Lucky Starr And The Rings Of Saturn ls-6, Page 2

  "We're on our way," said Lucky, reaching out to tousle Bigman's sandy hair. "We've been rusting on Earth for how long? Six weeks? Well, that's long enough."

  "And how," agreed Bigman joyfully, and pulled on the other boot

  They were out past the orbit of Mars before they made satisfactory sub-etheric contact with the pursuing ships, using the tightest scrambling.

  It was Councilman Ben Wessilewsky on the T.S.S. Harpoon who answered.

  He shouted, "Lucky! Are you joining us? Swell!" His face grinned out of the visiplate and he winked. "Got room to squash Bigman's ugly puss into a corner of your screen? Or isn't he with you?"

  "I'm with him," howled Bigman as he plunged between Lucky and the transmitter. "Think Councilman Conway would let this big lunk go anywhere without me to keep an eye on him so's he doesn't trip over his big feet?"

  Lucky picked Bigman up and tucked him, squawking, under one arm. He said, "Seems to be a noisy connection, Wess. What's the position of the ship we're after?"

  Wess, sobering, gave it. He said, "The ship's The Net of Space. It's privately owned, with a legitimate record of manufacture and sale. Agent X must have bought it under a dummy name and prepared for emergency a long time ago. It's a sweet ship and it's been accelerating ever since it took off. We're falling behind."

  "What's its power capacity?"

  "We've thought of that. We've checked the manufacturer's record of the craft, and at the rate he's expending power, he can't go much farther without either cutting motors or sacrificing maneuverability once he reaches destination. Wre counting on driving him into that exact hole."

  "Presumably, though, he may have had the sense to rev up the ship's power capacity."

  "Probably," said Wess, "but even so he can't keep this up forever. The thing I worry about is the possibility that he might evade our mass detectors by asteroid-skipping. If he can get the breaks in the asteroid belt, we may lose him."

  Lucky knew that trick. Place an asteroid between yourself and a pursuer, and the pursuer's mass detectors locate the asteroid rather than the ship. When a second asteroid comes within reach, the ship shifts from one to the other, leaving the pursuer with his instrument still fastened on the first rock.

  Lucky said, "He's moving too fast to make the maneuver. He'd have to decelerate for half a day."

  "It would take a miracle," agreed Wess frankly, "but it took a miracle to put us on his trail, and so I almost expect another miracle to cancel the first."

  "What was the first miracle? The Chief said something about an emergency block."

  "That's right." Wess told the story crisply, and it didn't take long. Dorrance, or Agent X (Wess called him by either name), had slipped surveillance by using an instrument that distorted the spy-beam into uselessness. (The instrument had been located, but its workings were fused and it could not even be determined if it was of Sirian manufacture.) He reached his getaway ship, The Net of Space, without trouble. He was ready to take off with this proton micro-reactor activated, his motor and controls checked, clear space above-and then a limping freight ship, meteor-struck and unable to radio ahead, had appeared in the stratosphere, signaling desperately for a clear field.

  The emergency block was flashed. All ships in port were held fast. Any ship in the process of take-off, unless it was already in actual motion, had to abandon take-off procedure.

  The Net of Space ought to have abandoned take-off, but it did not. Lucky Starr could well understand what the feelings of Agent X aboard must have been. The hottest item in the Solar System was in his possession, and every second counted. Now that he had made his actual move he could not rely on too long a time before the Council would be on his heels. If he abandoned take-off it would mean an untold delay while a riddled ship limped down and ambulances slowly emptied it. Then, when the field was cleared again, it would mean reactivation of the micro-reactor and another controls check. He could not afford the delay.

  So his jet blasted and up he went.

  And still Agent X might have escaped. The alarm sounded, the port police put out wild messages to The Net of Space, but it was Councilman Wessilewsky, serving a routine hitch at Port Center, who took proper action. He had played his part in the search for Agent X, and a ship that blasted off against an emergency block somehow smelled wildly of just enough desperation to mean Agent X. It was the wildest possible guess, but he acted.

  With the authority of the Council of Science behind him (which superseded all other authority except that contained in a direct order from the President of the Terrestrial Federation, he ordered ships into space, contacted Council Headquarters, and then boarded the T.S.S. Harpoon to guide the pursuit. He had already been in space for hours before the Council as a whole caught up with events. But then the message came through that he was indeed pursuing Agent X and that other ships would be joining him.

  Lucky listened gravely and said, "It was a chance that paid off, Wess. And the right thing to do. Good work."

  Wess grinned. Councilmen traditionally avoided publicity and the trappings of fame, but the approval of one's fellows in the Council was something greatly to be desired.

  Lucky said, "I'm moving on. Have one of your ships maintain mass contact with me."

  He broke visual contact, and his strong, finely formed hands closed almost caressingly on his ship's controls-his Shooting Starr, which in so many ways was the sweetest vessel in space.

  The Shooting Starr had the most powerful proton micro-reactors that could be inserted into a ship of its size; reactors almost powerful enough to accelerate a battle cruiser at fleet-regulation pace; reactors almost powerful enough to manage the Jump through hyper-space. The ship had an ion drive that cut out most of the apparent effects of acceleration by acting simultaneously on all atoms aboard ship, including those that made up the living bodies of Lucky and Bigman. It even had an Agrav, recently developed and still experimental, which enabled it to maneuver freely in the intense gravitational fields of the major planets.

  And now The Shooting Starr's mighty motors hummed smoothly into a higher pitch, just heard, and Lucky felt the slight pressure of such backward drag as was not completely compensated for by the ion drive. The ship bounded outward into the far reaches of the Solar System, faster, faster, still faster…

  And still Agent X maintained his lead, and The Shooting Starr gained too slowly. With the main body of the asteroid belt far behind, Lucky said, "It looks bad, Bigman."

  Bigman looked surprised. "Well get him, Lucky."

  "It's where he's heading. I was sure it would be a Sirian mother-ship waiting to pick him up and make the Jump homeward. But such a ship would be either way out of the plane of the Ecliptic or it would be hidden in the asteroid belt. Either way, it could count on not being detected. But Agent X stays in the Ecliptic and heads beyond the asteroids."

  "Maybe he's just trying to shake us before he heads for the ship."

  "Maybe," said Lucky, "and maybe the Sirians have a base on the outer planets."

  "Come on, Lucky." The small Martian cackled his derision. "Right under our noses?"

  "It's hard to see under our noses sometimes. His course is aimed right at Saturn."

  Bigman checked the ship's computers, which were keeping constant tab on the other's course. He said, "Look, Lucky, the cobber is still on a ballistic course. He hasn't touched his motors in twenty million miles. Maybe he's out of power."

  "And maybe he's saving his power for maneuvers in the Saturnian system. There'll be a heavy gravitational drag there. At least I hope he's saving power. Great Galaxy, I hope he is." Lucky's lean, handsome face was grave now and his lips were pressed together tightly.

  Bigman looked at him with astonishment. "Sands of Mars, Lucky, why?"

  "Because if there is a Sirian base in Saturn's system, we'll need Agent X to lead us to that base. Saturn has one tremendous satellite, eight sizeable ones, and dozens of splinter worlds. It would help to know exactly where it was."

  Bigman frown
ed. "The cobber wouldn't be dumb enough to lead us there."

  "Or maybe to let us catch him… Bigman, calculate his course forward to the point of intersection with Saturn's orbit."

  Bigman did so. It was a routine moment of work for the computer.

  Lucky said, "And how about Saturn's position at the moment of intersection? How far will Saturn be from Agent X's ship?"

  There was the short pause necessary for getting the elements of Saturn's orbit from the Ephemeris, and then Bigman punched it in. A few seconds of calculation and Bigman suddenly rose to his feet in alarm. "Lucky! Sands of Mars!"

  Lucky did not need to ask the details. He said, ''I'm thinking that Agent X may have decided on the one way to keep from leading us to the Sirian base. If he continues on ballistic course exactly as he is now, he will strike Saturn itself-and sure death."

  3. Death in the Rings

  There came to be no possible doubt about it as the hours passed. Even the pursuing guard ships, far behind The Shooting Starr, too far off to get completely accurate fixes on their mass detectors, were perturbed.

  Councilman Wessilewsky contacted Lucky Starr. "Space, Lucky," he said, "where's he going?"

  "Saturn itself, it seems," said Lucky.

  "Do you suppose a ship might be waiting for him on Saturn? I know it has thousands of miles of atmosphere with million-ton pressures, and without Agrav

  motors they couldn't… Lucky! Do you suppose they

  have Agrav motors and forcefield bubbles?"

  "I think he may be simply crashing to keep us from catching him."

  Wess said dryly, "If he's all that anxious to die, why doesn't he turn and fight, force us to destroy him and maybe take one or two of us with him?"

  "I know," said Lucky, "or why not short-circuit his motors, leaving Saturn a hundred million miles off course? In fact, it bothers me that he should be attracting attention to Saturn this way." He fell into a thoughtful silence.

  Wess broke in! "Well, then, can you cut him off, Lucky? Space knows we're too far away."

  Bigman shouted from his place at the control panel, "Sands of Mars, Wess, if we rev up enough ion beam to catch him, well be moving too fast to maneuver him away from Saturn."

  "Do something."

  "Space, there's an intelligent order," said Bigman. "Real helpful. 'Do something'."

  Lucky said, "Just keep on the move, Wess. I'll do something."

  He broke contact and turned to Bigman. "Has he answered our signals at all, Bigman?"

  "Not one word."

  "Forget that for now and concentrate on tapping his communication beam."

  "I don't think he's using one, Lucky."

  "He may at the last minute. He'll have to take a chance then if he has anything to say at all. Meanwhile we're going for him."

  "How?"

  "Missile. Just a small pea-shot."

  It was his turn to bend over the computer. While The Net of Space moved in an unpowered orbit, it required no great computation to direct a pellet at the proper moment and velocity to strike the fleeing ship.

  Lucky readied the pellet. It was not designed to explode. It didn't have to. It was only a quarter of an inch in diameter, but the energy of the proton micro-pile would hurl it outward at five hundred miles a second. Nothing in space would diminish that velocity, and the pellet would pass through the hull of The Net of Space as though it were butter.

  Lucky did not expect it would, however. The pellet would be large enough to be picked up on its quarry's mass detectors. The Net of Space would automatically correct course to avoid the pellet, and that would throw it off the direct course to Saturn. The time lost by Agent X in computing the new course and correcting it back to the old one might yet allow The Shooting Starr to come close enough to make use of a magnetic grapple.

  It all added up to a slim chance, perhaps vanishingly slim, but there seemed no other possible course of action. Lucky touched a contact. The pellet sped out in a soundless flash, and the ship's mass-detector needles jumped, then quieted rapidly, as the pellet receded.

  Lucky sat back. It would take two hours for the pellet to make (or almost make) contact. It occurred to him that Agent X might be completely out of power; that the automatic procedures might direct a course change which could not be followed through; that the pellet would penetrate, blow up the ship, perhaps, and in any case leave its course unchanged and still marked for Saturn.

  He dismissed the idea almost at once. It would be incredible to suppose that Agent X would run out of the last bit of power at the moment his ship took on the precise collision course. It was infinitely more likely that some power was left him.

  The hours of waiting were deadly. Even Hector Gonway, far back on Earth, grew impatient with the periodic bulletins and made direct contact on the sub-ether.

  "But where in the Saturnian system do you suppose the base might be?" he asked worriedly.

  "If there is one," said Lucky cautiously, "If what Agent X is doing is not a tremendous effort to mislead us, I would say the most obvious choice is Titan. It's Saturn's one really large satellite, with three times the mass of our own Moon and over twice the surface area. If the Sirians have holed up underground, trying to dredge all of Titan for them would take a long time."

  "It's hard to believe that they would have dared do this. It's virtually an act of war."

  "Maybe so, Uncle Hector, but it wasn't so long ago they tried to establish a base on Ganymede [3]."

  Bigman called out sharply, "Lucky, he's moving."

  Lucky looked up in surprise. "Who's moving?"

  "The Net of Space. The Sirian cobber."

  Lucky said hastily, "I'll get in touch with you later, Uncle Hector," and broke contact. He said, "But he can't be moving, Bigman. He can't possibly have detected the pellet yet."

  "Look and see for yourself, Lucky. I tell you he's moving."

  Lucky, in one stride, was at the mass detectors of The Shooting Starr. For a long time now it had had a fix on the fleeing quarry. It had been adjusted for the ship's unpowered motion through space, and the blob that represented the detectable mass had been a small bright star mark on the screen.

  But now the mark was drifting. It was a short line.

  Lucky's voice was softly intense. "Great Galaxy, of course! Now it makes sense. How could I think his first duty would be merely to avoid capture? Big-

  man…

  "Sure, Lucky. What?" The little Martian was ready for anything.

  "We're being outmaneuvered. We've got to destroy him now even if it means crashing into Saturn ourselves." For the first time since the ion-beam jets had been placed aboard The Shooting Starr the year before, Lucky added the emergency thrusts to the main drive. The ship reeled as every last atom of power it carried was turned into a giant thrust backward that all but burned it out.

  Bigman struggled for breath. "But what's it all about, Lucky?"

  "It's not Saturn he's headed for, Bigman. He was just making use of the full power of its gravitational field to help him keep ahead of us. Now he's cutting around the planet to get into orbit. It's the rings he's headed for. Saturn's rings." The young Councilman's face was drawn with tension. "Keep after that communication beam, Bigman. He'll have to talk now. Now or never."

  Bigman bent over his wave analyzer with a quickening heartbeat, though for the life of him he could not understand why the thought of Saturn's rings should so disturb Lucky.

  The Shooting Starr's pellet came nowhere near its mark, not within fifty thousand miles. But now it was The Shooting Starr itself that was a pellet, striving for junction; and it, too, would miss.

  Lucky groaned. "We'll never make it. There's not enough room left to make it."

  Saturn was a giant in the sky now, with its rings a thin gash across its face. Saturn's yellow globe was almost at the full as The Shooting Starr burned toward it from the direction of the Sun.

  And Bigman suddenly exploded, "Why, the dirty cobber! He's melting into the rings, Lucky. Now I
see what got you about the rings."

  He worked furiously at the mass detector, but it was hopeless. As a portion of the rings came into focus, each of the countless solid masses that composed them formed its own star mark on the screen. The screen turned pure white and The Net of Space was gone.

  Lucky shook his head. "That's not an insoluble problem. We're close enough to get a visual fix now. It's something else that I'm sure is coming."

  Lucky, pale and engrossed, had the visiplate under maximum telescopic enlargement. The Net of Space was a tiny metal cylinder obscured but not hidden by the material of the rings. The individual particles in the rings were no larger than coarse gravel and were only sparkles as they caught and threw back the light of the distant Sun.

  Bigman said, "Lucky! I've got his communications beam… No, no, wait now… Yes, I have it."

  There was a wavering voice crackling in the control room now, obscured and distorted. Bigman's deft fingers worked at the unscrambler,.trying to fit it better and ever better with the unknown characteristics of the Sirian scrambling system.

  The words would die out, then come back. There was silence except for the faint hum of the recorder taking down permanently whatever came through.

  "… not… wor… hither…" (Quite a pause while Bigman fought frantically with his detectors.)

  "… on trail and… couldn't shake… done for and I must transmit… rn's rings in normal orb… dy launch… sties of or… follow… co-ordinate read thus…"

  It broke off altogether at that precise point; the voice, the static, everything.

  Bigman yelled, "Sands of Mars, something's blown!"

  "Nothing here," said Lucky. "It's The Net of Space"

  He had seen it happen two seconds after transmission ceased. Transmission through the sub-ether was at virtually infinite velocity. The light that he saw through the visiplate traveled at only 186,000 miles a second.