Chapter 4: Find the Needle!

Rip walked into the squad room with a copy of the orders in his hand. After one look at his face, the Planeteers clustered around him. Santos woke those who were sleeping, while Rip waited.

“We have our orders, men,” he announced. Suddenly he laughed. He couldn’t help it. At first he had been completely overcome by the responsibility and the magnitude of the job, but now he was getting used to the idea, and he could see the adventure in it. Ten wild Planeteers riding an asteroid! Sunny space, what a great big thermonuclear stunt!

Koa remarked, “It must be good. The lieutenant is getting a real atomic charge out of it.”

“Sit down,” Rip ordered. “You’d better, because you might fall over when you hear this. Listen, men. Two days ago the freighter Altair passed through the asteroid belt on a run from Jupiter to Mars.” He sat down, too, because deceleration was starting. As his men looked at each other in surprise at the quickness of it, he continued, “The old bucket found something we need--an asteroid of pure thorium.”

The enlisted Planeteers knew as well as he what that meant. There were whistles of astonishment. Koa slapped his thigh. “By Gemini! What do we do about it, sir?”

“We capture it,” Rip said. “We blast it loose from its orbit and ride it back to Earth.”

He sat back and watched their reactions. At first they were stunned. Trudeau, the Frenchman, muttered to himself in French. Dominico, the Italian, held up his hands and exclaimed, “Santa Maria!”

Kemp, one of the American privates, asked, “How do we do it, sir?”

Rip grinned. “That’s a good question. I don’t know.”

That stopped them. They stared at him. He added quickly, “Supplies came aboard at Marsport. We’ll get the clue when we open them. Headquarters must have known the method when they assigned us and ordered the equipment they thought we’d need.”

Koa stood up. He was the only one who could have moved upright against the terrific deceleration. He walked to a rack at one side of the squad room and took down a copy of The Space Navigator. Then, resuming his seat, he looked questioningly at Rip. “Anything else, sir? I thought I’d read what there is about asteroids.”

“Go ahead,” Rip agreed. He sat back as Koa began to recite what data there was, but he didn’t listen. His mind was going ten astro-units a second. He thought he knew why he had been chosen for the job. Word of the priceless asteroid must have reached headquarters only a short time before he was scheduled to leave the space platform. He could imagine the speed with which the specialists at Terra base had acted. They had sent orders instantly to the fastest cruiser in the area, the Scorpius, to stand by for further instructions. Then their personnel machines must have whirred rapidly, electronic brains searching for the nearest available Planeteer officer with an astrophysics specialty and astrogation training.

He could imagine the reaction when the machine turned up the name of a brand-new lieutenant. But the choice was logical enough. He knew that most, if not all, of the Planeteer astrophysicists were in either high or low space on special work. Chances were there was no astrophysicist nearer than Ganymede. So the choice had fallen to him.

He had a mental image of the Terra base scientists feeding data into the electronic brain, taking the results, and writing fast orders for the men and supplies needed. Work at the Planeteer base had probably been finished within an hour of the time word was received.

When they opened the cases brought aboard by the Martians, he would see that the method of blasting the asteroid into a course for Earth was all figured out for him.

Rip was anxious to get at those cases. Not until he saw the method of operation could he begin to figure his course. But there was no possibility of getting at the stuff until Brennschluss. He put the problem out of his mind and concentrated on what his men were saying.

“ ... and he slugged into that asteroid going close to seven AU’s,” Santos was saying. The corporal shrugged expressively.

Rip recognized the story. It was about a supply ship, a chemical drive rocket job, that had blasted into an asteroid a few years before.

Private Dowst shrugged, too. “Too bad. High vack was waiting for him. Nothing you can do when Old Man Nothing wants you. Not a thing in space!”

Rip listened, interested. This was the talk of old space hands, who had given the high vacuum of empty space a personality, calling it “high vack,” or “Old Man Nothing.” With understandable fatalism, they believed--or said they believed--that when high vacuum really wanted you, there was nothing you could do.

Rip had come across an interesting bit of word knowledge. Spacemen and Planeteers alike had a way of using the phrase “by Gemini!” Gemini, of course, was the constellation of the Twins, Castor and Pollux. Both were useful stars for astrogation. The Roman horse soldiers of ancient history had sworn “by Gemini,” or “by the Twins.” The Romans believed the stars were the famous Greek warriors Castor and Pollux, placed in the heavens after their deaths. In later years, the phrase degenerated to the simple “by jiminy,” and its meaning had been lost. Now, although few spacemen knew the history of the phrase, they were using it again, correctly.

Other space talk grew out of space itself, not out of history. For instance, the worst thing that could happen to a man was to have his helmet broken. Let the transparent globe be shattered, and the results were both quick and final. Hence the oft heard threat, “I’ll bust your bubble.”

Speaking of bubbles ... Rip realized suddenly that he and his men would have to live in bubbles and space suits while on the asteroid. None of the minor planets were big enough to have an atmosphere or much gravity.

If only he could get a look into those cases! But the ship was still decelerating, and he would have to wait. He put his head against the chair rest and settled down to wait as patiently as he could.

Brennschluss was a long time coming. When the deceleration finally stopped, Rip didn’t wait for gravity. He hauled himself out of the chair and the squad room and went down the corridor hand over hand. He headed straight for where the supplies were stacked, his Planeteers close behind him.

Commander O’Brine arrived at the same time. “We’re starting to scan for the asteroid,” he greeted Rip. “May be some time before we find it.”

“Where are we, sir?” Rip asked.

“Just above the asteroid belt near the outer edge. We’re beyond the position where the asteroid was sighted, moving along what the Altair figured as its orbit. I’m not stretching space, Foster, when I tell you we’re hunting for a needle in a junk pile. This part of space is filled with more objects than you would imagine, and they all register on the rad screens.”

“We’ll find it,” Rip said confidently.

O’Brine nodded. “Yes. But it probably will take some hunting. Meanwhile, let’s get at those cases. The supply clerk is on his way.”

The supply clerk arrived, issued tools to the Planeteers, then opened a plastic case attached to one of the boxes and produced lists. As the Planeteers opened and unpacked the crates, Rip and O’Brine inspected, and the clerk checked off the items.

The first case produced a complete chemical cutting unit, with an assortment of cutting tips and adapters. Rip looked around for the gas cylinders and saw none. “Something’s wrong,” he objected. “Where’s the fuel supply for the torch?”

The supply clerk inspected the lists, shuffled papers, and found the answer.

“The following,” he read, “are to be supplied from the Scorpius complement. One landing boat, large, model twenty-eight. Eight each, oxygen cutting unit gas bottles. Four each, chemical cutting unit fuel tanks.”