Chapter 12: Mercury Transit

The long hours passed, and only Rip’s chronometer told him when the end of a day was reached. The Planeteers alternately worked on the surface and rested in the air of the landing boat compartment, while the asteroid sped steadily on its way.

When a series of sightings over several days gave Rip enough exact data to work on, he recalculated the orbit, found the amount that the course had to be corrected, and supervised the cutting of new holes in the metal.

Tubes of ordinary rocket fuel were placed in these and fired, and the thrust moved the asteroid slightly, just enough to make the corrections Rip needed. It was not necessary to take to the landing boat for these blasts. The Planeteers retired to their cave, which was now lined with nuclite as a protection against radiation.

Rip watched his dosimeter climb steadily as the radiation dosage mounted. Then he took the landing boat to the Scorpius, talked the problem over with the ship’s medical department, and arranged for his men to take injections that would keep them from getting radiation sickness.

They left the asteroid belt far behind and passed within ten thousand miles of Mars. The Scorpius sent its entire complement of snapper-boats to the asteroid for protection, in case Consops made another try, then flamed off to Marsport to put in new supplies to replace those damaged when Rip had forced sudden and disastrous acceleration.

The asteroid had reached Earth’s solar orbit before the cruiser returned, though Earth itself was on the other side of the sun. Rip ordered a survey and found the best place on the dark side to make a new base. The Planeteers cut out a cave with the torch, lined it with nuclite, and moved in the supplies. It would be their base to the end of the trip.

The sun was very hot now. On the sunny side of the asteroid the temperature had soared far past the boiling point of water. But on the dark side, Rip measured temperatures close to absolute zero.

When the Scorpius returned, he arranged with Commander O’Brine for the Planeteers to take turns going to the cruiser for showers and decent meals.

The asteroid approached the orbit of Venus, but the bright planet was some distance away, at its greatest elongation to the east of the sun. Mercury, however, loomed larger and larger. They would pass close to the hot planet.

O’Brine recalled Rip to the Scorpius and handed him a message.

Asteroid now within protection reach of Mercury and Terra bases. Your escort no longer required. Proceed immediately Titan, take on cargo and personnel.

The commander sighed. “Looks like I’ll never get to Earth long enough to see my family.”

Rip sympathized. “Tough, sir. Perhaps the cargo from Titan will be scheduled for Terra.”

“That’s what I hope,” O’Brine agreed. “Well, here’s where we part. Is there anything you need?”

Rip made a mental check on supplies. He had more than enough. “The only thing we need is a long-range communicator, sir. We’ll need one to contact the planet bases.”

“I’ll see that you get one.” The Irishman thrust out his hand. “Stay out of high vack, Foster. Too bad you didn’t join us instead of the Planeteers. I might have made a decent officer out of you.”

Rip grinned. “That’s a real compliment, sir. I might return it by saying that you have the makings of a Planeteer officer yourself.”

O’Brine chuckled. “All right. Let’s declare a truce, Planeteer. We’ll meet again. Space isn’t very big.”

A short time later Rip stood in front of his asteroid base and watched the great cruiser drive into space. A short distance away a snapper-boat was lashed to the landing boat. O’Brine had left it, with a word of warning.

“These Connies are plenty smart. I don’t like leaving you unprotected, even within reach of Mercury and Terra, but orders are orders. Keep the snapper-boat, and you’ll at least be able to put up a fight if you bump into trouble.”

The asteroid sped on its lonely way for two days, and then a cruiser came out of space, its nuclear drive glowing. The Planeteers manned the rocket launcher, and Rip and Santos stood by the snapper-boat, just in case, but the cruiser was the Sagittarius, out of Mercury.

Capt. Go Sian-tek, a Chinese Planeteer officer, arrived in one of the cruiser’s boats with three enlisted men.

Captain Go greeted Rip and his men, then handed over a plastic stylus plate ordering Rip to deliver six cubic meters of thorium for use on Mercury. While Koa supervised the cutting of the block, Rip and the captain chatted.

The Mercurian Planeteer base was in the twilight zone, but the Planeteers always worked on the sun side, wearing special alloy suits to mine the precious nuclite that only the hot planet provided.

At some time during its first years, Mercury had been so close to the sun that its temperature was driven high enough to permit a subatomic thermonuclear reaction. The reaction had shorn some elements of their electrons and left a thin coating of material composed almost entirely of neutrons. The nuclite was incredibly dense. It could be handled only in low gravity because of its weight. But nothing else provided the shielding against radiation and meteors half so well, and it was in great demand.