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Words: 31698 in 12 pages
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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?"
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