Asteroid of Fear Page 4
the ground, he heard the faint scraping. Arustle. It might have been made by heavy space-boots. It came, and thenit stopped. It came again, and stopped once more. As if skulking formspaused to find their way.
Out where the ancient and ghostly buildings were, he saw a star wink outbriefly, as if a shape blocked the path of its light. Then it burnedpeacefully again. John Endlich's hackles rose. His fists tightened onboth his rifle and pistol.
He fixed his gaze on the great box, looming blackly, the box thatcontained the means of survival for his family and himself, as if heforesaw the future, a moment away. For suddenly, huge as it was, the boxrocked, and began to move off, as if it had sprouted legs and comealive.
* * * * *
John Endlich scrambled to action. He slammed and sealed the face-windowsof the helmets of the members of his family, to protect them fromsuffocation. He did the same for himself, and then unzipped thetent-flap. He darted out with the outrushing air.
This was a moment with murder poised in every tattered fragment of it.John Endlich knew. Murder was engrained in his own taut-drawn nerves,that raged to destroy the trespassers whose pranks had passed the levelof practical humor, and become, by the tampering with vital necessities,an attack on life itself. But there was a more immediate menace in thesespace-twisted roughnecks.... Strike back at them, even in self-defense,and have it proven!
He had not the faintest doubt who they were--even though he could notsee their faces in the blackness. Maybe he should lay low--let them havetheir way.... But how could he--even apart from his raging temper, andhis honor as a man--when they were making off with his family's and hisown means of survival?
He had to throw Rose and the kids into the balance--risking them to thedanger that he knew lay beyond his own possible ignoble demise. He didjust that when he raised his pistol, struggling against the awfulimpulse of the rage in him--lifted it high enough so that the explosivebullets that spewed from it would be sure to pass over the heads of thedark silhouettes that were moving about.
"Damn you, Neely!" Endlich yelled into his helmet mike, his fingertightening on the trigger. "Drop that stuff!"
At that moment the sun's rim appeared at the landscape's jagged edge,and on this side of airless Vesta complete night was transformed tocomplete day, as abruptly as if a switch had been turned.
Alf Neely and John Endlich blinked at each other. Maybe Neely wasembarrassed a little by his sudden exposure; but if he was, it didn'tshow. Probably the bully in him was scared; but this he covered in acommon manner--with a studiedly easy swagger, and a bravado that was notgood sense, but bordered on childish recklessness. Yet he had a trumpcard--by the aggressive glint in his eyes, and his unpleasant grin,Endlich knew that Neely knew that he was afraid for his wife, andwouldn't start anything unless driven and goaded sheerly wild. Even now,they were seven to his one.
"Why, good morning, Neighbor Pun'kin-head!" Neely crooned, his voice aburlesque of sweetness. "Glad to oblige!"
He hurled the great box down. As he did so, something glinted in hisgloved paw. He flicked it expertly into the open side of the wooden casewhich contained so many things that were vital to the Endlichs--
It was only a tiny nuclear priming-cap, and the blast was feeble. Evenso, the box burst apart. Splintered crates, sealed cans, great tornbundles and what not, went skittering far across the plain in everydirection, or were hurled high toward the stars, to begin falling atlast with the laziness of a descending feather.
* * * * *
Neely and his companions hadn't attempted to move out of the way of theexplosion. They only rolled with its force, protected by their spacesuits. Endlich rolled, too, helplessly, clutching his pistol and rifle:still, by some superhuman effort, he managed to regain his feet beforethe far more practiced Neely, who was hampered, no doubt, by a few toomany drinks, had even stopped rolling. But when Neely got up, he haddrawn his blaster, a useful tool of his trade, but a hellish weapon,too, at short range.
Still, Endlich retained the drop on him.
Alf Neely chuckled. "Fourth of July! Hallowe'en, Dutch," he saidsweetly. "What's the matter? Don't you think it's fun? Honest togosh--you just ain't neighborly!"
Then he switched his tone. It became a soft snarl that didn't alter hisinsolent and confident smirk--and a challenge. He laughed derisively,almost softly. "I dare you to try to shoot straight, pal," he said."Even you got more sense than that."
And John Endlich was spang against his terrible, blank wall again. Sevento one. Suppose he got three. There'd be four left--and more in thecamp. But the four would survive him. Space crazy lugs. Anyway halfdrunk. Ready to hoot at the stars, even, if they found no betterdiversion. Ready to push even any of their own bunch around who seemedweaker than they. For spite, maybe. Or just for the lid-blowing hell ofit--as a reaction against the awful confinement of being out here.
"I was gonna smear you all over the place, Greenhorn," Neely rumbled."But maybe this way is more fun, hunh? Maybe we'll be back tonight. Butdon't wait up for us. Our best regards to your sweet--family."
John Endlich's blazing and just rage was strangled by that same crawlingdread as before, as he saw them arc upward and away, propelled by theminiature drive-jets attached to the belts of their space-suits. Theirreturn to camp, hundreds of miles distant, could be accomplished in acouple of minutes.
Rose and the kids were crouched in the deflated tent. But returningthere, John Endlich hardly saw them. He hardly heard their frightenedquestions.
To the trouble with Neely, he could see no end--just one destructivevisitation following another. Maybe, already, mortal damage had beendone. But Endlich couldn't lie down and quit, any more than a snake,tossed into a fire, could stop trying to crawl out of it, as long aslife lasted. Whether doing so made sense or not, didn't matter. InEndlich was the savage energy of despair. He was fighting not just Neelyand his crowd, but that other enemy--which was perhaps Neely's maintrouble, too. Yeah--the stillness, the nostalgia, the harshness.
"No--don't want any breakfast," he replied sharply to Rose' lastquestion. "Gotta work...."
* * * * *
He was like an ant-swarm, rebuilding a trampled nest--oblivious to thecertainty of its being trampled again. First he scrambled and leapedaround, collecting his scattered and damaged gear. He found that hismain atomic battery--so necessary to all that he had to do--was damagedand unworkable. And he had no hope that he could repair it. But thisdidn't stop his feverish activity.
Now he started unrolling great bolts of a transparent, wire-strengthenedplastic. Patching with an adhesive where explosion-rents had to berepaired, he cut hundred-yard strips, and, with Rose's help, laid themedge to edge and fastened them together to make a continuous sheet.Next, all around its perimeter, he dug a shallow trench. The edges ofthe plastic were then attached to massive metal rails, which he buriedin the trench.
"Sealed to the ground along all the sides, Honey," he growled to Rose."Next we fit in the airlock cabinet, at one corner. Then we've got tosee if we can get up enough air to inflate the whole business. That'sthe tough part--the way things are...."
By then the sun was already high. And Endlich was pantingraggedly--mostly from worry. After the massive airlock was in place,they attached their electrolysis apparatus to the small atomic battery,which had been used to run the well-driller. The well was in the areacovered by the sheet of plastic, which was now propped up here and therewith long pieces of board from the great box. Over their heads, thetough, clear material sagged like a tent-roof which has not yet been runup all the way on its poles.
Sluggishly the electrolysis apparatus broke down the water, dischargingthe hydrogen as waste through a pipe, out over the airless surface ofVesta--but freeing the oxygen under the plastic roof. Yet from the startit was obvious that, with insufficient electric power, the process wastoo slow.
"And we need to use heat-coils to thaw the ground, Johnny," Rose said."And to keep the pla
ce warm. And to bring nitrogen gas up out of thesoil. The few cylinders of the compressed stuff that we've got won't beenough to make a start. And the carbon dioxide...."
So John Endlich had to try to repair that main battery. He thought,after a while, that he might succeed--in time. But then Rose opened theairlock, and the kids came in to bother him. With all the triumph of afavorite puppy dragging an over-ripe bone into the house, Bubs bore acrooked piece of a black substance, hard as wood and more gruesome thana dried and moldy monkey-pelt.
"A tentacle!" Evelyn shrilled. "We were up to those old buildings! Wefound the people! What's left of them! And lots of stuff. We saw one oftheir cars! And there was lots more. Dad--you gotta come and see!..."
Harassed as he was, John Endlich yielded--because he had