouldn't."

"And yet my gun—which works on the same principle —did go off." There was an edge to his voice. "And I couldn't figure out—and I still can't, although I've got a theory that doesn't make sense."

"It's probably the true one," she said sadly. "Go on—"

"Well, I'd just blown this hole in the place, only the hole was bigger than it should have been, because what I'd done by a chance in a million was to uncover the top of one of the ventilator shafts for these tunnels that honey-comb this place."

"I heard the alarm go off a few hours back," she said, "to show that a tunnel was punctured—"

"I did that, and stood trying to figure it out when I heard footsteps; you know how that gravel stuff on the surface crunches and thuds when anybody walks on it. The auditory equipment on my suit was switched on, and I heard this thudding crunch and felt the ground vibrating under my feet. When I looked up, there coming towards me like something out of a cave man's nightmare was a thing with slime and scales and great purple eyes and claws." He shuddered as if to shut out some horrible memory. "Oh, man, it was like nothing on earth! So I went down the only place I knew I could go. I knew I couldn't outrun it, so I dropped down the shaft I had blown in the crust of this little world. I landed at the bottom, and it was a lot deeper than I thought, and I reckoned I was done for. Looked up and saw this thing scratching for me, like a cat scratching for a mouse. I let him have it with the gun, and he dragged what was left of his claw out of the hole. He went back. But he wasn't as stupid as he looked. There must have been some smattering of a brain inside that scaly head, because next thing I knew, he was shoveling stones down on top of me."

The girl nodded. "I see; please go on."

"Well, I managed to crawl out from under the stone bombardment and got into one of these tunnels. I dragged on as long as I could; then my oxygen gave out, and before I could get the cylinder changed I started to black out, and I knew I was done for. I hadn't enough strength left to change the cylinder, so I had to flip my helmet open. It was either quick death or slow death. Then I found I could still breathe. The air was cool and sweet and fresh. It was lovely, like a drink from a mountain stream or the bottom of a well. After that I just dragged on till I came to a door, and I saw that door wasn't meant to be opened by a human hand."

Now it was the girl who shuddered.

"You're right," she said. "It isn't. Could you open it?"

"I'm pretty tough," answered Masterson; "otherwise I wouldn't be here now. I forced that door open. Got through and forced it shut!" Her lips pursed in an admiring whistle.

"I've never been able to do so much as move it," she said.

He looked at her curiously, impatient to know the facts about her presence in the asteroid.

"Then," he continued, "I staggered along this passage. I ripped off my space suit, put it down another passage to act as a decoy, in case anybody came hunting for me, had a sleep with one eye and one ear open, and the fingers of both hands on the triggers of my guns. I woke up, heard your footsteps, and saw the light coming —that's what I'm doing here. And in case I forgot to introduce myself during the rigmarole, my name is Greg Masterson, and I'm a space pilot." He bowed with mock seriousness and held out his hand.

She understood the gesture and clasped his.

"Very, very glad to know you, Greg. Is that the custom on your world? Do you use the first name of someone you think you might like, or someone you would like to like?"

All this was quaint, almost as if she were making it up as she went along, as though she were learning it by trial and error.

"I guess you've got it right," agreed Greg.

"Well, I expect you want to know about me?"

"I certainly do," replied Masterson. "But first of all, is it safe to talk here? I can tell without you saying a word that you'd nothing to do with the evil part of this asteroid. I'd say that you either came here the same way as I did, or a similar way insofar as you'd rather be some place else."

"Yes, I would," she said sadly. "I'll tell you my story, Greg. My name is Astra, and I'm a Princess of Altair."

"Altair! We use the same name for a very distant star."

"I expect it's the same one. We have a planetary system not unlike your own."

"Tell me about your Altair," said Greg.

"Oh, it's quite simple to tell. I do not understand astronomy as you do, but—" she broke off and lapsed into a thoughtful silence—"I was trying to put myself on your earth and viewing Altair from there as if I were one of your own people. I would say that to you it would look like the brightest star of the group of Thor."

"Constellation Aquili! Good Lord! Yes, you're right so far." Greg snapped his fingers. "Go on."

"It's a white star; at least it would look white to you. Comparing it from your standpoint, it would give out about ten times as much light as your sun, and it's slightly larger."

"That's it; that is Altair! I can't understand this language coincidence." ,

"I'll explain some of that later; I think it's due to the fact that I have a special way of interpreting and translating. It's a mental process, but that's unimportant. I was beginning to tell you about my homeland. I am a Princess, Astra of the Altair Empire. There are seven planets in our system, and they, too, were in a united empire, much like yours. Beyond, for we are not so very far from you—only sixteen light years, in fact—our Altair, there are other star systems with which we have not yet made contact. Your own is one, and there are others far distant of whom we are afraid, of whom we have reason to be. I think I know what you meant by that word 'Out-worlders,' for we have a similar word for these people. Unlike you, however, who only guess at their existence we know of it, to our cost. They are jealous of our united Empire, avaricious to extend their control. For there are races out there, beyond your star and mine, who are as old as the universe itself; races out there as black as Algol. There are races darker than the infinities of night, stranger and colder than deep space. There are races who do not understand time as we have to understand it—and endure it on my world."

"And we," said the spaceman.

"From time to time these 'Out-worlders' have broken through our defenses," went on the girl, sadly. "I was on a state visit to one of our planets, I and my father and the Royal Court We have a type of constitutional monarchy which binds the nine planets together in their regions."

"We have a very similar system, but our supreme ruler is a President. He is regarded with equal affection by all his nine worlds," interrupted the spaceman. "But go on with your story."

"On this state visit, the general alarm was suddenly sounded. In my old home world it couldn't have happened, but this was one of the outer planets. The atmosphere was not good; the colonists dwelt under domes. The defenses were by no means perfect, for nobody can erect perfect defenses in a poisonous atmosphere. Suddenly over our heads this meteorite appeared, and we though it was a false alarm, and then a second warning came through, but by then it was too late. Its behavior was such that no normal meteorite could behave in just that way." Her voice had dropped to a husky whisper.

"And then?" prompted the spaceman.

"And then—" he was quite sure that it was a tear in her eye that he could see now—"and then—" She hesitated as though unable to go on. Suddenly he found that her hand was gripping his tightly, as though pent-up emotions were almost breaking the lovely heart that he felt sure must beat inside the perfect figure. "And then a thousand and one natural disasters broke loose. This thing, this beast, this master," she spat out the words through clenched teeth, "could control gravity. He was more deadly than a Nova, stronger and more terrible than destiny itself. I've never seen such technological power. Great tidal waves and earthquakes shook and destroyed every vestige of our defenses, and in the middle of the chaos, an attractor beam, for such I now know it to be, was poured out of this foul, dreadful satellite."

Greg felt sorry for her. She was a woman, and she was using the strongest language she had ever learnt and finding it inadequate. The adjectives she wanted would only have been found in a barrack room, and even had she known them, she would have been too refined to use them.

"I understand," said Greg. "And this beam—what did it do?"

"The asteroid came so close it was hovering above the heads of the crowd, scarcely four or five hundred feet, and as it hovered there, like a great black bird of ill omen, causing tides and hurricanes, and earthquakes, so this attractor beam picked up the royal carriage with my father and myself, like a child's toy, and whirled it into the sky at a fantastic rate. Father and I clung on for dear life; against the asteroid the beam seemed to switch itself off. And torn between the two gravities, by a masterpiece of technological juggling, we landed with scarcely a bump. A great doorway slid open and brought us into his presence."

"What's he like, this thing called the master?"

"Unbelievably horrible! Couldn't ever begin to try to describe him. Even to think about him makes me shudder. He brought us down and imprisoned us, then came day after day and fed us, and stared at us. We kept demanding to be released and threatened all sorts of vengeance, telling him that our armies would soon be here to rescue us."

"He laughed and kept repeating words like earthquake and whirlwind, and laughing again, as it to say that no army could ever frighten or worry him. He was like some insane god. He seemed to have all power in his hands, and then—" She closed her eyes and clenched her dainty little fists.

"Go on," said Gregg. "What happened then?"

"He wanted me to marry him."

"No. What did he want you to do that for?"

"Can't you guess?"

"Because you are a woman. I wondered if there was any political motive—if he wanted the power of your empire."

"Oh yes, that was part of it; that wasn't the part that really mattered. He wanted me because I was a woman and because he had been alone in space for centuries and because strange and weird and dreadfully repulsive as he was, he still had ordinary feelings. But he was so loathsome, like a reptile. I can't begin to describe how he looks."

"What happened when you said 'no'?" asked Greg, though he had already guessed, for he had seen no sign of the king.

"He said he would kill him slowly until I said 'yes.' He said that every day I would hear him scream."

"And what did you do?"

"I couldn't have stood it. I should have had to give in."

"But you didn't. What happened?"

"My father killed himself as soon as he knew, so that he couldn't be used as a weapon against me."

Greg had already guessed as much.

"I see," he said quietly. It was being forcibly borne in upon him that this creature controlling the asteroid had a great deal coming to it. Masterson's eyes gleamed with anger.

"I'd like to see that he gets what's coming to him," he said bitterly. "The sooner the better." There was a sudden shrilling jangle of sirens and alarm bells. The entire asteroid seemed to vibrate.

The girl's beautiful face turned suddenly strangely white and tense.

"They're coming," she gasped.

"Who're coming?" asked Masterson, thrusting her behind him protectingly. The gun in his hand looked even more menacing than usual.

"Who's coming?" he repeated.

"The things that do his bidding," she said hesitatingly. The things…

CHAPTER VII

The jangling of the bells and the wailing of the sirens petered away into a dull oppressive silence. The asteroid ceased its jarring vibrations.

"Anywhere we can hide?" asked Masterson suddenly, taking her by the hand. "You know your way about this place."

"Yes, I have free run of it; he knows I can't get off. He can always send them to send me back."

"Well?" Greg's voice held a question.

"I'm afraid I don't know much about strategy or places that are easily defensible. I'll try and find one somewhere."

"These servants—what are they like?"

She shuddered. "Horrible," she whispered. "As bad as he is."

"What are they like; what do they look like? How strong are they?" asked Masterson. She gave another involuntary shudder.

"They're stronger than human beings like us," she blurted, "and they're just terrible; they're—they're things!" Masterson felt his own courage trying to ebb away. He caught at it desperately, as a drowning man clutches at a straw.

"What kind of things?" he persisted. "Are they monsters like that thing outside? Are they human or do they look human? Are they as big as a house? They can't be that big, or they couldn't get through these passages after us. Have they got teeth or claws or scales?" In answer the girl pointed one trembling hand down the corridor along which she herself had just come.

"Now you try and describe them to me."

"Good God," said Greg. The thing that was coming was remotely like a human being, and yet so remote was the resemblance that it was more a caricature than anything else. It shambled, as though its bones had all been smashed and set in the wrong way. It had two forelimbs, and it walked upright. The eyes in its hideous, twisted face were evil and blemished. The teeth, great fang-like teeth, protruded from a mass of ebullient flash; the forelimbs hung by its side, in the style of a great, anthropoid ape. It was covered with matted red-brown hair.

"Are they all like this?" gasped Masterson.

"No—only some of them. The others are worse."

"Worse! Is there anything worse than that? Good grief, it must have been spawned in hell!"

"It was spawned in the brain of the master," she said quietly, "and that's worse than hell, a thousand thousand times worse. The devil would never take the likes of him."

"I bet he wouldn't. He'd corrupt their morals! Ye gods, a man who could think up a thing like that would probably put the brimstone out!"

The thing was uttering low articulate growlings as it came, a half human, half animal roar, like a beast that has been deprived of its prey. It stood, Masterson would have said at a guess, about eight feet tall, but it looked bigger than its probably was. The great shoulders of the brute rubbed against the side of the corridor as it ambled and lurched along. Its hideous, mottled eyes were fixed on the spaceman and the girl cowering behind him.

"We'll see how he likes a dose of this," said Masterson, and pressed the trigger savagely. There was no result.

"It knows you're here," said the girl. "It's put on the nullifying rays."

"Blast," muttered Masterson. He looked round for some other weapon. There had to be something. If this thing could neutralize the effects of an atomic charge he'd have to try something older.

The awful, claw-like extremity at the end of the creature's arms were the focal point of Greg's gaze. He realized now why the door handles were designed so oddly. The thing had no thumbs. The awful face twisted into the caricature of a grin as it came shambling forward.

"Back away and get ready to dodge up one of the other passages while I deal with this brute," said Masterson. "If I don't get away, run for your life."

"Its no good running," said the girl. "They'll only take me back to him. If it gets you, I'm just back where I started from." There was an awful, dull resignation in her voice.

"It hasn't got me yet," said Masterson, "and I don't intend it to. How strong would you say that brute is?"

"It can open that door as easily as you or I could put a finger through a piece of tissue paper."

He remembered the space suit. Among the tools on it was an axe! It seemed the ideal weapon. "Move," he urged. "Third passage on the right as you go back! My space suit is lying there. I left it as a decoy. There's an axe on the belt."

He spoke as he ran, reached the space suit, unsnapped the axe with fingers that shook a little, and turned to meet the beast in the wider space where the corridors met. The thing continued to give vent to the hideous guttural sounds. They seemed very appropriate from so dreadful a throat.

One of the great raking talons swung toward him.

"No, you don't," said Masterson sharply, and swung with the axe. The creature backed away with a scream that was more expressive of pain than anything else.

"Ah, so you're vulnerable, are you, you brute? Then see how you like this!" The girl had backed away into the passage and covered her face with her hands. The thing came on again, swinging the undamaged claw. Masterson slashed at that. There was another scream of pain. The hideous distorted face was only a few feet from his own. The axe was short but heavy. He held it in both hands and swung down with the strength of a pole-axe. There was a satisfying thud as the axe went home in the enemy. It fell down and lay still.

"Got it," said Masterson. "Got the swine! Astra, don't be afraid; it's dead! Astra! Astra!" he spun round, shouting. The corridor was empty. There was nothing but echoing darkness. From the darkness, seemingly very distant and far away, he heard a faint guttural laugh, and a girl's faint scream for help.

"Darn!" he swore savagely. He called himself every kind of fool under the sun. He knew nothing of these labyrinths, but the creatures, servants of the master, did. Even as he had been laying this brute low, one of the things had come from the other direction and dragged the girl away. The question was along which passage? He listened again, and then, switching on his torch, and with the bloodstained axe held at the ready in his strong right arm, the useless gun thrust into the belt at his waist, he hurried off in what he hoped was the right direction. It was eerie, following that slim pencil of white light along the corridor. The girl's own green vapor light apparatus had disappeared along with her, and he realized how inefficient his own light was. It was looking at everything through the wrong end of a telescope. His field of vision was very badly limited, but he had to keep on. He didn't know how it had happened; he couldn't even begin to understand. He had always been a lonely, adventurous, shyly masculine type of man; a man's man, an adventurer, a man who had never allowed himself to have time for women. And now he found himself like a tongue-tied schoolboy in the presence of this beautiful princess, who was a helpless prisoner of the foul thing that controlled this miniature world. He knew that his bold, carefree heart had been bound; he knew that he was held as no force field ever could hold him. He was desperately in love with a girl that he had met only a few minutes ago. Was it minutes, or was it an eternity? Was it possible that he had just met her for the first time? His mind went winging back over the great fields of philosophical speculation. Was there any truth in the reincarnation stories? he wondered. Had he met her before in another world, another life? Had he been separated from her by time and space; had they lived and loved a million years and a million worlds away? Was there, after all, an answer to his apparently insoluble question about the soul of man? Was there a tiny external inextinguishable flame, a tiny spark, a glowing, incandescent immortal something hidden within flesh and blood, and had that tiny spark known that girl before somewhere? Beside that immortal spark, time and space were meaningless. Distance had no real objective existence. Time was as irrelevant as a child's toy to a full-grown man. He knew, deeply intuitively and instinctively, knew by the depths of this passion that had flared up within him, that it must be so. The feelings that he had were too great, too enormous. They had to have always been; just as he knew that if there was a God, then that God must be an eternal being, so he knew his feelings must be eternal. They were too great to have been born out of the complex nerve endings which he called his physical brain. There was something in that feeling that went beyond physical attraction, though he would have been the last to deny that the girl was attractive. He didn't want her in the sense that a cave man wanted a mate to share his rough skin bed and raise his young. He wanted her as a companion, not for a time alone, but forever and forever, and for all the tomorrows that forever might hold. Would he be risking his life pursuing her into the depths of this crazy asteroid if it was purely a physical instinct that urged him on? He realized that it had to be more than a mere instinct. The strongest instinct of all was self-preservation, and when two basic instincts come into conflict it is the stronger which wins, and he knew that self-preservation was the strongest of all. That was basic psychology, first-year college stuff.

This was something altogether greater. This was a product of will, and will had been inspired by something that came from outside the material physical brain. Will was being spurred on by something from the immortal, nobler part of Greg Masterson. There was something distinctly noble and ethereal about the way he felt for the girl. There was nothing earthy about it at all. She was completely and utterly different from any woman he had ever known before. She was more a goddess, a green goddess. He thought of the ancient legend of Pandora's box, and the trouble that had been released when Pandora had undone the magical knot. Then he thought of Hope, who had come after the troubles and the trials and tribulations; a glorious, representative figure, preserved in the ancient mythology. Amidst all his trials, in the midst of the black sea of troubles that threatened to overwhelm him here in the depths of this asteroid, he had found the epitomization and the personification of Hope herself: this girl, this goddess, this mysterious enchantress, Astra of Altair. He knew that unless he could find her, and rescue her from this super intelligent fiend that controlled this mad world, he would never again know anything even vaguely approaching happiness. Unless he could rescue her and rescue her quickly, he would never be able to face himself again. He would never be able to live with himself. There were some things which a man had to do. They had to be done, and unless they were, life was empty, meaningless, dark.

For him the one thing that had to be done was to rescue the girl.

Greg became aware of a cackle of insane laughter; spine-chilling, blood-curdling laughter, it congealed and congested the very blood in his arteries. It was a hideous sound; like the other foul noises that had been emitted by the weird servants, this sound too was more animal than human, a foul, despicable, frightening, hyena-like sound.

It seemed to fill the whole asteroid, to echo through the whole asteroid like a weird, mad carillon.

Greg pulled himself together with an effort. To some extent this was a war of nerves. He was in the enemy's country, and he didn't know what devil he was heading for. He didn't know what was round the next corner. Uncertainty was pulling at him as though it had claws. On top of that was this weird semi-darkness beyond the bright light of his energy beam.

He had to keep moving; it was like groping his way through a thick fog. The beams of your headlights threw the fog back at you. It was like that, and yet it wasn't. The visibility conditions were roughly equivalent. He kept on moving. He reached another point in the corridor where it branched and again he stood listening for that weird, cackling laughter. Over and above it he thought he faintly heard another scream for help.

I've got to get to her. I've got to get to her quickly. His grip on the axe tightened. His jaw set in determination. Blast the creature that controls this place. In his mind he could see a mental image of the girl being dragged along those Stygian corridors by the likes of the creature that he had slain, the thing with the blemished eyes and hideous distorted face. The foul caricature of a man. At all costs he had to overtake them. He kept on moving. The laughter again. It was everywhere, echoing.

The whole experience was turning into some crazy kind of nightmare.

He still walked determinedly down the corridor. Now, throwing caution to the wind he started to run. They probably knew where he was, anyway; probably had some way of plotting his exact position. He was no doubt under the surveillance of half a dozen beams. His position could be pinpointed as accurately as a spider could tell upon which strand of its web a fly has alighted.

By running, he probably stood a better chance than by walking slowly and cautiously. If they knew where he was anyway, it was far better to run. The position would change far more rapidly. He thought about obstructions and pits and traps, and then let the thought fade away into oblivion. It was not a pleasant thought; oblivion was all it deserved! He saw something up ahead of him, something that lent wings to his feet. It was the faint backtrack of the green light that he had first seen, the green light that he had come to associate with the girl, Astra, Princess of Altair. They had not gotten very far; no doubt she was struggling as fiercely as she could. He thought again of the hideous deformed things that obeyed the wishes of the insane ruler of this peculiar asteroid. He increased his speed again. There was another wild ringing laugh, the green light faded from sight, and suddenly, almost undetectable in the slim light of his flash, he saw what had to be the toils of a net… It couldn't be anything else. The net was directly in front of him, around him. He spun quickly on his heel; it was behind him as well! He slashed at it savagely with the axe, but it appeared to be quite impervious to the blows of the hatchet. It was closing in on him. He struggled wildly, trying to keep his balance. Somehow it had gotten under his feet. The net seemed to be everywhere, thin, but immensely strong. He tried to tear it with his hands, but it was tougher than cord, and cut his fingers…

He got his feet and shoulders against it, braced himself and tried to break it, but it simply gave a little and then came back into position.

He thought of the analogy of the fly in the spider's web. It seemed more apt than ever now. He was hopelessly, helplessly, stupidly trapped. Fool not to have heard or seen it coming, he told himself. Masterson, you don't deserve to breathe. The amount of crazy mistakes you've been making since you started this trip! He rounded on himself reproachfully, and yet— who could have done better? Who could have avoided the net? Who could have known it was there? It had come so silently and so swiftly. The whole corridor was suddenly filled with green light, and he saw the girl helpless in the grip of two of the enormous creatures. She looked very pale and frightened. Another of the creatures was advancing toward him from the other end. He looked at it angrily, defiantly, wondering if it was going to kill him then and there. It was emitting those low guttural, growling noises. He struggled furiously again to break free from the net. All three of the creatures broke out into hideous laughs. He still retained his grip on the axe. If he couldn't cut the net, it could still serve its purpose, he decided. The creature pulled a long, wickedly curved knife from its belt and advanced cautiously toward him.

"You might kill me, seeing I'm helpless," said Masterson grimly, "but do you realize that you are challenging the mightiest empire of all time? What do you think my people are going to do? Let us get away with it? There are a hundred thousand space destroyers, good astral battleships, waiting back there. They'll blast this asteroid of yours to cosmic dust."

"Where?" said the creature slowly.

Oh, it can speak, thought Masterson. It was still advancing, holding the knife.

"Where are these ships you speak of?" Another horrible laugh.

"All around you in this system," said Greg. The laugh became even more pronounced.

"We are thousands of millions of miles from your system. We have crossed deep space."

Greg could hardly believe his ears. They were no longer in the solar system, and the creature with the knife was still advancing dangerously…

CHAPTER VIII

General Rotherson was pacing up and down his study like a caged tiger. His enormous head, itself like a minor planet, seemed to carry the weight of the world. No other neck, save the bull-like edifice which served Rotherson for that purpose, could have supported the weight of that head. It was a colossal, enormous head, and yet, because he was such a colossal, enormous man, it was not disproportionate.

Sitting on either side of his desk, Jonga and Krull smoked and drank coffee.

"I don't know what I'm going to do," said the general. "I only wish I did!" He laughed suddenly, derisively; pulled open a drawer in his desk and threw a file of papers across to Krull. "Look at that! I'm being more frankly honest with you chaps than I have ever been with anybody in my life. Just read that! The applicants for this post! Should be men with the ability to act on their own initiative, to make important decisions quickly, and to undertake responsible duties of the highest possible order! When I applied for this post, I thought I could do that! I don't know what's happened to me! I've never met a situation like this. I suppose I'm one of those fellows who can only act when things are cut and dried. I can't deal with life when it gets too complicated. I don't like the ifs and buts. I like life to be straightforward and relatively simple. I should have no hesitation at all in sending up the fleet, I would have no hesitation in going up with it, as its generalissimo, if I knew that we were being attacked, if I knew there was an enemy there. This invidious, twisting little hole-in-corner thing is getting me down. I like an enemy who will come out in the open and let me hit him. If I'm fighting, I want to fight it out as a slogging match. I want to stand there toe to toe and exchange blow for blow!" He crashed one enormous fist into the palm of the other hand to emphasize the point. "That's the kind of man I am! I'm not suited for all this —this—" He paused, lost for words. "I'm not suited for all this three-dimensional chess-playing. I was a simple, straightforward soldier. I understand simple straightforward soldiering. It's all very well having the prestige of being the defense chief! I was far better off teaching basic military maneuvers at Sandhurst. I was all right with a stream of first-year cadets. I could show them everything they needed to know about ground tactics. I'm a first-class ground tactician. I'm all right in this job as far as the administration goes." He stroked his great grey beard. "I don't know what's the matter with me. Why am I telling you all this?"

"You haven't had much sleep lately, sir."

"Neither have you chaps. You're not cracking up!"

"You're not cracking up, sir—just being remarkably frank," said Krull. "I don't think there's anybody better equipped to deal with the job than you. It's just that the others wouldn't be so honest if they didn't know what to do!"

Rotherson looked at him intently.

"D'ye mean that, Krull?"

"Sincerely, sir! Just think of the work you've done so far. Established a system of asteroid checking, which at our present level of technology is the best we've got available. It's already proved itself!"

"Yes, but what the devil has it proved, exactly?" said the general. "I've proved that there's something out there dangerous enough to destroy five dart ships, but we're still no nearer finding out what the devil it is."

"Yes, but without your system, sir, we wouldn't even have known there was anything there. Instead of five ships being lost, it might have been five planets."

"I suppose there's something in that. Now what do you suggest we try and do now? Let's go over the ground and try to clarify things."

"I've been going over," said Jonga, "over and over it, but nothing seems to come up. We spot one asteroid too many."

"Right!"

"We send up a survey force, five dart ships under the command of Squadron-Leader Greg Masterson, the finest man we've got. Masterson goes up; we lose radio contact for about fifteen hours. We take another check, and the asteroid is gone apparently having spirited away Masterson and his five ships with it. We're up against something here that has a technology considerably ahead of ours."

"Or," broke in Krull, "we're up against a freak accident. It doesn't have to be anything intelligent, anything that's leveled against the empire."

"I see what you mean," said the general. "It could be some kind of unnatural or accidental warp in the continuum in which they have all been sucked. Maybe that's what gave the impression of an asteroid too many."

"I wonder how a warp would show up on this screen."

"I don't think it would show up at all," said Krull.

"Well, that's put the tin hat on that one. On the other hand, this odd asteroid might have come through the warp. The ships might have spotted at once there was something odd about it and flown at once to intercept. The asteroid disappears back through the warp, and the ships go through after it."

"That again is a possibility, in which case, what happened to them?"

"Well, they've finished up on the other side of nowhere, perhaps thousands and thousands of light years away, on the other side of the galaxy, out among the Out-worlders."

"In that case, was it really an accident, sir?" asked Jonga. "Do you think this warp is a weapon, a new kind of spy weapon the Other Worlders have got? You see, just imagine that they could control hyperspace, the grey spaces between the galaxies. Imagine they've got some way of short-circuiting mileage and space and time as we understand it. The first thing they'd want to know is what kind of people we are, and what kind of weapons we've got. So they send out one of these decoy asteroids, with something rather odd about it, to decoy us into sending up a small interception squadron. Having done that, our squadron attacks, goes in to investigate, is promptly whisked away through their vortex, or whatever they've got and finishes up on the other side of the grey spaces, thousands of years and millions of miles from home."

"Precisely," said Rotherson. "That's a very terrifying possibility. If they could get a lot of ships through the continuum, they could probably get a planet through if they wanted to."

Jonga shuddered. "Wouldn't be much use sending a fleet out to intercept, then, would it, sir?"

"It certainly wouldn't," agreed the general. "The loss of five ships we can stand; the loss of five thousand ships would leave us defenseless."

"Suppose we sent half the fleet?"

"Maybe that's just what they want. Imagine that for a weapon. You trick the enemy into sending half his fleet, shall we say on a wild goose chase after some phoney asteroid. Soon as he gets up there, what happens? You suck them through your vortex; you blow them out on the other end of the universe, on some completely unknown corner of nethermost space, and having gotten them out there out of the way, you proceed with your attack. If any of the survivors manage to crawl back—perhaps fifty thousand years too late for the battle—or rather the descendants of the fleet's survivors, they find that their old world has been in enemy hands for so long that your empire's probably decayed as well. They've arrived just in time to remember some prehistoric legend as fact."

"I see what you mean."

"Let's go back and take a concrete example," said the general. "When Hannibal fought the Romans, they had the same sort of trick. Just imagine that they were technological creatures instead of being prehistoric ones. The Romans send up a decoy asteroid, and they lure off half of Hannibal's army. Half his space fleet goes off and disappears. The romans go in and fight his drastically reduced forces and beat them. Any time now the descendants of those men who were lured away, and swept through the space-time vortex, would probably be limping back. Just imagine how they would feel, perhaps not having developed technically at all since they were swept away. Just imagine them coming back to an earth of the 23rd century. The would wonder whose side they were on. They would want to take part in the war that was fought so long ago. Just imagine men wanting to fight for a Carthaginian empire that doesn't exist any longer! That's going to be a problem in loyalties for them."

"So the answer seems to be then, sir, that we don't send the fleet?" said Krull.

"No, we don't send the fleet, not yet," said the general. "There's a lot more to find out yet. I'm sick and tired of sitting behind this desk. I'm a straightforward soldier at heart, and I like a soldier's straightforward job. Give me a gun, and an enemy to shoot, and a bit of open ground to shoot him in."

"What are you hinting at, sir?" asked Krull.

"I'm not hinting; I'm going to come out in the open with it in a minute," said Rotherson. "I'm tired of trying to play this game on the other man's ground. I'm going to bring it on to my ground. I'm going to take one of those dart ships, and I'm going to call for volunteers, and I'm going out there to investigate the asteroid belt personally first hand." He looked from one to the other. "This is about the most irregular thing I've ever done. But this isn't the kind of problem that's going to be solved by sitting behind a desk. I can hand over the reins here to General Foster in the next section—simply tell him that as from now he's in command of both till I return—if I return. Shouldn't be difficult to get enough volunteers to man one dart ship. Every man on the base has been through basic space training before he was drafted into his own department. What about you two chaps?"

The idea had come like a bolt from the blue. Krull sat for several moments deep in silent thought. Jonga, younger and more impulsive than his colleague, leapt at the chance with both hands.

"I'll come, sir; delighted to!"

"Right! We'll take Dolores as well. If we get a chance to come to grips with these beggars, she'll be more than handy."

So I was right, thought Krull. She was trained on Jupiter.

"Who else? We only need another man," said the general softly. "I'll ring through to the radio room and see if I can get one of the chaps there to come as a 'sparks.'" He picked up the televiewer on his desk and flashed through to the radio room. A young technician was in the office within three minutes.

"Right!" said the general, with the sudden decisiveness that made him the man he was. "This is the kind of thing I like. This is action. This I can handle." He rattled off a memo to Foster on the teleprinter and led the way out of the office. The section of the fleet under his command lay gleaming and silent in the moonlight on the landing field. It looked for all the world like a pool of great silver fish, basking in the silent stillness of a quiet river.

"We'll go and catch us a minnow," said the general. He walked across to the nearest of the dart ships, and rang the emergency handle for two field mechanics. They hurried over.

"I want this thing operational," said the general, slapping the side of a ship.

"She's ready now, sir," said the mechanic who had reached him first.

"Good! Suits on board?"

"Yes, sir!"

"Nothing much else to be done, then, is there?" He looked at Krull. "Will you astrogate?"

"O.K., Chief."

"Climb aboard," said the general. He pressed the ramp release button at the side of the ship, and the collapsible beryllium ramp slid down. He gave an almost schoolboyish grin to his companions.

"We'll probably get court-martialed over this. Still, that'll be a new experience, if nothing else! Right-o, chaps; we're going aboard!"

With mixed feelings the party climbed aboard the ship. The general moved forward.

"It's a long time since these old hands got hold of a control button," he said, half to the others and half to himself. "It's the only cure for that itch, though, to get out there and fly the thing!" They settled back in the deep upholstery of the anti-grav couches, settled back and waited for blast-off.

The dart ship eased her nose gently up toward the sky, and then when the indicator showed they were exactly aligned with the take-off angle, Rotherson depressed the firing studs and eased himself back in the deep foam of the pilot's chair. One, two, three, three and a half, four G's mounted on the indicator. It was over in a matter of seconds, and the indicator began sinking back again.

None of them blacked out—the designers had seen to that—but the strain had been quite something.

"That's another offense we can put down in the book," remarked the general cheerfully.

"What's that, sir?" asked Krull.

"Taking off without the monthly medical check," retorted the general with an impish grin. "Wonder how many days C.B. we shall get for that? Anyway, a lot of this brass is too heavy to carry around."

The human side of him was coming out now, coming out very distinctly. The more they saw of him as a man, not just as a commanding officer, the more Krull and Jonga warmed to their leader. He was an immense personality, but he had been all too obviously a fish out of water. He was a proper son-of-a-gun of the old school, straightforward, direct, fighting soldier, completely out of his element in a chair behind a desk. His mind was not equipped to deal with complex problems, any more than Jonga was built to sit and watch charts. They were like men who had come home, those two, Jonga and his general. They belonged out there in space. They would have belonged in Spitfires three hundred years earlier. They would have belonged aboard a pirate ship or a covered wagon. They would have belonged in the army of Charles I, those dashing, flashing, sword-slashing cavaliers! They belonged anywhere where there was life, and excitement and adventure. They didn't belong behind desks. Paper was anathema to them. They didn't want second-hand life. They didn't want charts and computers. They wanted horses and swords, space ships and hand blasters, adventure with a capital A. It was life and breath to them. It was more essential to their mental well-being, than blood!

The ship lifted on its plume of flame, dancing like some silver bird without wings, dancing higher and higher, probing, thrusting, against the blue dome above it. The blue dome of sky and space—seeking escape from the cage called gravity. Up and on, ever upwards and onwards, higher and farther and faster flew the ship. She was well away from escape velocity now, and earth was receding behind her, a great green and blue and brown ball, like some ancient geographical globe spinning on its stand—the invisible stand called space.

The ship sped on, out and up, far out beyond the orbit of the moon. And as General Rotherson's enormous, powerful hands played over the control buttons, nursing every ounce of speed from the supremely fast dart ship, the orbit of Mars flicked its way onto the orbit computer. Then they were out beyond the orbit of Mars, heading for the fringes of the asteroid belt itself, heading for mystery and the unknown.

Looking for the spot where the deadly, unknown planetoid had disappeared, taking with it the five ships of the survey expedition.

CHAPTER IX

All was excitement in the great seven-planet empire of Altair. Excitement because, after months of preparation, the green races had developed a weapon which was hoped to be proof against the apparently infallible monster in control of the devastating asteroid which had wrecked one of their colonial outposts and carried off their beautiful and beloved Princess Astra.

Its inventor was a man named Rashak. Rashak of the green skin, the high-domed forehead, and the penetrating, intelligent eyes. Rashak, with a brain as fast and as delicate as an electronic computer. The three dominant races in the Altairian empire were the green scientific intelligentsia, a kind of mental aristocracy; the black athletic, vigorous, muscular breed; and the red, with their copper-colored skins, their aesthetic features and strange psychic abilities. It would have been thought almost impossible for three such vastly different races to have lived and moved and had their being together without conflict and discord. And yet, in the Altairian empire this was very definitely the case. The history of their empire itself made a brilliant sociological study in its own right. Long, long ago in the remote past there had been discords—savage, bloodthirsty discords, but the Altarian empire was an old one and these were long forgotten. The oldest mythology, in which traces of history could be seen like gold threads through the fabric of myth and fable, stated that in the beginning the black races had been dominant. They, because of their athletic prowess and warrior ability, had held sway over the planet of their birth when conflicts were decided with broadsword, shield and spear, as in the days of the early Spartan armies of earth, the epoch of Greek superiority, so the athletic races had triumphed in the early days of Altair. These colored giants, stronger than earthly heroes, had cut their way through all opposition, until there had been no race anywhere on their home world who had been able to stand against them. Then, in far-away, hidden corners, the red men had begun to rise. The red men, with their thin esthetic faces, their strange contemplative ways, their weird abilities to control both their own bodies and the powers of nature. You could bury a red man alive for a month, dig him up, and by the incantation of certain spells and charms, and the application to his face of certain secret herbal preparations, he would rise to his feet and resume his normal life. It had even been rumored in the old days of myth and legend, that a past master in the secret arts of the red men, could be buried for centuries. They could divine the future by means of stones and bones, and the entrails of animals. They could gaze into crystal spheres and see the dim, unwritten might-have-been, unfolding. They could go into a trance-like state and send their soul, or astral body, on a fantastic journey, across the universe itself if necessary. There seemed no limit to the powers of the mind of the red men. The dark race, despite their physical prowess, were superstitious and highly awestruck by these feats and magical mental performances. The red men could levitate, could make themselves appear and disappear, could teleport objects for short distances, and in consequence the black race regarded them as demi-gods or demons. As the centuries rolled by, they gradually infiltrated, and like Greeks in the Roman world, they became the power behind the scenes. They were not yet openly kings—but they were kingmakers. They pulled the strings to make the nominal black chiefs dance to their bidding, and then, as more centuries rolled by, the masquerade was over, and the red men held the superior position. Now they were no longer the chief's advisers; they were the kings and the emperors and the rulers of the planet. But the weapons were still the sword and the spear and the shield. During that period of transition of power from black to red, there were many blood-soaked fields of carnage. The red were not so numerical as the black, and what the darker-colored race lacked in mental ability, they made up for in courage and strength.

The bloody centuries drew to a close, with the red men firmly in the saddle and the blacks subservient to their priestly hierarchy. More centuries rolled by, and a new race came from hiding, came from the remote corners of the planet—the technological green race. Where the black races had relied upon courage and muscle, and where the red had relied upon mysticism and superstition and the power which could best be described as psychic—so the green used technology.

The reds could discover what was happening in a distant part of the planet by going into a trance and transporting their astral body to any place they desired. The greens duplicated this trick by inventing television and taking a camera to any part of the world they needed. The red could bury themselves alive by a stupendous effort of will over mind, of mind over matter… the greens did the same thing by taking with them a supply of food and oxygen. Anything the reds could do by mental power, the greens did by technology. Whereas there is a limit to mental power, there is no limit to an expanding technological movement. It was a kind of scientific Renaissance that swept across Altair. First came the steam engine, then internal combustion; from internal combustion came the jet; and from the jet, ultimately the jet-rocket, and atomic power was established.

Once the green races had developed atomic power, there was nothing they couldn't do. The crown began to slip from the red foreheads. The greens had very little time for the so-called psychic powers of those they had deposed, and a singularly materialistic philosophy became dominant. If there was a god at all, it was the great god science. The great science appeared to know all the answers—or did it? Something else had to be found.

It was not till the green discovered that there was something lacking that they made a serious effort to solve it scientifically. They discovered that there was some fatal flaw in their system of life and government. Their questing ships began to look for it on the other six planets of the seven-planet Altairian system.

They found it at last in the white race… the white race with jet black hair and jet black eyes; the white race who seemed to combine the three factors which their own race had to a limited degree. The white had almost as much technical ability as the green, but not quite. They recognized the importance of worship and religion and development of the soul, as did the reds, but they lacked the finer points of aestheticism which the reds had developed to a supreme art. They were strong and tough and athletic, but not quite so strong and muscular and robust or courageous as the blacks. They were very much an amalgam of all three, and they had, being an amalgum of all three—the realization that supremacy by one race was very wrong, and that their empire could only develop if their races worked together, realizing their dependence on each other.

And so a new civilization of peace and brotherhood was built up with the knowledge that at the head of it, outside the boundaries of the knowledge of science, was a Great Father Spirit; a Father Spirit to whom all men owed their existence, directly or indirectly; a great life force that had guided the evolutionary process of which all men were the children. From this the conception of brotherhood had grown and developed. It was not mere toleration; it was a community and a society with mutual love and respect. There were neither rich nor poor, for each man gave according to his ability and took according to his needs. No man was ever in want. There was no hunger, no thirst, no poverty, and as far as lay within the bounds of their medical science, there was no disease.

The whites, themselves partially spiritually inclined, recognized that the reds were their superiors in that respect, and the priesthood, and the care of spiritual things, remained in the hands of the inscrutable esthetics. The whites also recognized that if anything needed tenacity, stamina, strength and sheer, solid, animal courage, then it lay in the field of the blacks. The black races made the best soldiers, the best sailors, the best airmen. They won all athletic and sporting events whenever inter-planetary games were held. They could out-box, out-wrestle, out-run, out-leap any of their contemporaries. If there were unclimbable mountains to be climbed, it was the black race who climbed them. If there were new swimming records to be set up, it was the black race that established them. If there were feats of endurance to be undertaken, in the name of the empire, it was the black race who undertook them and carried them off with great success.

But when it came to technology, then it was the turn of the greens. If a problem in science or mathematics needed to be solved, then it was to the greens that the whole population turned. If a new alloy was needed for a revolutionary type of space engine, it would be a green metallurgist who could discover the alloy. If a problem seemed insoluble to red or black minds, then a green mind could crack it open as surely as a hammer cracks a nut.

If it was a problem in design, if it was a problem in nuclear physics, then all the citizens of the empire could be quite certain that the green minds could deal with it —if it had a solution they would find it.

If it hadn't a solution, they would find the way round it, and so the beginnings of harmony were sown. For the whites realized that in each of the separate fields of physical prowess, of technology and spiritual development, they were inferior to their other associate races, so the three associate races in turn respected the whites for their ability in the other fields. The whites were more athletic than the reds or the greens, although far behind the blacks.

The whites knew more of spiritual matters than the blacks or the greens, though they were far behind the reds.

The whites knew less technology than the greens, although they were ahead in other ways.

It was more than respect; it was downright admiration. The three colored races admired the whites for their depths of understanding in all fields. The whites admired the reds for their spiritual knowledge, admired the blacks for their physical culture, and admired the greens for their technological, mathematical minds—the seeds of harmony were beginning to grow.

Admiration and respect grew until a close bond of affinity and affection was forged, and at last the race emerged as a kind of corporate gestalt whole, in which each regarded his fellow beings as equally essential with himself. They knew that if they were to continue progressing, none of them could manage without the other. The blacks, the greens and the reds were the wood, the metal and the stone of which their society was built. The whites were the amalgam, the cement, that held the components together.

Three of the finest examples of the colored races were Pythol, the champion athlete of the blacks, Rashak, the most technologically intelligent of the greens, Tandos, the psychic esthetic high priest of the red cult. These three stood by the launching ramp with Valstar, the white brother of the kidnapped Princess Astra.

A great murmur of anticipation rose from the waiting, watching crowd. It was a vast crowd lining the four sides of the launching field, safely protected by the barrier. The murmuring turned to a roar, and the roar to a great cheer. White, red, black and green mingled in a colorful sea of faces, waving hands, waving hats, waving scarves, gesturing with flags, shouting and cheering, expressing as sound the hope that was in every breast, in every heart, mind and soul: that this expedition to save the Princess would be successful.

The new green weapon was a top secret, known only to half a dozen other green scientists besides its inventor.

No one doubted the loyalty or integrity of his fellows, yet walls have ears, and the fewer the number of those who shared the secret of the devastating new invention, the less chance there was that the asteroid man would learn of the danger that threatened him in time to prepare a shield or an antidote against it.

Rashak had been its chief instigator. He had fathered the invention. He understood it far better than any of the others, but it needed more than sheer intelligence to apply the weapon to the enemy.

It needed the broad understanding of a white mind like Valstar's. It needed strength and courage and ability like Pythol's; and in the long, lonely months of waiting and searching, Tandos would be able to keep up the spirits and courage of the expedition with prayer and with meditation.

They moved, four tiny specks, like flies crawling across a watch glass, across the center of that great field. They reached their waiting ship, the great disc-like ship climbed up the ramp and pulled it up behind them. The great portal of the ship closed. They felt alone isolated, cut off from their fellow Altairians. A green, a black face, a red face and a white face looked into each other's eyes. They were somehow symbolic. They were the representatives of the empire. Their loyalty and affection to each other were symbolic of the bonds that held the empire together. Their supreme loyalty to the lost princess was a symbol of the empire's loyalty to its constitutional monarchy.

At all costs, Astra, if she was still alive, must be brought back, as must her noble father, from the clutches of the foul, unnameable, evil thing, from somewhere in the distant out-worlds. The thing with the superior technology, and yet with no soul. The evil, hideous thing that controlled an asteroid. The thing that was more terrible than a nova, stronger than gravity. A thing that seemed to control destiny itself…

With a roar and a flash, the great ship took off with a great thrust of power. Tandos, Rashak, Pythol and Valstar were winging away into the blue-black, unknown mysteries of space, winging away on their mission of rescue and revenge.

CHAPTER X

Greg struggled desperately in the toils of the net as the revolting thing came closer. It hadn't been so bad, he reflected, the first time he had seen one. Then he hadn't been pinned helplessly in a net, waiting its arrival. He had known that he could fight or run, that he could escape from the foul, hideous caricature of humanity. Now there was no escape. He was as helpless as a fly in a spider's web, and this was worse than any spider. It lumbered and lurched as it walked. Blemished eyes regarded him with evil satisfaction. The raking talon claws reached out to grasp him. He wanted to be violently sick. There was a horrible odor from the thing, a stench of graveyard mould, a fetid decay, as though its evil body were corrupting even while the creature lived. It made him think of a zombie. It looked by every law in the universe as though the thing ought to be dead, only it wasn't dead. It was walking closer and closer, the great mouth opened like the caverns of hell itself. Greg got a reek of its foul breath. He tried desperately to get the axe into position, but the net seemed almost alive and foiled his every effort. It was too thin for the axe blade to bite into; it was too tough for his fingers to snap. It seemed to be drawing ever tighter and tighter as if he were in the grip of some hideous snake. He swore savagely, and as he swore the creature laughed and came closer. It waved the knife in front of his face, as though it enjoyed its ghastly anticipation.

"Oh, get it over with," said Greg, and spat derisively on the floor. The creature was in no hurry; it waved the knife slowly up and down in front of his eyes. He could see its razor-keen edge. He could almost imagine its keen, death-dealing bite, and then he knew that this creature would not kill swiftly. He thought of ancient legends of Chinese tortures and the death of a thousand cuts. He wished that the net would break. He longed for just one chance. One quick blow with that axe, and he knew he could drop the thing in a sprawling heap at his feet. The creature knew that as well; he could see it written in the blemished eyes, the creature was enjoying the game of cat and mouse. It wasn't a tiny helpless fly that it had caught in its net. It was a wasp, a deadly, dangerous, angry wasp—even if a helpless one. The spider was going to win because the wasp was trapped and couldn't use its sting. Greg couldn't use his axe. The spider was going to win, but he was a careful spider. He wasn't coming any closer than he could help until he was sure that the sting was safely trapped in another direction. Yet, looking at it, Greg realized again how fantastically strong it was. He knew that without that axe in his hand, the creature could take him and squeeze the life from him as if he were a rag doll. It could fling him from one end of the corridor to the other. Despite the awful odor of corruption and decay, the thing was fiendishly powerful. It did just occur to him that it wasn't the result of natural evolution; no planet anywhere in the universe, anywhere in the cosmos, could have spawned a thing like this. This was life gone wrong; it was a horrible hybrid between life and death. It was somehow artificial. It was something which the vile hand of an insane human being had interfered with. He thought of the age-old legend of Frankenstein and the monster—a creature concocted from the bodies of the dead and then powered with a strange, unnatural life. Was this something similar? Had the mad scientist who controlled this asteroid been experimenting with a weird biological process of his own? Had he found the way to produce these sub-men, these things that the girl had called the servants of the master?

The knife suddenly snaked out and hacked at something above Greg's head; he fell with a heavy thud to the floor of the corridor. The net had not released its prey, but it had been severed from its anchor threads. As he lay half-stunned, the creature took a lurching step forward and trod on his wrist. It seemed to weigh a thousand tons; he was aware of agonizing pain and felt a bone must snap at any second. The creature looked down at him as though it were enjoying itself hugely. The axe fell from nerveless fingers, and the creature removed its enormous foot. Greg could feel blood pulsing back to his hand. He flexed his fingers experimentally and was pleasantly surprised to find they still worked. "Must be tougher than I thought," he muttered to himself. The creature picked up the axe and, with a powerful stroke of its arm, embedded it in the wall. It gave a low guttural grunt.

"Helpless," it said, pointing to Greg. "Helpless now."

It picked up the net as a fisherman picks up a lobster pot and dragged him away down the corridor, dragged him away into the Stygian darkness.

How far they had traveled in that crude, jolting fashion Grey had no idea. He was conscious of lifts and escalators, of moving belts, and once he fancied he heard the whirring of distant powerful machinery. Once or twice the whole asteroid seemed to vibrate as it had done before. But it was a vibration caused by something distant and remote. The creature continued dragging him painfully along, step after step. Jolting and lurching, he half hoped the net would wear through with the friction of the dragging, but nothing of the kind happened.

It must have been far, far tougher than steel, that net, although as to the exact nature of its composition, he was totally ignorant. At last the creature paused in a dimly lit alcove. Set deep in the alcove was an enormous door, solid, thick, heat-resisting, studded with beryllium rivets. It was a door that looked as if it needed an atomic bomb to open it. The creature put its hand on the curiously misshapen handle and twisted effortlessly. The door swung open on silent, perfectly balanced hinges; swung open inward, away from them, obscuring the view of the chamber beyond. Through the crack a flood of brilliant green light issued; reaching around the chamber, it came bubbling out like green foam, like a cloud of incandescent steam. That light completely baffled Greg; he knew it was the same as the one the girl carried. But as to its source, it completely eluded him. The creature paused a moment, then slumped on all fours and crawled through the crack in the door. It left Greg in the pool of green light, still struggling furiously in the ever-contacting net. He heard a voice; not the creature's voice, but another voice. He stopped struggling and listened. It was a quiet, silky, honeyed voice, soft as thistledown and yet dripping with deadly venom. Every syllable was loaded with poison. It was one of the most cultured and refined voices he had ever heard. It spoke of tremendous intelligence; it also spoke of tremendous evil. The owner of that voice was bad, so bad that in comparison this ill-shapen, blemished thing was an angel from heaven. Greg had never heard a voice like it. It was so calm, so flat, so quiet, like the voice of an automaton. It had almost the soft quality of an expensive tape recorder, and yet it wasn't quite as artificial as a recording. It was a live voice; it came from a flesh-and-blood larynx. It came from a throat and chest. It came over a tongue and passed teeth that had grown by natural evolutionary process. Greg was overwhelmed by fear and curiosity at the same time. The voice was giving orders on a language he didn't understand. And the great creature backed away as it had backed in; backed out of the presence of that terrible and invisible voice, in much the same way that a thrashed dog, or slave of the past, would have backed away from the planter's whip. It came creeping back, looking awe-struck and helplessly terrified. It seized the sack with a great misshapen claw that was still trembling with fear. It dragged the net into the beam of light. The light of the room was so brilliant that for a few seconds Greg could see nothing except what was very close to him. He was aware that the light was streaming from somewhere above or behind the presence, the presence which the creature feared. Something sailed through the air, and he heard the honey silken voice laughing; a laugh that was quiet and refined, but a thousand times more terrible than the ghoulish cackles of the creatures that served it.

Something landed quite near him with a wet, rather heavy splashing sound. The creature mumbled something and began prostrating itself on the floor and backing away, leaving the net-enmeshed Greg squatting helplessly in the beam of light. He turned his eyes away from the direct radiance, back toward the shambling creature that was now making its withdrawal. He saw what it was that had flown through the air. The voice had thrown the creature a piece of raw meat. The thing had it in his misshapen claws and was even now tearing and biting at it, as it backed out of its master's presence.

"A touching little display of devotion and gratitude, don't you think?" said the voice.

Greg looked at the light and with great difficulty tried to focus.

"You won't be able to see me unless I so desire," said the voice. "My rooms are designed that way." It was as deadly as a striking snake, that voice issuing from a shadowy form. "I have one or two questions I'd like to ask you first," it went on. "Then perhaps, if I feel inclined, I may enlighten your curiosity before I have you destroyed."

Greg's courage had returned. He was remembering that he was a Masterson, that he came of a family who feared no creature living or dead, let alone a disembodied voice working in shadows.

"That is, if you can destroy me," he answered quietly.

"I should have no difficulty in destroying you," said the voice. "I am well served here. I have but to raise a finger, and one of my many servants would despatch you as they would squash a fly."

"They'd probably eat me as well," said Greg. "They look pretty civilized!" The voice still showed no emotion, but Greg felt that he was annoyed and decided to keep on the same track.

"Where are you from?" demanded the voice.

"I'm a genie," said Greg. "I came out of a bottle."

"Very amusing," said the voice coldly. "Since you do not wish to tell me, I will tell you. Five ships came up to investigate my world. There were five men in each ship. There are twenty-four corpses, or there were, till I disposed of them and the wreckage on the outside of my world. You bear a striking resemblance to the other bodies. I take it that you were the sole survivor of that crash."

"I might have been," said Greg; "then I might not. I might have popped up out of a rat-hole like you did."

"What a strange sense of humor you have," answered the voice. "Are all your people the same?"

"Oh, I'm quite serious by comparison with some of them," said Greg. "You'd be surprised."

"I am never surprised," answered the voice even more coldly. "That is one of the disadvantages of being omnipotent."

Greg decided that this insane creature lurking in the shadows was a megalomaniac with a paranoia as big as Mount Everest. That at least would help. Sometimes an insane opponent was less dangerous than a normal one, if you only knew how to play him. Greg wished that he majored in psychology instead of astro-physics and engineering.

"Oh, so you you're never surprised, aren't you?" he gibed mockingly.

"As I told you before, I am omnipotent. I know all things."

"Well, who's going to win the Derby next year?" ventured Greg. "I'll put a shilling on it for you."

"What is the Derby?" said the voice.

"I thought you knew all things," said Greg.

"I know all important things," said the voice. "I am not concerned with trifles."

"Well, the Derby's a horse race," said Greg. "It has a tradition that goes back for centuries—quite an event on my planet."

"I see," said the voice; "some sort of sport. Sport, the amusement of lesser minds." He laughed superciliously. "I was telling you how you got here, wasn't I?" it went on.

"You were," said Greg, "and I was telling you you were wrong."

"I'm never wrong," said the voice, and again Greg detected that slight trace of annoyance. "I was telling you that you were the sole survivor of those twenty-five men who crashed when I put out my attractor beam."

"That's what it was, was it?" said Greg. "I thought it was a couple of dime magnets out of Woolworth's." The voice failed to understand the allusion.

"Now," it went on coldly, "after your ship crashed, you began exploring the surface of my world. You tried out some primitive type of hand weapon, I believe. I had rather absent-mindedly shut off the force field which prevents such tilings from detonating in the belief that all of your people had been killed."

"It's not as omnipotent as it thinks," Greg decided mentally.

"You were then pursued by my guardian of the outer surface."

"Oh, you mean that cute little pussy cat with the big claws?" joked Greg.

"You may call it that if you wish; you would have found out how friendly it was had you not been able to escape into the tunnel. It is a singularly savage and omnivorous beast. I designed it myself."

"Oh! quite the little tin god, aren't we?" said Greg. "Designing living creatures just like that."

"I design and re-design living creatures," said the voice. "It is one of my hobbies. My servants are all products of my laboratories."

"How very nice for them," said Greg. "I must say you turned out a darn good job. I can smell them half a mile away. Let's say that was something that went wrong."

The voice was growing really angry now. "None of my processes ever go wrong, as you will discover to your cost. Your movements were checked in my central control room from the moment you entered the passage."

"I don't believe you," answered Greg. "If that's the case, you've been an awful long time finding me, and I even went to sleep."

"Yes, that is true. But I knew you could not escape. My outer guardian resealed your bolt hole."

"That wasn't the real reason it resealed it," said Greg. "It resealed it so that you didn't lose too much of your atmosphere." The voice gave a strange clucking sound, as though it were really irritated. Got him on a raw spot, thought Greg.

The creature that confronted him obviously was even more paranoid and maniac than he had thought originally. It couldn't bear to be contradicted or proved wrong. If I make it angly, it'll make a mistake, thought Greg, and relapsed into silence.

"I overheard your conversations with one of my other captives."

"Oh, yes," said Greg.

"Attractive, is she not?" the voice went on.

Now Greg was caught on the raw. There had been a horrid undercurrent in the way the creature had uttered those words.

"There's one question I'd like answered," said Greg, quickly changing the subject. "How is it that you overcome these language difficulties? When you spoke to that thing, you weren't using this language."

"Oh, that's a mental process," said the voice. "I'm rather proud of it. I perfected it several centuries ago. You've probably noticed that the girl has the same ability. It is one of the little things I've taught her. You see all sounds, basically, are merely expressions of thought. Sounds are irrelevant to the higher mind. It's quite simple. If you can just direct your mental perception to the conscious thought which someone else is expressing, it will translate itself in your mind, in your ears almost, as words. Once you've done this for a few moments, you will be quite conversant with any language there is. That is the basis of my development."

"I speak to you in your language, and to the creatures in theirs. It has become subconscious and automatic with me. I have but to listen for a few minutes, and my mind analyzes any thought language formations that you are transmitting. Once I have analyzed them, then the speech centers of my brain retranslate them into your language."

"That's a pretty useful trick," agreed Greg.

"It's extremely useful," said the voice. "It means that even if you knew a hundred different languages and tried to deceive me by speaking in any one of them, I should still be able to follow you absolutely perfectly."

"Don't believe you!"

"Try it," said the voice.

"I'm no great shakes as a linguist, but one little party trick I used to have was counting in various languages."

"I should think that would be adequate," said the voice. "Which language would you like me to count in for you?"

"What about this?" said Greg. "If I begin," he started counting in French, "un, deux, trois, quatre—" The voice went on: "'Cinq, six, sept, huit, neuf, dix. That enough for you?" said the voice.

"What about this, then?" said Greg, and began counting backwards in German, "Zehn, neun, acht."

"Quite enough," said the voice, and went on: "Seben, sechs, funf, vier, drei, zwei, eins."

"How's this?" said Greg. "I'll start in the middle and you finish me. We call this language Italian on earth— cinque, sei, sette."

"Otto," said the voice, "nove, dieci. Then there is uno, due, tre, quattro, and that completes the first ten decimal numbers."

"We used to call this language Spanish," said Greg. "Do you know that one, too?"

"I know all of them."

"Uno, dos, tres, quatro."

"Simple," said the voice. "Cinco, seis, siete, ocho, hueve, diez. Does that satisfy you?"

"More than satisfies me," said Greg wearily. He racked his brain. "I bet you can't get this though—"

"You're nothing if not determined," said the voice.

"Nothing," said Greg, and meant it. "En, ett, tva, tre, fyra."

"Ah," said the voice, for Greg was speaking in Swedish. He thought that that of all languages, would have caught this peculiar, superbly intelligent being.

"Fern," said the asteroid man quietly, "sex, sju, atta, nio, tio."

Greg gave it up as a bad job.

"Are you satisfied now with my linguistic ability?" said the voice ironically.

"I shall have to be," said Greg.

The spaceman became suddenly aware of an intense burning curiosity building up inside him, curiosity that superimposed itself upon his fear, that superseded the fear, that drove out the fear. The curiosity suddenly forced itself to the fore of his mind and became a vitally prime instinct.

He had to know more about the creature that controlled the asteroid. It became almost an obsession with him to discover more, to find out more. He wondered if the asteroid man's paranoia would provide him with the knowledge that he sought. If he posed his questions carefully, could be to trick the other into answering them? It was no mean accomplishment if he could pull it off. Dare he risk his own small intellect against the mighty mental powers of this strange being from God alone knows Where? Yet he knew that this instinct of his was very closely allied to even more important instincts of self-preservation. He had to find out more about the asteroid man before he could begin thinking in terms of retaliation or even escape. You can't fight an unknown enemy, no matter how great warrior you may be. It is the same in every field of human conflict, from the battle of disease to the battle of aliens from the stars. You must know with what you are dealing. You must analyze, you must focus, you must understand the enemy before you can destroy it. You must learn what makes it tick, and then you can learn what makes it stop ticking.

"How long have you been running this asteroid?" he asked suddenly. The face hidden in the shadows behind the powerful, penetrating light beams moved a little to one side, as though the asteroid man were considering the question.

"Why?" replied the voice monosyllabically.

Play on the paranoia, Greg told himself. Flatter the brute. "I was just thinking what a great achievement it was to be able to move an asteroid. I wondered how long you had been able to do it, and whether you had only found out by accident."

"Nothing is an accident," said the asteroid man. "Nothing, do you understand." He rolled the word around his tongue as though he liked the sound of it. "Nothing is an accident," repeated the asteroid man as though he enjoyed the phrase. "Everything is caused. Even in your puny type of society, there is no real accident. The difference between the puny mind and the great one is that the lesser mind does not understand the power that controls, and therefore believes in elemental forces outside itself." The face shrouded in shadows leant toward Greg. He longed for a glimpse of it and yet at the same time felt afraid to see it. He wondered if there was a dual purpose behind those shadows. The asteroid man wanted him in the light, that was an obvious reason, but was there a second? Did the asteroid man wish to remain unseen because of some hideous disfigurement, or some strange difference about his profile? Greg was filled with a mixture of dread and curiosity. The creature continued to speak.

"I'll answer those of your questions which suit me. I'll answer them because I contain some minor human foibles even yet, even after all the millennia that have passed since I shared a place in gregarious society."

"My name is Ultimus. I am the End."

"Did you make that up yourself?" asked Greg quietly.

"That is of no consequence unless I will it to be so. My name is Ultimus, the End of all knowledge, the Great One, the Infinite One. Many many millennia ago, no matter how your people count time, long, long before your earth became civilized, long before your primeval ancestors had dragged themselves out of the slime, I existed."

Greg wondered if he was lying. Oddly, irrelevantly the words of a sang ran through his mind, a song that had been known and sung in colleges and universities and jazz groups for centuries. I was a traditional song,

"I was born ten thousand years ago,

And there's nothing in this world that I don't know.

I saw Peter, Paul and Moses playin' ring around the roses,

And I'll fight the guy who says that it ain't so.

I remember when this country had a king.

I saw Cleopatra sell her wedding ring."

Strange, irrelevant words reminded Greg of other days, long dead days of carefree student happiness, days of roistering with the boys. Days when beer had flowed like water. Days around an electric organ, thumping out time with glasses. Days in which nothing mattered but bonhomie and camaraderie. Days in which passing an astro-physics degree seemed remote futures away—part of another life. A life that for him was dead but not forgotten. He wondered if the asteroid man could be as old as he thought he was. It was in the cards that it was just part of the creature's paranoia to claim infinite age; on the other hand, it might be a simple statement of fact. The asteroid man was speaking again.

"Long, long centuries ago as you reckon time, I was a member of a highly technological community; a community so far advanced in comparison of the achievements of your tiny planet that you would have been as dust beneath our feet, you would have been as inconsiderable as insects, as plankton swimming in the sea. We had machines about which you could know nothing. The children in our primary schools could have taught your wisest sages far more than they could ever have dreamed. But there was something wrong with our society, something devastatingly wrong." The asteroid man's voice had lost something of its silky, deadly calm. It had become charged with what must have been the equivalent of emotion in the alien's weird mind.

"Yes", it repeated, "something was badly wrong. It treated its greatest sons as though they were criminals. It couldn't realize the truth when the truth was presented to it!" Greg knew that this was the paranoia coming out. He played on it.

"And what was the truth?" he asked eagerly. Got to keep him talking; it's coming out now.

"I was the truth," said the asteroid man. "I was the greatest intelligence that that supreme society had ever thrown up. I held in my mind the universe as men could hold a drop of water in the palms of their hands. I understood all mysteries and all knowledge. I knew the answer to all things, and there was only one obvious place for me to fill, in my society—"

"Its supreme leader," said Greg with a note of sincerity which he found difficult to put into his voice.

"Of course," said the asteroid man. "How strange that a primitive savage such as you should have grasped so deep and important a fundamental issue, which those who lived on my world were unable to appreciate. Strange how the simple, savage mind, the primitive, undeveloped mind like yours, can come direct to a point of truth which has defeated the greatest scientific and philosophical minds of a superior society. Very strange." It was mastering its emotion now, and the voice had turned back to the silky monotone. In his mind's eye Greg could see the steel claw wrapped in the thin velvet glove.

"And so," went on the asteroid man, "because they would not recognize and accept me as their rightful lord and master, I had to fight against my own people. I worked my way up from the bottom. I became first a departmental chief, then a senior administrator and, when the time was ripe, I struck! History hung in my hands, but I was betrayed, betrayed by the very people upon whom I had relied. They had been against me all the time. They, who I thought were my loyal servants and subjects, had been working for the other government departments; they had been keeping a track on my every move, playing with me as a fisherman plays with a powerful pike. At the last minute I recognized their treachery for the baseness that it was. And recognizing it as I did in the nick of time, I rose against them and escaped their net." He looked across at Greg's pinioned form. "Nets are difficult things to escape from, aren't they?"

"They certainly are," replied the space man with grim humor. "I take my hat off to you for inventing this one. There isn't a creature in the galaxy could burst is way out of this."

"Thank you," said the asteroid man. "You flatter my ingenuity. Not that it needs any flattery—but you do flatter it." There was a note of passion in his voice again. The head was moving jerkily from side to side in the shadows as it spoke.

"Yes, I escaped from their toils and their net. The pike bit through the line before it could be landed, and then—"

"And then?" asked Greg.

"What I had been attempting to do by stealth I attempted to do by open warfare. I retreated to my satellite hideout, a satellite that I had been secretly preparing, and I blessed the day on which I had decided to tell nobody, so that none but I was aware of it. There I waged a deadly war against them. Alas, their technology is as strong as my own. If there had only been six men with me, equipped with satellites like this one, we could have destroyed even that technological society. But I failed—for the time being at any rate. One day I shall go back and shall destroy them. They captured me with their vast armies, millions to one—with their unlimited power sources, their unlimited power reserves. I could fight them as man to man, I could give them blow for blow, but I hadn't any supply lines. There was no one to bring me any ammunition. They had millions of troop carriers. There was no one to supply me with electric power, there was no one to help me maintain my war machine, and so my one-man battle collapsed. They starved me out, they laid siege to me, they dragged me—me," he repeated in a terrible voice, "who should have been their rightful leader—before a court of men with human minds. Lesser by their puerile standards. I, who should have been their god, was judged like a common criminal."

"Then?" asked Greg.

"Ah, then," said the asteroid man. "Ah, then. Yes, yes, what did they do then? You may wonder why I lurk in the shadows. Once I looked very much as you look now, apart from minor physiological differences. I could have passed as one of your people. But they put the sign of the criminal upon me. They jeered at my asteroid war. Do you know what they did then? For they felt that they were ethical and enlightened in their own strange way, savages though they were, compared to me. They'd set me adrift, not in an asteroid like the one from which I made war—a technological masterpiece—but they set me adrift with the barest necessities of life and the scars of the criminal upon me, upon a chunk of rock, an ordinary asteroid. I had nothing but my brain and my bare hands and a supply of air and chemical equipment for replacing and recharging it. That and a very limited supply of water. A quantity of concentrated food, a space suit, and a lump of bare barren rock. They mocked me as they set me adrift. They said they hoped his majesty would be comfortable on his new world."

Greg found himself thinking of the exiled Napoleon on Elba. Now he knew what accounted for the awful bitterness of this asteroid man—a great brain twisted by paranoia—abandoned on a lifeless rock. Not an island with friendly seas to beat against the rocky coast, could bring him whispers of the world beyond. Not an island where the sound of wind could almost bring him the sound of men's voices. Not on an island beneath the same sun that shone down on the living teeming worlds of human society, but upon an asteroid! A lonely, desolate asteroid, winging relentlessly, remorselessly through space. Going on forever amidst space and the dark nothingness between the stars.

"There was only one thing on my side," said the silky voice. "Only one thing—and that was Time. I had all the time in the world. I had already discovered one secret about which they knew nothing, and which no one could take from me. I, Ultimus, had discovered the elixir of life. No one knew, for they did not live enough to see that I was not aging as they aged. The elixir, I had already drunk of it before they marooned me, before they exiled me, and I knew that I could wait for a million years—for a million, million years till their puny world had turned to dust and they along with it. I knew that they would never get that elixir. Only a mind as great as my own could have torn that dreadful secret from the elements."

"And so there I was, a lonely mortal on my tiny barren world. It was my home, my prison, my castle, my fortress, my universe. It was my bread; it was my drink. There was something else that they couldn't really know—a man with infinite time at his disposal has infinite patience. All progress is evolution. Technology breeds technology. Development is the mother of development, and invention is the ancestor of invention. Once you've got the first single machine, then like an avalanche going down a hill, that machine grows and enables you to develop other machines. It will scarcely seem possible to a savage mind like yours; if you had been marooned on this asteroid in the dim and distant past, you would have given yourself up for dead. You would have allowed the weight of circumstances to crush your mind out of existence. But I did not do that, for I am Ultimus, I am the Great One, I am the asteroid man. Step by step, inch by inch, making first one primitive tool and then another, improving and developing year by year and century by century, slowly, so painfully slowly at first that I couldn't measure my own progress, and then gradually faster and faster like a snowball rolling down a snowy mountainside, I developed more and greater technological achievements, until I had once more developed for myself upon this asteroid the same standard of living that I would have enjoyed back upon my home world. Those who sentenced me to this living death were dead themselves, and I had inherited that standard of life which they denied to me. The wheel had swung full circle. The balance had tipped. I was drifting alone in space, the ageless, blue-back mystery of space. Between the stars, between the very galaxies, I floated from constellation to constellation on my tiny rocky kingdom. On this asteroid, as on many others, you will find the duplication of all the chemical elements; you will find that the proportions vary from the preponderance of that which is of no use and the paucity of things which you need. But here I had enough to work with. Step by step I rebuilt my world. Take the most complex reaction, take the most intricate biochemical development and, given the hundred basic elements, you can reproduce it if you only have the skill. And so I built it all up from nothingness. I literally created a world out of bare rock, my brain, my bare hands, my courage, and my will power. I, Ultimus the asteroid man, did all this!"

The paranoia was becoming a thousand times more pronounced as he went on to list his own achievements.

"Then, step by step, I went on to fight back at the communities which had betrayed me. Here and there I found a survivor drifting on wrecked ships, so I took them into my laboratories, and I altered them a little, as they a millennia ago had altered me."

Greg felt a shudder running down his spine as he wondered what kind of mark the ancient society had made upon the asteroid man. Confined as he was by the pressure on his neck, he flexed his muscles a little to try to restore the cramped circulation. Something that might have been the ghost of a laugh flickered across to him from the shadows.

"No use you trying to escape," said the asteroid man. "No use at all. You're one of the most helpless prisoners anywhere in the universe at the moment. The strands of that net are made from anatomically condensed material, thousands of times stronger than steel. You'll never cut it and you'll never break it."

"How did that moron of yours manage to cut it then?" asked Greg.

"Oh, that's equally simple," said the asteroid man. "His knife is one of the things that is capable of dealing with those strands, for it is itself made of atomically condensed hardness. Nature is very often extravagant. I have merely done away with the spaces between the electrons, neutrons and the nucleus. I have compounded far more atoms than there should be into a very limited space. The net appears comparatively light to you. It is actually far heavier than any other substance of the same volume in the universe; it has a higher specific gravity than anything else of equal size anywhere." The enormity of the scientific procedure involved drew an admiring whistle from Greg.

"But surely you could undo this net? You don't have to wait until your disciple—or whatever it is—comes along with his knife?"

"I could dissolve the strands of that net," said the asteroid man, "with as much ease as a fire can dissolve butter."

"I don't believe you," said Greg. "You may be able to condense it, but you can't dissolve it as easily, surely. Nothing and nobody could do that."

"Are you trying to trick me with some puerile device?" said the asteroid man. "Do you think that I, Ultimus, the new god of the universe, would be taken in by anything as savage and barbaric as an appeal to my vanity?"

"No. I'm simply saying that you couldn't undo what you've done. You might have a scientific power to set off an avalanche to blow the top off a mountain, but you couldn't put it back. Any fool can destroy—it's the man who can create. Anybody can tie a man up in a net made of unbreakable thread, but not anybody could break that unbreakable thread. That's the real test of intelligence, to be able to reverse an action that you've carried out."

"Do you really think so?" asked the asteroid man. He's biting, thought Greg.

"Well you can argue round if you like, but I shan't be very inclined to believe these tales of your so-called superlative power unless you can prove to me that what you've done you can undo."

"Come closer," said the asteroid man, "and see if you can do something besides talk."

By dint of much heaving and rolling, Greg inched his way nearer to the platform with the brilliant lights.

"That's close enough," said the asteroid creature. "Now you wish to see me dissolve the net."

The underground chamber was electric with suspense, tense with pent-up hates and fears and emotions. Greg could feel the atmosphere as surely as though his hands were across the terminals of some great dynamo. His breath seemed to freeze inside his lungs. His heart stopped beating. He hoped that his eyes, the expression of his face, would not betray him. He tried to freeze it into a mask. He had never been a good poker player. He hoped he could do something now; something that would be good enough to fool the supreme, yet evil, intelligence.

The asteroid man leaned further back into the shadows and moved a hand toward Greg. The hand held a glowing, circular object, like a small orb of pure, incandescent light. It was almost like the symbol of power itself.

"Dissolve," said the asteroid man slowly. His fingers seemed to squeeze the orbs. Its color changed from a brilliant white to dull red, from red to orange, from orange to yellow. Greg watched the fantastic rainbow tints replacing one another, almost too fast for the eye to follow. From yellow to green, then to a brilliant emerald. The emerald deepened into a turquoise, and the turquoise into a pure sapphire blue. The blue in turn gave way to a deep indigo, and that in turn to violet.

The glowing, gleaming, glittering orb ceased to emit light and became so black that the outstretched hand in the shadows seemed to be full of nothingness. The black seemed to play strange tricks with Masterson's eyes. It apparently reflected no light at all, almost as though the asteroid man could read his thoughts.

"Yes, I can do that, too. You're looking at a genuine black body. It reflects no light, no heat. A scientific marvel which lesser minds have been seeking for ages, to me, it is as simple as a child's toy."

The black body remained like a squirming ball of nothingness in the asteroid man's hand; then suddenly it flared a brilliant blinding luminescence again, glittering like a thousand magnesium flares condensed and crystallized into one solid mass.

"You will now find that the net will break as easily as string or cotton," said the asteroid man.

Greg gave a mighty heave. The net snapped.

For a second he could hardly believe that he was free. His first instinct was to reach for his gun and blast this creature into a black, lost eternity where it belonged. He remembered just in time that the gun wouldn't fire.

"I hope you're not contemplating anything foolish—my servants are very close if I need them, and, besides, I have all sorts of interesting surprises for anybody who is foolish enough to attempt any physical violence upon my person."

Greg was mentally measuring the distance between himself and the door. He threw a hand up to shade his eyes and backed away a little as though the brilliance of the light were hurting it. He had gained two steps before the asteroid man's voice cracked out like a whiplash:

"Don't try and escape; you could get no further than the labyrinth, and that is well patrolled. I should give orders for you to be brought in dead next time."

Greg could well believe that. He was a step further forward now he had got free of the net, but was it going to avail him anything?

He wanted something to distract the asteroid man's attention. He had two guns. He could spare one; besides they were no more than dead weight as they were at the moment with that force field in operation. That nullifying beam preventing them from exploding.

"You have shown me a great deal of your science," he said quietly and calmly. "I should like to show you a little of mine now. Or rather, I would like to begin by showing you something and then asking you to explain how your nullifier ray works. I think it's the greatest technological achievement I've ever encountered. It's masterly, brilliant." He was playing on the other's paranoia, in the same way that a skillful violinist plays on a horse-hair and resin and turns vibration into glorious sound.

"Here." He put his hand slowly and carefully down toward the holster and removed the gun slowly, and reversed it as though he were about to hand it to the asteroid man. "You fire it and explain to me why it will work when you wish it to and not when you don't."

The asteroid man leaned forward a trifle further out of the shadows. Every muscle in Greg's arms was as tense as a steel spring. The creature's hand was reaching out for the gun butt nonchalantly, a gesture full of affectation.

"I will condescend to examine it—" began the creature, and the steel spring that was Greg Masterson uncoiled!

The gun left his hand with the speed of a striking snake. The asteroid man gave a sudden choking cry and threw up his arm to defend his face. As he did so he lurched forward, and Grew saw what he meant by the "mark of the criminal." He saw then, for a fleeting moment, what that prehistoric society had done to the asteroid man, millennia ago. And as he saw, he understood something of the hatred that was in the creature's heart. The blood seemed to freeze in his veins. The hairs on the nape of his neck stood suddenly upright. He felt like a dog in the presence of some weird psychic power. He knew—and the knowledge aged him ten years in as many seconds. Never in his life had he seen such a hideous, unbelievable disfigurement as that which had been wrought on this unhappy creature.

He saw, but he didn't stay. The asteroid man was off his balance, slightly stunned by the gun which had landed in his chest. In less than a second he would have recovered and been thinking again. That ice-cool deadly brain of his would be planning new, devilish devices in which to entrap Greg Masterson, and Greg had no intention of being trapped any more. He turned and sprinted for the heavy door.

"Blast you!" shrieked the asteroid man, in a sudden uncontrollable outburst of passion. "You'll suffer for this!"

By the time he had finished screaming, Greg had reached the door. The handle was almost unbelievably heavy in his grasp; he put his shoulder to it and wrenched with the strength born of desperation. Just for a second he thought it wasn't going to open; he thought that all was lost. And then, with a sudden unexpectedness that almost threw him off balance, the door moved, the handles swung up in his hand, and he was free.

He slammed the door behind him and began moving down the corridor. Every instinct in him wanted to run, but he dared not run. And every time he let his mind wander by so much as a fraction from the passage in front of him, his subconscious kept throwing up mental images of the asteroid man's face, and its dreadful, soul-destroying secret. The thought was too much. The shock, the effort, the battle of wits and the sudden dramatic escape were too much for any man's nervous system. Greg leaned against the wall and was nervously, violently, noisily sick…

Then he felt better. He knew that the vision of the face of the asteroid man would haunt him to the end of his days—be that only a half second, or half a century, away.

CHAPTER XI

Rotherson crouched over the controls with a happy smile playing over his strong lips. He was happy because he was really doing something at last, instead of planning things for other people to do. He felt as thought he had come home after a long exile. He was mentally happier than he had been for a long, long time. The years of administrative routine had seemed like a nightmare. Every sheaf of paper on his desk, every file on his shelf, every memo that he had filed, every speech that he had drafted had been another fetter in the chain…

The chain held him down to routine clerical work, held him down to his position as a figurehead.

He didn't want to be a figurehead, nor did he want to be administrative or manipulative machinery for defense. General Rotherson was a soldier, a soldier to the core. If he had a part to play in society, he wanted to be the man in the front line, not the man in G.H.Q.

It had been an unprecedented step which he had taken, but he had no regrets.

Jonga felt very much the same, though for a different reason. He had not endured all the soul-destroying years that had made Rotherson suddenly rebel. His impetuosity was the impetuosity of youth…

He was full of fire, enthusiasm. He was wild and reckless and he, too, had suddenly found his real niche. He was at home on board the ship!

Krull, quieter by comparison, the most mature of the entire party, was still rather undecided. Not for him the overwhelming enthusiasm which action produced in his colleagues. He was a far more objective, contemplative type of man, and his brain worked rather more slowly than the others, but a great deal more thoroughly. Krull hated jumping in feet first, but when somebody else jumped and dragged him in along with them, he was the first to examine the position, and analyze the new environment in which he found himself.

The girl Dolores was the epitomization of the "dumb blonde." She was quite a simple soul in her way, and yet, for all that, not without the ability to think. She could chatter for hours about irrelevancies, but her real greatness lay in her almost unbelievable strength which lurked behind those feminine shoulders. It was hard to believe that she could have seized any one of her companions with one hand and thrown him clean through the beryllium wall. She could have taken a six-inch metal girder and bent it over her knee with the same ease that a man could snap a twig. It was fantastic to think that such colossal strength lay behind so smooth an exterior. In her way, Krull decided she was quite attractive, but it would need another Jupitrean colonist to stand any chance of courting her. One over-amorous embrace, and a man's back would snap as a wax candle snaps in cold weather. One over-affectionate kiss, and Dolores's boy friend would find himself without a head, albeit unintentionally. Krull found himself feeling sorry for her, for that strange mixture which made up the Jupitrean girl. Woman and yet not woman. Muscle man, and yet, in her own way, softly feminine.

She looked perfectly normal, yet she was more unnatural than the most garish freak in the sideshow. Thinking about it, Krull felt suddenly, strangely sad.

"How far do you think we've gotten?" asked the young radio operator suddenly. The strong fingers of General Rotherson tapped over the computer keys. And he handed the course chart across to the youngest member of the expedition.

"We're making good time," said the radio operator. Krull looked at him and again felt something akin to sadness; he experienced a great deal of sympathy for the boy. He could understand the ingenuousness behind the lad's outwardly calm exterior. He was a boy, nothing more than a boy, and he had so much to learn; and he had so far to go. Krull wondered whether he would ever have the chance to get there…

It made him think of that hackneyed, stereotyped character in the fifty-cent Westerns that he still enjoyed reading. What ever-green favorites they were, he thought. He found himself looking at the boy's back as he bent over the radio set. He thought of the mind that lurked under the curly brown hair… he was like the eternal younger brother. The little chap always got shot, trying to do something that was beyond him, in the Western… He was a perpetually tragic character. Krull had the feeling that if anything went wrong with the ship, he would gallantly stand by his ship to the last, like the boy in "Casablanca" who stood "upon the burning deck" while his ship went down around him, or the young messenger lad who died bringing the message to Napoleon. He was that type of boy; the heart and the bravery inside him were too big for the slim, youthful body. The ideals and the hopes were vaster and wider and nobler than that young, inexperienced mind was capable of dealing with. The fine spirit of adventurous ardor lurked behind a too-fragile exterior.

Krull wondered why he himself felt these strange feelings of foreboding.

Must be getting old, he thought, old and philosophical. Why, I must be fifteen years younger than the general, and by thunder, look at him! As happy as a schoolboy. He looked again at that sturdy iron grey beard, and that ferocious bristling moustache that characterized Rotherson's powerful features, and decided that Rotherson's profile was a mixture of weakness and strength. There was still about him that boyish quality which marked the young radio operator. Krull felt, in a sense, that he was the only man on board. The only man who had really been affected by life. The only man who understood the meaning behind things. The only one who had allowed experience to mature him. He did another quick mental survey of his companions…

Jonga was strong as a man; a man in years, a man in name, a man in ability yet filled with wild impetuousness.

The general almost in his second childhood, was giving way to youthful enthusiasms. Life had hammered at him and he had hammered back. He had refused to mature. He had tried to keep a young heart inside an aging body.

He looked at the girl, dumb and feminine, strange and lonely. Not knowing why she came. Just obeying orders. Just doing a job. Just on hand, in case her weird wild talent of supernormal strength should be needed for anything. If she could have converted her strength into horsepower, she would almost have been able to drive the ship as well as the rocket. Krull allowed the ghost of a smile to twist across his weathered countenance. His deep thoughtful eyes were old. He felt old. He felt as a man feels who had read too many stories, and seen too many plays, and met too many people. It was not the cheap sophistication of the cynical hero of current TV plays that lurked in Krull. He was not cynical and hard-bitten; he was just a man with rather more understanding of his fellows than the rest of us. He tried to bring his mind back to the business in hand. They were flying the ship on a fool's errand. They were looking for a vortex in space that probably didn't exist. They were looking for an asteroid that had been there one minute and hadn't the next. Five ships had gone out on the same expedition and disappeared. It just didn't seem to make any sense.

He crossed over to the computer and grinned lop-sidedly at Rotherson.

"Do you mind if I bash out a course on the last observed check point of the fleet?"

"No, go ahead," said the general. "I have one here." He handed back the slip and the stack of used tape at the base of the computer.

"Thanks," said Krull. He looked at the figures. Nothing but a meaningless jumble to anyone who was not an astrogator. His own slim, wiry hands ran over the keys of the computer caressing it as a skillful violinist caresses the strings and bow of the instrument that earns him his living and provides him with his pleasure. His fingers ran over the keys of the computer, as the hands of a groom caress a horse of which he is particularly fond and which he understands well.

Computers, for the last few years, had been his life. He could use them as he could use the physical cells in his own brain. Like a car driver who had had one vehicle for so long that it became part of him when he drove, like a motorcyclist who knew every last ounce of the weight of his machine, he knew to a tenth of a degree at what angle he could lay her over on the bends, knew how much grip his racing tires had on a wet slippery road. Knew that fraction of an angle which would mean the difference between winning a race, and the skid that would end him up as a heap of tangled bones by the side of the road. He knew these things and felt them. The electrical impulses of the computer were almost as one with the electrical impulses of his mind, with the nerve cells of his body. When he worked a computer he was part of it. He could feel it. He knew if he was using it in the right way. Something deep and intuitive that had only come from long, long practice told him he was seeking the solution in the right direction. He put in the last course that they had had from the fleet, he fed in all the possible corrections, then slowly and patiently, and leaving nothing to chance, he fed in all the possibility tracks. The computer was a machine which in the hands of a logician like Krull could answer almost any problem. In the hands of the right man, it became almost an extension of his brain. If he knew how to go about it, he could get almost anything from it.

True science, thought Krull, was not learning all the answers, but knowing how to ask the right questions. That applied more to computer work than anything else. If you could translate a problem into computer terms, then there was no problem you couldn't answer. It all depended on a man's ability to translate, to get the feel of a problem, to sense it, to view the whole of the cosmos as a huge mathematical equation: an enormously complex, and yet perfectly solvable, quadratic.

He kept on feeding information and corrections, looking at tapes and then re-feeding his answers. He worked in a series of concentric rectangles, coming closer and closer and narrowing it down. He was trying impossibilities, he was turning theories into computer symbols and symbols into equations. Then he was solving the equations. At last he was satisfied that he had gotten as close as flesh, blood and a computer could get.

He turned to Rotherson with a new set of figures in his hand.

"I think, Chief, if we head for this point here"—he indicated the course formula on the tape—"we shall find ourselves near the spot which the asteroid last occupied. Once at that spot, we can hammer out a course, taking into account the possible gravitational effects of other bodies in the vicinity. Armed with that we should know, to within very little, just how far that mysterious asteroid or planetoid, and our ships, and our friends have gone." As he said "friends" he was thinking about Greg Masterson. He and Masterson had been friends back in the old days, at college. Masterson was a few years younger than Krull, and yet there had been something in the sheer rugged strength of the space pilot that had made age a very secondary consideration. Masterson was one of these people who was all man. He had been a man before he was a child. He would still be strong and rugged and virile when he was ninety, because there was something in him that was mature. Not contemplatively and solidly mature, as there was in Krull, but something that had about it a simple directness, a forcefulness, a simple courage…

Krull had known every man on that expedition. To a greater or lesser degree, all twenty-five of them had been his friends. In a very special sense he had been close to Greg Masterson. The loss of the other twenty-four would be a real and terrible thing if it was a reality—and things now stood as if that must be so. But they were only friends, some just acquaintances. Greg Masterson had been almost a part of Krull's very life. He and Greg had been through the experience of growing up together. They had looked at life together, and each in his own way, in those early college days, had been complementary to the other.

When a new situation had arisen, Greg had known instinctively, intuitively, automatically, how to handle it, and having handled it, he and Krull had discussed it.

Greg was a master at presenting the world with a fait accompli. He believed that possession was nine tenths of the law; he went straight to the heart of a problem without bothering about some of the niceties, or finesse, of civilization.

If a man had wrongly appropriated something that belong to you, you went and took it back, even if half a dozen oily-mouthed lawyers were on his side. And when you'd gotten it back you had public opinion on your side—for public opinion at heart is not such a bad thing. Then, usually, the oily, greasy lawyers could rant and rave and discuss all sorts of serious actions which boiled down to nothing. Having produced his fait accompli, Greg would talk it over with Krull, and Krull would analyze and mentally dissect it, chop it into small cubes, feed it into a computer, and find by reasoning what Greg knew by instinct. Krull, having found it, would explain it to Greg, and Greg would see that logic was on the side of that certain indefinable something in his own mind and personality which made him act the way he did. They were like the two halves of a globe—together they made a perfect sphere.

The loss of the other men would have been bad enough; the loss of Greg Masterson, if Greg had gone, would be something that cut out a part of Krull's own mind. He had known that, deep down, subconsciously, when he allowed himself to be thrown into this crazy, unorthodox expedition of the general's. He knew now, thinking about it calmly and reflectively up there in the cool calm, quiet of space, that that was the reason he had allowed himself to come. He knew that there had had to be something deep inside him some factor which made it possible for him to allow himself to be hurled into such precipitous action against his normal inclinations.

That something had been his affection for Greg Masterson; his hope that Masterson, miraculously, was somehow, somewhere, still alive. Krull was telepathic, though he did not recognize it as such. He was a prosaic and scientific man and not terribly keen on the investigations of extrasensory perception. Yet he had to admit that to some degree, at least, he possessed it. He preferred to call it intuition or instinctive knowledge.

But however he cared to wrap it up in words, something inside him told him that he would know if Masterson was dead. And nothing had told him yet…

He had a feeling as if Masterson was in very very grave danger. He had the sensation that Masterson was in deadly peril, and that at any second a kind of dull, flat fatality would seize upon his mind, and tell him as surely as if he had seen his friend's body floating past the window in the coldness of space that Masterson no longer lived in the world of men.

He was afraid that that knowledge would come, just as he was aware that the knowledge had not come, and that there was still hope. Krull suddenly stopped thinking about Masterson and jerked himself back to the expedition. He realized, for in his youth he had been a great student of literature and Shakespeare in particular, that he suffered—if suffered was the right word—from the same fatal malady which had afflicted Hamlet.

Hamlet had been a highly refined, speculative meditative personality, thrown by the whims of fate into a situation which did not require meditation and speculation, but action!

If the story of Hamlet had been true, and if he, Krull, had been the unfortunate Prince of Denmark, he would have made the same mistakes which Hamlet made. His mind was not the kind of mind which could have coped with that kind of problem. That set him off thinking about Masterson again. For if Masterson had been at the Court of Elsinore, then he would have dealt very swiftly and efficiently with the situation. The ghost would not have had to prompt him twice, and once he knew where the guilt lay, he would have acted swiftly and surely. The reins would have been firmly in his hands, the evil-doers would have been punished, and the play would have been a straightforward history, with a reasonably happy ending.

Krull, thinking about Hamlet's weakness—speculation—realized that he himself was far too inclined to dwell in the realm of thought instead of in the domain of reality. He had to snap himself out of these reveries which assailed him from time to time. They had their place, and were remarkably useful, but life was real, life was earnest, and the grave was not necessarily its goal.

He had to force himself back to the present. His lips moved, and no sound came out, as his mind repeated the words over and over again. "My name is Krull, and I'm an astrophysicist. I'm in a space ship approaching the asteroid belt. I am looking for a needle in a haystack and worse. I am looking for one tiny and mysterious chunk of rock in an infinitude of space. Perhaps the one hope that Greg Masterson has of life is our ability to find that asteroid, find what happened to him and his ships and his expedition."

Something showed up on the radar screen…

A huge metallic blip…

The young radio operator gave a quick surprised shout and, setting the controls to automatic course, General Rotherson left his seat and moved awkwardly back to the radar screen.

"What's the trouble, Sparks?" The question was unnecessary; he had already seen the blip. The operator put a finger to the screen and pointed it out. He pressed the automatic tabulators under the radar, and the identifying mechanism snapped into operation.

"Looks like the wreckage of a ship—one of ours," said the general, as he read the identifying symbols. Krull's heart missed a beat. Was this it? Where they going to find the heap of tangled beryllium wreckage and the bodies of five of their friends? Was it the Squadron-Leader's ship, or was it one of his expedition?

If so, had the fate that had befallen one befallen the rest? Scarcely thinking what he did, Krull snapped out an interception course on the computer, passed the data across to the chief, and the steering jets began to blast. They approached the wreckage rapidly.

"Suits on," said Rotherson. "We'll get across and investigate."

It was the work of only a few moments to strap on the lead-impregnated, metallo-plastic suits.

They stood in an anxious group by the airlock as they matched velocity with the floating wreckage. Looking through the observation port, Jonga saw that it was in fact the remains of a dart ship, but of a dart ship that had been crushed and tangled almost beyond recognition.

"There's nobody alive in that lot," said the general flatly. "It'll be a wonder if we find enough bits to recognize."

They were only a matter of yards from the wreckage now and, throwing lines across, they reduced the distance almost to feet. Although both the ship and the wreckage were traveling at several thousand miles an hour, they were relatively stationary as regarded each other.

"Everybody ready. Suits checked?" asked Rotherson. They switched on the short-wave intercoms and gave him affirmative answers.

"O.K., over we go." They made their way to the hawser that was holding the two ships together. Ship was rather an ambitious term to use, in relation to the heap of rubble that had once been one of the survey vessels.

With decidedly mixed feelings, they opened the lock and made their way across those last few intervening feet and inches of space.

Parts of the wreckage were actually drifting and scraping against their own ship. It was a pathetic sight. The proud, gleaming space Conquistadore was torn, twisted, mangled, shattered. It looked like a moth that had flown into an oxy-acetylene flame. It resembled a prizefighter who had just been in a twenty-round bout against a far bigger and stronger opponent. It looked as though it had been hit by an earthquake, smashed by a tornado, set upon by a whirlwind and finally tossed against a waterspout. There was nothing but a tangled, mangled heap of metal, plastic and beryllium that would have disgusted the foreman of the respectable breaker's yard.

Among the inanimate objects lay the twisted, lifeless things that had once been men.

Rotherson floated, looking at it in silent thought, wondering whose ship it had been.

"Can you remember the identification of Greg's?" He never finished the sentence.

"Yes." Krull's voice came crackling over the radio.

"Was this it?" He gestured toward a fragment of identification.

"No," said Krull, and there was relief in his voice, evident despite the short wave and its interference.

"I'm glad of that," commented Rotherson.

"I am, too," said Krull.

They forced themselves to collect the identity tags from the five pieces of carnage who had such a short while earlier been their companions.

Dolores was examining what had been a section of landing jet. Embedded in the metal-like precious stones set in a crown were some small shingly objects which had not been part of the original ship. "What do you make of these?" Her voice was unusually quiet and serious, as she held them out and propelled herself in the direction of Rotherson.

The general took them clumsily in his great gauntleted hand, held them up to the eye-pieces and examined them closely.

"Rock fragments, and darn queer ones too, unless the force of the impact knocked them into this shape. They're round like pebbles on a beach. What asteroid would have a surface like that?"

They were strange granular particles, and the space-suited men gathered around their leader and examined them in turn, with equal bewilderment in their faces. "If that is part of the surface of the asteroid," said Krull, "I'll bet even money that there was something extremely artificial about it."

"There's nothing very strange about these, surely," said Jonga. "They're just fragments of rock."

"Yes, but look at the shape of them," said Rotherson. "They don't make sense. You don't find things like that out here. They look more like some kind of artificial coating that would be put around a phoney. A real asteroid has a surface that's mainly barren rock. It's never covered with shingle. It's more like the stucco that our ancestors used to like sticking outside houses."

"Didn't they call that pebble-dash, or something?" asked Dolores. "I remember doing a course on architecture once, and it was very popular in the mid-20th century in some places on earth."

"Yes," said Krull, "the study of architecture was one of my hobbies, too. You're right. Queer stuff!"

"It tells us one thing," said the general. "Artificial or otherwise, the ship never picked these up out in space."

"You don't think they're any kind of missile, do you?" asked the radio operator. It was a good question.

"No, I don't think so," replied Rotherson slowly. "They're not embedded deeply enough to have been a missile. If they'd been fired at the ship, they'd have gone clean through her. They've been ground in, in the same way that they would have been ground in if the thing had crashed."

Krull was busily putting two and two together and getting the right answers.

"Unless I miss my guess completely," he said, "I'd say that in the first place that asteroid was artificial, or at least it wasn't completely natural. I'd say that it was maneuverable, that it was controlled by some weird intelligence or other. I'd also say that it had a kind of attractor beam—something akin to magnetism."

"Aren't you forgetting that our ships are anti-magnetic, sir?" asked the young sparks.

"No, I hadn't forgotten that," answered Krull, "but on the other hand, there's magnetism and magnetism. As they used to say on those old classical broadcasts: 'It all depends what you mean by magnetism.' It all depends what you mean by attraction. If you rub a small crystal of amber against a piece of silk, you produce a static electric charge which will attract tiny fragments of paper."

"Yes, but magnetism and electricity are pretty closely tied in together, aren't they?" said the radio man.

"I see what Krull is driving at," broke in Jonga, butting in on the conversation. "What it boils down to is this: gravity is a force of very powerful attraction."

"Yes, but gravity isn't powerful enough to suck in a space sip with rockets capable of reaching escape velocity." Krull had drifted away from the group and was examining what remained of the rocket-firing mechanism. "How about this?" his voice cut in suddenly. The others turned to look in his direction.

"There's something here that is decidedly odd. The firing button on the control panel is jammed over in the 'on' position. But these tubes weren't firing when the ship crashed."

Rotherson joined him and began examining the tube itself, then drifted over to look into the firing mechanism.

"You're right," he said. "They weren't. Something, somehow, somewhere, had the power of preventing the rockets from firing, even though the button had been pressed. So that creature, or creatures, appear to have the deadly, fiendish power of being able not only to prevent the rockets from firing and cutting off the escape of any ships that came near it, but also of attracting them downwards with some kind of super-gravity of its own. Perhaps—and again I'm in the field of pure speculation—that thing on the asteroid has the power of amplifying its own gravity, magnifying it, sending out as concentrated beam or wavicle…"

"Yes, that would make sense," said Krull. "It would make horrible, fatal sense, at least as far as those poor devils were concerned." He looked again at the identification of tabs they had collected from the bodies. "What a waste, what a horrible waste, men and ship! How pathetic, how tragic, how futile!" He heaved a great sigh that was audible over the radio. "Let's get back to the ship, chief; this thing depresses me."

"Me too," said Rotherson. "O.K."

They left the pathetic pile of wreckage, a wandering, metallic corpse in the vastness of space, and moved back through the airlock into the confines of their own ship. A few seconds later they had blasted off, and the wreckage had disappeared—was no longer even a blip on the radar screen.

They coasted on, and then the observation indicator tinkled a sudden warning.

Rotherson switched on the repeller field. His hand had hardly left the switch when Sparks said, with dull, toneless edge to his voice:

"Radio seems to be showing up another wreck, sir."

"Darn," said Rotherson. "We came out here to verify things and effect a rescue if possible. I don't like coming out here on a postmortem mission."

It was another wreck, very much the same as the first.

They examined it. It was not Greg Masterson's ship. Less than an hour later they encountered the third, and half an hour after that, the fourth.

It was three hours after sighting the first wreck that they came across the fifth. This time it was Masterson's.

Krull could feel a great lump in his throat. They gathered round the airlock for what would be the last of their wreckage examinations.

"Think there's any chance of anybody being alive?"

"No. Let's not build up any false hopes," said Rotherson. "If he did survive the crash, what chance would he have had? What suit would have stood up to that impact?"

The radio operator's voice suddenly broke in on the conversation: "I've thought of something, sir," he said. "Why did the ships break free of the asteroid again?"

"Good grief," answered Rotherson. "That's a point."

"Certainly is," chimed in Jonga. "If they'd been dragged in there by some kind of super-gravity, smashed into the surface to embed those pebbles, or whatever they are, into the very fabric of the ships, wouldn't they have been inclined to stay put? What drove them off again?"

"The beam must have been switched off, I suppose," volunteered Krull. "Wonder what kind of time interval there was between the impact and jettisoning of the wreckage into space."

Jonga was looking very thoughtful. "And why crash them only to jettison them again? It doesn't make sense to me."

"It does to me," said Rotherson. "It's the perfect weapon. If you can switch off your enemies' engines, and switch on a super gravity at the same time, if you can crash him into the surface of our planet and then repel him again, you're going to save an awful lot of ammunition. It's the most effective thing there is."

"Didn't they carry a bomb load?" chimed in Dolores with feminine intuition.

"Yes, of course they did," replied the general. "They carried one or two of the three-megaton type—mainly used for experimental survey blasting… but highly effective weapons! For an emergency!"

"That's strange," said Krull, "because the bombs are missing. We haven't found a ship yet with bombs aboard; all the racks were empty. I wonder why?"

"It looks as though they tried to fight back at this thing when they found it was dragging them down."

"They can't have been awfully successful, then, because if they'd been able to blow the asteroid to fragments before they hit, they wouldn't have hit."

It was simple straightforward logic which raised another question.

"What manner of things are we up against?" whispered the young radio operator. "A thing that can control gravity, a thing that is able to throw out some kind of nullifying ray that prevents megaton missiles from exploding?"

"What indeed?" whispered the general. "Whatever kind of creature inhabits that asteroid must belong to a technology way, way in advance of ours."

A cold shiver of apprehensive fear began running down every back. They felt like children who had gone out hunting rabbits and had suddenly stumbled across the lair of a savage bear… standing amid bones and bloody carcases.

"Still, forewarned is forearmed," said Rotherson grimly. "If we know what we're up against, we can't rush into it blindly, like those other poor devils did."

"Begging your pardon, sir, but I don't think Greg Masterson would have run into anything with his eyes closed; he was a real Boy Scout in the sense that he was always prepared. There's nothing would have caught old Greg unawares; he wasn't that type of man. He'd have rushed in—but he wouldn't have rushed in with his eyes shut; he'd have taken every possible precaution."

"Yes, I know he would," said the general. "On the other hand, we've gained by his experience." They looked from one to the other.

"Come on," said Jonga suddenly. "Let's get it over with." They opened the lock and moved out toward the fifth wreck. They found the identification plate strangely intact and readable.

"This was Masterson's ship," said the general flatly. Everyone seemed to be under a great black cloud that had mentally descended upon the whole expedition. Twenty bodies so far… would this make up the twenty-five?

They combed the wreckage from end to end. Again there were no bombs. Again there were strange smoothly granular particles embedded in the fabric, but there were not five bodies. There were only four. Hardly daring to hope at first, Krull examined each of the corpses slowly and carefully. He would not allow himself to hope until he was sure, and even then the hope was the slimmest and the faintest that any man could have had. Space was a fantastically wide area. Within that infinity of universal dimension, the body or the shattered remnants of the body of one can could be hidden and lost from the knowledge of society for ever. Yet Krull still had that feeling that Greg Masterson was not dead.

The feeling had been leaving him with every wreck they encountered, but now it suddenly came back with renewed strength. The sense of Greg's danger was brought in more strongly upon him that it had been before, and just for once he gave his instinct full reign.

He let his hunch have its head, and as they made their way back to the ship and secured the airlock behind them, he slid off his helmet and turned to speak to Rotherson.

"I've got an idea, sir, it's only the slimmest of theories and founded on supposition rather than fact. But my idea is that Masterson is alive!"

"I shouldn't build up your hopes too highly," said the general. "I hope he is—I hope he is as much as any of you. What makes you think so, Krull?"

"In the first place, the only evidence we have is that we haven't found his body—but not finding a body doesn't matter much one way or another when you have a place as big as the universe to hide it in. On the other hand, on all the other ships everyone has been together. There's no reason to believe that Greg would have been separate. He's not the kind of man to abandon ship and leave his crew to crash. I think there's only one possible explanation to fit the facts. He was in the ship, but he wasn't killed. Call it luck, chance, destiny, or anything you like, but his name wasn't written on one of those fragments of flying beryllium. His number hadn't come up on Fate's wheel. Fate missed him. His four companions were killed, but he wasn't. What would you or I do if our ship had crashed? What would be the first thing you'd do when you had recovered consciousness, when you'd checked and found that all your pals were dead?"

"Get out of the wreckage… get away from it, I suppose," said the general.

"It's my guess that's what Masterson did," went on Krull, "and if that asteroid was artificial, he probably spotted it. And if the exterior looked like a perfectly ordinary chunk of rock on the testing apparatus, then the inside of the thing would be where the creature or creatures, or whatever inhabits it, lived."

"Agreed," said Rotherson, laying his helmet aside.

"Now," went on Krull very thoughtfully, ticking off the points on his fingers as he made them, "if he could once get inside it, he could probably hide. He'd have his guns, no doubt, and the asteroid, though quite small in astronomical terms, is pretty big if you think about it as a hollow vessel from inside. It might have been one enormous cavern, in which case the ship would probably have crashed right through the shell… no, that doesn't make sense. I think it must be unique, perhaps with some kind of labyrinth inside it. This is only one of the wildest of guesses." He leaned forward confidingly. "Without knowing it, and much as I hate to admit the existence of things like extra-sensory perception, or ESP, I may have gotten some queer telepathic communication with Greg. Things that I'm putting forward as wild guesses may be things that he is seeing and experiencing. There is a very slim possibility…"

"Leaving out the telepathic element, and judging your theory on its merits alone, I see quite a bit to recommend it."

There was a sudden shout from the radio operator, who had resumed his post after getting out of his suit.

"What's the matter now?" asked Rotherson. The lad beckoned him over.

"Look here, Chief!" Rotherson's heavy brows creased into a puzzled frown. The others gathered round the screen.

"It's another ship," said Sparks.

"I think it must be," said Jonga, and pressed the identification tabulator. "It records as a ship, anyway," he said slowly. "Let's see if we can match courses."

"Right," said the general. They put their computer into action and swung the steering rockets over.

"Moving pretty fast," said Jonga.

"Certainly is," commented Dolores. They increased speed.

"I've got the direction velocity matching equation," said Krull, as his hands hand over the computer again.

"Good man."

The ship suddenly took violent, evasive action.

"They must have seen us coming and swerved off course," said Rotherson. "This looks fishy. The indicators below the screen were registering all sorts of rather odd measurements." Sparks had suddenly gone very white, the others noticed.

"What's the trouble, son?" asked Krull. For answer the lad handed him the direction slip, and the identifying symbols on the sheet of plain white paper. They translated themselves almost instantaneously in Krull's intelligent, practised mind; he too caught his breath in astonishment.

"Look at this, sir," he said. "It must be an alien, an Out-worlder. It doesn't fall in with any of the system classification."

"An alien," echoed the general.

"An Out-worlder," repeated Jonga. "I wonder if it has any connection with that asteroid?"

"It'll be a pretty big coincidence if it hasn't," said Rotherson grimly. "We may not be able to fight an asteroid, but we'll fight this beggar. Right, lads; stand by for action stations."

CHAPTER XII

Once clear of that central chamber in the heart of the asteroid's labyrinth, Greg raced on, yet cautiously, despite his speed, as though all the devils in hell were pursuing him. He knew that if he got into one of those nets again, he was done for. For this time, as soon as he was helpless, the knife and the hand of the asteroid man's servants would sever, not the net cords, but his throat. And suddenly the obvious solution presented itself to him. Instead of being the hunted, he would be the hunter. He would have to track down that creature with the knife and destroy it. The question was—what with?

His guns wouldn't work, and anyway, he only had one left. He had lost the axe somewhere in the labyrinth. It would be a chance in a million against his finding it again.

He was being stalked by fantastic, grotesque monsters, with the strength of bull elephants. His only weapon against them would be an axe, a spear, a sword, something of that nature. For guns or similar mechanisms wouldn't fire while the nullifying ray was on. His first job, then, was to re-equip himself with a weapon. His second task was to find the creature with the atomically condensed knife that would cut his way out of one of those nets, or any other difficulties that he might encounter. The only other possible weapons that he could use were hanging on the belt of the space suit that he had lost somewhere far, far away in the labyrinth. Because if only he could find Astra, she would probably know where he could find some sort of weapon. But the enemy had gotten Astra, and he couldn't rescue her until he could find something with which to fight the creatures. It was a vicious circle. He remembered an old adage of the blackout of the last interplanetary war—the blackout that had been largely a farce due to the fact that modern electronic detection devices made night and day practically equivalent to one another. It was only the humor that remained as a memory of that war.

He stood still, trying to think; somewhere or other he had to find a weapon. The passage ahead of him branched suddenly. He wondered again, as he had wondered before, whether to go right, left, or straight ahead.

He decided to try the passageway on the left.

He turned slowly and carefully into it; the light of his flash, which he had managed to retain throughout all his weird hazards and misadventures, revealed for him in its bright luminescence, another of those massive and enormous doors.

Again he was in a cleft stick, uncertain which way to turn. Should he open the door and risk stumbling straight into a nest of those hideous Frankensteinean servants of the master. Or should he retrace his steps and go quietly the other way? A door in the labyrinth almost invariably meant some kind of chamber beyond.

He would make no progress at all, stumbling along half-blind in these corridors. That room might, just might, contain something that would be advantageous to him.

The odds were against it; the odds were, in fact, in favor of it containing something dangerous and hostile. He might have come round back into the presence of the asteroid man. He shuddered as he remembered the terrible disfigurement of the creature.

He shuddered and closed his eyes to try and shut out the vision—but there was no shutting it out. It was still with him, and he focused his attention on the door handle. The handle proved to be as stiff as those of its predecessors, with which he had tried conclusions. He got his shoulder under it the first time, for he knew it was useless to rely on his hands alone.

This time, too, he pressed more cautiously, not wanting to be caught off balance in case there was some kind of danger or enemy lurking behind it. He imagined one of those horrible and thumbless hands grasping at him, clutching at him…

He exerted every ounce of his strength, and the handle rose sharply, as it had done before, but this time he was ready for it. The door began to move inward. He swung the door wide open and took a quick, instinctive pace back.

Nothing happened.

The room was filled with a pale green luminescence, very similar to the luminescence which had accompanied the girl, and just for a second he was hopeful that he might find her again within. But it was empty. He took a deep breath and began looking all round this chamber. It was an unbelievably fantastic room. It was domed, and something about the ornate elaboration of its interior reminded him of some prehistoric basilica. He went slowly forward, on the watch for a trap. Even when this peculiar labyrinthine world looked straightforward, there were traps.

When it looked ornate, there must be an even greater possibility that something unpleasant awaited him; something either mechanical or animal. Would one of the master's servants, with its hideous misshapen face, suddenly come lurching and lumbering at him? Would another net descend, or would the floor open beneath his feet? There were a thousand unpleasant possibilities. He continued moving slowly across the room. He didn't like the interior of this room at all. There was something indefinably evil, for all its church-like appearance. It seemed almost like a mockery of religion, with a cheap crude impersonation. It was a burlesque, a caricature. Then he realized what it was. It was a museum. The room was obviously the central collection point of the odd bric-a-brac which the odd man had designed, collected, or created over the centuries. It was beautifully arranged, as though it had been put into position by some being who had all the time in the world at its disposal. It had the appearance of being checked and resorted. The layout of the exhibits reminded Greg of the layout of Tennyson's poetry, where the living language had been polished until nothing was left of it but dry, dead phrases.

Greg looked for some other means of egress from the chamber.

He had no particular desire to go out the way he had come. They might have picked up his track by now. The asteroid man said he could, but that may have been boasting; he was not sure.

Anyway, he decided the best plan would be to double back on his tracks. He might be in a cul-de-sac, but he thought not. It was difficult to find a door. It was difficult to find anything in that vast underground auditorium, so packed with exhibits, machinery, dials, switches, vast banks of electronic relays, looking as if they were ready to start the complicated job they had been designed to do.

Greg kept on looking for a door. This was a labyrinth within a labyrinth. And the faint greenish light was not exactly an aid to easy direction finding. He moved on in puzzled bewilderment. He realized that he had already passed this strange machine for the fourth time. It occurred to him that this might be the purpose of some of the machines—to produce a kind of mental bewilderment. Had that been the asteroid man's plan all along, to allow him to escape, only to find this museum, where his brain would be caught in the web of some mental paralyzer that would confuse him and set him walking round in circles till he dropped of sheer exhaustion.

He wondered again whether the machines were real, or whether they were images of machines being projected from some concealed point, much as the camera projected universal movement on the dome of a planetarium.

Greg kept on moving slowly but determinedly around the exhibits, trying desperately to keep in a straight line, but the museum had been so designed that it was impossible to keep in a straight line. You could do that for a certain length of time only, perhaps long enough to take two score paces. Then the exhibits that you had been using to line up your vision were out of perspective, and you found that you were coming back to your point of departure.

Greg had gotten lost among the more advanced exhibits. He was a long way now from the original door. He doubted now whether he could have found that.

It occurred to him that he must be using the wrong technique. He was deliberately trying to move in a straight line.

Suppose, instead of that, he just allowed himself to wander aimlessly, to allow his subconscious to direct him, to rely on his instinctive knowledge, rather than to work anything out as a conscious problem. He moved on again, as though he were trying to lose the exhibits.

He thought of some words of Jerome K. Jerome's "Three Men in a Boat." Strange how a man's writings can survive five centuries, and still be as brilliant and as funny as when first written. He recalled the incident where the three friends tried to make the kettle boil.

The technique had been to say to each other loudly, so that the kettle could overhear, "I don't want any tea, do you, old man?" And the kettle would then suddenly boil ebulliently over!

Greg tried the same technique now. He tried to feign some kind of interest in the exhibits, forced his mind to empty itself of all thoughts of doors and escape from the museum. He cleared his mind, as far as possible, of all thoughts relevant to an exit. He concentrated hard upon the machine he was looking at now: a gleaming barrel-like structure, standing on eight beryllium legs. A series of lenses flashed and crackled along the side, looking like the eye of Kitchener on the 1914-18 war poster… It followed him wherever he went. He wondered if it was some kind of warning or spying device. Yet it didn't look as though it was connected to anything.

He debated for a moment whether he ought to smash the lenses. He decided against it.

A few more steps and he was looking at a new machine. He was quite certain he had not seen this before. So he was making progress now he had stopped concentrating on it. That was good. Out of the corner of his eye he glanced around the new exhibit… and saw a door.

He stopped and turned his head slowly. The door was still there!

"Amazing!" he whispered.

He edged toward it, almost afraid that it would disappear in some miraculous and dangerous way. He reached it without incident. Why, he wondered, had the museum been designed in that peculiar way?

He was quite sure that if he had gone on walking round it, he could not have found the door. Yet as soon as he had stopped looking it had come to him, almost.

There must be some mental force at work in the place.

Throwing caution to the wind, he put his arms and shoulder under the door and gave an almighty heave. It began somewhere near his toes, rippled up through the strong muscles of his calves, his legs and back, till it exploded rather like dynamite in the rippling strength of his shoulders.

The handle came up and the door swung.

He let it swing and leapt back out of harm's way.

There might be something hiding on the other side. There was no means of knowing for certain. He was glad that he had jumped back, for something exploded with a devastating roar. He felt the blast of it above his head as it passed. There, framed in the doorway, was a metal colossus. A humanoid effigy in steel, his hands, if one could call such talon-like monstrosities hands, held a large and very lethal-looking blaster. The eyes in the metal skull were flashing green and red sparks. It swivelled on metal heels till the hand blaster pointed toward him again. He threw himself flat as another charge whistled over his head. Greg drew his own blaster with the speed of lightning and loosed off a shot in the direction of the robot. The atomic power charge blasted grooves in the side of the doorway and blackened the monster's legs, but the robot stood its ground unflinchingly and steered its own weapon at Greg.

Masterson was really in his element now. No longer was it a peculiar game of mental catch-as-catch-can, with the incomprehensible asteroid man. Here was something that he could fight.

. This was a straightforward battle with the gun as the weapon. Something here was so important that in this area the force field was switched off.

Greg watched for the metallic finger to tighten on the trigger. He saw it begin to move jerkily, and rolled clear. He wondered how many power charges the blaster held, or whether, like his own, it recharged itself. He thought that was more than likely the case. The asteroid man's technology was superior to his, not vice versa. If his gun would last almost indefinitely, it was pretty certain that the robot's would. The thing fired again, and Greg rolled clear.

It was firing at him again, advancing as it fired. He saw its finger tighten on the trigger, and its gun failed to go off. Taking a great chance, he raced up to it, and before the sluggish arm could move up, he crashed the butt of his gun into the lenses. The robot jerked spasmodically and turned, walking blindly into the nearest exhibit.

Done it, thought Greg. Now if only he's within range. Slowly and calmly he raised his own weapon and dissolved the head of the robot in a blast of atomic heat and power. The creature sank to its knees, kicked one leg in an ungainly fashion and crashed to a prone position.

Greg raced through the doorway which the monster had guarded. On the other side lay a room of immense size, filled with apparatus which, though advanced, could only serve one possible purpose. It was the central power room of the entire asteroid.

Greg drew a deep breath. Now he had the thing.

If he could only shut off that power, the asteroid man would be unable to guide the asteroid. Of course he would be able to repair it, but his repair technicians would not be able to get in as long as Greg guarded the door. Once the power was off, Greg's gun would work, and with Greg's gun working, it would need a very powerful number of aliens to rush that door. The asteroid man had obviously believed the robot was sufficient guard. Greg had stumbled, by chance, upon the one part of this miniature world that would put it into his command. He suddenly felt big.

From now on it looked as if he could dictate terms to the asteroid man.

Then, quite suddenly, a loudspeaker behind him roared and crackled, and he turned round to face a gigantic televiewer screen. On it was a picture of his enemy sitting amid the shadows of its lights.

"You have done surprisingly well, Masterson, for a mere mortal, for a mere savage, for a primitive," came the voice of the asteroid man. "But you have not done well enough, for I am undefeatable and indestructible. You have forgotten that there remains in my hands one exceptionally important factor in this game."

"And what's that?" said Masterson.

"The woman! The Princess Astra! I understand your puny mind! I know how you feel about that."

"What do you mean? What about the Princess Astra?"

"She is at the moment in the hands of my servants," said the man. "Unless you throw down your gun and surrender to my servants who are even now approaching you, she will be killed very slowly and very painfully in front of your eyes on this screen."

"You wouldn't dare!" said Greg. "Not even you!"

"Wouldn't I? You have pressed me too far! You assaulted me! You dared to do that to Ultimus, the god of the Universe! Then, in your puny mind, you thought, having reached my power room, you would hold me to ransom…"

Greg realized that in his moment of triumph, victory had been snatched from him.

"What guarantee do I have that you won't exact any kind of vengeance on the girl?" he said quietly.

"You have no guarantee other than my word," said Ultimus.

"And can that be relied on?"

"In this instance you will have to rely on it," said Ultimus. "I believe my servants are almost at the door of the power chamber. I was very foolish to leave it in the charge of a robot, which I see has proved dangerously inefficient. I shall take more stringent precautions in the future."

Greg lapsed into bitter, silent thought. There was nothing to do but fall in with the wishes of the asteroid man. The bitter irony of the situation was like a physical blow.

The door opened, and two of the hideous caricature men slouched in, laughing foully.

Just for a moment, Greg wondered whether to shoot them down, shoot the screen, blast the asteroid man's power chamber and go on a rampage of carnage through the ship, killing anyone and everything in his path. But it was only for an instant. He knew that the first false move would be the end of Astra, and that to him would be a thousand times worse than his own end.

Slowly he reversed the gun in his hand and held it out meekly toward the nearer of the two creatures.

CHAPTER XIII

The two ships began maneuvering for position. Rotherson looked keen and alert and alive.

"It's not terribly unlike us in some ways," he said to Jonga.

Jonga nodded. "I should imagine they're about the same culture level. Funny we always imagine the Out-worlders as being either ahead of, or behind us. I don't know why. Still, there's no guarantee that he is an Out-worlder in a strict sense; he might be from somewhere a lot nearer. He's not from Proxima; we've explored that. How about Altair?"

"It is only sixteen light years away," said Krull. "If there's a planetary system there that developed at about the same rate as ours has, they could be humanoid types. Do you think we're right to go into the attack?"

Krull's was the only dissenting voice; the others were in favor of shooting first and asking questions afterward.

"Okay," said Rotherson, "stand by!"

The two ships circled each other warily, neither being willing to fire the first broadside, both wanting to let the opponent come to them to test out his weapons and fire power.

"Let's put a shot across the bows, shall we?" said Krull. "If we're going to do anything, make it a warning shot; don't aim for them."

"Right you are," said Rotherson. "I suppose it's the chivalrous thing to do. They might want to heave to and surrender. They may be unarmed."

He fired the forr'ard cannon of the dart ship. The atomic shell burst with spectacular brilliance a couple of miles ahead of the alien. The alien responded by hurling a green light beam about an equal distance away from the dart ship.

"Hmm. In that case, tit for tat," said the general. "That's certainly not a surrender signal; that's green for danger."

"Do you think we could go into radio contact before we go into a head-on fight with them?"

"I don't know," said Rotherson. "There's no guarantee that they'd understand us."

"Yet again, they might—"

"Try sending out a simple signal."

"What do you suggest, sir?" said the young wireless operator.

"Flash out in English and then in Galactic code, 'We are friends! We would prefer to speak with you.' There's no set signal for this purpose," he said ruefully. "It's never happened before. These chaps possibly won't understand the Galactic code anyway; it's rather an ambitious title, for what really only applies to our own world and Proxima, isn't it?"

"Never mind; let's try."

The message was duly sent, on general beam. An unintelligible answer came back!

Krull's feeling of foreboding had been growing gradually stronger.

"You know, I don't think we ought to attack, sir. Don't fire any more and see what their reaction is."

"I don't know," said Rotherson. "I think we ought to go ahead and shoot it out with them, then go across and pick up any survivors later."

"Yes, but what if they're friendly. If they have no connection with that asteroid, they may not have."

Suddenly an inspiration flashed into Krull's mind. "I don't see why they might not be from another system like ours, which has also been raided by that asteroid. They may be looking for it in the same way that we are."

"There's a slim possibility, I agree," said Jonga. "In that case we could join forces. Our two technologies together might be much more effective than one of us alone. Launch the dinghy."

"All right," said Krull. "I don't think we all ought to go—"

"Volunteer for the dinghy," said Rotherson, looking round.

"It was my idea that they're friendly; I ought to take the risk. I'll go," said Krull.

"Are you sure?" said Rotherson.

Krull got into his suit and made his way through the airlock. Rotherson pressed the dinghy release; slowly and carefully Krull crossed the intervening spaces, keeping in radio touch all the time. He reached the alien ship without incident. He saw all along the portals of the stranger a line of tubes with peculiar lenses. It was obviously from these that the green light emanated. He fetched up in front of what was obviously the alien's lock—and waited.

They must have seen him; they must know he was there. He got carefully out of the dinghy with his hands upraised and stood by the airlock. He stood there for what seemed ages, and nothing happened.

"All right so far," he signaled back to his ship. "They've done nothing hostile. The airlock's opening."

It was indeed. The portal, which seemed to be of a beryllium type compound similar to their own, slid back, and Krull, rather apprehensively, moved into the aperture. He wondered what was waiting on the other side. He imagined a bug-eyed monster with green and yellow pseudopods, intelligent octopi, one-eyed gorillas, almost anything from a science fiction author's nightmare to an ordinary man like himself. Yet the ship was so like their own that he couldn't help hoping they would be recognizably humanoid. The lock slid to behind him, and the inner door opened. He was greeted by a tall, ebony-skinned individual, who looked at him curiously and gestured to him to enter.

Krull tapped the breathing space on his helmet and then made a circular movement with his hands, indicating the atmosphere inside their ship. The dark one understood and nodded. Very cautiously Krull slipped back the visor and sniffed carefully. The air seemed pretty good. It was certainly as dense as the atmosphere he was used to. He gave a sign of greeting. It was difficult to communicate when he was on the inside of a suit and they were not. He slid the visor back and lifted the helmet carefully.

Pointing to himself he said: "Krull."

The black superman facing him repeated the gesture and tapped his own muscular chest and said "Pythol." The other members of the alien ships' crew were gathering round in the central cabin. A green man, a light, bottle-green man whose skin seemed almost to glow, was the next to introduce himself. "Rashak," he said. There was a red man among them, too, looking like a cross between a yoga from Tibet and a North American priest. "Andos." His voice was deep. His eyes looked mystic and spiritual.

The fourth member of the alien's crew was a white man. He might almost have been an earth man, so similar was he in every respect to Krull. "Valstar," he said, repeating the now characteristic gesture. Krull held out his hand; apparently the symbol was understood. Valstar took it in his own for a moment and smiled. That was also understood. Krull retrieved his helmet and radioed back to his ship. "There are four of them, and they are friendly. We haven't got over the language barrier yet."

Rashak the green man was looking at him intently; then, taking him gently by the arm, he led him gently into a forward cabin where a very complex electronic device was screwed to a table. Something that was very obviously a microphone surmounted the contraption. He himself put on the headphone and adjusted a dial on the side of the machine. Krull, speaking very slowly and clearly, began:

"We are from the planet earth of the solar system. There are nine planets on our system, and we evolve round a white-yellow sun of the G-type. We are four light years distant from the next nearest star which we call Proxima. Beyond that lies a star which we have not yet visited, which we believe may contain intelligent life. Possibly it is your home world; we call it Altair." As he said Altair, smiles broke out on the faces of the others, and there were nods of affirmation. So I was right, thought Krull, they are Altairians.

The green man gestured to him to go on speaking while he himself fiddled among the dials. Realizing that the machine was some kind of language analyzer, working on an electric computer principle, slightly in advance of their own, Krull went through the letters of the alphabet, and then counted slowly up to a hundred, after that he began to say anything that came into his head. He recited as much as he could remember of the galactic convention act. He talked about space ships and space pilots; he spoke about earth and its cities. He pointed to the various parts of his body, hand, arm, leg, foot, head, giving the appropriate word at the same time. The green man was nodding happily now; within half an hour the computer had broken down the common vocabulary of English to Altarian. Armed with this, the green man began feeding more tapes back into his machine, and at the end of another hour they were able to understand one another well enough.

The tale that the four aliens had to tell was fascinating and exciting…

Krull learned that they, too, were victims, as he had intuitively suspected, of the raid of the weird asteroid. They had lost practically an entire colony to this fantastic individual. They had also lost their king and their princess, a beautiful girl named Astra. There were four races living harmoniously on the seven planets of their system, and each was noted for some particular forte, or specialty. The green were the intellectuals, the blacks were the athletics, the reds were the psyhic-esthetic priests, and the whites were a combination of all three qualities. The green had just developed, and Rashak in particular had brought on this project a new weapon which they hoped might be capable of destroying, or at least rendering powerless, the terrible asteroid man. They were even now searching for the asteroid, and on first sight of the earth ship had been suspicious lest it was connected with the alien. The green ray which the earthmen had seen provisionally demonstrated was a small and rather modified version of the weapon which the Altairians were going to use against their deadly and powerful enemy.

Now that the language barrier had been broken down, the two parties were only too glad to join forces. The ships moved into convoy, one behind the other, and set off again, searching for the alien. Rashak spoke to General Rotherson, explaining some of the principles of their weapon and the way in which they hoped to use it when they met the asteroid.

CHAPTER XIV

"We have an old saying in my world that two heads are better than one," said Rotherson, "even if they are only sheep's heads. A sheep is a rather stupid animal, and none of us are stupid. We've got nine heads between us. There are fields of technology which our people have explored and yours haven't. The same holds good in your science. In some fields we are head of you; in others you are ahead of us. If we put our knowledge together, we shall have the combined understanding of the nine planets of our system and the seven of yours. That gives us the combined comprehension of sixteen different worlds, and their separate developments. Some of my party have unexpected gifts." He was thinking of Dolores and her fantastic strength.

Krull took Rotherson's place at the radio and began talking to Rashak about the computer course which he had lined up. Krull and Rashak soon discovered a great affinity for each other. Between them they could almost make a computer talk. They began plotting probability courses for the asteroid. It wasn't long before they arrived at a directional path which they felt would be more than probable—but distinctly possible. They moved along it and kept detector screens probing in front. Somewhere on that asteroid the Altarians hoped they would locate their missing Princess; somewhere on that asteroid the earth men hoped to find their missing Greg Masterson. What else they would find, they could only guess.

It seemed as though encountering one another had brought luck to the expeditions, for mere hours after joining forces the radar screen leapt into excited life. The asteroid had been sighted.

Like two angry hornets, the ships roared down, the green ray sweeping and swirling like a swathe of pure radiant energy across the artificial pebbled surface of the weird world. All that Rashak had claimed of it was justified. It cut deep into the surface and beyond, exposing a section of the labyrinthine honeycomb. As yet, it seemed, the asteroid man was unaware of his danger. Either that, or his nullifier beam was ineffective against the green ray. The Altairians signaled to the earth ship.

"Try a small bomb to test his nullifier field," requested Rashak.

Jonga was on the point of dropping a missile at random when his attention was suddenly focussed upon a hideous carnivorous monstrosity crawling across the face of the asteroid. It was the hideous, primeval, experimental beast which had almost destroyed Greg Masterson on his arrival.

Jonga decided it would make an excellent target. He let fly with a quarter megaton bomb, the smallest in the armory. The deadly missile landed within a few feet of the beast and exploded with a devastating roar.

"Some visiting cards," said Rotherson with a grim smile.

The fragments of the asteroid man's gruesome little pet were scarcely distinguishable from the pebbles.

"My device is even more successful than I dared to hope," signaled Rashak. "It has obviously counteracted the effect of the nullifier force field."

They came in to land; the nine space-suited figures leaped out with the agility of commandos and made their way into the gaping hole which the green ray had torn in the planetoid's surface. The asteroid man's hideous army of Frankensteinian monstrosities were racing through the labyrinth to drive off the attackers. But the asteroid man had made his last, fatal mistake. So confident had he been that his nullifier ray was the ultimate weapon that he had little else in working order to repel a surprise attack. His shambling caricature men were pathetically useless against invaders whose guns were working.

Rotherson was leading the charge. His powerful hand blasters cut swathes of carnage into the ghastly ranks of the shambling monsters. One got past his fire, seized the general's gun in a grip of steel and wrenched it from his hand. But Dolores and the enormous Pythol were close at hand. Before the creature could do any serious harm, the vast Altairian Negro smashed his gun butt down on the creature's skull, lifted the vast body as though it were a toy and hurled it into the ranks of its companions. Dolores seized another and smashed it to a pulp, as a child tosses a rag-doll against the floor of a nursery.

There was no stopping this avenging expedition. With axe, gun and knife, with muscle, brain and courage, they cut through the asteroid man's defenses as a red-hot knife goes through butter.

Through labyrinth after labyrinth and chamber after chamber, they drove his blemished army back until they reached the throne room of the insane creature itself. The mighty portal split and twisted from the heat of Rotherson's gun blast, and they were through! On a raised dais at the end of the chamber, they beheld their enemy!

The asteroid man himself, hidden by the mysterious shadows beyond his dazzling, camouflaging light beams. Chained to a wall, a few yards from him, were the Princess Astra of Altair and Squadron-Leader Greg Masterson.

"Stop!" screeched Ultimus in frenzy. "Stop where you are and surrender, or I shall destroy them!"

The tableau was frozen into dramatic immobility. None of the rescuers dared move.

Masterson wrenched at his chains like Prometheus in his underground cavern.

Ultimus dared not carry out his threat, for if he did so, nothing would stop his opponents from destroying him in vengeance. His voice became oily again.

"Perhaps we can strike some kind of bargain?"

Astra and Greg exchanged glances. They knew just how much reliance could be placed on the word of this scheming, lying devil incarnate.

Rotherson was wondering whether or not he could pull the trigger before the asteroid man could carry out his threat. It was a risk he did not wish to take.

Imperceptibly the chain holding Greg Masterson to the wall began to weaken. The squadron leader sweated blood in a last desperate effort. The chain snapped.

"Rush him!" he roared, flinging himself between Astra and the asteroid man's gun.

Two shots crashed simultaneously, and the battle was over. Singed and breathless, but otherwise unhurt, Greg Masterson began freeing the Princess.

The asteroid man was dissolving in a heap of charred flesh. Rotherson reholstered his smoking gun.

It was Tandos, the red Altairian priest, who expressed the thoughts in every mind.

"If all the races and all the planets will work together," he said softly, "there is nothing which they cannot achieve—"

Table of Contents

CHAPTER I

CHAPTER II

CHAPTER III

CHAPTER IV

CHAPTER V

CHAPTER VI

CHAPTER VII

CHAPTER VIII

CHAPTER IX

CHAPTER X

CHAPTER XI

CHAPTER XII

CHAPTER XIII

CHAPTER XIV