Asteroid Man (9 page)

This was something altogether greater. This was a product of will, and will had been inspired by something that came from outside the material physical brain. Will was being spurred on by something from the immortal, nobler part of Greg Masterson. There was something distinctly noble and ethereal about the way he felt for the girl. There was nothing earthy about it at all. She was completely and utterly different from any woman he had ever known before. She was more a goddess, a green goddess. He thought of the ancient legend of Pandora's box, and the trouble that had been released when Pandora had undone the magical knot. Then he thought of Hope, who had come after the troubles and the trials and tribulations; a glorious, representative figure, preserved in the ancient mythology. Amidst all his trials, in the midst of the black sea of troubles that threatened to overwhelm him here in the depths of this asteroid, he had found the epitomization and the personification of Hope herself: this girl, this goddess, this mysterious enchantress, Astra of Altair. He knew that unless he could find her, and rescue her from this super intelligent fiend that controlled this mad world, he would never again know anything even vaguely approaching happiness. Unless he could rescue her and rescue her quickly, he would never be able to face himself again. He would never be able to live with himself. There were some things which a man had to do. They had to be done, and unless they were, life was empty, meaningless, dark.

For him the one thing that had to be done was to rescue the girl.

Greg became aware of a cackle of insane laughter; spine-chilling, blood-curdling laughter, it congealed and congested the very blood in his arteries. It was a hideous sound; like the other foul noises that had been emitted by the weird servants, this sound too was more animal than human, a foul, despicable, frightening, hyena-like sound.

It seemed to fill the whole asteroid, to echo through the whole asteroid like a weird, mad carillon.

Greg pulled himself together with an effort. To some extent this was a war of nerves. He was in the enemy's country, and he didn't know what devil he was heading for. He didn't know what was round the next corner. Uncertainty was pulling at him as though it had claws. On top of that was this weird semi-darkness beyond the bright light of his energy beam.

He had to keep moving; it was like groping his way through a thick fog. The beams of your headlights threw the fog back at you. It was like that, and yet it wasn't. The visibility conditions were roughly equivalent. He kept on moving. He reached another point in the corridor where it branched and again he stood listening for that weird, cackling laughter. Over and above it he thought he faintly heard another scream for help.

I've got to get to her. I've got to get to her quickly. His grip on the axe tightened. His jaw set in determination. Blast the creature that controls this place. In his mind he could see a mental image of the girl being dragged along those Stygian corridors by the likes of the creature that he had slain, the thing with the blemished eyes and hideous distorted face. The foul caricature of a man. At all costs he had to overtake them. He kept on moving. The laughter again. It was everywhere, echoing.

The whole experience was turning into some crazy kind of nightmare.

He still walked determinedly down the corridor. Now, throwing caution to the wind he started to run. They probably knew where he was, anyway; probably had some way of plotting his exact position. He was no doubt under the surveillance of half a dozen beams. His position could be pinpointed as accurately as a spider could tell upon which strand of its web a fly has alighted.

By running, he probably stood a better chance than by walking slowly and cautiously. If they knew where he was anyway, it was far better to run. The position would change far more rapidly. He thought about obstructions and pits and traps, and then let the thought fade away into oblivion. It was not a pleasant thought; oblivion was all it deserved! He saw something up ahead of him, something that lent wings to his feet. It was the faint backtrack of the green light that he had first seen, the green light that he had come to associate with the girl, Astra, Princess of Altair. They had not gotten very far; no doubt she was struggling as fiercely as she could. He thought again of the hideous deformed things that obeyed the wishes of the insane ruler of this peculiar asteroid. He increased his speed again. There was another wild ringing laugh, the green light faded from sight, and suddenly, almost undetectable in the slim light of his flash, he saw what had to be the toils of a net… It couldn't be anything else. The net was directly in front of him, around him. He spun quickly on his heel; it was behind him as well! He slashed at it savagely with the axe, but it appeared to be quite impervious to the blows of the hatchet. It was closing in on him. He struggled wildly, trying to keep his balance. Somehow it had gotten under his feet. The net seemed to be everywhere, thin, but immensely strong. He tried to tear it with his hands, but it was tougher than cord, and cut his fingers…

He got his feet and shoulders against it, braced himself and tried to break it, but it simply gave a little and then came back into position.

He thought of the analogy of the fly in the spider's web. It seemed more apt than ever now. He was hopelessly, helplessly, stupidly trapped. Fool not to have heard or seen it coming, he told himself. Masterson, you don't deserve to breathe. The amount of crazy mistakes you've been making since you started this trip! He rounded on himself reproachfully, and yet— who could have done better? Who could have avoided the net? Who could have known it was there? It had come so silently and so swiftly. The whole corridor was suddenly filled with green light, and he saw the girl helpless in the grip of two of the enormous creatures. She looked very pale and frightened. Another of the creatures was advancing toward him from the other end. He looked at it angrily, defiantly, wondering if it was going to kill him then and there. It was emitting those low guttural, growling noises. He struggled furiously again to break free from the net. All three of the creatures broke out into hideous laughs. He still retained his grip on the axe. If he couldn't cut the net, it could still serve its purpose, he decided. The creature pulled a long, wickedly curved knife from its belt and advanced cautiously toward him.

"You might kill me, seeing I'm helpless," said Masterson grimly, "but do you realize that you are challenging the mightiest empire of all time? What do you think my people are going to do? Let us get away with it? There are a hundred thousand space destroyers, good astral battleships, waiting back there. They'll blast this asteroid of yours to cosmic dust."

"Where?" said the creature slowly.

Oh, it can speak, thought Masterson. It was still advancing, holding the knife.

"Where are these ships you speak of?" Another horrible laugh.

"All around you in this system," said Greg. The laugh became even more pronounced.

"We are thousands of millions of miles from your system. We have crossed deep space."

Greg could hardly believe his ears. They were no longer in the solar system, and the creature with the knife was still advancing dangerously…

General Rotherson was pacing up and down his study like a caged tiger. His enormous head, itself like a minor planet, seemed to carry the weight of the world. No other neck, save the bull-like edifice which served Rotherson for that purpose, could have supported the weight of that head. It was a colossal, enormous head, and yet, because he was such a colossal, enormous man, it was not disproportionate.

Sitting on either side of his desk, Jonga and Krull smoked and drank coffee.

"I don't know what I'm going to do," said the general. "I only wish I did!" He laughed suddenly, derisively; pulled open a drawer in his desk and threw a file of papers across to Krull. "Look at that! I'm being more frankly honest with you chaps than I have ever been with anybody in my life. Just read that! The applicants for this post! Should be men with the ability to act on their own initiative, to make important decisions quickly, and to undertake responsible duties of the highest possible order! When I applied for this post, I thought I could do that! I don't know what's happened to me! I've never met a situation like this. I suppose I'm one of those fellows who can only act when things are cut and dried. I can't deal with life when it gets too complicated. I don't like the ifs and buts. I like life to be straightforward and relatively simple. I should have no hesitation at all in sending up the fleet, I would have no hesitation in going up with it, as its generalissimo, if I knew that we were being attacked, if I knew there was an enemy there. This invidious, twisting little hole-in-corner thing is getting me down. I like an enemy who will come out in the open and let me hit him. If I'm fighting, I want to fight it out as a slogging match. I want to stand there toe to toe and exchange blow for blow!" He crashed one enormous fist into the palm of the other hand to emphasize the point. "That's the kind of man I am! I'm not suited for all this —this—" He paused, lost for words. "I'm not suited for all this three-dimensional chess-playing. I was a simple, straightforward soldier. I understand simple straightforward soldiering. It's all very well having the prestige of being the defense chief! I was far better off teaching basic military maneuvers at Sandhurst. I was all right with a stream of first-year cadets. I could show them everything they needed to know about ground tactics. I'm a first-class ground tactician. I'm all right in this job as far as the administration goes." He stroked his great grey beard. "I don't know what's the matter with me. Why am I telling you all this?"

"You haven't had much sleep lately, sir."

"Neither have you chaps. You're not cracking up!"

"You're not cracking up, sir—just being remarkably frank," said Krull. "I don't think there's anybody better equipped to deal with the job than you. It's just that the others wouldn't be so honest if they didn't know what to do!"

Rotherson looked at him intently.

"D'ye mean that, Krull?"

"Sincerely, sir! Just think of the work you've done so far. Established a system of asteroid checking, which at our present level of technology is the best we've got available. It's already proved itself!"

"Yes, but what the devil has it proved, exactly?" said the general. "I've proved that there's something out there dangerous enough to destroy five dart ships, but we're still no nearer finding out what the devil it is."

"Yes, but without your system, sir, we wouldn't even have known there was anything there. Instead of five ships being lost, it might have been five planets."

"I suppose there's something in that. Now what do you suggest we try and do now? Let's go over the ground and try to clarify things."

"I've been going over," said Jonga, "over and over it, but nothing seems to come up. We spot one asteroid too many."

"Right!"

"We send up a survey force, five dart ships under the command of Squadron-Leader Greg Masterson, the finest man we've got. Masterson goes up; we lose radio contact for about fifteen hours. We take another check, and the asteroid is gone apparently having spirited away Masterson and his five ships with it. We're up against something here that has a technology considerably ahead of ours."

"Or," broke in Krull, "we're up against a freak accident. It doesn't have to be anything intelligent, anything that's leveled against the empire."

"I see what you mean," said the general. "It could be some kind of unnatural or accidental warp in the continuum in which they have all been sucked. Maybe that's what gave the impression of an asteroid too many."

"I wonder how a warp would show up on this screen."

"I don't think it would show up at all," said Krull.

"Well, that's put the tin hat on that one. On the other hand, this odd asteroid might have come through the warp. The ships might have spotted at once there was something odd about it and flown at once to intercept. The asteroid disappears back through the warp, and the ships go through after it."

"That again is a possibility, in which case, what happened to them?"

"Well, they've finished up on the other side of nowhere, perhaps thousands and thousands of light years away, on the other side of the galaxy, out among the Out-worlders."

"In that case, was it really an accident, sir?" asked Jonga. "Do you think this warp is a weapon, a new kind of spy weapon the Other Worlders have got? You see, just imagine that they could control hyperspace, the grey spaces between the galaxies. Imagine they've got some way of short-circuiting mileage and space and time as we understand it. The first thing they'd want to know is what kind of people we are, and what kind of weapons we've got. So they send out one of these decoy asteroids, with something rather odd about it, to decoy us into sending up a small interception squadron. Having done that, our squadron attacks, goes in to investigate, is promptly whisked away through their vortex, or whatever they've got and finishes up on the other side of the grey spaces, thousands of years and millions of miles from home."

"Precisely," said Rotherson. "That's a very terrifying possibility. If they could get a lot of ships through the continuum, they could probably get a planet through if they wanted to."

Jonga shuddered. "Wouldn't be much use sending a fleet out to intercept, then, would it, sir?"

"It certainly wouldn't," agreed the general. "The loss of five ships we can stand; the loss of five thousand ships would leave us defenseless."

"Suppose we sent half the fleet?"

"Maybe that's just what they want. Imagine that for a weapon. You trick the enemy into sending half his fleet, shall we say on a wild goose chase after some phoney asteroid. Soon as he gets up there, what happens? You suck them through your vortex; you blow them out on the other end of the universe, on some completely unknown corner of nethermost space, and having gotten them out there out of the way, you proceed with your attack. If any of the survivors manage to crawl back—perhaps fifty thousand years too late for the battle—or rather the descendants of the fleet's survivors, they find that their old world has been in enemy hands for so long that your empire's probably decayed as well. They've arrived just in time to remember some prehistoric legend as fact."