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 pa.s.s 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 t.i.tAN, 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 t.i.tan 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. If you're leaving, we'll have no way 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 I'd be glad to have you as a Planeteer corporal any time."

O'Brine chuckled. "All right. Let's declare a truce, Planeteer. We'll meet again. s.p.a.ce isn't very big."

A short time later Rip stood in front of his asteroid base and watched the great cruiser drive into s.p.a.ce. A short distance away a snapper-boat was lashed to the landing boat. O'Brine had insisted on leaving 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 b.u.mp into trouble."

The asteroid sped on its lonely way for two days and then a cruiser came out of s.p.a.ce, 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.

Captain Go Sian-tek, a Chinese Planeteer officer, arrived in one of the cruiser's landing boats accompanied by three enlisted Planeteers. They were all from the Special Order Squadron on Mercury.

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 did all their work on the sun side, using special alloy suits to mine the precious nuc.l.i.te 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 thermo-nuclear reaction. The reaction had shorn some elements of their electrons and left a thin coating of material composed almost entirely of neutrons. The nuc.l.i.te 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 for s.p.a.ceship skins.

"Things aren't so bad," Go told Rip. "The base is comfortable and we only work a two hour shift out of each ten. We've had a plague of silly dillies recently. They got into one man's suit while we were working, but mostly they're just a nuisance."

Rip had heard of the creatures. They were like earth armadillos, except that they were silicon animals and not carbon like those of earth. They were drawn to oxygen like iron to a magnet, and their diamond hard tongues, used for drilling rock in order to get the minerals on which they lived, could drive right through a s.p.a.ce suit. Or, if they could work undetected for a short while, they could drill through the sh.e.l.l of a s.p.a.ce station.

_Scralabus primus_ was the scientific name of the creature, but the fact that it looked like a silicon armadillo had given it the popular name of "silly dilly." Apart from its desire for oxygen it was harmless.

Koa reported, "Sir, the block of thorium is ready. We've hung it on a line behind the landing boat. The blast won't hurt it, and it's too big to get inside the boat."

"Fine, Koa. Well, Captain, that does it."

The Mercurian Planeteers got into their craft and blasted off, trailing the block of thorium in their exhaust. Rip watched the cruiser take the craft and thorium aboard, then drive toward Mercury, brilliant sunlight reflecting from its sleek sides. The planet was only a short distance away by s.p.a.ceship. It was the largest thing in s.p.a.ce, except for the sun, as seen from the asteroid. To Rip it looked about three times the size of the moon as seen from earth.

Past the orbit of Mercury, the sun side of the asteroid grew dangerously hot for men in s.p.a.ce suits. Rip and the Planeteers stayed in the bitter cold of the dark side, which ceased to be entirely dark. Even the temperature rose somewhat. They were close enough to the sun so that the prominences, great flaming tongues of hydrogen that sped many thousands of miles into s.p.a.ce, gave them light and enough heat to register on Rip's instruments.

Mercury was left far behind, and earth could not be seen because of the sun. There was nothing to do now but ride out the rest of the trip as comfortably as possible until it was time to throw the asteroid into an ever-tightening series of elliptical orbits around earth, known as braking ellipses. The method would use earth's gravity to slow them down to the proper speed. A single atomic bomb and a half dozen tubes of rocket fuel remained.

Then, as Rip was enjoying the comfort of air during his off-watch hour in the boat compartment, Koa beat an alarm on the door.

Rip and the Planeteers with him hurriedly got into s.p.a.ce suits and opened up.

"It's Terra base calling on the communicator, sir," Koa reported. "Urgent message, they said, and they want to talk to you, personally."

Rip hurried to the base cave. The communicator indicator light was glowing red. He plugged in his helmet circuit and said, "This is Lieutenant Foster. Go ahead."

A voice crackled across s.p.a.ce from earth. "This is Terra base. Foster, a Consops cruiser has apparently been hiding behind the sun waiting for you.

Our screens just picked it up, heading your way. We've sent orders to the _Sagittarius_ on Mercury to give you cover, and the _Aquila_ has taken off from here. But get this, Foster. The Consops cruiser will reach you first.

You have about one hour. Do you understand?"

Rip understood all right. He understood too well. "Got you," he said shortly. "Now what?"

The communicator buzzed. "Take any appropriate action. You're on your own, Foster. Sorry. Sending the cruisers is all we can do. We'll stand by for word from you. If you think of any way we can help, let us know."

Rip asked, "How long before the cruisers arrive?"

"You're too close to us for them to move fast. They'll have to use time accelerating and decelerating. The _Sagittarius_ should arrive in something less than two hours and the _Aquila_ a few minutes later."

The communicator paused, then continued. "One thing more, Foster. The Connies know how badly we want that asteroid, but they also know we don't want it enough to start a war. Got that?"

"Got it," Rip stated wryly. "I got it good. Thanks for the warning, Terra base. Foster off."

"Terra base off. Stay out of high vack."

Fine advice, if it could be taken. Rip stared up at the brilliant stars, thinking fast. The Connie would have almost an hour's lead on the s.p.a.ce patrol cruisers. In that hour, if the Connie were willing to pay the price in blasted snapper-boats, Consops would have the asteroid. And Terra base had made it clear that the s.p.a.ce patrol would not try to blast the Connie cruiser and take back the asteroid, because that would mean war.

Added together, the facts said just one thing: they had one hour in which to think of some way to hold off the Connies for an additional hour.

The Planeteers were cl.u.s.tered around him. Rip asked grimly, "Any of you ever study the ancient art of magic?"

The Planeteers remained silent and tense.

"Magic is what we need," Rip told them. "We have to make the whole asteroid disappear, or else we have to conjure up a s.p.a.ce cruiser out of the thorium. Otherwise, we have a little more than an hour before we're either prisoners or dead!"

CHAPTER THIRTEEN - PERIL AT PERIHELION

Sergeant-major Koa had made no comment since notifying Rip of the call from Terra base. Now he asked thoughtfully, "Lieutenant, can the Connie launch boats this close to the sun? Won't the sun's pull suck them right in?"

Corporal Pederson scoffed, "Naw, Koa. If sun's gravity be that strong, it pull us in, too."