Part 22 (1/2)

Joe Kuzak had just come back into the dwelling and office bubb.

”Don't let my twin sell you any rotten apples, fellas,” he warned lightly. ”He might be expecting you to transport your collateral to Pallastown. Naturally anybody trying to strangle this Post will be blocking the route. You might get robbed again. Also murdered.”

Ramos' gaunt face still had its daring grin. ”Frank and I know that,” he said. ”I'm past bragging. But we've had experience. Now, we might be smart enough to get through. A few more days out there won't hurt. How about it, Frank?”

”Ten hours sleep and breakfast,” Frank said. ”Then a little camouflage material, new weapons, a pair of Archers in condition--got any left?”

”Five in stock,” Joe answered.

”Settled, then?” Art asked.

”Here, it is,” Ramos answered, and Nelsen nodded.

It would have been rough going for them to try to sleep in beds. They had lost the habit. They slept inside their new Archer Fives.

Afterwards they painted their armor a dark grey, like chunks of mesoderm stone. They did likewise to the two bundles in which they wrapped their relics.

They were as careful as possible to get away from the post without being observed, visually or by radar. But of course you could never be sure.

Huddled up to resemble stray fragments, they curved out of the Belt--toward the Pole Star, north of its...o...b..tal plane. Moving in a parallel course, they proceeded toward Pallastown. The only thing that would seem odd was that they were moving contrary to the general orbital rotation of most of the permanent bodies of the solar system. Of course they and their bundles _might_ have been stray meteors from deep in s.p.a.ce.

Four watchful, armored figures seemed to notice the peculiarity of their direction, and to become suspicious. These figures seemed too wary for honesty as they approached. They got within twenty-five miles.

Even without the memory that Tiflin might make guesses about what they meant to do, Nelsen and Ramos would have taken no chances. They had to be brutal. Homing darts pierced armor. The four went to sleep.

VI

The asteroid, Pallas, was a chunk of rich core material, two hundred-some miles in its greatest dimension. It had a mottled, pinkish s.h.i.+ne, partly from untarnished lead, osmium, considerable uranium, some iron, nickel, silver, copper. The metals were alloyed, here; almost pure, there. There was even a little rock. But thirty-five percent of Pallas' roughly spherical ma.s.s was said to be gold.

Gold is not rare at the cores of the worlds, to which most of the heavy elements must inevitably sink, during the molten stage of planetary developments. On Earth it must be the same, though who could dig three thousand miles into a zone of such heat and pressure? But the asteroid world had exploded. Pallas was an exposed and cooled piece of its heart.

Pallas had a day of twenty-four hours because men, working with great ion jets angling toward the stars, had adjusted its natural rate of rotation for their own convenience to match the terrestrial. A greater change was Pallastown.

Frank Nelsen and Miguel Ramos made the considerable journey to it without further incident. Because he was tense with hurry, Nelsen's impressions were superficial: Something like Serene, but bigger and more fantastic. A man weighed only a few ounces, here. Spidery guidance towers could loom impossibly high. There were great storage bins for raw metal brought in from all over the Belt. There were rows of water tanks.

As on the Moon, the water came mostly from gypsum rock or occasionally from soil frost, both found on nearby crustal asteroids. Beyond the refineries bulged the domes of the city itself, housing factories, gardens, recreation centers, and sections that got considerably lost and divergent trying to imitate the apartment house areas of Earth.

Frank Nelsen's wonder was hurried and dulled.

Gimp Hines and David Lester were waiting inside the stellene reception dome when Nelsen and Ramos landed lightly at the port on their own feet, with no more braking a.s.sistance than their own shoulder-ionics.

Greetings were curiously breathless yet casual, but without any backslapping.

”We'd about given you two up,” Gimp said. ”But an hour ago Joe Kuzak beamed me, and said you'd be along with some museum stuff... Les lives here, now, working with the new Archeological Inst.i.tute.”

”Hi-hi--good to see you guys,” Ramos said.

”Likewise. h.e.l.lo, Les,” Frank put in.

While Frank was gripping David Lester's limp, diffident hand, which seemed almost to apologize for his having come so far from home, Gimp teased a little. ”So you latched onto Art Kuzak, too. Or was it the other way around?”

Frank's smile was lopsided. ”I didn't a.n.a.lyze motives. Art's a pretty good guy. I suppose we just wanted to help Joe and him out. Or maybe it was instinct. Anyhow, what's wrong with latching onto--or being latched onto by--somebody whom you feel will get himself and you ahead, and make you both a buck?”