Trouble Times Two
: Gold In The SkyThe sun was glowing dull red as it slipped down behind the curving
horizon of Mars, but Gregory Hunter was not able to see it.
There was no viewscreen in the ship's cabin; it was too tiny for that.
Greg twisted around in the cockpit that had been built just big enough
to hold him, and shifted his long legs against the brace-webbing, trying
to get them comfortable.
He knew he was afraid ... b
captain waiting at the control board on the satellite, and in spite of
the fear Greg Hunter would not have traded places at this moment with
anyone else in the universe.
He had worked too hard and waited too long for this moment.
He heard the count-down monitor clicking in his ears, and his hands
clenched into fists. How far from Mars would he be ten minutes from now?
He didn't know. Farther than any man had ever traveled before in the
space of ten minutes, he knew, and faster. How far and how fast would
depend on him alone.
"All set, Greg?" It was the captain's voice in the earphones.
"All set, Captain."
"You understand the program?"
Greg nodded. "Twenty-four hours out, twenty-four hours back, ninety
degrees to the ecliptic, and all the accelleration I can stand both
ways."
Greg grinned to himself. He thought of the months of conditioning he had
gone through to prepare for this run ... the hours in the centrifuge to
build up his tolerance to accelleration, the careful diet, the rigorous
hours of physical conditioning. It was only one experiment, one tiny
step in the work that could someday give men the stars, but to Gregory
Hunter at this moment it was everything.
"Good luck, then." The captain cut off, and the blastoff buzzer sounded.
He was off. His heart hammered in his throat, and his eyes ached
fiercely, but he paid no attention. His finger crept to the air-speed
indicator, then to the cut-off switch. When the pressure became too
great, when he began to black out, he would press it.
But not yet. It was speed they wanted; they had to know how much
accelleration a man could take for how long and still survive, and now
it was up to him to show them.
Fleetingly, he thought of Tom ... poor old stick-in-the-mud Tom, working
away in his grubby little Mars-bound laboratory, watching bacteria grow.
Tom could never have qualified for a job like this. Tom couldn't even go
into free-fall for ten minutes without getting sick all over the place.
Greg felt a surge of pity for his brother, and then a twinge of
malicious anticipation. Wait until Tom heard the reports on this run!
It was all right to spend your time poking around with bottles and test
tubes if you couldn't do anything else, but it took something special to
pilot an XP ship for Project Star-Jump. And after this run was over,
even Tom would have to admit it....
There was a lurch, and quite suddenly the enormous pressure was gone.
Something was wrong. He hadn't pushed the cut-off button, yet the ship's
engines were suddenly silent. He jabbed at the power switch. Nothing
happened. Then the side-jets sputted, and he was slammed sideways into
the cot.
He snapped on the radio speaker. "Control ... can you hear me?
Something's gone wrong out here...."
"Nothing's wrong," the captain's voice said in his earphones. "Just sit
tight. I'm bringing you back in. There's a call here from Sun Lake City.
They want you down there in a hurry. We'll have to scratch you on this
run."
"Who wants me down there?"
"The U.N. Council office. Signed by Major Briarton himself and I can't
argue with the Major. We're bringing you in."
Greg Hunter sank back, disappointment so thick he could taste it in his
mouth. Sun Lake City! That meant two days at least, one down, one back,
maybe more if connections weren't right. It meant that the captain would
send Morton or one of the others out in his place. It meant....
Suddenly he thought of what else it meant, and a chill ran up his back.
There was only one reason Major Briarton would call him in like this.
Something had happened to Dad.
Greg leaned back in the cot, suddenly tense, as a thousand frightful
possibilities flooded his mind. It could only mean that Dad was in some
kind of trouble.
And if anything had happened to Dad....
* * * * *
The sun was sinking rapidly toward the horizon when the city finally
came into sight in the distance, but try as he would, Tom Hunter could
not urge more than thirty-five miles an hour from the huge lurching
vehicle he was driving.
On an open paved highway the big pillow-wheeled Sloppy Joe would do
sixty in a breeze, but this desert route was far from a paved road.
Inside the pressurized passenger cab, Tom gripped the shock-bars with
one arm and the other leg, and jammed the accelerator to the floor. The
engine coughed, but thirty-five was all it would do.
Through the windshield Tom could see the endless rolling dunes of the
Martian desert stretching to the horizon on every side. They called Mars
the Red Planet, but it was not red when you were close to it. There were
multitudes of colors here ... yellow, orange, brown, gray, occasional
patches of gray-green ... all shifting and changing in the fading
sunlight. Off to the right were the worn-down peaks of the Mesabi II,
one of the long, low mountain ranges of almost pure iron ore that helped
give the planet its dull red appearance from outer space. And behind
him, near the horizon, the tiny sun glowed orange out of a blue-black
sky.
Tom fought the wheel as the Sloppy Joe jounced across a dry creek bed,
and swore softly to himself. Why hadn't he kept his head and waited for
the mail ship that had been due at the Lab to give him a lift back? He'd
have been in Sun Lake City an hour ago ... but the urgency of the
message had driven caution from his mind.
A summons from the Mars Coordinator of the U.N. Interplanetary Council
was the same as an order ... but there was more to Tom's haste than
that. There was only one reason that Major Briarton would be calling him
in to Sun Lake City, and that reason meant trouble.
Something was wrong. Something had happened to Dad.
Now Tom peered up at the dark sky, squinting into the sun. Somewhere out
there between Mars and Jupiter was a no-man's-land of danger, a great
circling ring of space dirt and debris, the Asteroid belt. And somewhere
out there, Dad was working.
Tom thought for a moment of the pitiful little mining rig that Roger
Hunter had taken out to the Belt ... the tiny orbit-ship to be used for
headquarters and storage of the ore; the even tinier scout ship, Pete
Racely's old Scavenger that he had sold to Roger Hunter for back taxes
and repairs when he went broke in the Belt looking for his Big Strike.
It wasn't much of a mining rig for anybody to use, and the dangers of a
small mining operation in the Asteroid Belt were frightening. It took
skill to bring a little scout-ship in for a landing on an asteroid rock
hardly bigger than the ship itself; it took even more skill to rig the
controlled-Murexide charges to blast the rock into tiny fragments, and
then run out the shiny magnetic net to catch the explosion debris and
bring it in to the hold of the orbit-ship....
Tom Hunter scowled, trying to shake off the feeling of uneasiness that
was nibbling at his mind. Asteroid mining was dangerous ... but Dad was
no novice. Nobody on Mars knew how to handle a mining rig better than
Roger Hunter did. He knew what he was doing out there, there was no real
danger for him or was there....
Roger Hunter, a good man, a gentle and peaceful man, had finally seen
all he could stomach of Jupiter Equilateral and its company mining
policies six months before. He had told them so in plain, simple
language when he turned in his resignation. They didn't try to stop
him ... a man was still free to quit a job on Mars if he wanted to, even
a job with Jupiter Equilateral. But it was an open secret that the big
mining outfit had not liked Roger Hunter's way of resigning, taking half
a dozen of their first-rate mining engineers with him. There had been
veiled threats, rumors of attempts to close the markets to Roger
Hunter's ore, in open violation of U.N. Council policies on Mars....
Tom fought the wheel as the big tractor lumbered up another rise, and
the huge plastic bubble of Sun Lake City came into view far down the
valley below.
He thought of Greg. Had Greg been summoned too? He closed his lips
tightly as a wave of anger passed through his mind. If anything had
happened, no matter what, he thought, Greg would be there. Taking over
and running things, as usual. He thought of the last time he had seen
his brother, and then deliberately blocked out the engulfing bitterness.
That had been more than a year ago. Maybe Greg had changed since then.
But somehow, Tom didn't think so.
The Sloppy Joe was on the valley floor now, and ahead the bubble
covering the city was drawing closer. The sun was almost gone; lights
were appearing inside the plastic shielding. Born and raised on Mars,
Tom had seen the teeming cities of Earth only once in his life ... but
to him none of the splendors of the Earth cities could match the simple,
quiet beauty of this Martian outpost settlement. There had been a time
when people had said that Sun Lake City could never be built, that it
could never survive if it were, but with each successive year it grew
larger and stronger, the headquarters city for the planet that had
become the new frontier of Earth.
The radiophone buzzed, and the airlock guard hailed him when he returned
the signal. Tom gave his routine ID. He guided the tractor into the
lock, waited until pressure and atmosphere rose to normal, and then
leaped out of the cab.
Five minutes later he was walking across the lobby of the Interplanetary
Council building, stepping into the down elevator. Three flights below
he stepped out into the office corridor of the U.N. Interplanetary
Council on Mars.
If there was trouble, this was where he would find it.
He paused for a minute before the gray plastic door marked MAJOR FRANK
BRIARTON in raised stainless steel letters. Then he pushed open the door
and walked into the ante-room.
It was empty. Suddenly he felt a touch on his shoulder. Behind him, a
familiar voice said, "Hello, Twin."
* * * * *
At first glance they looked like carbon copies of each other, although
they were no more identical than identical twins ever are. Greg stood a
good two inches taller than Tom. His shoulders were broad, and there was
a small gray scar over one eye that stood out in contrast to the healthy
tanned color of his face. Tom was of slighter build, and wirier, his
skin much more pale.
But they had the same dark hair, the same gray eyes, the same square,
stubborn line to the jaw. They looked at each other for a moment without
speaking. Then Greg grinned and clapped his brother on the shoulder.
"So you got here, finally," he said. "I was beginning to think I'd have
to go out on the desert and find you."
"Oh, I got here, all right," Tom said. "I see you did too."
"Yes," Greg said heavily. "Can't argue with the major, you know."
"But what does he want?"
"How should I know? All he said was to get down here fast. And now he
isn't even here himself."
"Is Dad on Mars?" Tom asked.
Greg looked at him. "I don't know."
"We could check the register."
"I already checked it. He has not logged in, but that doesn't mean
anything."
"I suppose not," Tom said glumly.
They were silent for a moment. Then Greg said, "Look, what are you
worried about? Nothing could have happened to Dad. He's been mining the
Belt for years."
"I know. I just wish he were here, that's all. If he's in some kind of
trouble...."
"What kind of trouble? You're looking for spooks."
"Spooks like Jupiter Equilateral, maybe," Tom said. "They could make
plenty of trouble for Dad."
"With the U.N. in the driver's seat here? They wouldn't dare. Why do you
think the major rides them so hard with all the claim-filing
regulations? He'd give his right arm for a chance to break that outfit
into pieces."
"I still wish somebody had gone out to the Belt with Dad," Tom said.
Just then the door opened. The newcomer was a tall, gray-haired man with
U.N. Council stripes on his lapel, and major's rockets on his shoulders.
"Sorry I'm late, boys," Major Briarton said. "I'd hoped to be here when
you arrived. I'm sorry to pull you in here like this, but I'm afraid I
had no choice. When did you boys hear from your father last?"
They looked at each other. "I saw him six weeks ago," Tom said. "Just
before he left to go out to the Belt again."
"Nothing since then?"
"Not a word."
The major chewed his lip. "Greg?"
"I had a note at Christmas, I think. But what...."
"What did he say in the note?"
"He said Merry Christmas and Happy New Year. Dad isn't much of a letter
writer."
"Nothing at all about what he was doing?"
Greg shook his head. "Look, Major, if there's some sort of trouble...."
"Yes, I'm afraid there's trouble," the major said. He looked up at them,
and spread his hands helplessly. "There isn't any easy way to tell you,
but you've got to know. There's been an accident, out in the Belt."
"Accident?" Greg said.
"A very serious accident. A fuel tank exploded in the scooter your
father was riding back to the Scavenger. It must have been very
sudden, and by the time help arrived...." The major broke off, unable to
find words.
For a long moment there was utter silence in the room. Outside, an
elevator was buzzing, and a typewriter clicked monotonously somewhere in
the building.
Then Tom Hunter broke the silence. "Who was it, Major?" he said. "Who
killed Dad? Tell us, or we'll find out!"
More
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