"Take your time, Mark; I don't think we're in a hurry down here," said Zip. For half an hour, Mark tried voice commands and combinations of keyboard strokes, but made no progress.

"This place is oppressive," said one of the miners, after a long silence. "I don't like being closed in by darkness."

"Right," said another. "On the asteroids we can see for thousands of light years, but inside here it seems as if life is swallowed. I feel as if I'm in something's stomach."

"Starman Foster," said George St. George. "I think we had better move on. We need to come to the end of this giant room and get back to light and living quarters of some kind. With all this excitement we've had, I think the men are just about completely exfluncted."

Zip paused a moment and looked into the distance, then nodded. "Okay,"

he agreed. "This room can't go on forever. Let's find the end of it."

Lurton Zimbardo was in the control center of the asteroid. A small group of his most trusted a.s.sistants stood silently by. Through the wall of gla.s.s on his right he could see the cavern where the pirates'

s.p.a.ceships were anch.o.r.ed to the landing field. Five of them were out on a.s.signment in the Belt. As the work crew on the asteroid was able to produce sufficient sheathing, power, and propulsion units, a s.p.a.ce crew was a.s.signed the task of outfitting the asteroids that Lurton had previously chosen.

The first, under the leadership of Cra.s.s, had returned that morning.

Another had gone out almost immediately afterward and one more would depart the next morning. By the end of the following day, the last two crews would be launched.

Cra.s.s' a.s.signment had included the destruction of the sats while he performed his task. Now that the pirates knew how easy and fast it was to complete the work, they did not bother to destroy the sats in the remaining four sites. Zimbardo knew that the destruction of the sats would alert s.p.a.ce Command, but the authorities would not be able to stop the project before his ships returned. Once they learned what he was doing they would expect that he had only one asteroid to command.

The remaining four would be a shock to them and give him, Zimbardo, a powerful psychological edge. He would need it for his last demand. Even his most trusted lieutenants had no inkling of the enormity of his last ploy.

"Now in contact with G670," uttered Zimbardo, referring to the asteroid that Cra.s.s and his crew had rigged. The screen was lit up before him.

"Two minutes and four seconds to go from right...now!" A countdown clock was set at his left. The pirate captain checked his figures one more time. He had plotted the orbit of Mars, the thrust and direction of the power units on G670, the speed of the red planet in its course and its rotation, the antic.i.p.ated acceleration of the asteroid, and the time delay involved in making adjustments to its course. He had checked his computations half a dozen times and then commanded three others to do so.

Three, two, one... read the countdown clock. Zero. Zimbardo pressed the b.u.t.ton. He remained motionless for at least ten seconds. Then he sat back and exhaled loudly. He had not noticed that he hadn't been breathing. Then he turned and smiled broadly to his audience.

"Five and a half days from now, everyone in the Earth-Moon-Mars system will know who we are!"

Oritz Konig was making another report to Richard Starlight. "The s.p.a.ce Command ships came onto the site and found no sign of human presence.

They quickly replaced the sats, got them activated, and then checked data. I don't know how to explain it, Richard, but an asteroid is missing. Other than that, there is nothing different in the area of the Belt that had gone dark, but obviously the pirates have done something with an asteroid. It's not a very big one-only about 100 yards in diameter, maybe a little more-but it's vanished."

The Starmen and miners had been walking more than three hours, and covered a distance of about ten miles.

"A wall," announced Zip. "We've come to the end of it at last."

"You'd think that a race that can make elevators go sideways could have come up with a way to traverse this gymnasium quicker and easier than walking," grumbled Joe.

"Didn't I hear you say that this place is great?" inquired Zip.

"It is. Back then, I meant 'great' like 'magnificent'; but now it just feels like 'great' as in 'really big.'"

The company came up to the wall. There was a bank of elevators in front of them and several sets of doors to their right. In a large open gathering place, there were many platforms like flat beds, with rods coming out of one end and sticking up perpendicular to the beds.

"Joe," said Mark, investigating one of the beds. "Here's your easier way to travel. These things must be some sort of dolly or truck. I saw a lot of them where we first came out of the elevator, but I didn't recognize them."

"And we didn't know how big the room is, either, so we didn't look for means of transportation," added Zip.

"No wheels," said Joe, peering at the apparatus, "and doesn't need them. Magnetic, probably, with this iron floor. Man," he said with exaggerated disgust, "we could have floated in comfort the whole length of the place."

"We're here now," said Zip, matter-of-factly. "What happens next? We'll see if our friends are still with us."

The men waited for some sign of guidance, but there was only silence.

No lights were activated over an elevator. Minutes dragged on. "Try the doors," said Zip at last, and walked to the nearest elevator. He pressed b.u.t.tons, but nothing happened. "Go on, try the other ones," he called out with a wave of his hand. Some of the men went to the other elevators and pressed b.u.t.tons. Others went to the standard doors adjacent to the elevators, but they did not open.

"Well, I guess we have to go back," said Joe. No one laughed.

"This one's open," called one of St. George's men. They all turned and saw an open door-the tenth in a row of identical, unmarked doors along the wall. The man didn't go through it but waited for Zip. The leader of the Starmen went through the portal onto a metal deck. Stairs went upward. He began to climb, with the others following after.

Three flights up he came to another door, which opened as he set foot on the landing. He went through it into a room outfitted as a small hangar. Five s.p.a.ceships of alien design were clamped to the floor. At the far end of the hangar was an airlock.

Walking gingerly, Zip stepped out a little farther into the hangar. The airlock was enormous and perfectly clear, revealing thousands of stars.

Though it had been only a few days since he had seen a starscape, now it almost seemed as if he were perceiving the heavens for the first time. A feeling of awe coursed through him.

"We're almost free," he whispered.

12: First Impact

"ALIEN s.p.a.cECRAFT!" murmured Joe, slowly. "Magnificent!"

He and Mark had followed Zip into the hangar. George St. George and his men came after them. They huddled close together and remained at the door while the Starmen strode across the floor of the hangar toward the s.p.a.cecraft.

The five ships were sleek craft with a highly swept delta wing design.

The hulls were a startlingly reflective deep forest green color. The craft looked identical to each other, each about 75 feet long with a wingspan of about 45 feet. The windshields were black and opaque. They lay horizontally on the floor of the hangar, all pointed toward the airlock.

"Beautiful! Just gorgeous!" exclaimed Mark. As he approached the alien craft he noted that the hull was not merely colored, but patterned. "Oh my! Look at this!"

Joe and Zip were right behind Mark and came over to see what the big Starman was showing them. The hulls were not only beautifully colored, but showed evidence of leaf patterns. Subtle gradations in color gave the impression that the ships were almost camouflaged-that they could land in a deep forest and become almost invisible.

"This is a work of art, a work of genius!" exclaimed Joe.

"How do you get in?" asked Zip, looking for a door. He was running his hands over the surface. There was no sign of a doorway, no seal or join anywhere he could see or feel. He could see his reflection in the side of the s.p.a.cecraft as if he were looking into a still pool in a forest.

"So close, yet so far," said Mark. "Here are ships, there is an airlock, but we're not any closer to escaping than we were before."

"This'll take some time," said Joe, with a grimace. "It's probably voice-activated, like the computer screens below." The company had pa.s.sed large computer screens regularly on their trek through the power plant. "All we need to do is learn the language of an alien race we don't know, have never met, and whose language we can't read. Then we can break free of here."

"Let's get busy," said Zip. "I like a challenge. We were led here by our hosts. There has to be a way."

Zip went back to George St. George and his men. "We'll be working on getting into one of the s.p.a.cecraft and learning how to use it. You can help by exploring this place and finding out what's here. George, would you please take an inventory of what we've got in the way of food and drink and make a plan for making it last as long as you can. We'll also need s.p.a.cesuits. We can probably fly without them if we have to, but it's a bad risk."

"Okay, Zip. We'll do our part," responded George. His men scattered throughout the hangar. There was a lot to investigate. It was only about 200 yards long and 50 yards wide, but was lined with cabinets.

There were shelves and racks with equipment of various kinds, some recognizable and some decidedly not. More than a dozen doors opened into the hangar. Zip went back to the s.p.a.cecraft the Starmen had chosen for their escape vehicle.

Joe and Mark were at the closest work station, where there were tools of curious manufacture.