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Read Ebook: The Road and the Roadside by Potter Burton Willis
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Ebook has 362 lines and 31698 words, and 8 pages
ESCAPE VELOCITY
BY CHARLES L. FONTENAY
Murdering Stein was easy. Kraag waited until Jonner donned his spacesuit and went out to have a personal look at the asteroid. Even then Kraag held his patience, because he wanted Jonner to come back to the ship unsuspecting.
Kraag sat tensely at the back of the control room while Stein, the navigator and communications man, operated the radio. There was a brief period when Stein talked with Marsport, then he got in touch with Jonner. Until Jonner got some distance from the wrecked ship, most of their conversation was an argument.
"I still think two of us ought to go out and one stay at the ship," argued Stein. "Kraag agrees with me. What if you fall into a crevice?"
"There's not much danger, and you've got a directional fix on me," replied Jonner's voice through the loudspeaker. "If we had a large crew, I'd agree we ought to explore in pairs. Since there are just three of us, only one ought to be endangered at a time. I'm the captain, so I'm it."
"Well, don't get out of sight," warned Stein. "We don't have an atmosphere here to bounce radio waves over the horizon."
Through the glassite port, Kraag could see Jonner poking around at the asteroid's surface with his steel probe. Against the incredibly curved horizon, Jonner's suited figure leaned at a slight angle under the black, star-studded sky. The distant sun gleamed from the sphere of his helmet.
"Pretty smooth terrain," remarked Jonner. "It's not much of a planet, but it seems to have enough mass to pull down any mountains. Looks like there should be some hills, though. It must have been in a molten state when the original trans-Martian planet was broken up."
"That ought to mean high albedo," said Stein. "Higher than it ought to be."
"Sounds more like Vesta," said Jonner. "Sure we're on Ceres?"
Stein looked at the notes he had made from the ship's instruments, before the crash.
"The escape velocity was 1,552.41 feet per second," he said, "and the diameter 0.06. I figure the mass at .000108."
"All those figures are off according to the latest table for Ceres," said Jonner.
"The fellows that made that table were on Mars," reminded Stein. "Vesta doesn't have a 480-mile diameter. It must be Ceres."
"You're the navigator," surrendered Jonner. "I'll take your word for it."
The personnel sphere of the ship rested on the ground, tilted at almost a 20-degree angle from the horizontal. The tilt was no inconvenience, however. Each of the men weighed only five or six pounds here, and slippage was hardly noticeable.
"I'll turn you over to Kraag," said Stein at last, glancing up at the chronometer. "It's my day to fix supper, you know."
It was the signal Kraag had been waiting for. He reached behind him and fumbled in the rack for a gun.
The one he brought out was Jonner's, and it wasn't a heat-gun but the ancient pistol Jonner swore by. Kraag put it back hurriedly, but not before Stein had turned in his chair and seen it.
"What's up, Kraag?" asked Stein without alarm. "Why the gun?"
Kraag pulled a heat-gun from the rack.
"Nothing's up," he said, and shot Stein.
The ray burned into Stein's shoulder, and Kraag swung it down across Stein's chest to his stomach before relaxing his pressure on the trigger.
"My God, Kraag!" gurgled Stein. Summoning a last effort, he croaked into the microphone: "Jonner! Watch out! Kraag shot...."
Kraag blasted him in the face, cutting him off. Stein's body floated forward and upward out of the chair and began to settle slowly toward the slanting floor.
"What's going on, Stein?" came Jonner's alarmed voice over the loudspeaker. "Stein? Stein!"
"It's all right, Jonner," said Kraag as calmly as he could, when he could reach the microphone. "Stein just fainted."
There was silence from Jonner.
"I'll take care of Stein and then take over the mike till you get ready to come in," said Kraag into the microphone.
"I want to talk to Stein when he comes around," said Jonner. His voice sounded cold.
So Jonner suspected something. Well, that couldn't be helped. Maybe he could be talked around.
"All right, Jonner," agreed Kraag soothingly.
Stein's body had to be hidden from Jonner, just in case. Jonner got into the personnel sphere alive--something Kraag did not intend for him to do. When he had taken care of Jonner, he could dispose of both bodies before the rescue ship got there.
Dragging Stein's body was like towing someone through water. It floated through the air of the sphere at Kraag's tug, settling slowly. His only problem was getting good leverage for pushing. After some cogitation, he jammed the body into an empty food compartment two decks below the control room.
Back in the control room, Kraag looked out the port. Jonner was closer to the personnel sphere now, looking toward it but not moving.
Other portions of the ship, some jettisoned, some crumpled and broken apart by its crash, lay at varying distances from the personnel sphere. Some of the parts were scattered out of sight beyond the horizon, a mile away.
Kraag had not wanted to fool with the asteroid. There had been no question that they had to swing back off their original orbit toward Titan when the meteorite slashed open both of their hydrazine tanks. But Kraag's idea had been to stay in space and try to turn back toward Mars before the fuel gave out.
As the engineer, Kraag resented Jonner overruling him. Jonner had felt it safer to take an orbit around the asteroid and wait for rescue. But the fuel pumps had failed before they could adjust to the orbit. Kraag would never forget that helpless waiting as they circled and circled, spiraling downward to the inevitable crash.
He went back to the microphone.
"Okay, Jonner," he said. "What's going on out there now?"
"Where's Stein?" countered Jonner. "I want to talk to him."
"He's not feeling so good. Said he'd rather not try to get back up to the control room right now."
"Tell him to come to the mike anyhow. I don't want to talk to you till I talk to Stein."
"Stein can't talk, I tell you. If you don't want to talk to me, then are you ready to come in?"
"And get shot?" retorted Jonner.
So Jonner's suspicions were that definite. It was to be expected after the words Stein had been able to shout into the microphone. Jonner was nobody's dumbbell.
Kraag tired once more.
"That's a ridiculous idea, Jonner," he said. "I can't figure why you'd say such a thing."
"You shot Stein," said Jonner positively. "There's no use your denying it. I know you shot Stein, and I'll know it until Stein himself tells me it isn't so."
Kraag knew Jonner too well to try to keep up the pretense any longer. He tried another tack.
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