“It’s still far-off, and safely to the left—”
His breath caught, and he bent closer to the screen.
“What is it?” Jay Kalam whispered.
“The thing is only a tiny, irregular rock,” Bob Star answered uncertainly.
“Probably no more than half a mile hi diameter.
But I believe—” suppressed excitement crept into his voice—“I believe it’s inhabited!”
“Bob!” protested the commander. “That’s impossible, almost.
When it’s so remote—uncharted—”
“The light-diffusion,” Bob Star insisted, still watching the screens, “indicates an atmosphere.
And so small a body couldn’t hold an atmosphere, without an artificial gravity-field.
I’m sure—”
“Planetary engineering is expensive, Bob,” Jay Kalam reminded him. “Especially when the equipment would have to be brought so far.
It would have been nearly impossible for anyone to develop such a remote asteroid secretly—”
“There!” Bob Star whispered.
“I have it again, with a higher power.”
He looked around suddenly, his lean face shining with wonder.
“It is!
It is inhabited, commander!
I see vegetation—it has been landscaped!
And there’s a building—a long, white building!
A ship lying beside it—a small geodesic cruiser.
And an ultrawave tower on the little hill behind it!”
Jay Kalam’s hand closed hard on his shoulder.
“Can you land there, Bob?”
“Land?”
Bob Star turned from the screen to read the other instruments.
“I don’t know,” he said slowly.
“Our relative velocity is very high.
It would take a lot of rocket fuel, to stop without the geodynes.”
“We must—if we can,” Jay Kalam urged him.
“For we’re helpless, on this wreck.
If we can land, we should be able to secure the use of the ship you saw.
Or at least to signal some Legion base for aid.”
Intent over his instruments, Bob Star had seemed hardly to hear.
At last he read the final integration from the calculator, and turned swiftly to the rocket fuel gauges.
Anxiously, Jay Kalam asked:
“What do you find?”
“I think we can do it,” Bob Star said.
“With just about enough fuel left to fry an egg.
We won’t be able to leave the asteroid again— unless we get the other ship, or at least a new supply of rocket fuel.” “Try it,” Jay Kalam said.
Again the rockets thundered response to the firing keys.
“I’ll find Hal Samdu,” the commander said, “and send him back into the proton gun turret.
And you keep alert, Bob. Because I think we aren’t very likely to meet a friendly reception.
Honest folk are not apt to frequent a secret refuge a billion miles outside the System.
Frankly, the asteroid puzzles me.
“The obvious guess is that it’s a criminal hide-out.
But it’s pretty remote from any possible scene of operations.
Pirates could hardly find it a convenient rendezvous.
There wouldn’t be much profit in running synthetic drugs so far.
I don’t know what to expect—except hostility.”