Salvage in Space

  Produced by Sankar Viswanathan, Greg Weeks, and the OnlineDistributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net

  Transcriber's Note:

  This etext was produced from Astounding Stories March 1933. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.

  Salvage in Space

  By Jack Williamson

  * * * * *

  [Sidenote: To Thad Allen, meteor miner, comes the dangerous bonanza ofa derelict rocket-flier manned by death invisible.]

  His "planet" was the smallest in the solar system, and the loneliest,Thad Allen was thinking, as he straightened wearily in the huge,bulging, inflated fabric of his Osprey space armor. Walking awkwardlyin the magnetic boots that held him to the black mass of meteoriciron, he mounted a projection and stood motionless, staring moodilyaway through the vision panels of his bulky helmet into the darkmystery of the void.

  His welding arc dangled at his belt, the electrode still glowing red.He had just finished securing to this slowly-accumulated mass of ironhis most recent find, a meteorite the size of his head.

  Five perilous weeks he had labored, to collect this rugged lump ofmetal--a jagged mass, some ten feet in diameter, composed of hundredsof fragments, that he had captured and welded together. His luck hadnot been good. His findings had been heart-breakingly small; thespectro-flash analysis had revealed that the content of the preciousmetals was disappointingly minute.[1]

  [Footnote 1: The meteor or asteroid belt, between the orbits of Marsand Jupiter, is "mined" by such adventurers as Thad Allen for theplatinum, iridium and osmium that all meteoric irons contain in smallquantities. The meteor swarms are supposed by some astronomers to befragments of a disrupted planet, which, according to Bode's Law,should occupy this space.]

  On the other side of this tiny sphere of hard-won treasure, his Millenatomic rocket was sputtering, spurts of hot blue flame jetting fromits exhaust. A simple mechanism, bolted to the first sizable fragmenthe had captured, it drove the iron ball through space like a ship.

  Through the magnetic soles of his insulated boots, Thad could feel thevibration of the iron mass, beneath the rocket's regular thrust. Themagazine of uranite fuel capsules was nearly empty, now, he reflected.He would soon have to turn back toward Mars.

  Turn back. But how could he, with so slender a reward for his efforts?Meteor mining is expensive. There was his bill at Millen and Helion,Mars, for uranite and supplies. And the unpaid last instalment on hisOsprey suit. How could he outfit himself again, if he returned with nomore metal than this? There were men who averaged a thousand tons ofiron a month. Why couldn't fortune smile on him?

  He knew men who had made fabulous strikes, who had captured wholeplanetoids of rich metal, and he knew weary, white-haired men who hadbraved the perils of vacuum and absolute cold and bullet-swift meteorsfor hard years, who still hoped.

  But sometime fortune had to smile, and then....

  The picture came to him. A tower of white metal, among the low redhills near Helion. A slim, graceful tower of argent, rising in afragrant garden of flowering Martian shrubs, purple and saffron. And agirl waiting, at the silver door--a trim, slender girl in white, withblue eyes and hair richly brown.

  Thad had seen the white tower many times, on his holiday trampsthrough the hills about Helion. He had even dared to ask if it couldbe bought, to find that its price was an amount that he might notamass in many years at his perilous profession. But the girl in whitewas yet only a glorious dream....

  Gigantic claws seemed to reach out of empty air.]

  * * * * *

  The strangeness of interplanetary space, and the somber mystery of it,pressed upon him like an illimitable and deserted ocean. The sun was atiny white disk on his right, hanging between rosy coronal wings; hisnative Earth, a bright greenish point suspended in the dark gulf belowit; Mars, nearer, smaller, a little ocher speck above the shrunkensun. Above him, below him, in all directions was vastness, blackness,emptiness. Ebon infinity, sprinkled with far, cold stars.

  Thad was alone. Utterly alone. No man was visible, in all the supernalvastness of space. And no work of man--save the few tools of hisdaring trade, and the glittering little rocket bolted to the blackiron behind him. It was terrible to think that the nearest human beingmust be tens of millions of miles away.

  On his first trips, the loneliness had been terrible, unendurable. Nowhe was becoming accustomed to it. At least, he no longer feared thathe was going mad. But sometimes....

  Thad shook himself and spoke aloud, his voice ringing hollow in hishuge metal helmet:

  "Brace up, old top. In good company, when you're by yourself, as Dadused to say. Be back in Helion in a week or so, anyhow. Look up Danand 'Chuck' and the rest of the crowd again, at Comet's place. Whatprice a friendly boxing match with Mason, or an evening at theteleview theater?

  "Fresh air instead of this stale synthetic stuff! Real food, in placeof these tasteless concentrates! A hot bath, instead of greasingyourself!

  "Too dull out here. Life--" He broke off, set his jaw.

  No use thinking about such things. Only made it worse. Besides, howdid he know that a whirring meteor wasn't going to flash him outbefore he got back?

  * * * * *

  He drew his right arm out of the bulging sleeve of the suit, into itsample interior, found a cigarette in an inside pocket, and lighted it.The smoke swirled about in the helmet, drawn swiftly into the airfilters.

  "Darn clever, these suits," he murmured. "Food, smokes, watergenerator, all where you can reach them. And darned expensive, too.I'd better be looking for pay metal!"

  He clambered to a better position; stood peering out into space,searching for the tiny gleam of sunlight on a meteoric fragment thatmight be worth capturing for its content of precious metals. For anhour he scanned the black, star-strewn gulf, as the sputtering rocketcontinued to drive him forward.

  "There she glows!" he cried suddenly, and grinned.

  Before him was a tiny, glowing fleck, that moved among the unchangingstars. He stared at it intensely, breathing faster in the helmet.

  Always he thrilled to see such a moving gleam. What treasure itpromised! At first sight, it was impossible to determine size ordistance or rate of motion. It might be ten thousand tons of richmetal. A fortune! It would more probably prove to be a tiny, stonymass, not worth capturing. It might even be large and valuable, butmoving so rapidly that he could not overtake it with the power of thediminutive Millen rocket.

  He studied the tiny speck intently, with practised eye, as the minutespassed--an untrained eye would never have seen it at all, among theflaming hosts of stars. Skilfully he judged, from its apparent rate ofmotion and its slow increase in brilliance, its size and distancefrom him.

  "Must be--must be fair size," he spoke aloud, at length. "A hundredtons, I'll bet my helmet! But scooting along pretty fast. Stretch thelittle old rocket to run it down."

  He clambered back to the rocket, changed the angle of the flamingexhaust, to drive him directly across the path of the object ahead,filled the magazine again with the little pellets of uranite, whichwere fed automatically into the combustion chamber, and increased thefiring rate.

  The trailing blue flame reached farther backward from the incandescentorifice of the exhaust. The vibration of the metal sphere increased.Thad left the sputtering rocket and went back where he could see theobject before him.

  * * * * *

  It was nearer now, rushing obliquely across his path. Would he be intime to capture it as it passed, or would it hurtle by ah
ead of him,and vanish in the limitless darkness of space before his feeble rocketcould check the momentum of his ball of metal?

  He peered at it, as it drew closer.

  Its surface seemed oddly bright, silvery. Not the dull black ofmeteoric iron. And it was larger, more distant, than he had thought atfirst. In form, too, it seemed curiously regular, ellipsoid. It was nojagged mass of metal.

  His hopes sank, rose again immediately. Even if it were not the massof rich metal for which he had prayed, it might be something asvaluable--and more interesting.

  He returned to the rocket, adjusted the angle of the nozzle again, andadvanced the firing time slightly, even at the risk of a ruinousexplosion.

  When he returned to where he could see the hurtling object before him,he saw that it was a ship. A tapering silver-green rocket-flier.

  Once more his dreams were dashed. The officers of interplanetaryliners lose no love upon the meteor miners, claiming that theircollected masses of metal, almost helpless, always underpowered, aremenaces to navigation. Thad