We had no time for further discussion. The asteroid was rapidly approaching. Already, under the gla.s.s, it was a magnificent sight. I had never seen this tiny world before--asteroids are not numerous between the Earth and Mars, or in toward Venus. I never expected to see this one again. How little of the future can we humans fathom, for all our science! If I could only have looked into the future, even for a few short hours! How different then would have been the outcome of this tragic voyage!

The asteroid came rushing at us. Its...o...b..tal velocity, I later computed, was some twenty-two miles a second. Our own, at the present maximum, was a fraction over seventy-seven. The asteroid had for some time been under observation by the lookout. He gave his warning only when it seemed that our trajectory should be altered to avoid a dangerously close pa.s.sing.

At the combined speeds of nearly a hundred miles a second the asteroid swept into view. With the naked eye, at first it was a tiny speck of star-dust, unnoticed in the gem-strewn black velvet of s.p.a.ce. A speck.

Then a gleaming dot, silver white, with the light of our Sun upon it.

Five minutes. The dot grew to a disc. Expanding. A full moon, silver-white. Brightest world in the firmament--the light from it bathed the Planetara, illumined the deck, painting everything with silver.

I stood with Carter and Blackstone on the turret bridge. It was obvious that unless we altered our course, the asteroid would pa.s.s too close for safety. Already we were feeling its attraction; from the control rooms came the report that our trajectory was disturbed by this new ma.s.s so near.

"Better make your calculations now, Gregg," Blackstone suggested.

I cast up the rough elements from the observational instruments in the turret. It took me some ten or fifteen minutes. When I had us upon our new course, with the attractive and repulsive plates in the Planetara's hull set in their altered combinations, I went out to the bridge again.

The asteroid hung over our bow quarter. No more than twenty or thirty thousand miles away. A giant ball now, filling all that quadrant of the heavens. The configurations of its mountains--its land and water areas--were plainly visible. Its axial rotation was apparent.

"Perfectly habitable," Blackstone said. "But I've searched all over this hemisphere with the gla.s.s. No sign of human life--certainly nothing civilized--nothing in the fashion of cities."

A fair little world, by the look of it. A tiny globe: Blackstone had figured it at some eight hundred miles in diameter. There seemed a normal atmosphere. We could see areas where the surface was obscured by clouds. And oceans, and land ma.s.ses. Polar icecaps. Lush vegetation at its equator.

Blackstone had roughly cast its...o...b..tal elements. A narrow ellipse. No wonder we had never encountered this fair little world before. It had come from the outer region beyond Neptune. At perihelion it would reach inside Mercury, round the Sun, and head outward again.

We swept past the asteroid at a distance of some six thousand miles.

Close enough, in very truth--a minute of flight at our combined speeds totaling a hundred miles a second. I had descended to the pa.s.senger deck, where I stood alone at a window, gazing.

The pa.s.sengers were all gathered to view the pa.s.sing little world. I saw, not far from me, Anita, standing with her brother; and the giant figure of Miko with them.

Half an hour since, first with the naked eye, this wandering little world had shown itself; it swam slowly past, began to dwindle behind us.

A huge half moon. A thinner, smaller quadrant. A tiny crescent, like a silver bar-pin to adorn some lady's breast. And then it was a dot, a point of light indistinguishable among the myriad others hovering in this great black void.

The incident of the pa.s.sing of the asteroid was over. I turned from the deck window. My heart leaped. The moment for which all day I had been subconsciously longing was at hand. Anita was sitting in a deck chair, momentarily alone. Her gaze was on me as I looked her way, and she smiled an invitation for me to join her.

CHAPTER VII

_Unspoken Love_

Unspoken love! I think if I had yielded to the impulse of my heart, I would have poured out all those protestations of a lover's ecstasy, incongruous here upon this starlit public deck, to a girl I hardly knew.

I think, too, she might have received them with a tender acquiescence.

The starlight was mirrored in her dark eyes. Misty eyes, with great reaches of unfathomable s.p.a.ce in their depths. Yet I felt their tenderness.

Unfathomable strangeness of love! Who am I to write of it, with all the poets of all the ages striving to express the unexpressible? A bond, strangely fashioned by nature, between me and this little dark-haired Earth beauty. As though marked by the stars we were destined to be lovers....

Thus ran the romance of my unspoken thoughts. But I was sitting quietly in the deck chair, striving to regard her gentle beauty impersonally.

And saying:

"But Miss Prince, why are you and your brother going to Ferrok-Shahn?

His business--"

Even as I voiced it, I hated myself for such a question. So nimble is the human mind that mingled with my rhapsodies of love was my need for information of George Prince....

"Oh," she said, "this is pleasure, not business, for George." It seemed to me that a shadow crossed her expressive face. But it was gone in an instant, and she smiled. "We have always wanted to travel. We are alone in the world, you know--our parents died when we were children."

I filled in her pause. "You will like Mars--so many interesting things to see."

She nodded. "Yes, I understand so. Our Earth is so much the same all over, cast all in one mould."

"But a hundred or two hundred years ago it was not, Miss Prince. I have read how the picturesque Orient, differing from--well, Great-New York, or London, for instance--"

"Transportation did that," she interrupted eagerly. "Made everything the same--the people all look alike--dress alike."

We discussed it. She had an alert, eager mind, childlike with its curiosity, yet strangely matured. And her manner was navely earnest.

Yet this was no clinging vine, this little Anita Prince. There was a firmness, a hint of masculine strength in her chin, and in her manner.

"If I were a man, what wonders I could achieve in this marvelous age!"

Her sense of humor made her laugh at herself. "Easy for a girl to say that," she added.

"You have greater wonders to achieve, Miss Prince," I said impulsively.

"Yes? What are they?" She had a very frank and level gaze, devoid of coquetry.

My heart was pounding. "The wonders of the next generation. A little son, cast in your own gentle image--"

What madness, this clumsy brash talk! I choked it off.

But she took no offense. The dark rose-petals of her cheeks were mantled deeper red, but she laughed.

"That is true." She turned abruptly serious. "I should not laugh. The wonders of the next generation--conquering humans marching on...." Her voice trailed away. My hand went to her arm. Strange tingling something which poets call love! It burned and surged from my trembling fingers into the flesh of her forearm.

The starlight glowed in her eyes. She seemed to be gazing, not at the silver-lit deck, but away into distant reaches of the future. And she murmured:

"A little son, cast in my own gentle image. But with the strength of his father...."

Our moment. Just a breathless moment given us as we sat there with my hand burning her arm, as though we both might be seeing ourselves joined in a new individual--a little son, cast in his mother's gentle image and with the strength of his father. Our moment, and then it was over. A step sounded. I sat back. The giant gray figure of Miko came past, his great cloak swaying, with his clanking sword-ornament beneath it. His bullet head, with its close-clipped hair, was hatless. He gazed at us, swaggered past, and turned the deck corner.

Our moment was gone. Anita said conventionally, "It has been pleasant to talk with you, Mr. Haljan."

"But we'll have many more," I said. "Ten days--"

"You think we'll reach Ferrok-Shahn on schedule?"