T
hose were his words, but he did nothing. He seemed content to stand with cold, intent face looking back through the infra-red electelscope. TheSandra'sspeed sank to three hundred, two hundred and soon a hundred, and the asteroid, which was of course also decelerating, crept up remorselessly. Ban Wilson had every confidence in the Hawk, but finally the inaction grew too much for him to bear.
"Jumping Jupiter, Carse!" he sputtered. "—aren't you going to do anything? Use our rays! Try maneuvering to the side! Damn it, we're just letting them take us!"
The adventurer might not have heard, for all the sign he gave. The Earth-clock on the wall ticked on; seconds built minutes, and the minutes passed. The asteroid was only ten miles astern.
"Eliot," said Carse quietly, "get me one of your infra-red glasses."
He took over the controls again. Carefully he varied the forward repulsion and sent current to the side gravity-plates, and slowly theSandraanswered by rotating, longitudinally, reversing her position. Still maintaining a slight and dwindling speed toward Earth, her bow swung from that planet's eye-filling panorama and came to face, instead, the invisible asteroid. When turned completely around, the men in her control cabin looked through the bow windows right into the brilliant cone of the purple ray.
Lar Tantril's voice again boomed from the broadcasting shell, and this time it was harsh with anger.
"Try no tricks, Carse! I see what you intend. You plan to suddenlyanswermy ray, instead of continuing to resist it, and so drive right past me and escape. But I warn you I have terrific power, and if you move towards me of your own volition, I can burn you to a cinder in three seconds, and I'll do it. You can't escape! If I have to destroy Ku Sui, all right—but I'll get you!"
T
he Hawk strapped over his eyes the infra-red glasses Leithgow now gave him.
Reversing theSandra'sends had neither increased nor decreased the rate at which the asteroid's purple stream was bringing her closer. Obviously the magnetic stream was being varied. The space-ship's forward momentum merely continued to drop normally until the moment came when she had no Earthward velocity at all; and then more quickly she moved toward the restraining asteroid.
With his infra-red glasses, through the bow windows, Carse could now see the massive body in full detail. There was the dome, a huge, gleaming cup of transparent stuff now showing wisps of blue, from the defensive web around it; and inside were the several buildings, and minute black dots which were the figures of men. There was a great number of them. The largest group was clustered inside one of the large ship-size port-locks in the dome. The lock's outer door was open, and it was from there that the purple ray seemed to originate. Obviously the intention of the enemy was to draw theSandraright in. Five miles now separated asteroid and ship.
Again the Venusian chief spoke.
"I warn you once more, Sparrow Hawk, try no tricks. You can see the men I have here, but you can't see my ray projectors. They're hidden, but they're centered on you, every one, and my hand's at the control that fires them. They have terrific power, Carse. Better not attempt anything!"
The Hawk switched on the extension microphone at his side. He said levelly into it:
"Lar Tantril, I'll make a bargain with you: a favor for a favor."
"What?" shot from the loudspeaker.
"I will agree to surrender peaceably when you've drawn my ship inside if, for your part, you promise to free Eliot Leithgow, who is aboard with me, and the five patients on whom Ku Sui operated. If you don't grant me that, I will oppose you to the last pull of my finger on trigger."
"But, Carse—" the Master Scientist began, horrified: but his expression of amazement faded when the slender man at the radio turned his head and half-closed one eye in a wink.
"You will agree to that—and no tricks?" Tantril's voice repeated.
"I will agree to it. And as for tricks, what could I possibly try? Your rays could burn through the maximum power of my web in three seconds, as you say: I know it as well as you. I only wish there was a chance to get out of your range in time."
"All right!" the Venusian replied decisively. "I agree. I'll release Leithgow and the five patients. Keep away from the controls and I'll draw you in."
C
arse switched off the microphone.
"A hell of a lot Tantril's word is worth!" muttered Ban Wilson. Once more, surprisingly, the Hawk winked. Friday was grinning now. For once in his life he had guessed his master's strategy before the others.
A mile and a half to the front lay the dome-end of the asteroid. Perhaps nine hundred miles to the rear lay the tremendous mottled curve of Earth with her dangerous upper layers of the stratosphere all too close. In the very face of Earth, all three on a line, the ship lay linked by a stream of purple to the great rough-hewn, errant asteroid. Half the bulk of all three lay sharply outlined against the black of space by the intense yellow light of the flaming distant sun.
The asteroid neared to a mile, then a half-mile. Hawk Carse said curtly:
"Ban, when I give the word, put all the power we've got into our defensive web. Load the generators; overload them; tax them to the limit. That web must be as tough as possible for five seconds."
"Got you, Carse."
"You've—a trick?" ventured Leithgow timidly.
"I think I have, Eliot. Lar Tantril might have caught on when I turned the ship, but unfortunately for him his brain is incapable of proceeding past a certain point.... All right, Ban."
"Feel it!"
In answer to Ban's hands, the deck of the control cabin was literally vibrating under the mounting speed of the generators in the power-room. The generators could not stand that terrific overload long: they would burn out. But Carse needed only a few seconds of it.
The asteroid was a quarter of a mile away, seen through the infra-red. The dome loomed large.
"All right!" whispered Hawk Carse. "Hold on!"
With the words he unleashed theSandra'sfull acceleration.
I
t was a risk and a big one, but the Hawk had it calculated to a fraction of a second, and so, without hesitation, he took the chance. A little less than four seconds to reach his objective, he reckoned; a little more than one second for Tantril to release the asteroid's disintegrating rays as he had threatened; therefore about two and a half seconds for theSandrato be exposed to those rays. The chance that her defensive web could resist them for that long would decide it.
From almost a standing start, theSandraswept ahead, generators humming, her web a blue mist around her, acceleration at the full. Straight down through the heart of the narrowing purple ray she sped, a hurtling metallic projectile, hundreds of tons in mass, her stub bow levelled dead at the dome.
After a second the asteroid bared its fangs.
A cone of brilliant orange flamed and washed around theSandra'sbow, and a storm of soundless sparks engulfed her. She was caught in a maw of fire, and held there for the remaining terrific seconds of her wild forward dash. But the seconds passed; the hands of Hawk Carse were delicate on her controls; and theSandra, curving slightly upward, struck, crashed, wrenched terribly in every joint; and then the jolt and the protesting wrench and the spluttering sparks were gone from her, and there was around her only the deep silence of lifeless space.
At three hundred miles an hour theSandrahad nicked the upper plates of the dome and streaked on, unharmed!
It was not necessary now to use infra-red glasses to see the asteroid. It was there in the visi-screen for naked eyes, but for seconds not one of the men in the ship's control-cabin thought to look. The awful acceleration and shock had dazed them. They had not known what was coming, except Friday and the Hawk, and only the latter was able to retain reasonable alertness. He, almost immediately after the impact, cut down the load on the generators, and brought theSandraout of her mad drive forward, rotating the ship until she was facing back towards the asteroid. Then all of them looked through the bow windows, and what they saw told the story in an instant.
"It's visible! See—the invisibility's gone!" cried Friday.
A
score of miles away the body lay, fully revealed, its starboard half gleaming hard and sharp in the sunlight. Cautiously theSandradrew closer. Carse gave the controls to Ban and examined it carefully through the electelscope, after removing the infra-red attachment.
He saw that the keel of theSandrahad torn a great, mangled rent in the dome and through this the air had rushed out. Space had taken possession. The disintegrating rays which had been burning at theSandrahad been snapped off with the sheathing of invisibility; in that one wild second of impact, all the asteroid's functioning mechanism had been destroyed. Lar Tantril had not thought quite far enough: he had not sealed the buildings air-tight against a possible crashing of the dome, and for that reason alone he and his men had gone down in full defeat under the drive of the Hawk.
Shreds of flotsam drifting and turning in space around the dome now became visible—bits of wreckage hurled out from the tear, and also a number of white, bloated things which once had been the bodies of men. The outrushing tide of air had taken them along, and now they drifted, shapeless, all of a kind, in the lifelessness of space.
"Merciful heaven!" whispered Eliot Leithgow, staring at the desolation. "Gone! Just snuffed out!"
The Hawk took over again and brought and held theSandrain a position a quarter of a mile above the now rapidly falling asteroid.
"They're all dead, I'm sure," he said in a voice hard and emotionless as his graven face. "They must be, for the asteroid is now visible, and that means that the doors of the power building were open. Inside and out, all there is dead, machinery and men.... Still, it had to be done. It was they or we. A variation of the trick we used to escape from the dome before, Eliot; and Tantril of course didn't expect it and protect himself as Ku Sui did that other time. It's all done now—yes, its gravity-plates too, for see, it's turning."
"And fast!" murmured Friday.
The body was rotating around its longer axis at about twice the speed of an Earth-watch's second hand. Now the dome was sliding under, out of their sight, the craggy rock belly coming up to take its place. Nine hundred miles away was Earth—rather, less than that, for the body was now free to accept the tremendous gravity pull of the planet so near. Soon it would plunge to destruction there....
A
thought came to Carse, and he said:
"Perhaps Ku Sui would like to see what has become—"
On the last word he stopped and whirled around. His eyes were suddenly intense and his face startled.
"I heard a hiss!" said Friday.
"You too? Then it was a port-lock!" Carse turned to the visi-screen. "Look there!" he cried.
In the screen Earth made a titanic background against which, a falling, dwindling figure in a clear-cut in the sunlight, gleamed space-suit. Down it went, rapidly, even as they stared, until it hung just off the also-falling asteroid. It was obviously preparing to enter the dome.
"Take the helm, Ban, and watch him!" Carse ordered harshly, and ran aft from the control cabin.
Leithgow and Friday, following at once, found him inside the open door of Dr. Ku Sui's cabin, examining two figures stretched limp at his feet. The men were Thorpe and Williams, who had been set to gas and guard the Eurasian. Carse said:
"Both dead. Poison. Look at Thorpe's wrist."
On the right wrist of the dead man was a line of red, a scratch, and swollen, discolored flesh was ugly around it. One cheek of Williams bore a similar patch. Both had been armed with rayguns, but now they were gone. Half to himself, the Hawk murmured:
"Yes, poison. It might have been in the ring. Everyone else was in the control cabin. The men entered the door, Ku Sui was waiting—quick death.... Well, I'm going after him."
Not understanding, still horrified by the contorted face of the man on the deck, the other two gazed at the adventurer.
"But, Carse!" Leithgow broke out. "How can you? How can you possibly—"
"He's gone back to the dome," the Hawk cut in frostily. "He can't make it to Earth as he is now, for we'd see him and easily be able to pick him up. No; he's got some reason for returning, to the dome. Something important. He thinks he's escaped.... He's mistaken."
A shudder passed over Friday, for Hawk Carse's eyes had fallen on him, and they were deadly.
"Let me by, Eliot," the man whispered. "This time he goes or I go, but by the gods of space it'll be one of us!"
H
is face set and cold, Carse ran to the stores cabin, just as the Eurasian must have hurried there a few minutes before. He took one of Dr. Ku's self-propulsive space-suits down from the rack and slipped into it, sticking a raygun in the belt. Still not speaking, he glided to the rear port-lock, Leithgow and Friday running alongside and attempting to dissuade him from the dangerous pursuit. Their words were wasted. Carse gave them only a faint smile and a few directions.
"Keep the ship as close as you can without danger. No, Eclipse; I'm going by myself; there's no need to risk two. If I don't come out, you've everything needed to prove your case. Eliot—the re-embodied brains, Ku Sui's four white assistants—"
"I tell you you're going to your death! You'll be caught inside! Earth's attracting the asteroid now, and in a few minutes it will be plunging through the atmosphere with terrific speed! The friction will make it a meteor, and you'll burn. Carse! You'll die in flames! You haven't but a few minutes to do the whole thing!"
"Have to risk that, Eliot." He swung open the inner door of the lock and stepped into the chamber. "Remember, keep as close to the asteroid as possible, and a steady watch for Ku Sui and me." He looked levelly at them, white man and black, for a moment, then turned his face away. "That's all. Good-by," he said.
The door swung shut in their faces with a hiss of compressed air.
The Hawk closed the face-plate of his helmet and rapidly spun over the controls. Another hiss, and the outer door moved wide. He stepped with force into space.
T
he panorama below him was breath-taking: Earth seemed almost to hit him in the face. He had not realized it was so close. The sheer, mighty stretch of the globe filled his eyes, and for seconds he could not focus on anything else, so overwhelming to his vision was the colossal map. It reached away to left and right, before and behind, and he was so near that it seemed almost flat, a sun-gleaming plain on which stood out in sharp outline the continent of Europe, the Atlantic Ocean and, bordering it, the edge of North America.
To his left was the flaming orb of the sun; and directly underfoot, rotating against the vast background of the North Atlantic, he now saw the asteroid, glinting metallically along its craggy length as it swung over. Carse centered every bit of power he had on it, and at maximum acceleration began to overhaul his objective.
The asteroid was plunging free to Earth, and the rate of its uncontrolled plunge was second by second mounting tremendously; but Carse's power-fall quickly enabled him to overtake it. As the dome swooped up in front of him, and the sunlight washed briefly over its desolate buildings, he looked hard for a shape moving amongst them, without success. Doubtless the Eurasian was well inside by now.
The job of getting into the dome was a hazardous one. About every thirty seconds the asteroid described a complete rotation, making the rim turn at a speed of half a mile a second, and that made the task of entering extremely dangerous to a man whose only protection was the metal and fabric of a space-suit. Misjudgment would either rip the suit or dash him to instant death. He had to slip cleanly down through the jagged tear in the dome, planning his swoop accurately to the fraction of a second.
Never cooler, the Hawk made it. Building a parallel speed equal to that of the rotating dome, he followed it over in a dizzy whirl; and as the rent came below he shot curving down and in with sufficient precision, and at once swiftly adjusted his gravity to offset the asteroid's great centrifugal force.
F
or alternating fifteen-second periods the sunlight filled the dome and its buildings; and on the tail of the first of these, even as the sable tide swept all vision from him, the Hawk arrived at the door of one wing of the central building. He had not seen Ku Sui, and he had no time for exploration, but he did have a hunch as to where the Eurasian had gone, and he followed that hunch. A silent, giant-gray thing in the black silence of the corridor, grim, intent and seeming irresistible, he swept along it; and every second he knew that a raygun might spit from where it had been waiting in ambush to puncture his suit and kill him. For whether or not Ku Sui was aware that he was being tracked by his old, bitter foe, Carse did not know.
The asteroid plunged down faster and faster. Earth's atmosphere, with all its perils of friction, coming ever closer, and the great bosom of the planet lying waiting to receive and bury the rock hurtling towards it. Throughout most of the leagues of space that asteroid had tracked on its master's diverse errands, and in many distant places the trails of Hawk Carse and Ku Sui had crossed and left blood and crossed again; and now those three—asteroid, Eurasian and the Hawk—were drawn once more together for the spectacular and epic climax, now only minutes away. No power in the universe was to stop the plunge of the asteroid; it remained to be seen how one or both of the two living humans on it could get out in time....
But of all this, nothing was in Hawk Carse's mind except the beating, driving realization that few minutes were left in which to play out the last scene. With reckless haste he sped to where his hunch led him, the secret panel in Dr. Ku's laboratory. As he reached it, faint sunlight came filtering in from somewhere and he saw that the panel was open.
He looked within and dimly saw a ladder reaching down into black depths. Without hesitation he thrust through the opening and dropped into the blackness. He dared not lose a second.
H
e hit bottom with a thud, changed his glove controls and reached out in the darkness. He felt that he was in one end of a passageway. As rapidly as he could, his arms stretched wide, all his nerves and muscles and senses alert, he pressed along it.
Continually he was thrown into the rough wall at his right by the centrifugal force of the asteroid. How far did the passageway extend? Was Ku Sui at the end of it? It occurred to the Hawk that the asteroid was a developing shooting star, eating up the few hundred miles of life that remained, streaking down into the atmosphere, where waited quick friction and incandescence—and he down in the heart of it, blind, without clue to what lay in front of him, ignorant of everything, and with only minutes in which to achieve his end. There'd be no heat-warning through his insulated suit. Even now, perhaps, there was no time to get out; already the deadline might have been crossed; he could not know. He went on....
How far? A hundred yards; two hundred? Easily that, he thought, and still no variation in the blackness around him! The passageway seemed straight, so he might now be past the rim of the dome above.
Then, for just a second, he saw a faint wisp of light ahead!
Automatically Carse's raygun came up, but in the time that simple motion took the light was gone and the blackness was as deep and lifeless as before. But he was coming to something. He went on, perhaps a little faster, hot to discover the last emergency resource of Dr. Ku. He took no pains to avoid making noise, for he knew Ku Sui could not hear him through the airless space between.
After another hundred yards or so the light from ahead winked again. It was stronger. Only a second of it, but he now suspected that it came at regular intervals. It was a machine, perhaps, working under the hands of the Eurasian. On—on! With the seconds fleeting by, building to the small total which would bring friction to the asteroid, and incandescence, and scalding death for him within it!
Again, suddenly, the mysterious light. It left instantly as usual, but not before it revealed, well ahead, the end of the passage. Quickly he traversed the remaining distance and felt around with his hands. He found what he half expected. There was an opening, a doorway, to his right. The room beyond surely held the final secret of the asteroid. And if Dr. Ku Sui were anywhere, he was in there.
C
arse restrained an impulse to rush in, deciding to wait for the recurring light. Everything in him told him that this was the climax, that through the door to his right lay the object of his chase; and in spite of his consciousness of the plunging asteroid, and the up-leaping skin of Earth's atmosphere, now so close, he stood full in the doorway, gun ready, waiting. Seconds were precious, but this was the part of common sense. He needed the light to show him what perils he must face; he could not go into that chamber ignorant of the situation there.
For what seemed ages the fantastic figure stood there. The great rock turning over and over, with awful speed dropping down. Earth nearing, death ever closer—and he standing in silence and darkness, waiting to finish the feud! He might never escape; he knew that; it might already be too late to try; but the core of the man, his grim and steely will, would not let him think of retreating towards safety until he had faced Dr. Ku Sui and decided the account between them forever.
The wall of darkness melted. A ghostly light filtered through. He stared, and in its brief maximum saw before him a high, bare rectangular room, hewn out of the rock—and at its far side a man in a space-suit. Ku Sui, brought to bay!
But Carse, for one of the few times in his life, doubted his eyes. What trick were they playing him? For it was not a real, sharp figure that he saw; it was an indefinite one, shimmering and elusive, like a mirage. A prank of the strange light, perhaps. But Ku Sui nevertheless! Ku Sui trapped!
The Hawk leaped forward with outstretched arms to seize and hold the Eurasian's motionless figure. As he moved, the second of ghostly light dissolved away, and in the blackness his eager reaching arms closed on—nothing!
Surely Ku Sui had been there! Surely he had not just imagined he saw him!
B
affled and coldly raging, the Hawk whirled and groped frantically. The centrifugal force caught him off balance and hurled him into a wall, but dizzy he continued his desperate search, sweeping his arms all around him, over walls and floor and, rising, the ceiling. The tumbling asteroid banged him unmercifully into the six sides of the room, but even as he was flung he reached and felt in every direction—felt without result.
In some incredible way, Ku Sui had eluded him. The second the light failed, he must have slipped by and escaped down the passageway behind. The Hawk could hardly understand how it might have been achieved, but there was no other explanation. So, with lips firm set in his cold, grim face, he felt to the doorway, ready to track back through the long, unlit passage. He might still overhaul and capture the other. If there was still time....
Butwasthere?
The passing seconds had not been idle. Inexorably they had brought him to Earth's atmosphere. He stared around the room in sheer horror.
For its blackness was relieved by the faintest of glows. It was not that of the recurring light; it came from the whole rock ceiling above. Carse was overwhelmed by the realization that within numbered seconds the surface of the asteroid would reach incandescence.
Thoughts raced like lightning through his head. He could not get free through the corridor and dome behind: that would take at least three minutes, and not a quarter of a minute was left. Ku Sui too, if he were in the corridor trying to reach the dome, was trapped and finished. A meteor flaming to Earth would be their common grave!
A searing, hideous death! Trapped within fiery walls of melting rock!
At that moment the regularly re-recurring flash of light came, and under pressure of his great need the phenomenon meshed with understanding in Carse's mind. That light was sunlight! It come at definite intervals as the dome side of the asteroid rotated to face the sun.
And that light could reach the room only by way of some channel in the ceiling!
I
n the waxing glow of the rock above him, Carse swiftly found the channel—a vertical bore several feet wide, in one corner of the ceiling. Its rock sides glowed redly, and at their end was a round black patch that caused his heart to leap with hope. Outer space!—and a short, straight escape to it! In a flash he saw how Ku Sui perhaps had eluded him.
The Eurasian's prepared emergency exit would also be his!
He lost not a fraction of a second. Turning his glove controls to maximum acceleration, he rose with a rush into the bore. Despite his good aim the asteroid's centrifugal force threw him heavily into one red-hot side. His heart went cold; would the fabric of the suit burn through? No time for such worries—must make the frigid air outside—fast—fast—never mind bumps—quick out—and must stay conscious—muststay conscious to exert repulsion against Earth!
Like a projectile Hawk Carse shot out of that tunnel of hell at a tangent to the asteroid and in a direction away from Earth, and in an instant the doomed body was far below him, and streaking faster and ever faster to the annihilation now so near.
He fought to come out of his dizziness. Shaking his head, he glanced back for sight of a minute, suit-clad figure. Had Ku Sui preceded him through the emergency exit, his shape should be visible somewhere, etched by the sunlight.
There was no sign of him.
Carse's eyes dropped to the asteroid. He saw it already miles below, a breath-taking celestial object, a second sun, brilliant and increasingly brilliant as it diminished over the watery plain waiting to receive it. His mind saw the Eurasian, caught in the long corridor to the dome, already dead on this last flight of his extraordinary vehicle of space....
The end came at once. The sun was quickly a great, brilliant shooting star, then a blinding smaller one: then its straight mad flight through the heavens was over, and it was received in the waters of the Atlantic Ocean and buried deep.
A cataclysmic burial. A titanic meteor, an incandescent, screaming streak in the night—a cloud of billowing steam—a wall of water rearing back from the strange grave of the asteroid, so far come from its accustomed orbit around Mars.... The thought came to Carse that Dr. Ku Sui had died as he lived, spectacularly, with a brilliance and a tidal wave and an earthquake to disturb the lives of men....
And a sadness fell over the heart of the Hawk....
H
e roused from it in a moment. He felt heat! In the rush of events he had not before noticed that his space-suit had started to burn from the friction of his own passage through the atmosphere. Fortunately, it was already cooling off.
For in spite of his own leaving speed and the added centrifugal velocity the asteroid had given him, he had hurtled down after the doomed rock; and only then was his building repulsion neutralizing Earth's gravity and his initial Earthward velocity. He had slowed down just in time to keep his space suit intact.
He came to rest, in relation to the Earth, and hovered there. Again he scrutinized the black untenanted wastes of space above. Far out, approaching as rapidly as it dared, was theSandra.
He wanted to be sure, so he cut in his mike and asked Leithgow if they had, through their electelscope, seen, Ku Sui leave the asteroid.
The anxious scientist told him they had not.
With a slight sigh Hawk Carse snapped off his contact and waited till the sharp, growing spot that was theSandrashould come dropping down to pick him up, and his friends learn from his own lips the story of the passing of Ku Sui....