METEOR 497.

Get the North America off the route, but quick. Never mind, just get her at least eight hundred kilomiles above the ecliptic, or equivalent.

This is official. Now get me her position."

A short verification of his authority followed, then the Terran operator relayed the request to the North America. The wait was almost fourteen minutes, by which time Phil was visualizing a ship, crushed and shattered, being swept through s.p.a.ce by the ma.s.sive meteor. The Terran man reappeared, looking pale.

"I'll send it over on the writer. We just got the flash from your office, and we're right smack in the middle. I hope you guys know what you're talking about."

"If I were you, I'd hope we didn't," Phil said, and cut off.

He looked in the writer and got the message. The North America would be making an emergency turn by now, he thought. Hope it doesn't take them into the wrong spot at the wrong time.

Spatial Debris began to hum. Phil had made the first decision; now the rest of the office was busy. A flight on another pa.s.senger line was canceled fifteen minutes before take-off--too close! All the robot freight companies were checked and individually warned. On the master chart in Phil's office, little dots acc.u.mulated, making a dense stream along the s.p.a.ce route. Eight hundred ships, a quarter of them carrying pa.s.sengers, were diverted. No more than two hours pa.s.sed before complaints began to roll in by s.p.a.cegram and by viser.

"I'll lose a good prospect if I don't deliver--"

"Exactly where is this meteor--?"

"Why don't you jerks leave us alone? I've been in s.p.a.ce thirty years--"

"How long--" (How long, Phil thought, can seventy million miles e) He stood it for half an hour, then had the public line disconnected and received only official and emergency calls. The next call he got was from Terran Lines. The North America had reported a brief sight on the meteor, but no data on it; the ship was in its emergency turn. Could she go back on course?

Phil told them to hang on a while. He gave the meteor an approximate position, estimating from the position of the Terran ship. The dot lay far above the danger volume.

"Permission refused. Not the same meteor." Phil switched to video and explained. "It's probably a small, close one, blastable. You can sit easy, though. Your ship's out of danger as long as you keep her north." The Terran agent thanked him, with reservations--canceled reservations, probably.

The meteor's path clung obstinately to the trade route; its progress was measured not in linear kilomiles, but in days, and the days looked to add up to several weeks. Government blasters took off from Mars trying to locate the rock, while Phil started losing sleep.

A week pa.s.sed. The blasters had returned four times and had hurtled off again. Somewhere out there a six-mile mote was falling toward the Sun, and while electronic nets were spreading, the system was suffering.

SD STILL SAYS NO! said one headline; another gently hinted, FORTY MILLION DOLLARS SO FAR! The safety bureau took a beating from all sides. Daily, on the financial pages, a little box appeared giving the s.p.a.ce-time coordinates of the meteor. As the weeks wore on, the blasters began taking off from bases on Luna, searching doggedly for a grain of sand in a flour bin. By now the danger volume was an impossible ten trillion cubic miles.

The thinning stream of ships was flowing almost Ecliptic North from the Earth as Mars approached conjunction. No ship gleamed along the whole free-flight trade orbit. Well--one.

Planetoid 17321 belonged to Terry Carson by virtue of a claim filed in Big Bay, Mars. Terry's ship was resting lightly against the half-mile boulder while Terry was "underground" in his pneumatic hut, tight.

1731 was on the chart in Spatial Debris, and its...o...b..t was known exactly. The fact that it was inside the danger volume was of incidental interest. The fact that there was a man in it would have attracted a good deal more attention; however, Terry's flight plan was crushed somewhere in the works of the crippled East Station.

The tunnel Terry had dug extended forty yards into 1731. The walls were plain rock thirty-six yards of the way, right up to the door of the pneumatic hut. From there on, the pick strokes had flaked off blue-gray chips in isolated spots, spots that came more frequently over the last yard. Terry was sitting inside his rubber-canvas hut, a bottle in one hand and a chunk of pure galena in the other.

"I'm rich," he murmured happily. "Hear that, Carson? You're rich.

He's rich, they say. She's rich, it's rich." He let his head drift down on the sleeping bag and chuckled in his belly.

The vein was ninety feet thick, fifty yards across, pure lead sulphide.

Terry had been looking for this rock from the time of the Tompkins strike, eighteen years ago. Eleven fragments of a larger planetoid had been found, each containing a segment of lead ore vein. A topologist friend of Terry's had pieced the rocks together on paper. He had found a gap in the vein, and 1731 was the missing piece. Soviet Atomic was currently paying two-fifty a pound for lead, correspondingly for ore.

Terry did some figuring.

Terry tilted the bottle again. He whispered: "Maybe a million bucks!"

He reached for his portable radio.

If Terry had kept up on current events, he would have known that Earth station KWK had switched off its beam for the duration of the emergency.

But then, Terry didn't know there was any emergency. He batted the plastic box, but all that came out was the hiss of the distant stars.

The gold leaf showed that the filaments were still active; it indicated that the batteries and electrets were good enough. Terry began to feel uneasy.

He scrambled into his suit, the effect of the alcohol wearing off.

Back at the ship, he switched on the long-range radio and fiddled the dial back and forth while the power supply warmed up. Still no KWK.

He spun the dial to WLW, and blew out his breath in relief. The familiar reliable time-ticks beeped away, and Terry relaxed and listened. He spun the dial to the MBC--their wide beam inclosed 1731-and he had music. The default of KWK pa.s.sed quickly from his mind, and he flopped in his bunk and da-dreamed, his fingers twitching now and then as he peeled off a hundred-dollar bill.

At o645 UT, the news came on. Terry paused in the midst of purchasing an Indo-Venusian palace, sat up gradually, and froze.

"... The situation is rapidly becoming serious," the commentator was saying. "For the last three weeks, trade has been falling off at an increasing rate. Conjunction is only a month away, and pa.s.senger lines are straining at the leash. n.o.body wants to travel. The Department of Safety remains obstinate--no direct flights until the meteor is gone.

One wonders a little--the government has sent over sixty long-range blasters after the meteor, and there hasn't been one contact. At a time like this, yours truly would be inclined to say, 'Look before you leap." Are you listening, Mr. B?"

At 0700 the co-ordinates of the meteor were broadcast. Terry was startled to hear how large the uncertainty was, and it was with reluctance that he punched the necessary figures into the computer.

"I'm in it!" he despaired. "They can't do this to me!" But he knew they could. They could send out a blaster after him, leave 1731 unguarded. They could If they were coming after him, Terry reasoned, they would have arrived long ago. So, he guessed more or less correctly, his flight plan must have been snarled up in red tape. He chortled, then swallowed his laughter. Sure, he could stay here--but if the meteor hit, by some long chance, he'd lose both his strike and his life. He chortled again, uncontrollably, and then giggled.

In an instant he was through the mid-section hatch fumbling with the 500 William T. Powers air-generator. The increasing numbness of his fingers hindered him, and he had to concentrate to remember which way the valve turned. The oxygen-content meter was up to sixty percent. Deliberately, Terry slowed his breathing, and reluctantly bled the ship, running helium into the ship's atmosphere until the oxy meter was back to normal.

With a start he noticed that the helium tank was nearly exhausted; then he noticed that the hiss of incoming oxygen was still sounding.

Terry's heart wrenched as he stared at the oxygen gauge. He figured quickly--twenty minutes. Twenty minutes! A leak. All the time he had been digging, celebrating, the main air supply had been draining out a puncture. As he watched the gauge needle twitched and came to rest again a fraction of a division from the stop.

Terry tapped the dial, watching the needle quiver toward zero. Red flag, air supply gone. He breathed deeply, waited two more minutes, then when he could get no more from his ship's vanishing atmosphere, donned his suit.

Four hours of air remained in its tank and regenerator, maybe twelve hours in the hut. Sixteen hours left to breathe. So Terry did v.hat any old hand would have done. He set the distress signal to WLW, beamed it at Earth, and went to sleep. The signal screamed its hundred-megacycle note down the empty s.p.a.ce lane, and was lost.

Peter Hedrick, smuggler by trade, watched a cold Alaskan sky darken, and wrote in his log, "0700. Sky becoming overcast. Take-off in thirty minutes. Consignment, Poppy seed to Big Bay." He had a fine load, a big fast ship and a s.p.a.ce lane all to himself--almost. One meteor was worth chancing. He snapped the log shut and strolled toward the camouflaged ship.

"My dear," Mrs. Ashton confided to the private telescreen, "I know just how you feel. Now don't worry a bit. After all, your John always did like to have his little flings, and everyone understands. He'll be back. And I wouldn't worry too much. Peter says he has it from a very good source that this whole thing is just another meteor scare."

The screen babbled back briefly.

"All right," Mrs. Ashton smiled. "I'll surely let you know.

Bye-bye."

She cut off the screen and let the smile become a smirk. Mrs. Phelps' superb husband was in his private yacht somewhere between here and Mars, and everyone but Mrs. Phelps knew he had company. For a few moments, Mrs. Ashton considered the dramatic possibilities in Mr. Phelps and his yacht being crushed by the meteor, but not beyond recognition.

Phil Brownyard was beginning to repress all optimism concerning the position of the meteor. The failure of the blasters to locate it gave pretty F METEOR 50 I.

good odds that it was well out of the volume a.s.signed to it, and that meant out of the shipping lanes. But there was always one chance.

Phil merely shoved the other nine hundred ninety-nine out of his consciousness and clung to that one.

He got to the office early the twenty-eighth day after the alert.

There was no sense in sitting at home in the dark, so he opened the office at 0725. The reports were still the same--no contact. The black line on the chart extended now from Mars to within two million miles of Earth.

Half a day at the most before Luna would pick up whatever was there.

Phil gave a nervous yawn.

The clock crept laboriously to 0730. Phil doodled on a pad, drawing daggers and ominous blots. 0731. He got up and looked out the window at the city, noting the beauty of the towers in the early morning light 0732. Out in the corridor messenger cars whipped back and forth; all the building was alive except for Spatial Debris and a few others.

Phil sat in his soundproofed office and bit the end off a cigar. Paper rustled as he propped his elbows on the desk.

At 0734, the telescreen shrieked. Phil jumped, dropping his cigar.

Before the automatic dial could switch the call to his home, he flipped the toggle and leaned forward.

"Brownyard?" A switchboard operator stared sleepily at him.

"Yeah, who is it?"

"Mr. Cushing of Terran Lines, collect. Will you accept the call?"

"Go ahead."

Cushing's face blurred too close to the pickup lens. "Brownyard, we've found your meteor!" He roared. "It just hit the North America!" The screen blanked out.

Instantly it came to life again. An excited young man appeared and stammered, "North Station Luna calling. Meteor 842M2055 detected.

Co-ordinates and orbit follow."

Phil acknowledged automatically, knowing it was too late. Switching to another band, he called the night Safety office. His stomach knotted, and hurt.

"What's this about the North America?" he asked Jim Shepard.

"Oh ... you, Phil. Well, she's. .h.i.t all right. Taking off for Stag Head.

Collided at sixty-eight thousand miles; almost nothing left. The patrols are going after her now."

"O.K." Phil started to sign off, then tensed. "Hey ... hey--!"

"Yeah?" Jim reappeared, his face sympathetic.

"What did you say her distance was?"

"Sixty-eight kilomiles. Why, do you think--?"

502 William T. Powers "You bet!" Phil stiffened his aching back and went to work. "That couldn't have been our baby. I just got a contact report from Luna, and I was still convinced that 842 had got the North America. Let's get busy-here are the co-ordinates." Phil dug into the writer and came up with the message card.

He stuck it into the slot under the screen, received the acknowledgment, and cut off. His hands were shaking badly.

How many hours to work? Phil retrieved the card and scanned it, then went to the chart and plotted the point. Nine hundred and eighty kilomiles. That left--nine hours. Only nine hours for the blasters to try to match velocities, nine hours to--Phil tightened inside as the curvator started forward to trace a new black line. It swept inside the orbit of the Moon, straight into the green disk that was Earth.

The crimson light went on.

He had known it would end this way, for a long time. From the instant he had deciphered the first flash, he had had a funny feeling; he had known that the danger volume would sweep over Earth, but he had hoped for just a little more luck, one little favor from the laws of probability. The invisible fingers of Earth tugged, and the great rock obeyed.

Trembling with tension, Phil called Computing and got them to work. In half an hour the answer returned. The west coast of the European continent would be hit; it would take three hours to pinpoint the spot.

Phil frowned and rubbed his forehead. It was silly to feel this way, of course. He had carried out his duties as well as he could--a thousand ships had been warned, the s.p.a.ce lanes had been held clear.

But he felt a sense of responsibility that he could not shake.

At eleven fifteen Fred Holland walked in holding a card. "Here it is.

We've got it down to a twenty-mile circle in southwestern France.

Impact time is 1618." He dropped the card on the desk. "Look, Phil, there's nothing you can do that you haven't done."

"One more thing." Phil took the card without looking at it and sent it to the main Safety office. "Now I can resign."

"This is Jim, Phil. The North America was. .h.i.t by an unscheduled ship that took off from Alaska somewhere. What's the dope on the meteor? I heard it's bad."

"Yeah. Southwestern France, somewhere." Phil wondered vaguely about the ident.i.ty of the other ship. For some reason, the feeling of guilt grew stronger. "Any survivors?" he asked.

And his heart did not change its pace when Jim said, "No."

METOR 53.

Thirteen hundred, and the hourly news. Phil listened dully as the reports came in from the reopened s.p.a.ce lanes. A private yacht had been sighted cruising illegally in the lane. Some scandal or other impended. Planetoid 17321 left the lane and the gap caused by its presence closed. Collision near Mars in the rush to take advantage of approaching conjunction. Stag Head Station operative again. On and on.

The meteor was between Earth and the Moon, now, its pace quickening.

In two more hours and some minutes it would rocket into Earth's atmosphere; incandescent and thundering it would smash into France with a towering splash of earth, rock and living things. Ten million refugees streamed along the roads leading out of that imaginary circle, quiet and terrified, peering into the luminous afternoon sky. Police were thick in the mobs, suppressing panic.

Phil quit listening to the news at 1500. He busied himself around the office, collecting papers acc.u.mulated over the past eight years.

Maybe I can afford to retire. That would be nice. Get away, at any rate.

Maybe Claire would like Venus.

He came on the computations he had made, those about the ma.s.s of the meteor. A strange hope kindled, but the figures were right. He began to fill his briefcase. As he started to leave, he looked long at the clock.

Twelve minutes. As the door shut, a card in its capsule b.u.mped against the end of the pneumatic tube. The punchings on it indicated that a distress signal had been picked up from somewhere near the trade route.