Part 1 (2/2)

Goil then excused himself coldly and left for the VIP quarters.

Point number one for the opposition, I thought. Why hadn't someone warned us about the peculiarities of the man?

I hoped nothing would go wrong with the inspection. If things went well, Goil and his cohorts could get their business over with and get away from here that much faster. I was more than a little concerned about w.i.l.l.y and what he was doing.

w.i.l.l.y had spent two days, mostly off-duty time, visiting and working on the asteroid he had adopted, his two miles of irregular monstrosity. In his spurt of activity to install the drive unit, he had over-calculated a charge of explosives and blown out too much of the end section of the asteroid. That caused him some concern for a little while. In a flash of what he probably considered to be pure genius, he solved that minor problem by deciding to fill in the hole by installing a sub-s.p.a.ce energizer. This first flash of genius was apparently followed by another inspirational flash. He could, with both installations, and some additional work, send the thing back to Earth. He must have been proud of the thought, for private satellites around Earth were all the rage now; no one who was Anyone was without one. Besides that, it would make a wonderful birthday present for his wife. Her birthday was only a matter of days away.

Goil's first request was to observe a day's operation. I had made what few arrangements were necessary, and Goil and I started out early so we could get into position and see the operations from the start.

We had one of the observation flitters. I took it about twenty thousand miles out from the area of operations and parked with the forward port facing the area. I said:

”We'll watch from here, Mr. Goil. You can see the debris floating down there.” I pointed, and Goil looked at the little pin points of light reflecting from a great volume of dust, nebula-like in its dim luminosity. ”When the crew starts actual operation, we will turn on the magnification screens and get some close-up views of the process.”

”Please explain this to me,” said Goil. ”I've never seen an asteroid's operation before.”

”Of course, Mr. Goil. I didn't know. This asteroid patch, or vein, as we like to call it, has a better than average content of metal ores and compounds. As you can see, we have swept the loose ends, so to speak, together. And there you see the result. In the center of that nebulous sort of ma.s.s is a large asteroid. There is at least one in almost every patch. We use that as the core, and by planting a large gravity generator on it and feeding it a great deal of power, it and the asteroid attracts most of the nearby debris. The gravity generator has been souped up tremendously. It burns out rather quickly, but it operates long enough for our purposes. There is a respectable layer of a.s.sorted sizes of asteroids hugging the core. And there are several miles of dust surrounding everything. After the gravity generator has burned out, the big attraction dies out, of course. But the proximity of the debris is still enough to hold them together for some time.”

[Ill.u.s.tration]

”What is that stray body off to one side?”

”That is the trigger asteroid,” I answered.

A couple of minutes before triggering time, I reached over and punched the channel b.u.t.ton on operations frequency. Immediately the usual operations chatter came rus.h.i.+ng out at us from the speaker. Suddenly a voice blasted out saying, ”Ready, Sam? Clear, everybody! Eyes off! Ten to go!” A countdown was started.

I had switched on four screens, each a different magnification. I pointed to a spheroid on one of the screens and said, ”There's the trigger body. It's equipped with a sub-s.p.a.ce energizer big enough to get it into sub-s.p.a.ce and return it to normal. Then there is a small propulsor unit with just enough energy to send it to the center of that mess. Then it returns to normal s.p.a.ce smack dab in the center of the core asteroid. And when the asteroid matter and the trigger body matter try to occupy the same s.p.a.ce at the same time.... Watch it go out.”

It did. Just disappeared.

The debris-encrusted ma.s.s vaporized. It seemed to do it slowly, lazily. Much of the debris was flung out from the ma.s.s, but raw energy of boiling vapors chased it, overtook it, and then it too was vapor.

The light emitted from the vaporizing collection of bodies would have been optic nerve searing if Goil and I had not been looking at it through the screens. The vapor continued to expand and spread until it looked like a miniature nebula.

I said, ”The triggering body is about half the size of the core body.

The heat that results from the explosion vaporizes nearly a hundred per cent of the material. What little solid matter that escapes is of little consequence.”

Goil watched in fascination. The spectrum of colors displayed were unbelievably, indescribably beautiful. The brilliant cloud ma.s.ses that boiled and leaped around were like things alive trying to escape the terrible inner torment.

A long time pa.s.sed, but the sight was so hypnotizing that Goil seemed to be unaware of just how long he had been watching. Finally I broke the silence.

”Watch the specks on the far left screen. They are the gravitor tugs.

They are ready to move in.”

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